विल्ड-एयेद कोन्स्पिराच्य theory

Here's a wild-eyed conspiracy theory: Google can wash its hands of responsibility for the hacking of this blog now that Bush has signed a new, extended warrantless wiretap law.

The law was needed, according to N.Y. Times sources, because telecommunications companies, fearful of lawsuits, were balking at cooperating with some NSA demands. The details of the extension were, of course, kept under wraps.

Well, you say, what's a blog got to do with email communication? Google has changed its policy to require that every blog be linked to an existing email address, whether Google's Gmail or other. This blog's password is identical to my Gmail password, at Google's insistence.

So, if the feds demand the password for my Gmail account, then they also have the password for this blog. Once the interceptions are authorized, Google lawyers can then argue that any hacking is not Google's responsibility. Think the Bush-Cheney crowd wouldn't stoop to morphing a nettlesome critic into a "terrorist-linked" threat? Even now, numerous political activists are denied, without due process of law, their right to fly, though it is absurd in 99 percent of cases to view them as terror-tied.

I have contacted Google's tech team three or four times about the hacking but no response has been received and the latest bug remains unfixed. I did mention in one letter that I suspected that this blog was being hacked for political reasons and that the hackers seem to getting past Google's firewalls and into its main system. I say this because I keep shifting my passwords, computer terminals and geographic locations, but the hacking continues.

As luck would have it, shortly after I wrote that first letter to Google, the notorious bill was railroaded through Congress and hastily signed by Bush.

Now you may say that hacking blogs is not the same as scanning email. Yes, but don't forget, there are no warrants. And if one suspects such a dirty trick, there is the recent appellate decision tossing out a lawsuit by journalists and lawyers who had reason to believe they had been targets of warrantless NSA wiretaps. The government just applied catch 22: We are not allowed to win. One can't prove one's case without seeing the evidence and one can't see the evidence unless one proves one's case.

The political point of the most recent hack attack on this blog is, I believe, to counter my point that the invisible government is slipping in its control of public debate because the blogosphere is commandeering wedge issues left uncovered by the invisible government's media allies and pawns. How to scotch that dangerous thought? Stick an obvious bug on the blog, and see that it doesn't get fixed.

Also, I've noticed that once a clandestine operation is authorized, it keeps going on its own inertia, whether or not it still makes sense or whether there is a degree of public attention. Recall that the NSA is essentially a military operation.

Aug. 12 note: Yesterday's New York Times gave an account of how the bill zithered past worried Democrats. Democrat Jay Rockefeller, Senate intelligence panel chairman and a "liberal" oligarch, set the bill in motion. Supposedly, Rockefeller made a terrible political miscalculation because it was the expansive GOP bill that passed, rather than the Democrat bill. On the other hand, the invisible government of oligarchs and spooks is well satisfied.

The Democratic bill would not have given telecom companies -- nearly all of which are extensively interlocked with the Rockefeller crew in a tangled skein of business relationships -- near blanket immunity from lawsuits over protection of privacy from improper government access. However, even the Democratic bill would have given these firms, including Google, strong protection against such lawsuits.