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Safe and Free from Patriot II
JJ22 writes "The ALCU has a press release about a full page ad they have running in the New York Times. See the ad here. It gives a list of some of the freedoms which were taken away under the Patriot Act, and lists more which Ashcroft is pushing for under Patriot II. Obviously, you should only be concerned about losing your liberties if you're a terrorist (or similar dissident)."
Mirror of the AD in PDF is here (patriot2_ad.pdf).
Here's a little hint. I'd be a lot more likely to take the time to read the link and comment thoughtfully if you gave me some information instead of of subjecting me to your smirky asides about "jackboots" and "dissidents".
Unless your goal is simply to parade your concern for our admiration. Given that the top-rated post right now is from someone who was confused because you weren't heavy-handed enough (!), maybe there's no problem.
Guess what, it's citizens like me who take civil rights seriously but aren't concerned about striking the most ostentatious pose that you need to win over. On this issue, DRM, file sharing, IP law and all the other stuff you're the worst possible advocate for.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Yes, that could get you profiled as a terrorist. Guilt by association. The Patriot act and Patriot act II are worse than any paranoid delusion conspiracy theorists ever cooked up, and they are real! Welcome to The Fourth Reich.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
The American Civil Liberties Union
The Free Software Foundation
Yet another scary aspect to this... Imagine that some organization that you've long felt to be a worthy charity suddenly becomes reclassified as a "Terrorist Organization." This may happen two ways, either it really was, and you weren't aware, or it really isn't, but it's politically expedient for it to be reclassified as such. In either case, you can get stripped of your citizenship and put in a dog kennel on Cuba.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Here is a list of books you better never buy, or check out of a library. After all, you aren't a terrorist, are you?
How ya like dat?
Okay, everybody, okay!! :-) Too much coffee I guess.
Irony kinda went out the window after 9/11, and sarcasm too. Ashcroft has actually threatened members of Congress and the press with prosecution under USA PATRIOT if they spoke against it. If that's not fascism, I don't know what is.
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
The bigger question is, how do you appeal?
Suppose they remove your US citizenship. How do you get a lawyer to represent you? Can you even be represented in a US court? Do they purge your social security number/tax ID? If so, what happens to your bank accounts and property?
Suppose somehow you convince them that it was a mistake -- how do you get your citizenship *back*? What if took months to accomplish and records were purged by various institutions. Do you get your old social security number back, do you get a new one? How would one recover for that?
This is probably the most scary thing here. If they can arbitrarily declare someone a non-citizen and shutdown that person's access to bank accounts (frozen for investigation), work (no longer a US citizen eligible for work), property (siezed for investigation), transportation (no drivers' license -- not a US citizen), and legal representation (good luck finding some without work, money, a car, or a house), what can one do to protest that after the fact? Even if you managed to successfully get your citizenship back, by then, your government confiscated property might have been sold to someone else (nice potential scam for someone there.)