Outrageous!

The mass media has been up in arms about the National Security Agency's so-called domestic spying program in which the agency has been authorized to listen in on communications between U.S. citizens and suspected terrorists overseas.

How much outrage will this story raise among the media elite? It seems that the U.S. government is keeping tabs on members of the Minuteman Project, the volunteer civilian border patrol group that is Doing What the Government Won't Do in securing the U.S.-Mexican boarder. Not only is the government keeping tabs on the Minutemen, but it’s also notifying the Mexican government as to where the Minutemen are!

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman confirmed the notification process, describing it as a standard procedure meant to reassure the Mexican government that migrants' rights are being observed.

"It's not a secret where the Minuteman volunteers are going to be," Mario Martinez said Monday.

"This ... simply makes two basic statements -- that we will not allow any lawlessness of any type, and that if an alien is encountered by a Minuteman or arrested by the Minuteman, then we will allow that government to interview the person."

Minuteman members were not so sanguine about the arrangement, however, saying that reporting their location to Mexican officials nullifies their effectiveness along the border and could endanger their lives.

"Now we know why it seemed like Mexican officials knew where we were all the time," said Chris Simcox, founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. "It's unbelievable that our own government agency is sending intelligence to another country. They are sending intelligence to a nation where corruption runs rampant, and that could be getting into the hands of criminal cartels.

"They just basically endangered the lives of American people."

The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps is not the only volunteer boarder patrol group whose activities are being monitored and reported to the Mexican government. Friends of the Border Patrol, which patrolled the boarder between Mexico and San Diego from June to November 2005, has also been affected.

Mexican officials had access to the exact location of the group founded by Andy Ramirez, which ran its patrols from the Rough Acre Ranch, a private property in McCain Valley.

Ramirez said that for safety reasons, he disclosed the location of his ranch patrol only to San Diego Border Patrol and law enforcement officials...

"We did not release this information ... to the media or anyone else," Ramirez said. "We didn't want to publicize that information. But there it is, right on the Mexican government's Web site, and our government gave it to them."

Will the New York Times jump on this story, or is it O.K. for the government to gather information on the location of U.S. citizens trying to keep foreigners from illegally entering our country, and to then give that information to the foreign government? Is it only wrong for the government to keep tabs on U.S. citizens who are communicating with terrorists?

This is simply outrageous. If the government will not secure the boarder, would it be too much to ask that they not interfere with the attempts of private citizens to do so?