Slashdot Mirror
Civil Liberties And The New Reality
Politically, America is an intensely polarized country, where discussion of issues quickly tends to bog down in notions of what is "left" or "right," thus ideologically pure, and consideration of a wide range of issues, from gun control and abortion to privacy and surveillance -- quickly freeze people into opposing camps characterized by rigidity, hostility and absence of communication. On the Net, people with particular interests increasingly often talk only to one another and consider only their own particular values and beliefs.
In fairness, let me declare my own warped perspective at the moment. I live just west of New York City, felt much affected by a visit to the attack site, and live in a town which has apparently lost somewhere between 30 and 40 people. Elsewhere in the country, life is beginning to move on, as it should, but in greater New York, it's still all death, all the time, on TV and in other media. As bits of bodies get pulled out of the wreckage, people give up hope of finding people from the wreckage, people give up hope of finding the people they love, and disruptions continue as the funerals and memorial services increase. People here remain numb and heavy-hearted.
It's easy to be suspicious of Attorney General John Ashcroft and of the FBI he heads when they say they need broader powers to wiretap, monitor the Net and conduct surveillance of Americans. Many people worry that once these powers are granted, they will never be given back. And some of these people don't have a comforting record of sensitivity when it comes to protecting privacy, free speech and individual civil liberties. But the terrorist attack has changed the entire context of these discussions, putting the issues far beyond knee-jerk reflexes.
But there is also something reflexively knee-jerk in the automatic "they-are-taking-our-freedoms-away" response from certain quarters online. The Justice Department isn't proposing dropping all restrictions or warrants or oversight regarding wiretapping and surveillance. They propose to ease some of them. This may or may not be a good idea. But it needs -- deserves -- to be rationally and openly considered.
First- and second-generation Internet dwellers value their freedoms, and have often had to defend them. Our government, sponsors of the CDA, Carnivore, and the DMCA -- it doesn't have a noble history here. Few people in government have ever made privacy and freedom online a political priority.
But the cataclysm at the World Trade Center is a historic event, and many people do, in fact, need to "get it." We will be living, thinking and behaving differently. Many of us -- if we and our families want to live safely -- will have to redefine our traditional politics, and consider new ways of defining certain rights.
The night of the attacks, reporters asked a New York City fire official why the city put out a desperate call for gas masks and vaccines that morning. "We thought one of the hijackers might possibly be carrying Anthrax -- there were some intelligence reports about that." The official stopped. "If they had been," he told reporters, "there might be 100,000 dead people, maybe more."
My own record of yowling about privacy and the First Amendment ad nauseum is clear enough, so I feel entitled to consider some other points of view, especially this week.
Certain rights -- equality, liberty -- are considered inviolate. But almost all rights are subject to a series of checks and balances, always subject to circumstance, never absolutes granted without reservation, in perpetuity, regardless of external circumstance. Yes, people online have the right to keep their communications private and people have the right -- I believe -- to move online and travel in the real world without their movements being monitored and recorded by governmental authorities. But people have the right to go to work without buildings falling on them, too.
This is how the WTC attacks have challenged our system of rights. The thousands of dead and millions of others who work in vulnerable office towers, or travel or study or live near airports (or schools, or ports, or national symbols) have rights too, and they have been grievously violated.
The government has an obligation to protect them.
These terrorists are technologically skilled, government authorities say. They use the Net to e-mail one another, and to send encrypted files, sometimes online, at other times via Zip disks or other media. They move money online, make plans there, thus avoiding possible interception by traditional intelligence monitors listening to phone and cell calls. Is it really totally unreasonable for authorities to seek broader powers to follow these conversations? Wiretap laws are not adequate for teaching these kinds of criminals. Existing wiretap laws require warrants for each telephone, even though criminals and terrorists might use dozens of phones or a variety of communications systems.
If terrorists are proven to be using encrypted files, aren't government agents entitled -- even obligated, on behalf of the thousands of innocent victims and many more future victims -- to get warrants to intercept them? Would we really rather that our water systems be poisoned, or our cities choked with gas, or planes flown into schools and City Halls? This would have seemed silly hyperbole to me a month ago, but all of these things are now plausible in the post-World Trade Center world.
Many of us have already happily and willingly surrendered some privacy to Napster, Amazon, gaming sites, EZ-Pass toll systems, online retailers and other Web tracking services which have lists of our shopping, reading, entertainment habits and preferences. Corporations have abolished many conventional notions of privacy, while most Americans shrug it off as a new convenience. Is it really our position that Wal-Mart can own the details of our lives, but that government agents tracking those people who murdered 5,000 of our fellow citizens can't?
Nobody in his right mind would support a blank check for government authorities. Any new laws to fight this new kind of war ought to be temporary, and self-expiring, perhaps subject to annual review. There ought to be clear civil and criminal penalties for wanton violations of privacy and excessive monitoring.
But when something like the World Trade Center attacks occur, the challenge, it seems to me, isn't to retreat into our knee-jerk positions, but to pause and carefully consider the new reality. Any government's primary obligation is to protect and defend its citizens. The failure to do that last week occurred primarily, many terrorism experts say, because our existing intelligence institutions don't have the human resources, the technology or the laws to keep up with a sophisticated, well-funded, technologically-savvy network of murderous enemies. We might want to ponder what rights we owe the living and owed the dead -- the right to live, to be and have parents, to work or fly without being torn to bits or crushed in a collapsing inferno.
Post of Posts
First Post!!!
Indeed, it did. How did you know?
Milking it for all its worth, eh Jon?
You make me sick.
...is the foamingest fucker that's ever fucked foam!
Exactly.
STFU Katz.
Just wanted to get that off of my chest.
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
OMG! Revelation!
Jon Katz is Miss Cleo!!!!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
This "Ben Frankin" is NOT the same Ben who is a foaming fucker. However, when you give up foaming for fucking, it is true you can have neither...
Idiot loser newbie.
Insightful...
You are expressing exactly that low qualities you are blaming on them.
Muslims are not bloodthirsty senseless animals. I wonder if you have ever talked to a muslim yet. Or ever met one.
Same to that who/what formed your views.
First "STFU, Katz!" post!
Correct-omundo!
Home run.
Mr. Katz, I believe was referring to Cuba, or maybe Afghanistan when he was talking about rights being subject to the circumstances.
I am amazed at how many people, maybe in an
effort to personnally sacrifice, are willing
jetison our rights as American Citizens.
American Citizen means something, if our
rights had been written in 1999 by a commitee
I don't think they would have been as extensive.
Through chance, jefferson, and a civil war we
have some great rights. If we give them up
it could take 200 years if ever to get them
back. If you want to live with reduced rights
move to afghanistan or some other hellhole and
leave us American Citizens alone.
I think that you need to really take a look at yourslef and what you stand for Jon. You made a big name for yourself standing up for youth in the Columbine shootings. How is it that you can defend not taking away civil rights for children and be against overreaction in that case but for it here? Don't kids have a right to be safe at school? Where do you draw the line? Apparently when it only hits close to home. But at least you arent doing those damned movie reviews any longer.....
Dare I mention overbearing taxes that have created a lucrative offshore tax haven industry. One often used shady types to launder money too.
Leave it to Katz to make the same lame argument that's always used to surpress liberties.
Yeah. Ben Franklin.
Hey son, sorry about your parents, the terrorists were attacking the american way really, so we've decided to do away with the american way altogether. Now we're going to go to war with Eurasia, or is it East Asia? The president said we would have victory, victory. Want some chocolate, or perhaps some gin?
The author asks us not to engage in knee jerk reations. But the only knee jerk reaction here is the 'we need expanded police powers' reaction. First we must ask ourselves will more policing make us safer? This tragedy did not happen because police were hampered by the civil liberties of Americans. If the FBI, CIA, NYPD etc had any inkling that this would happen they already have sufficient powers of wiretapping, surveillance etc to stop it. Basically what the government wants is to get rid of the inconvenience of having to get authorization for wiretapping and surveillance from multiple jurisdictions. Well the Federal government has the money and technology to set up a streamlined system for getting surveillance approvals, perhaps a secure 911 type system for emergencies. The FBI enters a request for surveillance into a computer system, it gets zapped to all available jurisdictions and a judge disposes of it one way or another. The point is there are other ways to deal with law enforcements problems than reducing civil liberties.
Let's think very carefully about this. Those countries with the greatest insecurity for their citizens, highest crime rates and under constant terrorist assault are also the most surveilled, have the least civil liberty and have unbridled police forces. Totalitarian states are the least safe type of state for their citizens.
EMK
What is wrong with some of you people ???
Can't grasp the shear enormity of our current situation ? You tell a guy who mourns for these victims to STFU ???
WTF do you have that is so secret that you are so damned paranoid against our government ??? Katz did not suggest total loss of rights and privacy, but proposed carefully, measured thought on what might be more appropriate given today's reality, and yes, this is a new reality. He suggested temporary measures that are appropriate given wartime status. He only suggested a debate on it, and gets attacked. It makes me sick.
Maybe Hollywood really has hardened people too much or interefered with their perception of reality. I'm stunned. This is not over by a mile.
There are tens more of terrorists still loose in our country, and they have plans that while may not be as visually grand as what they pulled off last week, could be far more devasting.
I'm scared of more terrorist attacks, and all you're worried about are your rights to privacy ?
Yes, they are important, but our right to BE ALIVE right now sort of outweighs that IMO.
Are those of you who are warez and script kiddies afraid that right now our government is concerned with you ? I assure you, they have much, much, larger fish to fry but maybe you have such egos that you feel you are more important.
As for those who claimed the internet was not used in the attacks, get your noses out of the keyboard for a moment, and watch the news. It most certainly was, as was more conventional means as well. They wil use whatever tool can be used.
Maybe when people in your neighborhood are horribly slaughtered, you'll wake up, but then you'll probably bitch about why our Government didn't do more to stop it !
No, we don't read the articles. After about the 3rd article, JonKatz's mindless troll bullshit gets very repetitive.
Feeding the trolls here, but pointing out that things could be infinitely worse, as bad as they are already...
My understanding is that U.S. Defense policy is to respond to any attack using any type of weapon of mass destruction in kind.
Chemical Weapons, Bio-Weapons, and Nuclear Weapons all equate to weapons of mass destruction as far as the federal gov't is concerned. The response would be for us to launch a nuclear strike.
This is the only troll that I know of that CONSTANTLY gets modded to +1 Informative every day...
I'm not sure I'm ready to tell those kids whose parents didn't come home last week that they and others down the road just have to suck it up because people may be unwilling -- even temporarily -- to lose any measure of privacy.
I'd say instead that thousands of lives were lost because most americans have been brainwashed out of defending themselves. The hijackers did not need sophisticated technology to plan this -- just face to face meetings, and a few agreed upon code words so the necessary phone or e-mail messages would sound like normal business planning. For example, "The big meeting is set for Sept 11."
But the really weak part of their plan was that they did NOT have a way to smuggle real weapons past airport security. Instead, they depended on being able to bluff the passengers and crew with pen-knives, box cutters, and a cardboard box. And the terrible thing is that on all four airplanes, this was sufficient to get the pilots to the rear of the airplane and their own guys in the driver's seat. There was a time in this country when someone who tried something like that would have been beaten unconscious with carry-on luggage -- if not shot by someone carrying a real weapon. But we've not only taken away the weapons, we've taught people not to defend themselves.