On Fox News last night, Karl Rove took a rather interesting stance on government snooping, criticizing a provision in the financial reform bill that he claimed allows the government “to monitor every financial transaction in the United States.”
“It creates a new office and gives it a half a billion dollars a year and a huge start-up for computer systems in order to monitor every financial transaction in the United States,” Rove said.
So they’re literally gonna have the capacity to go through everybody’s brokerage account, and everybody’s checking account, and everybody’s credit card and everybody’s financial transactions, and collect — sweep that information, and then analyze it.
Of course, Rove’s stance might seem a little off considering the Bush administration’s surveillance programs and warrantless wiretapping.
Rove did confront that apparent contradiction on Fox.
“I remember when people got really upset when we were taking a look in the Bush administration at sweeping the electronic communication of suspected terrorists abroad,” he said. But, he implied, what’s happening now is worse.
Under the Democrats’ plan, Rove said, the government could look at anyone’s financial accounts “and sweep that information in order to do with it what whatever they want to do.”
“Doesn’t sound to me like a smart thing to do,” Rove said.
Watch:
