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CNet calls it a long-shot bid for the geek vote : Speaking [in Las Vegas] at a political conference on Friday, Barr focused almost exclusively on privacy and eavesdropping–and argued that both major parties are far too surveillance-happy. “Both of them will continue down the same track,” Barr said, noting that both McCain and Obama supported last week’s bill to immunize telecommunications companies that illegally opened their networks to government snoops. Congress’ legislative rewrite of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is “not about surveilling Al Qaeda,” Barr said. “It’s about surveilling U.S. citizens in America.” He added, for good measure: “This administration is the most anti-privacy, the most anti-individual freedom, in our nation’s history, certainly in my lifetime.” This is hardly a Bush-McCain species of Republican speaking. It underlines Barr’s appeal: If you’re a traditional conservative who disagrees with the big-government policies, the surveillance, the inflation, the deficit spending, and the unnecessary wars of the Bush administration, vote for me. I was one of you, once. It might work. More precisely, it might work well enough–think a Republican equivalent of Ralph Nader–to make a difference in states that would have tilted toward McCain otherwise. It’s certainly a more attractive message than the Libertarians’ 2004 candidate , a telemarketer-turned-programmer, had to offer. Barr has an arch-conservativ ...
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