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Sybase Advertises 'PATRIOTcompliance'
xmtrx writes "While everyone is rabidly pouncing, pounding and going pundit on Palladium, little-to-no attention is being paid to enterprise-class spyware such as Sybase's PATRIOTcompliance Solution. Their ad includes such gems as "Non-compliance is not an option" and "...helps you satisfy the many integration requirements of the USA PATRIOT Act by... filtering your customers, employees and suppliers against known suspects, and then... continuously monitoring their future activities." No punchline." The laws passed which affect financial institutions are mostly opaque to Joe Citizen. Sybase's press release sheds a little bit of light on what is going on behind the scenes.
If your don't like this sort of stuff, stop buying (or considering) stuff from Sybase.
And let them know your doing this.
And why.
Although in troubled times restrictions are necessary I fully believe that "In times of emergency, restrictions on the freedom of the individual and imposed in the real or assumed interest of the community. We hold it to be essential that such restrictions be confined to a minimum of clearly specified actions ; that they be understood to be temporary and limited expedients in the nature of a sacrafice ; and that the measures restricting freedom be themseles subject to the free criticism and democratic control . Only thus can we have a reasonable assurance that emergency measures restricting individual freedom will not be degenerate into a permanent tyranny." - sec. 7 of the manifesto of the Congress for Cultural Freedom published in 1951 In was true then and it is true now. The steps of government and corporations that seek to influence the gov be be in the light, and not hidden, espically under the guise of "protecting the people". Peace folks,
There is no good or bad, but thinking makes it so. -Hamlet
1) We're not at war. Congress never declared war. Congress MUST declare an act of war against a country in order to be in a state of war. Simply saying ad nauseum in speech rhetoric about the "war on terrorism" does not make the nation at war.
:)
2) Ashcroft is quite possibly the scariest person alive, in my opinion. He might be grandstanding, but his actions since taking office has shown to me that he would rather just throw away the Constitution; makes his life easier.
3) American troops have been in "combat" for like the past 20 years, doing "peacekeeping" missions. That doesn't change the fact that the PATRIOT bill infringes upon your privacy hardcore.
I'm really quite sick of people saying that "dammit, we're in a war, stop badmouthing the government or else." Who are we fighting, exactly?
Too bad everyone's too busy following the government's lead to really do anything.
*reads post over*
Man, I sound like a conspiracy theorist at 8 in the morning
Lordfly
hookers and grits.
Reading this and putting the 'vision' (if you can call it that) of the USA's government in perspective, you start to wonder why the USA still are calling themselves "Leader of the Free World". Must be a different definition of 'Free' than I have...
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Actually all presidents have used the power of the Executive Order. It bypasses congress and allows the president to a law. For example, Bill Clinton executed an executive order lowering the allowed level of arsenic in drinking water. Bush changed that order. President Bush issued an executive order that contradicted the 1978 Presidential Records Act, a law passed by congress. The law would have required records of the Reagan White House to be released 12 years after that president left office. Bush also used an executive order to establish the office of homeland security. So parts of Bush's "anti-terrorism" package were enacted through what amounts to presidential fiat, the executive order. The next president will obviously be able to undo any and all presidential orders, just each congress can repeal the laws passed by the previous congress. I believe executive orders can also be ruled unconsitutional.
I am sure Clinton signed some executive orders I disagree with and I'm sure Bush must have signed some I agree with, but these examples were both in the news at the time and they are the ones I remember.
For more information about the checks and balances of the American government, check out your local library or go on-line and visit:
And that's One to Grow On.
Death is preferable to moral bankruptcy. The minute we decide that security is preferable to ethical behavior, we lose the right to say we are the greatest democracy in the world.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...