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DOJ Already Monitoring Cable Internet Traffic
According to this Wired News article, the Justice Department is already using its new powers under the USA Patriot Act to obtain subscribers' identities and other information from cable operators without judicial oversight under Section 211 of the new legislation. Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff also says that the act has allowed police to obtain IP addresses of cable subscribers and has enabled DOJ to obtain court orders for ISP logs outside a court's traditional jurisdiction. The Senate Judiciary Committee has convened hearings to review the impact of the Bush administration's actions on civil liberties, but A.G. Ashcroft is not scheduled to appear until December 6. One wonders what effect the upcoming cable failure will have on government surveilance of the potentially criminal citizenry.
Quite a few European countries have had problems with terrorosts for years. The UK with the IRA, the Spanish with the Basque (sp?) seperatists etc etc.
In these countries laws on human rights and free speach prevail. (Albeit precariously sometimes, I admit!)
The US, confronted with some of its first terrorist attacks imediatly goes into panic, ignoring the spirit of its consitution.
I can only hope that over the next few months things will calm down, and the US will realise the importance of human and civil rights laws.
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
The fears of the informed seem to have come true. What remains is this question: will the informed be able to get the uninformed interested enough to rise up against this new police state? This is either the start of the real Third Reich (before you hit that flame-bait button, read on) coming to you in 25 years from now, or the last straw to make the people regain civil liberties from Corporatism and mis-guided politicians.
We will need to ring the bell louder, make more people aware. We have the obligation to do so because we know. If you let this go unchallenged, don't come complaining in 25 years time that your children have no rights, no liberties.
Should this sound absurd to you, read into some European history for the years 1900-1939, to read the reasons for WW I, WW II and what happend in the "interbellum". You may very well not like what you find. For WW I a single event was enough to set it off. For WW II the foundation was laid by a repressive reaction 'supported' by the 'people'. 2001-9-11 may very well be the one event, the repression of civil liberties in reaction to it may very well bring it on for real.
Again The waves are eating at the lime-stone, slowly but surely. In the end the rock _will_ fall.
Karma? What's that again?
In my eyes, the local Cable company is worse than our Baby Bell (especially after that NAT bashing article recently). I can choose my local and long distance phone service, I can't choose my Cable TV company. Plus the Cable TV goes largely unregulated. The phone company has a concept of CPE vs. CO, etc. The cable co. regards everything as their network.
Now, if I used a cable modem, I have even less of the microscopic amount of privacy I had before? Great!
Regards
I like teamwork. It's easier to assign blame that way.
I have actually asked rooms full of people wether they think, even given the extremly long odds that they would ever be involed in a terror incedent, it is a god idea to give these controls to the goverment and let their rights to privacy, speech and fair trial be vacated. Most of them said yes they would give up a portion of the rights. One I explained to some that giving up these freedoms would only create the illusion of security, but in fact would not make them any more secure a few even said that that was ok too.(I almost started screaming at those folks)
I think it is now starting to get better, but some of it is to late. It is going to be very difficult to take away the powers that have been given to law enforcement.
I honestly don't know what to do about the situation. I try to talk to friends and family about it and even people in grocery store lines and such. But I have to admit I am worried that there is nothing to be done. And I am sadly glad that many Americans are armed and am now a left wing liberal who supports the NRA. Scary.
When the government is sneaky, people learn not to trust the government.
When the government is sneaky, much more is lost than ever can be gained by being sneaky.
Trust is absolutely necessary in a democracy. If we cannot trust our government, we do not really have a democracy.
When a government cannot be trusted, the government becomes a suspect in every major crime.
Governments are not sneaky because sneakiness benefits the government. Governments are sneaky because there are people who like to be sneaky and be paid for it, and they sometimes gain power.
The facts seem to be this: For years the U.S. government acted in an un-trustworthy way toward Arabs. For years some Arabs became mentally unbalanced by this and threatened to retaliate inside the United States.
Now, the U.S. government is using the results of its unwillingness to be trustworthy to justify even more un-trustworthy behavior.
Here are links to respected news sources that show how U.S. government policy contributed to terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
Sorry to rub it in, but here in the Netherlands I can only laugh about the 'news' CNN is showing 24/7 when it comes to the tragedy of 11th of sept/binladen/afganistan etc. It's from 1 single POV: the patriotic USA-first government. When I compare it to our dutch news-agencies people in the USA miss a hell of a lot of information which is IMHO VITAL for making the right judgement about what's right and what's wrong.
For starters: the secret tribunals where pres. Bush will pick who's on trial and who's not is similar to every 3rd world dictatorship out there, yet I have to see 1 single message from mainstream USA newsstations critizising this IMHO shocking development. Thankfully the EU isn't co-operating with Bush on this: f.e. spain is not handing over al-quaida suspects.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Depending on *what* the ISP logs, this may or may not be considered a wiretap. A simple IP address is not big deal. What would they do with that? Any real terrorist will encrypt non-trivial communications.
Once again, the legislature allows the real criminals to go unpunished and untouched while the average joe gets a large peephole drilled into the wall of his internet connection.
Thanks, Legistlators!
Spain has already stated that it will not extradite suspects to the US unless the US guarantees that suspects will not be tried in military court.
s pain_2.html
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011127/pl/bush_
Is is really a bad thing that Web server logs are going to be treated the same as telephone logs? You don't need a court order to obtain logs that show who called whom, but you do need a court order to tap someone's phone and listen to the content of the call. The same now applies to Web connections.
The really bad legal attacks on freedom in cyberspace have involved attempts to grab powers and impose controls that the technology makes feasible, but that are not supported in the laws regulating conventional media (e.g., the cases and controversy surrounding DMCA, UCITA, DeCSS). Lawrence Lessig makes the argument that legislators need to move slowly and carefully, making new law by extending the old law according to carefuly drawn analogies. The worst thing that can happen is to take the potential for control through computer code and enshrine that in law (as with the DMCA's restrictions on who can read what and where).
It seems to me that the Justice Department made a successful argument for treating cyberspace the same as older communication media. In the long run, that's a good thing. The law already contains protections against unwarranted surveillance, and to apply that same body of law to cyber-communications is a desirable outcome.
*** "Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden". -- Rosa Luxemburg ***
The new law essentially lets the FBI get info to get _leads_. Under old law, the FBI could force you to give up info on someone already suspected of a crime. Now I think they can go further and try to find leads also.
Of course, none of this was in the slashdot blurb.
Stop the negativity, the sensationalism, and the yellow journalism. This is an _Open_ _Source_ _Development_ _Network_ for christ sake. It's not the _misinformed_ _anti-bush_ _activism_ _scare-mongering_ _network_.
Take your anti-RIAA/MS/BUSH/ASHCROFT/MPAA FUD and post it on usenet or something.
Slashdot has become hypocrisy online. Every day it devotes space to content that is based on Fear-Uncertainty-Doubt (FUD (TM)).
~~~
Violations of rights is Violation of rights is Violation of rights. It doesn't matter if you are a us citizen or not. I believe the constitution said that "ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL". Maybe i misread that.
Either way, history has shown that laws supposadly aimed at "non-us citizens" have been extended to us citizens eventually. Know about RICO? That law was supposed to apply only to people in the mafia. Later, abortion protesters and stock brokers were prosecuted under that law. Money Laundering laws and Asset seizure? These were only supposed to apply to the "evil" drug lords. Now innocet americas who have not been accused of a crime can have their property stolen by law enforcement.
And as for Lincoln, Washington, and FDR, they were in REAL WARS, not some fictional crusades like the "War" on Crime, the "War" on Drugs, and the "War" on Terrorism.
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
OK, so the feds can ask an ISP for the IP address of a suspect; this would be useful for purposes such as magic lantern, or otherwise trying to crack the suspect's box. The feds can also obtain logs from the ISP; I've never worked at an ISP, so I'm wondering what do ISPs (or especially overloaded cable ISPs) actually log anyway? I can't imagine the information would be overly extensive, since for the most part it's not in the ISP's best interests to keep verbose logs over an extended period of time. Anyone who knows more care to chime in?
-- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
Looking over at CNN you see that over 100,000 people have voted that the 'new powers' of the government are not too much, while only 30K or so think they are too broad.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
How is this any different than any other president in the US history. Lincoln, Washington, and FDR all did the same thing
Most presidents did not do these things. Washington was for all intents and purposes a king, and it was only his choice that prevented him from from exercising all of the power he could have had. Lincoln was second only to FDR in terms of presidents abusing the constitution. All of these men were good men, and we are lucky they happened to be in power when the situations arose that gave them the excuse to do their extreme power grabs for the executive branch. Their constitutional breaches are now viewed as the lowest points in their presidency.
As bad as September 11 was, it is not nearly the crisis that the formation of the country, the Civil War, or World War II was. And I don't trust Bush to be half the man any of the above three was. I trust Ashcroft even less.
The people that this is aimed at are NOT american citizens, they are either here on a visa, or here illegally.
How is this even relevant? The Constitution makes no distinction between a foreign defendant or a domestic one in a trial. It describes the powers and restrictions of the cort system, regardless of the defendant.
If you can site one instance where an american citizens rights are being violated by this act, then I will re-consider my stance.
How about the fact that the DOJ is Already Monitoring Cable Internet Traffic?
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
The most disturbing suspension of civil liberties is the power the Bush administration has given itself to try uspected terrorists in secret military tribunals - all non-US citizens, even long time residents of the United States, can be tried and sentenced in secret military courts
Despite the opinion often voiced on this board that there is aboslutely *no* relationship between the restrictions of civil liberties and increased security there is in some situations exactly such a relationship and our contitution and laws reflect that reality. To be fair I will note that if such measures are taken to lengths not justified by the degree of threat or are taken to extremes even if there is a high level of threat they become subject to a law of diminishing returns and can even become counterproductive. Unfortunately since our enemy in this war is secretive and shadowy it is very hard even for our government to assess the real level of continuing threat. But the attacks on Septemeber 11th suggest that it would be a grave mistake to underestimate the threat.
As for the constitutionality and legality of the tribunals there is a fair amount of ambiguity since al Queada is not a state and we are acting under a legally vague "use of force resolution" rather than a legally clarifying declaration of war. Neither of these ambiguities are insurmountable though. The US went to war with the barbary pirates even though they were not independant nations (they really were but legally they were theoretically part of the Ottoman Empire). Al Queada is certainly more than a mere criminal enterprise but a substantial paramilitary organisation with over ten thousand troops in Afghansitan and many thousands of agents in cells around the world. As for our not declaring war - international law states that the laws of war are binding on a belligerent even if the other party to the conflict does not recognise a state of war. Al Queada declared war on us when bin Laden issued his "fatwa." Attacking the WTC is a war crime in every respect. Attacking the Pentagon is not a war crime in and of itself but operating behind enemy lines disguised as civilians and using a civillian airliner as a method of attack are.
So treating al Queada commanders and their agents who have infiltrated our country as war criminals is legally justifiable - so who has jurisdiction and what prodedures do they have the option to use? The constitution specifically gives the congress the authority to punish "Offences against the Law of Nations" which would include the "law of war." Congress has used that authority to write the "Uniform Code of Military Justice" which puts war crimes under the jurisdiction of optionally either a General Court Martial (Art. 18 of the UCMJ) or of Military Commissions (UCMJ, Art. 21) for "offenders or offenses that by statute or by the law of war may be tried by military commissions..." There is no statute and no specific treaty or convention defining what exactly those offenses are so GWB (and Lincoln and FDR) is relying on the common law "law of war" which is rather vague though the UCMJ itself gives a little additional insight since in the articles defining crimes and punishments it again specifically mentions military commissions (in addition to courts martial) as having jurisdiction for both the crimes of "aiding the enemy" and "spying" (articles 104 and 106) the common law "law of war" is further clarified by precedents during the revolutionary war, civil war and world war II and by the unanimous supreme court decision in Ex Parte Quirine.
As I said before there are some ambiguities but overall the legal and constitutional validity of these military tribunals seems pretty sound.
I mean if everybody gets the rights of the Constitution afforded to them why then do we have citizenship?
To vote. To pay taxes. To sit on juries. To hold political office. The Rights granted by the Constitution are granted to Persons, not 'Citizens.' I'll head off any complaints about semantics by making reference to the provisions for eligibility to be a Congressman:
If personhood = citizenship, then why did the framers make the distinction between the two when determining eligibility? For further edification on your rights, and mine, and those of visitors from distant lands, I suggest the ACLU (Join Today!).