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Senate Trashes Civil Liberties; House to Vote Today
The U.S. Senate passed its version of the "anti-terrorism" legislation last night. The Washington Post, CNN, and Wired all have stories. There are terrorists under every rock, and we must destroy our freedom in order to save it. Remember: gamblers are terrorists too. The House is apparently going to drop their version of the legislation and vote on a copy of the Senate bill.
A friend of mine had sent out a mass email about the ATA telling all of his friends to "Sign this, we have to protect our kids!", yet it did not mention the actual text of the Act at all. Our government is using fear to pass laws, simple as that. The question really comes down to: Do you want to feel safe, or do you want to be free? Personally, I stand by Patrick Henry "Give me liberty, or give me death."
The sad thing about it, most Americans don't care enough to read up on the acts they are signing petitions to support.
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I did the same...no responses on any fronts. Face it they just don't care. Now they are trying to "sheild college students from gambling. Welcome to thought control. Welcome to the beginnings of the police state.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Only Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) did not vote for this... and he tried last ditch efforts to include privacy.
Even my own, Sen Tom Daschale (D-South Dakota) voted for this, and I too wrote him a letter.
Sigh, I wonder what 'unintended' consequences this will bring about... how it will be abused...
And, I wonder how it will HELP... this is an anti-terrorism bill. I'd like to see some follow up someday that shows specifically how these new laws HELPED fight terrorism.
I hate the comparision, but this 'war on terrorism' is starting to feel a lot like the 'war on drugs'... and open-ended, make it up as you go sort of deal with no clear goals and lots of shady undercurrents.
And no one defined moment where we can say, there we've won, it's over...
Hatch is quoted "current law perversely gives the terrorist privacy rights.... We should not tie the hands of our law enforcement and help hackers and cyber-terrorists to get away"
First off, obviously Hatch doesn't know the differences between a hacker and a cracker.
Then the comment about giving the terrorist privacy rights... unfortunately terrorists are a subset of people... and this legislation is going to hammer PEOPLE's privacy rights - at least in the US.
Sorry to see this happening, and I sure am glad to be a Canadian right now.
But then I remembered I live in the UK.
Unfortunately, what goes on "over there" soon enough comes round "over here".
What can a foreigner do to stop the "Leaders of the Free World" leading it up the garden path?
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Not that I disagree with the sentiment of your chosen title, but "Senate Trashes Civil Liberties;" is merely inflammatory rhetoric. I'd prefer that Slashdot editors list their specific grievances with the legislation and ask us what we think about those complaints.
but nobody even seems to care about the fact that Anthrax has been confirmed in New York City.
/. is like arguing for expanding civil liberities at the NSA. One ferverant zealot forum vs the other with no real middle ground.
Yes this is going to seem like a flame, but here goes my karma anyway...
You see, we need a balance between security and freedom. Obviously the previous balance wasn't good enough because Downtown Manhattan and the Pentagon were given a serious blow. Civil liberties are not ENDOWED rights, they need to be restricted to keep people safe, in times such as these. It is not A BORN right to be allowed to drive in downtown manhattan. Privacy is not a BORN right... it's a civil liberty.
Ok, we'll get them back after all this is over. Most of these provisions (the one the Senate passed in particular) has a SUNSET clause. Nobody seems to mention that. These are temporary restrictions to aid in the keeping the people safe.
But then again, arguing for restricting civil liberties on
How important will PGP be to you when your entire home is destroyed by bombs/planes or wiped out by plague?
"Despite my misgivings, I have acquiesced in some of the administration's proposals because it is important to preserve national unity in this time of crisis and to move the legislative process forward," said Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont.
Translation: I'm scared shitless to vote against any bill with "anti-terrorism" in the title. You really have to admire the lone dissenter, Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, for having the sack to vote against it. Too bad he'll be lucky if the voters of Wisconsin don't hold an emergency election to kick him out, nevermind re-election. You know your in trouble when CNN is singling you out in the second paragraph.
How can I find out which of our esteem elected "representatives" added these riders? I sure would like to know if someone I voted for added something that I didn't like. Maybe then I wouldn't vote for that person next time! What about those who spoke out against it? I'd like to vote for them again if I can!
I swear, I'm gunna run for some public office and end this crap.
You should. This is how things can be changed.
But you should consider that getting elected and preserving the principles for which you want to fight may be close to impossible. You need to study the actual and perceived needs of the people you are going to represent, and see if they are anywhere near the ideals you follow. You will also have to join a major political party, and learn to navigate the petty and not-so-petty conflicts, personalities, and agendas.
Utlimately you need to persuade the people that it will be to their benefit to elect you - and I believe there are very few people that can do that, and remain principled.
My family lives in New York City. My sister was telling me that she had to submit to a full body search when she went to a concert at Madison Square Garden earlier this week, and I expressed a concern for her civil liberties. She told me that she didn't, of course, enjoy submitting to a full body search, but that she would gladly give up some of her freedoms in these "terrifying times" if it would even potentially be a deterrent to terrorists. The thing that she (and many other Americans) do not realize is that the laws that are being enacted to enable the authorities to infringe on her freedoms in these terrifying times are a slippery slope-- as stated in the Washington Post article, there is no "sunset," or expiration, date on these laws. I sent her a funny article from the Onion this week, and she was offended: this is not something to joke about, she said. "I'm scared right now. I see soldiers on the street corners and it makes me feel awful, but if that causes one potential terrorist to think twice about attacking me or mine, I'm glad to have them there." I don't know how to respond-- I'm glad, as well, if they're a deterrent, but it's really a question of how imminent the danger is, and whether we can ever really know how imminent danger of terrorist strikes is. If we don't know (and how could we?) I'd rather have the civil liberties. Failing that, I'd rather know that, when the fear dies down, we'll be able to restore all that we've lost.
I think that the real issue is not that these bills are passing, but that they're passing without expiration dates; that they're potentially part of a much longer-term loss of our civil liberties. That is a slippery slope that we cannot afford to start down.
Do something about world hunger. Click here
Albeit sneaky to put a gambling item into an anti-terrorism bill, /.ers should look into exactly who wrote this bill and who's voted for it and against it. Keep in mind that with the way congress works, had this bill been voted out in committee, it could take quite some time for a new bill (with the good parts of this one) to get back into committee and pushed throught the house and senate. Many of your representatives may vote to push a bill through a committee looking to get it out there for it's good parts, thinking that the good outweighs the bad.
Do you think that just because this nation is in the midst of a war and crisis, that the lobbyists are any less active than they would normally be? Absolutely not. Remember most of the law voted into existence in this country is written part or in whole by lobbyists who are trying to obtain some political or corporate advantage by getting the law passed.
Bullshit !!!
How many things will you let be taken away in the name of protecting the people ????
I can understand many of the measures proposed but clamping down on online gambling is just attempt to sneak some other agenda in to so called anti-terrorist legislation.
Why should all kinds of legitimate technology be thrown away because they *MIGHT* be used by terrorists. Encryption protects all kinds of things we take for granted ATMs, Credit card & bank transactions etc. do you want your accounts to be compromisable in order to prevent terrorism ??? The needs to be some calm logical thought here not just nee jerk reactions.
The intelligence services couldn't keep their eyes on a relatively small number of *KNOWN* terrorists so why is letting them monitor everybody going to help ?
People in Afghanistan have no freedom. Does that mean they are perfectly secure?
What the Senate has passed reduces our freedom significantly without increasing our security one iota. Read the Act as passed in the Senate and explain to me how it would have prevented the 9/11 hijackings.
--
E_NOSIG
First we need someone willing and able to break the new law and take the case to the Supreme Court. The checks and balances were supposed to be a deterrent to making unconstitutional laws, but they've become an excuse. Lawmakers now just throw laws with happy names (PATRIOT, USA, etc) at the wall, and see what sticks, letting the courts scrape the crap away.
I wonder if theress a list of the number of laws each legislator has proposed/voted for that were later ruled unconstitutional. Too bad there's such thing as "voice votes".
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
Let's be real here, there have been people with little or no education for a long time, people who knew nothing about the political process, or what the king was actually doing, or what the dictator was planning, but everyone has always rallied around the concept of freedom. Jesus, what did people fight for for the last 6 millenia? And our countrymen would now lay down and give up so that they could be "a little safer".
President Bush, how exactly will a missle defense shield, email tracking, and shutting down online casinos do anything when the terrorists used box cutters, sent messages through the mail, and had money wired to them Western Union?
I think the great American democratic experiment is almost at an end... wait... a little longer... its done. So, what's up next? Oligarchy? Sounds good to me I suppose. Where do I send my RIAA tithes?
"What we elect to call imagination is mere combination of things not heretofore combined." - Frank Norris
.. if putting harsh restrictions on cryptography can hinder him as well, what all is lost?
Since restricting lawful people from using strong, backdoor-free encryption has no effect on bin Laden's use of strong backdoor-free encryption, what is lost is the ability of lawful people to use strong backdoor-free encryption.
How hard is this to understand? I am willing to give up some liberties for a short while, as long as doing so contributes to the effectiveness of our response to this problem. I am not willing to give up any liberties at all otherwise, and certainly not for window-dressing activities like national ID cards.
Effective limitations on liberties for a short time, with clearly stated goals and intent, and a sunset period - sign me up. Throwing up our hands and giving Carte Blanche to the police - hell no.
Edith Keeler Must Die
As a quote from the movie 'red october' where when the generals from russia dflect to america, one of them says in bewilderment ".. i can travel without any papers?" -- capturing part of the essence of the freedom that is america.
With all the measures being taken in the name of security, we are starting to erode the frabic of freedom that america stands for. exactly what the terrorists wanted to do. their goal wasn't to put a hole in a tower. it was to put a hole in our freedom. and looks like our congress is helping them get there.
DMCA
SSSCA
USA Act
Now I think you Americans have also given up the right to call your country 'Land of the free'.
Someone will probably mod this as funny but really it's sad.
Government can't protect us from everything. September 11 proved that. Even with all the security already in place, they failed. What makes you think going even farther in that direction will be any improvement whatsoever?
What I want is the freedom to protect myself. Ultimately it is my right to do so, and I will not cede it away to gov't. I am always present to protect myself. A gov't that is always present is bound to be too intrusive.
Isn't the government great? It claims sole privilege of protecting us on airplanes by putting armed marshals on board, and then when they ultimately fail and the hijackers take his weapon, the solution is to have the military blow the innocents it failed to protect right out of the sky. Wonderful.
We don't need another bureaucracy to protect us. (Office of Homeland Defense == Internal Security Police == KGB.) That's what the 2nd Amendment is for. The military and intelligence service are there to protect us from external threats, and that's fine and legitimate. But when it comes to internal threats, individuals can do the job better than gov't can.
Constitutionally Correct
"Nobody's life, liberty or happiness are safe while Congress is in session" (Mark Twain I think but could be someone else)
I guess the one thing that really worries me about all this is not that the government wants to go after terrorists. I'm even willing to give them the benifit of the doubt about their intentions with the bill. The question I have is how do you define "terrorist"?
I know this sounds silly at first glance but it isn't. Everyone sort of assumes we know what we mean by a "terrorist" and Congress passed laws in order to help deal with them. But these laws will be with us even if we win this "war". And we as citizens will have to live with the consequences of them for years afterwards.
I think taking a significant amount of time to make sure the proposed rule changes don't cause more harm to the citizens than grief to the terrorists is not a particularly silly thing to ask for. Given the speed which with this bill was passed, I'm not convinced it will to more good than harm. I'd like to think it would but I've seen far too much to not be cynical about the prospects.
If this (American Govt) is democracy, maybe we should give something else a try.
They won't be getting your vote, but they'll still be getting enough other moron's votes that it won't matter. And so what? If they didn't win, the other guy would be just as bad.
(now some god-loving america-is-great sheep can mod this "troll" or "flaimbait" because they can't accept that fact that their system isn't working. Eat my ass, I've got 50 karma and I'm not going away.)
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
Have people read this article?
, 00 .html
http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47518
Democrats were similarly split, with ranking member Rep. John LaFalce (D-New York) saying that college students must be shielded from gambling's lure.
"The chief users of Internet gambling are not terrorists, they are our youths," said LaFalce. "Lots of different kids are given credit cards -- not one -- multiple cards. It's easy to gamble from dormitory rooms, or with wireless connections from campus quads, or with Palm Pilots any place."
Welcome to Puritan America. Our women don't wear veils, but let's protect our college students from sin.
Bush II's "war on terror" just pulled the plug. All with the implicit endorsement of the entire Senate, save for that brave soul Russ Feingold.
In 10 years, will we even remember what it was like to be "secure in our possessions and papers"?
We defeated the Soviet Union....now we are on a path to become them.
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
"The other fact people need to realize is that this bill gives law enforcement better ability to go after *terrorists*...not just anybody they feel like... and just like before they must show probable cause in a court of law before they can go after you. So, unless you are a terrorst, you have little to fear."
I know I'm not a terrorist, but I also know that the definition of terrorist can be applied loosely to anyone considered something of an undesirable. Maybe it's the slippery slope argument, but I'd be concerned if it starts venturing into thought-police territory.
-J5K
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
The only thing to fear is what the FBI, CIA, etc., get away with while waiting for the courts to toss this out, in whole or part. Next year will be an interesting election year, be sure to write these things down, go to campaign rallies and then call the representatives on the carpet for it! In the meantime, you can still make yourself heard by stomping into your local Senators branch-home-offices and telling them where they went wrong. Writing into newspapers isn't half bad, either, be sure to be articulate, tho.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This country is about the _people_. Everything is our right since the government should be listening to what _we_ want, not what they say is best for us.
Say for example 100,000 million citizens want encryption technology without back doors, the government _has_ to give it to them. Give it to them or pay the price. The people outnumber the government and military, and if needed, we can fashion our own militias to take what we want from the government by force.
Much of the Supreme Court is composed of conservatives that will try to see if this legislation fits in with the tradition of American law. I'm hoping that they'll find that such drastic measures go way too far without some sort of acknoledgement that this is a temporary change in policy due to extenuating circumstances.
What bothers me most about this is that the government actions seem to be in a wartime mentality, without a declaration of war, or even a declaration of a state of emergency. If an event that preciptates the overhaul of our law enforcement system isn't a national emergency, I don't know what is.
Even under the current system law enforcement has had been cracking down hard on a rather dizzying number of people. For now we haven't heard about a lot of abuses, but they almost certainly will occur. I'm afraid that this is turning into another Red Scare, where anyone who associates with "known terrorists" is thrown in jail.
The only foolproof, completely effective way to stop any and all terrorism is to lock everyone up in individual jail cells. All any anti-terrorism law will do is force the terrorists to find another way, while depriving the average non-terrorist of their rights to privacy.
Sure, it would be great if the government knew everything about all terrorists, but until a terrorist actually does something illegal there's no way of distinguishing them from you or me. The only way to detect all or even most of them would be to get rid of privacy for everyone, either by simply outlawing it entirely or giving police the right to snoop on suspected terrorists, who may or may not actually be a terrorist. And likely they will not be a terrorist, just a regular citizen who's getting spied on by their own government.
I'm wondering how long until members of the Democrat party get "suspected" of terrorism because they oppose what the party in power ATM (the Republicans) is doing, and the subsequent surveillance is used to undermine the next election, keeping Bush in power.
From everything I've read the failure to see this attack not coming wasn't due to having some daft ATA in place but rather was due to our elected officials gutting our intelligence infrastructure after the Cold War.
All these crap jingoistic (USA and PATRIOT Acts puhleaze!) bills are is one of the biggest CYA scams the public has ever seen.
Today, I was listening to the radio while driving to work and hearing about how this one guy had a nail clipper confiscated by two armed soldiers while trying to board a flight. What crap! Boy I can see it now. "Fly that plane into the Sears Tower right now or I'm going to give one heck of a nip with these!" or "Get your ass back into your seat before I decide to manicure you to death. You wanna die with clean cuticles?! Huh? Do you!"
The fact is it is easier, quicker and cheaper to come up with crap laws than it is to implement real security in this country. Real security would require actual thought and admission that we did some things wrong. It would come down to facing facts instead of listening to our fears. Which is exactly what the government is doing now.
I'm just damn glad I live in WI and can toss my vote Russ' way in the next election. I know he's going to need it.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
one drop of water doesn't make an ocean
and
one judge doesn't make up the Supreme Court
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
I personally am very concerned with this new legislation. However, as soon as they begin to enforce this horrid disgrace of a law, it will bring a lawsuit, and it will go to the Supreme Court, and the law will be repealed. I do still believe the constitution will be upheld. Hopefully, the SSSCA will die before it gets to the point of requiring lawsuits to kill it, as we have seen, in purely technical fields apparently, the constitution does not apply, but, I do not believe this law will pass judicial review.
while her comments are distrubing, I do have confidence that in the future, like in past episodes of reactionary decisions in the supreem court, we will see a backing off from these stances. in the next 10 -15 years, a more liberal (not democrat, justices should not have party ties, just political ideology such as liberal, conservitive, Libertarianist, athoritarianist) set of justices will be present, times will be good and all the bad decisions made today will be over turned tomorrow. the government is living. 30 years ago we were pro working man as we wer 30 years prior to that, in the 20, 50, and today, the government is more business oriented. in 10 or so years we will be back to a personal emphasis and hopfully it will not be as a result of some catastroph from businesses getting to much control.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
After the Sept. 11 incident at the WTC, I felt some emotions towards those events. Slight emotions of anger, frustration and perhaps fear. It seemed so distant.
Now after hearing about this latest law passed by the U.S. Senate, I feel even more fearful for myself and my friends. I work in the computer industry and because of that engage in various computing activities. It's in the U.S. government's and people's history to engage in the most far-fetched criminal charges against individuals (see Sklyarov and Prof. Felten). Now I'm afraid that what is an innocent gesture might be misconstrued as a felony, and the chances of this happening has increased with all this wire-tapping. Unfortunately, it costs money just to prove one's innocence! This one small move by the gov't. has achieved what all the distant stories of terrorism has failed to do, so far: scare me in my everyday living.
Pray, friends, that you won't be the next victim the gov't. sets its eyes on. It's not as far-fetched as it used to seem (see Brian West)
Seriously, if you havent noticed this before, time to wake up. no offense. read the tabloid dirt on /. and get the bigger picture on k5
Bodø community site
b) This is exactly the kinds of things that Ben Franklin was mentioning. These laws are purley cosmetic. They "assure" the american people they are "safe", while in reality they do nothing of use. Essential Liberties are being taken away(search and seizure without due process?)
Repeat after me: NO AMOUNT OF SECURITY CAN GIVE ME THE SAFETY I DESIRE. The sooner we come to terms with that, the better off we will all be. We can't have a perfect solution. We have laws in place to deal with these things. But, unfortunatley, here in america, we must have a perfect solution, regardless of the cost.
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
Right now, the USA Act says that system administrators should be able to monitor anyone they deem a "computer trespasser." ...the USA Act still allows police to conduct Internet eavesdropping without a court order in some circumstances. [amemdments would have] Preseved the privacy of sensitive records -- such as medical or educational data -- by requiring police to convince a judge that viewing them is necessary. Without that amendment, the USA Act expands police's ability to access any type of stored or "tangible" information.
It's almost too much to belive. Agents of my government may now view all records related to me without warrent. Those records will now contain anything any "system admin" decides to collect about me. If enough computer records can be collected to convince a judge that my house should be searched, I might not ever be informed.
How long before the "system admin" is required to collect information? Might my competitors and enemies create false records for me? I'm sure the FBI will now be equiped with M$'s most secure tools. How can anyone be secure in their house and possesions knowing that their government may have bugged it? Do I have to sit behind a bookshelf to write this?
The potential for abuse is unlimited. Such observation can easily be used to harrass. By posting the comment, "Israel is unjust for driving the Palestinians out of their land and keeping them as slaves in concentration camps that lack plumbing, sewerage, power, medical facilities, and schools. It is beyond my comprehension that a people who suffered such things at the hands of others two generations ago could behave this way.", do I become a suspected terroist? Does the FBI then dig into my wife's medical records?
The terrorists have won. We are swiftly becoming the enemy we defeated in the cold war. Rights of free speech, publication and privacy are being stripped away faster and more permenatly than I had ever thought possible. You don't think encryption and the web as a collection of peers will survive digital rights managment do you? Say good bye to the free press of the digital era. With such massive ability to harrass, you don't think people will dare speak their minds about controverial subjects, do you? Say good bye to rational public debate. Our government will soon make the UK's privacy invading cameras and other Orwellian nightmares look like child's play. YOU WILL CONFORM AND CALL IT FREE WILL.
This legislation is perminant. God help the supreme court see it for what it is.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
What good would an autoreponse be to your message? Do you think you are the only person who sent them mail? It takes a long time to get through all the mail they receive. I have received responses to issues I have e-mailed my congressman for a few months later at times.
Your congressman represents a lot more than just you and they aren't going to give your letter special treatment and get to it immediately.
Why would the senate oppose the sunset clause?
If the act is still valid after it has expired, one can simply renew it. There is no logical explanation as to why this clause should not be included. Yet they stopped it.
So my simple deduction is this -- they do not want to relinquish these powers once the threat is gone.
The way i see it, the natural state of any government is to oppress its people, and that is why the constitution was written in the first place. The government will always want more influence and control, and is swift to move in times like these, when citizens are dazed and enraged and crying for vengeance.
"Take away the right to say 'fuck' and you take away the right to say 'fuck the government.'"
There is already legislation on the books that already allows for huge FBI powers... remember the 1996 anti-terrorism bill passed after WTC bombing number one? Why do the laws need to be expanded more? What really needs to be done is for the current manifestation of the FBI and the CIA to allow for better information sharing and collaboration. We don't need to increase monitoring of demonstrators and activists... they are doing what they are supposed to do when they have something to say. Terrorists don't
The FBI and the CIA could have collaborated to investigate some of the perpetrators before the WTC attacks... They dropped the ball. New digital monitoring of innocent people and reclassifying protesters and website crackers as terrorists will not stop murderous attacks like the one we've seen.
Actually the federal government is "trashing the farm economy" in part to bolster salmon runs, the decline of which (in no small part due to water diversion for agriculture in the Klamath basin) has led to the trashing of the salmon fishing economy on the coast.
As the salmon fishermen on the coast have been quoted as saying "it's not about jobs vs. the environment, it's about my job vs. their job". Others, more bitter, call the farmers "water thieves".
The protection of the sucker fish has come as a result of suits by the Klamath Indians. Without getting into the complex details (which include the sucker being listed as endangered) the bottom line is that the tribe can exert prior water rights. Even without the ESA listing the Tribe had a very strong case (which they've pursued in court for a long time).
Just like the ag interests have prior water rights that lead to them getting most of what's left while the Klamath/Tule National Wildlife Refuge complex (one of the most important in the country)
is left high-and-dry.
Of course, all this comes against a background of one of the worst droughts in the area we've ever seen.
Regardless of how you feel about the water allocation dispute, don't believe for a moment that Libertarians would be welcome. The farm economy in the Klamath Basin wouldn't even exist if it weren't for the federal water project (i.e. paid for by the taxpayers, not farmers) and without past and present federal price support and other subsidy programs. And libertarians aren't wildly enthusiastic supporters of federal welfare programs for agriculture...
Keep in mind also, that the capital and operating costs of the federal project haven't come close to being paid for by fees charged to the irrigation district. The farmers claim different but do so by comparing fees paid in today's dollars with capital costs paid out when the project was built over a half-century ago (in other words they ignore inflation).
Kilgore might be right. After decades of watching the political process in action I'd say that over time it's become considerably worse; or perhaps, that the people who supposedly represent us are less interested in appearing to care than they once were.
Trying to enact effective laws to correct course is an impossible task, as others have pointed out. Campaign finance reform? From a corrupt congress? I don't think so. Term limits? From the guys who spend their whole lives trying to stay in office as long as possible? Fat chance. Doing away with the electoral college so that a vote from Rhode Island counts as much as a vote from California? Not on your life!
The system that we have seems to be failing in major ways, unable to adapt to a changing world; and like any organization that finds itself incapable of adapting and under increasingly vocal critical scrutiny it lashes out with action intended to silence the critics and establish effective control over those that might upset the apple cart.
Call me a pessimist, but I no longer believe that it's possible to repair my government through established means - including electing the right officials (my choices in the last presidential election: Gore and Bush. Aside from the last name, what exactly were the major differences between the two? And everyone else, including Nader, was completely sidelined). When your choices for candidates all come from the same money-ticket you have zero chance of getting Congress or the President to substantially alter the system. Even the courts, which until recently I held out as the last possible hope for a strong check on government excess, don't seem to be immune from being influenced to toss aside their views and vote in line with the power structure (Supreme Court...a complete about-face on the 14th amendment re the presidential election...a refusal to substantially justify the decision...etc.)
I don't advocate a violent 1776 response, although our Forefathers certainly did (and published many papers on why armed revolution against an unresponsive government was a dandy thing). I don't have a particular yen to get shot rushing the Capitol building. But if my government decides that it won't listen to me, and will even attempt to coerce me into accepting limited freedoms (or none at all), then perhaps I'm no longer obligated to pay attention to my government on a number of issues.
The question for me becomes: which issues? And if a sufficiently large number of people react in this manner, won't the government - like all governments throughout history - resort to violence to enforce its edicts? No power structure can stand to be ignored; loved or hated, yes, but ignored? No way.
So if the established system won't respond, what do I do outside of the established system as a form of protest?
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
- Expanding the ability to subpoena voice mail
- Expanding the ability to subpoena ALL electronic data
I think that the points you bring up are pretty useful, and I'm not sure anyone has a problem with them. I don't think anyone would argue with the illegal to harbor a known terrorist at this point in time.But thinking back to an earlier story about shopping habits, I think people are having a bigger problem with the little things slipping through the cracks, and the lack of a time limit on them. Taking all these little things and throwing them together result in one big database that knows a whole lot about you, and it does feel a little Big Brother-ish.
It's imperative to pass laws that enable the people dealing with the actual situation to do their job effectively, but at the same time, these laws are being passed in a VERY short time-span, and it's dangerous to not have a way out of the scenario if there are repercussions for the general population.
Very disturbing comments. However, how well they can throw out the constitutional proceedures without a formal declaration of martial law is questionable in terms of the next court.
The constitution is not something that even the Supreme Court can effectively throw away for the long term. If they do, I for one will think about emigration...
That being said, that article does seem a little slanted and I don't know what will happen. I think that with a formal declaration of war, civil liberties could be TEMPORARILY suspended, but that the last country that tried to live in a perpetual state of war was Germany, from 1932 until they were split up...
Where is O'Conner getting these ideas from? Mein Kompf?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Where does this Democracy rumor keep coming from? The US is not a democracy. Did you get a vote on the USA bill? No? In a democracy, you would. What we have is a republic, where you get to vote only on a guy that you HOPE will represent your interests and your only recourse if he doensn't is to NOT vote for him next time. When the damage is already done.
It seems we have the technology to become a democracy; the question now becomes whether lawmaking (well ratifying) is best left to those whose career is to study law, or if the average joe can vote intelligently. After reading adequacy.org and seeing how many people can't recognise satire when they see it, I have my doubts.
I have a feeling the current session of Congress is going to go down in history as McCarthyism Part II. That is, if it's still legal to say anything against the government. After all, if I speak out against the powers that be, aren't I encouraging terrorists, and myself a terrorist? Seems like more than enough reason to tap my phone and search my house without my knowledge....
m00.
The average Joe and Jane Person just want to feel safe and terrorist-free. They want to go back to their munchies and their pop-culture and their nightly-boring-grey-news. They don't worry much about rights or losing the freedom to talk about what they want these days...they are sheeps who just wanna float along, munching on their government-ok'd grass and thinking about how a certain celebrity is cool or troubled or had a boob job. They don't care now.
Which means, in short, that the rep's don't care about the thinkers, people who care about rights. even in a state of war. They care about their majority of votes...sheep.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
Federal law enforcement, given shape and purpose by Ashcroft, an old Nixon/Reagan/Bush man, is grabbing everything they can off of the shelves, throwing it into a sack, and running for the exit before the spell wears off and the storeowners notice that they've been robbed.
I mention the Nixon/Reagan/Bush connection, not as a flame, but as a real indicator. Nixon, Reagan, and other very right-wing leaders hated the "liberal" press, believed that freedom was too free, and that law enforcement was hamstrung by civil liberties.
Let us not forget that Hoover, the chief of Fed law enforcement for almost a half-century, ran a despotic organization that nailed people he didn't like, blackmailed presidents and congressmen and citizens with information he obtained from spying, and was himself a security risk par excellence because of his secret homosexuality and cross-dressing.
Nixon used the CIA to spy on and destroy his "enemies", which he saw as threats to his admin and by extension the country. The "enemies" were the press, members of congress, and a hell of a lot of citizens.
The FBI and the CIA were limited BECAUSE of the actions of the leaders that championed more power granted to law enforcement. Too many of you are too young to remember why those laws were passed. The law was abused by quasi-dictators who wanted power, naked and brutal, over their enemies. And such power is never enough for those types of personalities.
Today, the beginnings of such power is being given back to the very people it was taken from 30 years ago. Literally. They didn't deserve it then, they don't deserve it now. no one does -- but they especially do not.
Additionally -- not a single thing would have been changed on September 11th had this series of powers been granted prior to the attack. Nothing.
The agencies responsible have all the power now needed to track and capture terrorists. They were doing so prior to the attack. The Feds just weren't mind readers, and the men struck simutaneously, and there was no chance to stop them.
Finally, it amazes me that people who hate government in our lives have no problem with the current admin making a naked power grab under the cover of "fighting terrorism".
They aren't going to wind up controlling terrorism. They are eventually going to wind up terrorizing us.
I read the post here and a number of the comments, all of which pointed out the dangers of tyranny. I should also disclose that the woman speaking about using network analysis to break terrorist networks on NPR today was on my dissertation committee.
While I see the point about tyranny, we are under attack by an enemy who has infiltrated our borders. Several have cited the declaration of indepdendence. There is another document, the Constitution, that allows the executive branch to suspend liberties in time of national emergency (used by Lincoln as a justification for suspending the writ of Haebeus Corpus). Just today, more anthrax cases were discovered. These may be unrelated to the attacks of 9/11, but they still constitute terrorism.
The House is insisting on sunset provisions for these extraordinary powers. It seems these are extraordinary times that require extraordinary measures. With sunset provisions, we can be assured that the extraordinary measures will not overly outlive their intended purpose.
Don't forget that one of the major tools that the government of 1984 used to control its population was constant war. I'm not accusing the US government of staging the WTC attack, however they do seem to be taking advantage of it in a similar manner.
I was at a talk by Naomi Klein a few weeks ago and she mentioned that she had heard a US Military official mention that they are expecting 20 years of war. Even if that is totally uncredible it still makes you think, "what if?"
1984 may have only been 17 years off.
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
It is amazing. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, Americans declared war the next day, rolled up their sleves and got to work. They defeated Fascism by sending citizens off to fight, and those left behind went to work building the implements of war. Scientists were brought together to keep us ahead of our enemies technologically (remember the Germans had jet aircraft way before we did).
It seems to me that now American's would rather legislate and litigate rather than create and innovate. Just look at pre 9/11. The RIAA would rather crush Napster under a mountain of legal bills rather than accept the change and try to stay one step ahead. Now in post 9/11 America, we would rather create new laws (how many did the terrorists break again?) in a vain attempt to curtail the activities of those who don't plan on obeying the law in the first place, rather than building on the infrastructure of our law enforcement agencies. If the FBI wants to hire more agents...great. Should our law enforcement agencies be slowed by stupid "rules of evidence" which allow the guilty to get away...of course not.
However, as a law abiding citizen of this country, I am tired of the lazy way our system of legislators, judges, and executives attempts to infringe on people's rights to satisfy their own lusts. The reality is that congress had to act. They had to prove to the world that they aren't completely useless. They dropped the ball by gutting the CIA/NSA/FBI and now to protect the cash flow their positions afford them, the Bill of Rights is conveniently forgotten and our freedoms trampled. I hate to quote Trek at a time like this, but Picard said it best..."With the first link, the chain is forged. The first thought forbidden. The first speech censured. The first freedom denied, binds us all irrevocably." Remember that when your children ask about freedoms.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
It takes a lot of money to be a terrorist? Really?
Ask Timothy McVeigh... if you could, that is...
That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed....
Except what happens when Government manufactures our Consent for us (see also: Noam Chomsky), and only a small minority are aware of it? In Britain's case, this small minority had the fortune to have their own (sizable) chunk of land to flee to.
90% of the population happily sacrifice their freedoms, and have been doing so since the writing of the Constitution.
Take a peek at history; this is nothing new. How many people realize that there was a HUGE debate over the Harrison Act (the start of our war against drugs)? Many people knew it was unconstitional for Federal Law to apply to doctors perscriptions of medicine, and yet the Act (which was the first to list "controlled" substances in the form of herion, opium, and cocaine) passed, and everybody quickly became used to it. If the proponents of the Harrison Act could only see what the long term effects of this disastrous legislation had, I'm sure they would have thought twice.
Sacrificing our freedoms for the sake of Freedom(tm) is an American Tradition(tm). Why stop now?
A democracy would be no better than what we have, and has the potential to be far worse.
If the Sept. 11 attacks had happened to a direct democracy, the majority would probably have voted to go bomb every village in Afghanistan or Palestine they can find, require mandatory searches of Arabs and/or Muslims upon entering a public place, ban flight simulators with accurate depictions of cities, regulate the sale of box cutters, etc.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
We can mark the day they do it as the end of the 4th amendment and therefore the Constitution itself.
Welcome to the Fascist States of America.
Are these the right preventive measurements we should be taking?
There are three vague aspects of criminal law. They split them up into the classic criminal, the socio-behavioral criminal and the conflict criminal.
Now the theory behind the classic criminal is that he/she/they think out the crime before they commit it. Think about it in advance, look at the reprecussions, weigh the benefits and the detriments and make the decision.
To combat these criminals, a process known as target hardening and situational prevention. Make it harder to commit the crime, catch 'em in the act, make examples and make punishments harsh enough to scare them off.
But then you get to the other criminals. Socio-behavioral and conflict criminals.
Socio-behavioral criminals are affected by factors just as social pressure, social interaction, social dysfunction, behavior dysfunction and social moral development.
The general concept of preventing socio-behavioral criminals from emerging is to find the flaws in their society and environment and work on them.
A similar concept behind the conflict criminology.
A conflict criminal is suppose to be one who commits "crime" (crime by our definition may be rebellion by theirs) because of situations of oppression, injustice or inequality.
A conflict criminologist would also most likely disagree with the anti-terrorism package proposal set forth as one would believe that this would just increase the injustice, inequality and oppression, at least in the eyes of the "criminal". For them, the real prevention methods would be to set forth to equalize the people and lift any oppression.
Now of course, lets apply this to our own time. Osama bin Laden personally declares Palestine as a reasoning for America being devoid of safety.
My personal opinion is that this won't work, because Osama bin Laden is more a conflict criminal, or a socio-behavioral criminal, then anything. So are most of these terrorists. Whether we agree with it or not, the guns and tanks and other support we give to Israel is being used to occupy Palestine and expand Israeli land. Palestenian people are being killed by our bullets. Palestenian kids are standing in front of our tanks and throwing rocks (as a kid of 16 years old, I find it a bit crazy and a bit admirable for a kid of my age to throw rocks at a tank coming torwards them. It requires either alot of balls or so much anger as an injustice that you simply don't care).
So even if these changes to American privacy go through, how much good can they do before they're just being used against American people? Not only will the terrorists find other ways, but when someone is willing to give their lives to do something, it's very hard to stop them.
Perhaps we should look torwards our foreign policy before we jump the gun and "declare war". The relatives and friends of the innocent "callataral" people who may get harmed by our bombings are potential terrorists, and so are the relatives and friends of the terorrists we imprison. Punishment is necessary, I agree, but so is prevention.
Yeah, see what you have done?
Refuse to get involved, refuse to vote Libertarian keep playing with your legos and now we have a police state.
Look how we are still encumbered with that. The ramifications of quick judgements last for years. I feel that all measures to 'combat terroroism' should have limitations. That way we can have longer discussion to hammer out details that do not have the ramifications of the quick 'get it done now' quick fix.
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
With the new anti-terrorism laws in place it will be perfectly legal for foreign governments to do the spying that America previously couldn't, on it's own citizens at least. I'm sure that Mexico or Canada will gladly log any future correspondence you have and pass it on to the FBI.
Shit Max. You said alot of things I've been thinking in the last two weeks. Aside from a violent revolution, the only other way I can think of to fix our governtment is to infest the public offices. I don't mean infest it with geeks, just somebody other than CEOs or lifetime politicians. I believe that the founders of our government never intended public office to be a career, just a public duty that everybody ought to fufill in some respect.
We need to get more honest, caring, American citizens into office. I don't neccessarily mean congress - I mean mayors, state senators, governers, county commisioners, etc.
And we should also get over this whole party thing. It's complete bullshit. Nobody can completely agree with the views of either party, so basically it comes down to choosing the lesser of two evils.
So there you go, we can either A) Do nothing and get raped. B) Try to overthrow the government and get killed. C) Try to get into office, and not get raped or killed!
If we were not in the middle east for ONE purpose ONLY, oil as we all know it, and IF our government had not systematically SCREWED everyone they've ever dealt with in the Middle East maybe things would be different. It strikes me as WE are the force which is UNITING the muslim world just as the terrorist attack became the uniting factor for western culture. If the US and other western interests dealt with the Middle eastern countries on a more up front basis things would be better. I can hardly see the so-called Muslim world standing united without an immediate enemy to rally around. Now DON'T get me wrong, international terrorism is EVIL, and I condemn those responsible, but REALITY says people do not just become SUICIDE bombers for NO REASON.
If our country spent just a portion of the 30 BILLION we are gonna cough up in aid to our various allies and supporters for this mission, on say serious alternative fuel sources, we could leave the Middle East to solve its own problems. I doubt that the hardline interpretaion of the Taliban is going to spread like wildfire acrossed the muslim world unless the pressure of WAR with the WEST drives it.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
The causes are neither light nor transient, and you took that quote WAY out of context. Here's a bigger chunk:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
(you can read the whole document here)
The U.S. government was (according to the above) meant for securing unalienable rights.
It was not meant for intervening in foriegn military conflicts, or "fighting a war on evil", or monitoring common citizens' lives, or outlawing the sale of technology without approved encryption, or helping "american interests" by paying for McDonalds to advertise in Asia (yes your tax dollars really pay for that!).
If our founding fathers could see this country today they would be ashamed. I am ashamed, and you should be too.
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
Okay, slashdotters, the challenge is this: corporate America needs to be offerred a new ideological alliance which won't involve placating fundamentalist monotheists. As Andrew Sullivan noted in last weekend's New York Times Magazine, "it is a war of fundamentalism against faiths of all kinds that are at peace with freedom and modernity."
So how do we do that? How do we build a political alliance that preserves freedom for economic activity (and emphasizes freedom in economic activity, rather than allowing corporations to band together to remove freedoms from individuals), while also preserving freedom from people who are too silly to see that their favorite interpretation of their favorite old text is not a direct order from the sort of God who would have us see free will as the crack through which evil enters an otherwise perfectly ordered creation (which is in fact the theology of our fundamentalists)?
How do we extend open source to make freedom even more of an economic imperative? Just as America has found some strange allies in its struggle, so must we find ways to radically realign our domestic political alliances to regain the freedoms our current unrepresentatives are surrendering in our name.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
"We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Think about it for a second.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Sen. Russ Feingold has never disappointed me in the six years I've followed is career. He seems to me to be the politician with more integrity than any other I know about. His vote against the "USA" act reinforces my high opinion of him.
Here's his statements about the liberty implications of the bills that are in consideration right now: feingold.senate.gov
back when it seemed texas wanted to be its own freakin country or when california was really a territory it made sense that the senator from california would represent california. But now that we are all pretty much the same, and specifically now that senators vote on FEDERAL LAW shouldn't I be allowed to cast a vote for all senators, as all have a duty to represent me and all have an opportunity to FSCK me over.
The people that make state laws should be picked by the state, but shouldn't I have a chance to vote for the few representatives who think like me, regardless of where they live?
A particular quote comes to mind:
"There is no way a country can satisfy the craving for absolute security - but it can bankrupt itself, morally and economically, in attempting to reach that illusory goal through arms alone. The military establishment, not productive in itself, necessarily must feed on the energy and brain-power of the country, and if it takes too much, our total strength declines" -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Even though this quote was more directed towards the military than law, the principles remain the same.
Neroon
I am ashamed at what corporations and politicians have done to America.. however, none of this would be possible if the American people cared more about the directions they are being led in. I would say I'm much more ashamed at the level of apathy in the US, than I am ashamed at the people who we have chosen to run the country.
As for making drastic changes in our government, I think we could do a lot worse. It's not perfect here, but there are a lot of problems that we don't have to worry about. These are problems like not having clean water or medical care, or a 30+ million person AIDS epidemic.
At the same time, we need to work on the problems we do have. Our human rights record is pretty piss-poor, the drug war needs to end now, and it's true that we have a civil liberties problem. The solution, though, isn't just to throw everything out and start from scratch. Democracy can work - it's just up to the people to make it work. Last November, voter turnout was around 50%. That's terrible! No wonder government and law enforcement know they can get away with a lot.. they know that many of us just don't care.