techdirt is reporting that during an interview on October 29th, 2013 – Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan states that “you can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated, right?” – clearly Representative Rogers doesn’t understand that covert crimes are still crimes.
The discussion in the video below is between Rep. Mike Rogers (chairman of the House Intelligence Committee) and Professor Stephen Vladeck (Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law) – the only panelist to appear before the committee who expressed any concerns at all regarding the surveillance programs being run by the NSA.
Rep. Mike Rogers laughs and makes a joke that wine will be required to get into discussion further, which we read as a way to brush aside the (valid) concerns of Professor Vladeck.
We wish to ask Rep. Mike Rogers if we can get his opinion on some other “non-crimes”. As an example, would Rep. Rogers feel that a crime has taken place if his pocket was picked and he didn’t know about it? Or if his bank account was emptied without him knowing? The mere fact that the victim of a crime doesn’t (yet?) know about the act of violation, does not mean a crime has not been committed. How about if his home was burglarized during his time in Washington DC? Clearly a crime would have been committed. Clearly the representative wouldn’t know; at least to begin with. Are these also not crimes against the owner of the property? Why would a crime against an individual’s constitutionally protected rights be any different?
We think it a little scary that the chairman of *any* committee within the govt. has this kind of view on violations of privacy – let alone a member, or even worse, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee… where is the intelligence here?
