The Senate passed the FISA bill today giving telecoms immunity and allowing the government to spy on all Americans. Yes, this violates the privacy the constitution is meant to protect us from.  Spying…hmm… that doesn’t sound very American. But it also doesn’t surprise me.

This past week, I came across an article and radio segment about torture.  The former is a frightening piece in Vanity Fair where author Christopher Hitchens undergoes the controversial drowning technique and concludes, “believe me, it’s torture.”

And on This American Life, Ira Glass interviews Basim, an Iraqi national who worked as an interpreter for the U.S. Army. He talks about the time he had to purposely mistranslates in order to keep a situation from turning violent. And then Basim mentions the Abu Ghraib photos and how they changed the Iraqi’s perception of Americans. Before the photos were published, even if Iraqis mistrusted Americans, they viewed Americans as generally fair and ethical. But after the photos of Abu Ghraib were public, it was as if everything they perceived about Americans was a lie and it was even more difficult to believe we could do anything good.  Almost instantly, Americans were seen as less fair, ethical and evolved. (You can listen to the entire show here. Basim’s segment is about 20 minutes in.)

Does passing the FISA bill reinforce the perception of unfair and unjust America?

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Related:

Believe Me, It’s Torture

This American Life: By Proxy 

The Lucifer Effect: Cheney Ok’d Harsh Interrogations