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False Information A-Okay in Primary FBI Database
blamanj writes "The FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC), which compiles a huge database on criminals, arrest warrants, missing persons, etc., no longer has to put up with the pesky problem of ensuring the data is accurate. I guess the Justice Department isn't particularly concerned with justice anymore." The full text of the provision which the main FBI criminal database will no longer have to adhere to is: "Each agency that maintains a system of records shall ... maintain all records which are used by the agency in making any determination about any individual with such accuracy, relevance, timeliness, and completeness as is reasonably necessary to assure fairness to the individual in the determination."
90% of the impact is lost, dude. If someone hasn't seen the original; that's only going to look like abstract ascii art to them.
Back to the drawing board with ya.
They're just as likely to not keep accurate records about the things I do wrong. Yeah!
Like I've said before, the Department of Justice would be more aptly named the Department of Prosecution. At least Ashcroft has his priorities straight.
The future isn't what it used to be.
If they're not worried about accuracy, they'll save millions by simply using a very large MS Access database!
I would rather imprison hundred innocents than let one guilty go free.
If the information doesn't have to be accurate or unique, they've come to the right place!
But what if they accidentally screw me up with an axe murderer??? But they'll probably have the wrong address...
It seems perfectly clear that to make a single person or organization responsible for the information in the database would leave them open for lawsuits when people were wrongly accused, denied employment, etc. This way, when a lawsuit gets filed, everyone points fingers at everyone else... It's an interesting idea that arises anytime groups colloborate (hardware people: don't look at us; it's the fault of the software people... software people: don't look at us; it's the fault of the hardware people... )
This will be a great opportunity to call any information the proscecution uses into question, if you actually make it to court, that is.
We'll swing by later to detain you indefinitely.
has anyone else noticed that while liberties in many other places in the world is on the rise, Liberties at home seem to be more and more restricted and monitored? How can we free other peoples and nations when we can't even free ourselves?
It would be interesting to see the same logic applied to Wall Street databases, personal/birth records, health information...hey, I have cancer now.
...we've got a nice big potential for nasty stuff to happen.
You can run but you can't hide, except, apparently, along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
That throws my plan to be a good citizen right out the window. Even a typo could make the FBI think I was a serial killer, or something.
http://www.xpurple.com
Try maintaining an address and record database on government officers and employees and see how quickly you get shut down.
I thought Bush never read any books, but apparently he has been inspired by one! The irony, the irony!
why do we have to worry about justice, when it's easier to just blame it all on the terrorists.
It's a bitch if you don't believe. All alone in my white boy pain. Shake your booty while the band complains.
USA is a fucking place these days. Where is the democracy when the TV is not even allowed to show all informations from war. Where is the real truth ? The global administration of USA is a bunch of fucking suckers, murders and lying terrorists. All the shit that Rumsfeld, Powel and Bush is spreading on TV is nothing more than a big lie and I seriously wonder what low IQ most of the US-americans have to belive what they say. Even that Peter (?) moron spread on some newspapers that USA is up to re-create the world security and explained his opinion that other countries should be allowed to comment the situation but should not have a VETO anymore.
In the historybooks of USA there will soon be a new entry. George Dubya Bush (that fucking chimpanse) and his PET lover Tony Blair are responsible for the freaking World War III
Even if they can't verify all of the information that they put in, what they could do is record whether/how a data item has any verification status (or even possibly, falsification status).
It surprises me how often databases of information that it is vital to check for accuracy/truth/reliability just don't have any content that indicates how far, if at all, any of the main data content has actually been checked (and by whom and against what comparator). Ideally there should be an audit trail for where the data came from and who entered/checked it. Better than nothing would be some kind of indicator that this data item is either unchecked (by anybody other than the person who added it), or else has been checked as either ok, or doubtful, or not ok (and when, and who checked it).
Terry
instead of making sure that every single piece of information included in the database is checked and double-checked, it makes *more* sense to check the information in a case by case basis as necessary. Most of this stuff is probably never used again anyway.
I guarantee the government doesn't just plug your name into the database and then: "The computer says he's committed first degree murder! Lock him up for life!" This is only a handy-dandy quick-pull reference library. It's the *actual* evidence which gets you convicted
I for one am glad that the FBI is shaving some of its bueracracy and spending more time fighting crime and less time filing paperwork.
I'd be really interested in how liability works out in this.... nasty potential for lawsuits
YOu're the idiot if you think the Us is the free-est country. As an outsider looking in: in the past 2 years the US which is supposed to be democratic has shown some really facist ideals. The DEA can walk into ANYBODYS home without warning and ANYBODY can be held in custody without even rights to council. As far as I know there has only been one organization in the past 100 years. I believe the were called the SS.
The GEEK shall inherit the earth...
Now that plus PATRIOT is a nice formula for abuse. "Mr. Smith, we see that you have recently converted some of your holdings to cash and our database gives us reason to believe that you are going to give it to terrorists, so we have seized it. We don't have any evidence with which to charge you, but we will be watching you. No, of course you can't have the money back."
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Aw shucks. I' shocked. I'm awed. It's f'ing awe-ful. And shocking. f 'em with an f m awl.
Nobody guarantees that Usenet is accurate, or the web. They capture any garbage anyone ever produces, and Google indexes it for everyone. The reader knows this, and distinguishing wheat from chaff is usually possible, and not too hard.
If I have a mark on my record that I killed my great-great-grampa, followed by some authoritative marks that I really didn't and that first mark was in error, that looks fair to me. Not editing history is a good thing.
68 FR 14140. Direct link to the Federal Register. PDF format. Enjoy.
PS: Request your FBI file regularly. It's really easy.
You are ignorant when you say that
a) "there has only been one organization in the past 100 years"
b) "the were called the SS"
They would be called the Gestapo perhaps since the SS was a battle command.
I dunno, my read on the article is that the reason for dropping the requirement is because so much of the data comes from other sources. I guess if the sources in question are "reliable" why should the FBI be required to recheck the data? I mean, it's like writing a term paper. You back up your statements with credible sources, and if the sources are credible you're not expected to back up their statements too. Besides the existing system hasn't prevented mistakes anyway.
Not saying it's right, but it's more like they're just making official what was standard practice (or non-practice I guess) already.
Bah. What do I care. I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm Canadian.
There have been a number of legal reviews which have concluded that the Europeans are keeping pace with the US on that front. The situation is actually worse in like England where any right can be revoked by the current government - at least in the US you at least have the hope of getting something truly egregious thrown out as unconstitutional.
Speaking of which, it's probably time to start planning for some protracted legal battles cleaning up the anti-terrorist mess.
... punks worrying about nothing but yourself! We got a $74 billion pointless war to fight for the love of god! We can't expect the government to have to pay money to protect our freedom!
Over in the US, they stick an anal probe in you for everything you do - school, banking, job, driving, housing, that is except for voter registration. Then they are so easy going and unintrusive - it's truely amazing. I'm curious if it's the same in the UK?
We definitely are the free-est country. But we are by no means 100% free. And we shouldn't be. But we should be free to assume that those who are keeping track of our every move are keeping track of this accurately. And the arguement that something is the XXX-est doesn't mean that it could be more of XXX. In the 60s, we had the most civil rights, but that didn't stop people from demanding more. Just because you're number 1 doesn't mean you should stop pushing forward. Isn't that what we always say to a certain Redmond-based company?
I'm sure this is going to bring up all the great dystopian visions, but this is so Brazil...
...
I hereby inform you under powers entrusted to me under Section 47, Paragraph 7 of Council Order Number 438476, that you have been invited to assist the Ministry of Information with certain enquiries, the nature of which may be ascertained on completion of application form BZ/ST/486/C fourteen days within this date, and that you are liable to certain obligations as specified in Council Order 173497, including financial restitutions which may or may not be incurred if Information Retrieval procedures beyond those incorporated in Article 7 subsections 8, 10 & 32 are required to elicit information leading to permanent arrest - notification of which will he served with the time period of 5 working days as stipulated by law. In that instance the detainee will be debited without further notice through central banking procedures without prejudice until and unless at such a time when re-imbursement procedures may be instituted by you or third parties on completion of a re-imbursement form RB/CZ/907/X
Sign here please.
I wasn't using my civil rights anyway
Just for a change, I think we need to rename a couple of things. Specifically, I think we need to rename the "Homeland Security Dept" to: "The Fuck-the-Average-Citizen Dept".
I'm not sure if that'll catch on, but it certainly would make me feel as though my government were attempting honesty for a change.
Oh, how we yearn for the times around 1974, which you'll all remember is the year that the Privacy Act was made law.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
All undertakings of The Ministry of Justice are double-plus-good.
I don't know of any country besides Iraq where you can drive around on a pink pickup with a mounted
(just kidding)
With this new policy, bad data will affect you and your ability to, say, travel without strip searches. And you'll have few (meaning zero) opportunities to fix it. But the best part is that the bad data will creep out to taint anyone you associate with: you'll now have a permanent case of dataSARS. If you're a possible terrorist, then your old roommates might be too. And your new business partners. And whoever you call regularly, so now grandma gets a breast cancer screening whenever she flies.
I think the privacy commissioner of Canada is a precog: most of what he's warning about in his must-read essay on privacy is coming true. (Or Ashcroft is using it as an anti-blueprint):
" If information that is actually about someone else is wrongly applied to us, if wrong facts make it appear that we've done things we haven't, if perfectly innocent behavior is misinterpreted as suspicious because authorities don't know our reasons or our circumstances, we will be at risk of finding ourselves in trouble in a society where everyone is regarded as a suspect. By the time we clear our names and establish our innocence, we may have suffered irreparable financial or social harm.
"Worse yet, we may never know what negative assumptions or judgments have been made about us in state files... Decisions detrimental to us may be made on the basis of wrong facts, incomplete or out-of-context information or incorrect assumptions, without our ever having the chance to find out about it, let alone to set the record straight.
" That possibility alone will, over time, make us increasingly think twice about what we do, where we go, with whom we associate, because we will learn to be concerned about how it might look to the ubiquitous watchers of the state..."
"The bottom line is this: If we have to live our lives weighing every action, every communication, every human contact, wondering what agents of the state might find out about it, analyze it, judge it, possibly misconstrue it, and somehow use it to our detriment, we are not truly free. That sort of life is characteristic of totalitarian countries, not a free and open society...
This is bad news, but on the upside, if someone gets hurt by this law--i.e., inaccuracies in a record--I say sue the FBI up the wazoo for damages. They may not be motivated by law, but they will be motivated by lawsuits.
That's assuming, of course, that the joke of an "administration" appointed by the Supreme Court doesn't exercise undue control over the judiciary.
Which is entirely possible...
Here is the relevant file from the FBI database: ARCHIBALD BUTTLE charged with Freelance Subversion, Deconstructive Behavior, Reckless Creation of Suspicion Among the Greater Public, Stealing Work from Qualified Personnel, Practicing Heating Engineering without a License, Failing to Complete Necessary Work Orders, Wasting Ministry Time and Paper
The complete Python file is here: Tuttle
Cheers, Joel
And I'm amazed at the forgetfulness of the average person. Laws such as the 1974 Privacy Act were in response to the massive, intrusive, unconstitutional acts of the FBI during the 1950s and 1960s. The kind of surveillance we're now seeing were done surreptitiously by the FBI in attempts to sabotage the Civil Rights movement, and the anti-war movement during Vietnam.
We live in the freest country on Earth? Does this have something to do with that whole, war is peace, slavery is freedom thing? Just what other countries are you comparing the US to when you say this? Have you visited other countries?
If you want to sit back while your entire life is reduced to nothing more than data in a database, that's fine, but I believe that a human being is more than just data. I believe I have an intrinsic right to human dignity - something which is taken away when my entire life becomes an entry in some damned database to be searched through, scrutinized, colated, etc. My government has absolutely no right to catalog and judge every moment of my life, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let my children grow up in a nation where they have to watch what they say and do, lest they be mistaken for a "threat".
If you think it's anti-American to question the tactics and policies of the government, then you know not the first thing about what it is to be an American. I believe you'll find the regimes in China, Iraq, Iran, or North Korea more to your liking, as those who question the government there are shot. I question my government's actions and plans because I recognize that it is a servant of the people. As such, I have a right and a duty to question anything I see as degrading the service provided to me and my fellow citizens by our government. If you don't like it, move; I really don't give a damn.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Who are you to talk about justice when there are terrorists on the loose? Hell, YOU could be a terrorist!
What Future?
I've been screwed over by the governments mistakes over and over again. I once owned a store that was bankrupted by our lovely government after they siezed the entire sum of the company account claiming I "owed" back taxes, which I did not.(nor did they bother to send any warning, I was informed by the bank) Several weeks later they finally admitted that it was a mistake, and I did not owe the money. But of course never returned the funds. NOW, just recently, my tax returns where intercepted , again claiming I owed money, for something I had ALREADY paid off over 5 years ago. Seems they 'lost' my records, and suddenly I owe this money again... Thank you Uncle Sam, as I bleed from the ass...
What the hell? Do I get to now ensure that the information on my taxes is incorrect? The name I give when pulled over is wrong? Lie on my job application? Pee in church? It numbs me to think that the government and corporations have more rights than I do. Especially since 'they' are the ones 'adjusting' my rights.
I think it's time to start a company to shield myself from the US, or convince my state to leave the Union.
Who's with me? We'll call ourselves Quebec, and if we get homesick we'll wage a land war in the middle east!
Since accuracy is no longer important, does this mean that GWs record will show he's a deserting, cokesnorting alchy? Or that he no longer is an upstanding American, concerned with the rights of the people in his stellar rise to godhood?
If you mod me down, you admit you masturbate while watching Christopher Lowell's show on HGTV.
Since the acuracy of the data is integral to its efectivnes there is still going to be an onus of justifablity. This is going to fall upon the sources that the FBI uses. If they're found to be less than accurate then they'll either have to be fixed, or elimentated as sources.
> We definitely are the free-est country.
Hah! You do actually believe that don't you?
Funny.
I have long believed that the word Justice has no place in government. Seriously, Justice is a moral thing, defined by social mores and subjective judgments about fairness. That department's job should be protecting the people, not punishing the bad guys. If you take away this idea that a government can and should punish the bad guys, for 'Justice' and replace it with the idea that we should apprehend bad guys to keep them from doing harm to society, a lot of thorny questions get very straightforward.
For instance, what is the Just and Fair thing to happen to an American guy who things the taliban is morally correct and goes to Afghanistan to join them? Ok, now ask what should be done to prevent such a man from harming Americans. Different question, and a much more practical one.
Justice is institutional revenge. Our government should not be making such judgments about right and wrong, they should be making judgments on how to protect and serve the populace.
This isn't completely tangential to the topic, either - consider how this would turn out (in an ideal world) if the fbi did not look at these databases as a tool to punish the evildoers, hunt them down at any cost to deliver that punishment, but as a tool to protect those who would be victims of the evildoers - in that view (ideal world, remember) the accuracy of the data would be inherently important as a part of that protection.
In such a view, there would be no such thing as a Victimless Crime, since crime would be defined by its harm to society (no victims, no harm done).
Premiere is a noun (as in "the movie premiere").
Premier is an adjective (as in "the premier movie selection").
It also helps if nobody assumes your identity & commits crimes (or threatens the President) in your name. Of course, you don't really have too much control over that - so just cross your fingers & hope it never happens to you.
Premier is a drum company.
Premiere is video editing software. You silly fools!
name a country with more freedom.
yeah...
that's what i thought...
From personal experience, the NCIC is a mess. Only contained about half of my arrests, and had chgarges and outcomes both wrong and missing.
To get it corrected, I had to track the original court records, then persuade the State Attorney General to sign a certification.
You don't want to be driving around with the only database available to the average traffic cop telling him, incorrectly, that you are a convicted cop batterer..
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
No offense, but it blows my mind how relatively small the ACLU membership is. They address issues like this all the time and have a new action alert about CAPPS II which is related to this. Expect something from them about this soon.
After 9/11 it was interesting to predict what would go up more: votes for Republicans or ACLU membership. Both did, but one group is truly in need of smart, passionate people to fight crap like this. The democrats don't seem like they want to do anything critical of Bush (at least as a group) and SCOTUS just turned down a review of the secret wiretap court. (to their credit it may come before them after more appeals)
Related and thought-provoking salon editorial here.
Try Finland. Try Sweden, Iceland ,Denmark...
How many do you need ?
There has to be a Patriotic, red blooded, flag flying, American Citizen out there who will defend the Department of Justice? After all, 85% of americans support the current reich, um, I mean government!
Don't tell me all the polls are (gasp) WRONG!?.
P.S. I'm a Disabled Gulf(1) Veteran. I earned the right to say whatever the fuck I want about the country.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
So, we should all stand united for truth :-) and populate such unreliable databases with false data. We should start calling each other and discuss how to make explosives or posions, hiding clean sheets of paper in suspiciously looking places, send mail to false foreign addresses with pieces of local newspapers and so on. :-)
After this, we should begin forming our own secret clubs at no particular reason, writing senseless petitions to the newspapers and send boxes with garbage to Saddam (if there stail will be any). We should also try to disrupt the casually untoched good name of unwilling ones. Finally, everybody will be so dirty that FBI etc will turn back to using reliable data
The FBI etc. are not exactly famous for their acuracy. Only recently there was the case of that old man arrested in South Africa on an FBI warrent and he was left for a month before they realised that he was the victim of ID theft rather than the criminal.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
It isn't news anymore. This is one of a thousand stories that tell the story of a slow decline. The United States has neared its completion of Project Mainland China, wherein the Constitution is replaced by Mao's little red book.
I don't see anyone really denying that this is where we're going. The sad part is that the mainstream really doesn't see it as a problem. We're starting to get used to the idea that hey, maybe this Fascist Communism thing really is the ticket for us. Just so long as we don't use the words Fascist and Communist. Say safety and War on Terrorism, and everyone thinks it's just nifty keen.
Don't mod this post. It's just (albeit accurate) nihilistic sarcastic bitter cynicism, and deserves neither a 0 nor better than a 1.
fifth sigma, inc.
As someone who used to do contract work for the government here in DC, I can pretty much assure you that there was no way your information would have been accurate in the first place.
I've spent half an hour explaining to govt employees the mystical function of the CAPS LOCK and the NUM LOCK keys, and these are the same people in charge of your records. So, we were all pretty much screwed from the get-go.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
Craig Livingstone got a severe whining at for providing the White House with hundreds of FBI reports--plenty of blackmail material which proved quite useful during the Clinton impeachment vote in congress. Just ask Larry Flynt.
Conversely, Chuck Colson went to Federal Prison for disclosing one FBI report, providing the Watergate with a convenient conviction.
Who cares what's in the FBI files since they'll only be used for political purposes by moral relativists.
This kind of thing gives me a very surreal feeling. On the one hand, I am a sane person, I don't believe in conspiracy theories, etc... But, I still have this nagging feeling that things are about to get much much worse here in the US. Does anyone else feel the same? I just want to be told it isn't true... Greater governmental powers combined with lessened accountability frightens me to my core.
You are number 6.
Australia, although Little Johnnie Howard is doing his best to make us like you big yankee man!
America as in freedom is going down the drain unless americans manage to remove the blind the government manipulation through media has put on their rational.
act now!
So if they implement it well enough to assure fairness, what's the actual problem (apart from slashdot kneejerk "gu'ment-is-bad-ok"? Is there some level of extra vigilance that would make it more fair in some way? Surely fairness is an absolute ... isn't it?
If I implement a an IT system well enough to ensure compliance with the spec then that's good enough, surely?
Apparently US journalism has no obligations to adhere to the truth.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Their counterparts in the UK are sometimes known as "The Funny People." Very apt.
In the worst case scenario (well, almost worse case), you get arrested by a local cop for something that the NCIC said you did. You go to jail for a few days, then your lawyer sorts it all out.
After that, you sue the city for relying on a database that they know is not correct. You sue the PD for false imprisonment. You sue the FBI for slander/libel. You sue the Justice Dept for allowing these idiots to ruin your standing in the community.
Hell, you could even get 10 other people together and file a class-action with millions in punitave damages. Sure, the lawyers would get 40%, but that is still 60% of something you would have never seen. Than take your money and become a naturalized citizen of Swizerland. I hear Bern is nice this time of year...
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Some american have started a campaign to give back Statue of Liberty to France (see www.giveitback.net).
I don't want to go into details about the obvious republican and pro-israel roots of this campaign.
But I think we (French) should start a campaign to accept such a gift, for the following reasons:
1) obviously, US of A is no longer home of liberty
2) We should place it Place de la Concorde, slightly off from the Louvre-Champ Elysees-Grande Arche Axis, looking toward the Assemblée Nationale, to remind deputies that if Equality is important in France, Liberty is not to be forgotten (for American Friends, French Republic slogan is Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, that is Liberty (or freedom, I don't know if there is enough of a difference in meaning), Equality, and Friendship(of course, nobody can make this happen by decree)).
3) As an interresting side effect of this placement, US Embassy personnal will have a direct view on Liberty ass.
Having inaccurate FBI/crime records will help purge the voter rolls in 2004 of all those pesky people who DIDN'T commit a felonies but who happen to be of the wrong demographic....
Perhaps the mere thousands of legit voters who were
purged in Florida 2000 can be increased to 10,000's as the database goes nationwide!
The above quote nicely points out the failure of modern democracy. It used to be 'If you don't like it, vote against it.
My sympathies to the American people, but take comfort in the fact that GWB was not elected by a majority vote. Who knows, we might even let you rejoin the international community once you have a democratically elected government.
Over in the US, they stick an anal probe in you for everything you do - school, banking, job, driving, housing, that is except for voter registration.
:P
That's correct. The anal probe that normally would accompany voter registration is held in reserve for when you, as a registered voter, are called in for jury duty. If you live in a state with one-day jury service, you can get out of jury duty faster if you aren't picked (one day and you're out), but now they won't take any excuses for not showing up for jury duty, since they need a fresh crop of jurors every single day.
So, when the lawyers interrogate you, and all your answers are recorded by the court reporter, think about why you decided to register to vote. Voting don't come for free. And before you decide to give false information, keep in mind that carries a hefty fine and civil penalty (or at least in California it does.)
The truely sucky part is if you get selected for an actual jury trial, and you don't get paid for jury service by your employer (or if you're self-employed.) $15 a day is what you get here in California, plus mileage. No meal voucher. On a civil trial that should have been sent to a judge instead of wasting jurors. Blah.
When dealing on serious contentious matter (lawsuits, complaints...) with ANY public administration, court, or private business, you should ALWAYS use certified mail, return coupon required.
Pretending that some mail never arrived, or ignoring it, is an old trick of all bureaucracies.
Why does data need to be "verified" or "researched" before we accept its validity? Whatever data they accept, I'm sure it'll pass the Slashdot Standard, and -- since I'm here -- that's evidentally good enough for me.
"I am constantly amazed at the willingness of people who live in America to step forward and ignorantly accuse the FBI of crimes that have not yet been committed."
It's called profiling, get use to it. The trickle down effect is still at 17 year olds.
34oiuy34f234oy23oi45y2fo323f52f3
Looks ok to me!
And what if you didn't do what is listed in the records? No offense, but that's the beginning of a police state: You fear to challenge inaccuracies, because it weighs against you. Then those inaccuracies are used as leverage against you to do other things you would normally refuse, or to hold you in place. It seems like a bedrock principle that, if information is gathered under the police power of the State, the State is obligated to ensure its accuracy.
Disclaimer: I didn't read the article, so perhaps the Justice Dept is simply stating that 100%% accuracy is not really possible, and that they can't invest all their resources going after that final 0.000001%.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I wonder if lawyers will ever use:
"Your Honour, ever since 2003, the database is more likely to contain inaccuracies, therefore I move that this information not be submitable to this court proceeding."
It seems to me inaccuracies can only hurt the system more than help it.
A few examples:
There's a few more, but those are the big two that take up a lot of the ACLU's time and money. I don't see either one as really a fundamental classic civil liberties issue; abortion is a complex moral decision and affirmative action is a social program intended to fix a social problem (which, even if it's a good idea, is something more along the lines of welfare -- a positive program, which is something entirely different from a protection of civil liberties).
So all that said, does anyone know of any good organizations that are dedicated to protecting civil liberties in the classic sense? I already know about the EFF of course, and have joined them, and would be willing to join others if I found some.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Australia Plans to Censor the Internet
Australia Taps More Phones Than Entire U.S.
Australia Plans More Spying on Citizens
Australia Spying On Its Own
Censoring Australian Censors' Blacklist
And most outrageously:
Aussies Ban GTA3
Australia Oppresses Jedi
Try speaking publicly against issues guarded by zealots, you'll quickly find you have no protections at all.
The city claims that the database software company is at fault. The dsc claims that Axciom is at fault. Axciom claims that it received data voluntarily and why didn't you clean up your credit report? The FBI claims it cannot reveal how it does its datamining in a public forum.
The city still decides to settle. You get your $5,000 and rent a trailer at Lucerne at Clear Lake, California.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
The FBI recently requested the arrest and extradition of a British pensioner holidaying in South Africa for fraud. I've long considered the FBI to professional & above reproach so I quickly dismissed his claims he was innocent, because of my respect for the FBI. I even when so far as to say to family and friends 'the FBI doesn't make that sort of mistake' how wrong I was. I learnt a valuable lession and hopefully I will be wiser in future. It troubles me that the FBI didn't learn the same lession.
Pensioner in 'most wanted' arrest
How the mix-up happened
Pensioner freed after FBI bungle.
Yeah, the cops can come in unannounced, if they have a warrant. Also, anybody cannot just be held without council. People captured on foreign soil, training to fight are not considered civilians by international law. Furthermore, technically only US citizens are protected under the constitution. So if someone decides to join the taliban and fight against the US, then they can hardly be considered US civilians anymore. Civilians have far more rights than combatants. The USSC and other Frederal courts have many times on this matter. Now if we are talking about US citizens on US soil, with out a warranty and right to council, then you would be entirely correct, such behavior would be entirely unconstitutional. And for the record, it think that the PATRIOT ACT (under anything more than a very strict interpretation) should be considered highly unconstitutional. But the government has mostly been using powers that they already had before, just more extensively.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
I fail to see how such a statement is less arrogant than what the US has done. Frankly, very little that happens in the world is agreed upon by everyone. You sound like a little kid who's threatening to take his ball and play elsewhere. I also find it highly amusing that democracy is now required to be a member of the "international community" considering that almost half of the UN is made of countries that are no where near democracy. Like Iraq for ezample, which chairs the UN commission on dissarmament. Are they considered members of the International community?
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Yeah they're free to take a huge portion of your income and give it to others.
Why is this not moderated "funny"?
I'm not sure exactly what people think NCIC is, but judging by the responses that were modded up, I believe at least some of the assumptions are erroneous. The functions of NCIC are basically keeping a record of stolen property, allowing agencies to search for warrants, records of restraining orders, missing persons, deported felons, and specific threats to national security (such as people who have expressed specific intent to kill the president, etc... not people who buy too many books on fertilizer storage). Very few changes have been implemented since the inception of the system... none even remotely approaching the draconian orwellian total information awareness machine that people seem to think this is.
One more apparently misunderstood point is that a "hit" on any information does not give the officer to power to arrest the person they believe to be a match. At the bottom (or top, depending on the state) of any NCIC hit is a message stating "Immediately confirm with ORI (originating agency)". Wants and warrants are not stored in NCIC. All that is present is a reference to a want or warrant held by a local agency. The officer must then contact the ORI directly to confirm the want. This does not involve NCIC in any way.
So what does the change in the rules regarding this do? Not much, really. The are hundreds of thousands if not millions of transactions within NCIC every day. Basically what DOJ is doing is clarifying that any errors are the responsibility (and liability) of the agency that enters them.
This changes your legal process the following way:
Old way: An erroneous hit is made on you in NCIC. The officer deviates from procedure and federal law by not confirming the hit with the ORI. You sue the DOJ and local agency for violation of civil rights. The judge throws out the case against DOJ, finds the local agency and arresting officer liable. You get money. Hooray.
The new way: An erroneous hit is made on you in NCIC. The officer deviates from procedure and federal law by not confirming the hit with the ORI. You sue the local agency for violation of civil rights. The judge finds the local agency and arresting officer liable. You still get money. Hooray.
Relax, his statement about the International community was a joke. I certainly had to chuckle reading it.
The problem is that the USA at this point simply does not want to be part of the International community. The world would love to see a USA taking the lead in reforming the UN and leading by example, but the current administration has unfortunately decided that America does not need the UN.
Tell that to Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen arrested in Chicago, now rotting in a South Carolina naval brig without trial or counsel. (The DoJ is appealing a federal judge's order that he receive counsel; see here and here.) He is being held based solely on the word of the President that he is a terrorist; no public trial has been held and no evidence against him has been presented. This precedent is dangerous; the next person to be so treated could be you!
You don't have to be American, or even be in America to suffer from the FBI's poor checking:
Briton back home after FBI ordeal
This is just an excuse to allow the FBI to arrest more english pensioners as suspected con artists.
I suppose they will arrest school children on charges of terrorism and when they realise the mistake they'll shrug it off as "it's not our fault that our system is inaccurate"!
They could also use this as protection against the legal action from the parents of the child due to the childs emotional scars from the 'good cop - bad cop' experience.
Hey, isn't that 10 year old bin laden?
If they weren't guilty, they wouldn't be suspect would they?
-=sig=-
About ten years ago, I was doing some statistical investigations of the incidence of homicides in urban centers. I came across some discrepancies between the reports from the Bureau of Justice Statistics ("BJS"), the database referred to in the parent of this post, and the National Center for Health Statistics ("NCHS"). Homicides are reported both by administrative arms of the courts and law enforcement, and by county and state pathologists, although using different reporting channels. In theory, they should agree. There are really no different standards used in one versus another, since pathologists determine cause of death.
I was startled to see significant discrepancies. Indeed, when I looked into the matter further, I found there had been entire research papers written on the subject. (Don't have time to find those now, but those interested can e-mail me.) Further study indicated I needed to know something about how BJS obtained their numbers, so I called BJS.
I spoke to a representative there for a long time. Now, this charcterization is, as I said, ten years old, and perhaps it has improved. But the rep said contribution of numbers and classification of crime incidents were voluntary programs from state and county authorities. In contrast, y'see, reporting from pathologists is mandatory and they are audited for accuracy. No such auditing is done for BJS or states or counties. When I asked why, the rep said that they needed to cooperate with local law authorities on a wide range of programs involving enforcement and otherwise, and they did not want to alienate them.
So, at least as of ten years ago, if a local sherriff or state wanted to make their official track record look better, they could "administratively misclassify" a set of crimes and there is no mechanism for finding them out. It is only detectable in the case of homicide because both BJS and NCHS have the same events recorded in their databases.
*sigh* for sure.(:-(}
Jan Theodore Galkowski, (Oo) http://www.smalltalkidiom.net/ MySQL,PHP,ETL,SQL,MinGW C, and plucking the Web
European countries are subject to the European Court for Human Rights. A local law that violates the human rights can be opposed by any citizen of the participating countries (44 at last count).
http://www.echr.coe.int/
the ECHR can outlaw any countries law and set a citizen free in any of those countries.
Agreed. I would almost say obvious.
Makes me think of the rise of the Nazis (seen from Europe, Dems are center-right, and Reps are far-right with this taste of Inquisition from Christian Coalition).
The Reishtag burning down was the "terrrorist attack" that allowed Hitler to push Germany in the downward spiral of police state and Nazism.
I wouldn't say that Bush is Hitler, but he might turn out to be a wannabe dictator, and good ol' Osama gave him the Reishtag he needed on a silver plate. From the (right now down) whitehouse.org, I learnt he said a dictature would be a lot easier.
He also comes from the corporate world, which is more arstocratic that democratic in its way of working (purely hierarchic (sp?)). (Hence the sentence)
So I see Bush potentially turning out to be America's own Hitler light, partially thanks to the way the events will turn out.
America also has its higher people (American Citizens) and lower people (the rest could just be detained secretely or even killed without judgement with current laws). Lower people sometimes extend to recent citizens with Arabic origin.
Of course, America could wake up, but Germany didn't at the time...
Because it isn't. /. should have a "Dumb" or "Lame" category.
1) You have the right not to be killed. Murder is a CRIME! Unless it was done by a policeman or aristocrat.
2)You have the right to food money Providing of course you Don't mind a little investigation, humiliation And if you cross your fingers rehabilitation
3)You have the right to free Speech as long as you're not dumb enough to actually try it.
....The HSD is now known as the 'Gestapo'.
The BATF NFA databse, which catalogs taxed firearms like privately owned full-auto weapons is inherently inaccurate. They've gone on record in criminal cases saying that the databse is 100% accurate, even when a training video by BATF brass has a top official admiting that it's only 30% accurate ON VIDEO! Not having your data in the BATF NFA database can get you 10 years in federal prison if convicted, regardless of the fact that you have paperwork showing you paid the tax and received confirmation paperwork back from the BATF. These are the same people our own Congress labelled "Jackbooted Thugs" after the Davidian Massacre in Waco.
If you think dealing with the IRS as a citizen is bad, try dealing with them as a federally licensed firearms dealer. They say the gun industry needs more regulation, but anyone who says that has NEVER dealt with the gun toting branch of the IRS; The BATF.
Could everybody start calling me John Ashcroft? There's some crimes I want to commit.
The US went into Somalia in December, 1992. Clinton was sworn in in January, 1993.
Europeans may put up with more government intervention into their lives, however they at least have a social welfare state to show for their trouble. We are heading to the point where we have the worst of both - all the social controls of the nanny state with none of the social benefits. Like it or not, the Europeans have created their social contract with their govnerments - subsidized universal healthcare, retirement, the dole, all at the price of a more intrusive government. The US formerly had the opposite, no real government social support network, but a laissez-faire attitude towards individual freedom.
Soon we will have neither individual liberty nor any social welfare system. We will be free to starve in a police state.
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
Um, how exactly were you intending to "ensure" that all these firearms are only used in self-defense? If you can really "ensure" that, then you wouldn't need the firearms to begin with, would you? There'd be nothing to use them in self-defense against, right?
You'd have a database bigger'n'badder than this FBI one in ten minutes, in your "ideal world." Or did you intend that "ideal" to mean "I don't want to deal with the unintended consequences of this idea"?
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Ideally, everyone would use firearms responsibly, but we all know that isn't how it is in the real world.
But the question remains... how does law enforcement protect law-abiding citizens if there is no punishment for crime?
"If you don't like it, move; I really don't give a damn."
I wholely agree. People with such attitude should leave. They are doing more harm than good.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
Moderators, this is first intelligent post in the whole forum, and appearently the only person who knows what the NCIC is.
And...
From personal experience, the NCIC is a mess. Only contained about half of my arrests, and had chgarges and outcomes both wrong and missing.
You mean that stuff about being a convicted cop batterer was only half of your arrests? O.o
-T
I haven't see the movie yet, I can't really be objective on this. But I think there is a good thing to remember: "never trust anybody only because everybody do"
Back in the late-70's or early-80's some person responsible for data entry at the NCIC was given their 2 week notice. A few months later when that persons superior was on vacation they were pulled over on a routine traffic stop. Before long the guy was face down on the ground being handcuffed. Sometime during those 2 weeks the person being fired entered data into the system that their boss was wanted in several states for child molestation, rape, assault, etc etc. It took a lot of phone calls and explaining to get that guy released from custody.
The new policy after that was that people being fired were escorted out of the building.
I hold a patent on sigs...
For the last few years, the FBI has had the Supreme Court's stamp of approval for "mistakes" like this. Arizona v. Evans (514 US 1) pretty much castrated the exclusionary rule regarding computer databases. Basically, guy gets stopped for a traffic violation, guy had a then-expired misdemeanor warrant in the computer, guy gets arrested for drug possession (not what the warrant was for, by the way). Despite the fact that the warrant was invalid, the evidence was still admissible, so the guy was convicted.
Their reasoning behind this? It's more of a clerical error than a police error, and since the exclusionary rule (forbidding illegally obtained evidence in court) is only supposed to deter police misconduct, everything's perfectly alright. Yeah, Rehnquist wrote it, so it's not like it's supposed to make sense. Before anyone turns this into a convervative-liberal argument, the vote was 7-2, so everyone's at fault.
Anyway, before they were overruled, the Arizona Supreme Court was actually on the right track. From the majority opinion: "As automation increasingly invades modern life, the potential for Orwellian mischief grows. Under such circumstances, the exclusionary rule is a 'cost' we cannot afford to be without."
Anyone hoping for a constitutional review of this, don't hold your breath.
The US doesn't want another Vietnam - that is to say - they don't want another war where lack of public support forces their agressive plans off the rails...
http://cryptome.org/us-blackout/us-blackout.htm
ah yes, everyday I wake up and this country smells more and more like a police state.
I don't need to tell you that this probably has me on all kinds of nasty lists, including the FBI's "We don't wanna deal with it" list.
Finding God in a Dog
Civil liability, as opposed to criminal, is a solution available to private citizens for constitutional violations. However, in practice these cases are difficult to win because they are often worth little money (assuming nothing expensive was destroyed and no one got killed) and the government actors may be protected by various types of qualified (e.g., good faith) and abaolute (e.g., judicial) immunity. Perhaps the greatest bar to the bulk of violations is that litigation is very very expensive and stressful.
However, by lifting this data-checking requirement, the government has not done anything that reduces these lawsuits, rather they have reduced internal accountability and increased the likelihood mistakes will be made and violations committed. There have been astonishing errors already, which one would think are warning enough.
So from the perspective of victims and those in government, this is lose-lose proposition. No one wants to get arrested for something they didn't do, and the cops don't want to waste time arresting them and sowing ill will. The change primarily serves those with fantasies of massive domestic spy databases and with little appreciation of the harm in sloppy law enforcement.
I predict we will see more, not fewer, lawsuits, but far too few to bring change.
Yeah, you get back some taxpayers money that should have gone to funding undernourished schoolkids lunches or getting a math textbook to some kid. Hoo-fuckin-ray.
After being detained, locked up, questioned, harrassed, having your freedom removed for who knows how long you get some money which can't possibly compensate. Hoo-fuckin-ray.
Does the arresting officer get removed from his position, his superiors disciplined and the rules revised to make sure it doesn't happen to some other innocent person? No. Hoo-fuckin-ray.
Let's all have another big cheer for the waste of taxpayers money in the service of abuse of human rights. Hip Hip Hoo-fuckin-ray!
ultimately i think this is well-intentioned (assuming you agree with info-sharing, which many people don't), but with some potential big pitfalls. instead of voiding the requirement, maybe they ought to amend it to still require the accuracy audit, but allow it to happen later in the process. better late than never.
"You want a toe? I can get you a toe by three o'clock... with nail polish."
Uh, no. There's still plenty of violent crime that happens without firearms. "Personal weapons" (hands and feet) are the most commonly used in violent crime, plus there are knives, clubs, rocks, all sorts of tools for beating the shit out of people.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I have every confidence that someday France will undertake a mission to liberate us from our oppressive, dangerous government.
Does the Revolutionary War ring a bell?
He gets a call from HR informing him that his wages will be garnished by over 50% starting the next pay check, because they have received a court order to collect back child support. My friend of course goes through the roof, since he has never had a child and has only recently been married.
After much calling around and agonizing he finally convinces them that just because his name is the same name as this other person, he is NOT that other person, particularly since in this case he would have had to sire the child when he was 12 years old. Not impossible, but unlikely.
So, problem over, right? Wrong. Much later when he went to try and purchase a home, he found it impossible because this person was now linked to him in the financial institutions databases as well as the justice systems.
Seems that the reason my friend was mistakenly identified in the first place was because the justice system had so little information about the identity of the true father to begin with. They had no social security number for him, and were missing a lot of other data too. So when they fingered my friend as the father, the various private and government agencies which were trying to build a "picture" of this person fleshed out the holes using my friend's data. Now, at this point, no one knows who got what piece of data from who. Even when it's discovered that another agency is using this bad data, it is very hard and sometimes impossible to get the bad data removed. He continues to discover more agencies/database where this bad information has propagated to, and there is no tractability/accountability which would allow him to to even identify what groups have gotten ahold of this wrong information. He just continues to hit these "land mines" of bad data as he tries to live his life.
Now, imagine if the situation had been different, and it was a terrorist who's data had become confused with his? It strikes me that in trying to track down a terrorist, (just like in my friends case), the authorities may be missing big pieces of the puzzle... like social security numbers and current addresses. In this case there was a credible challenge to the accusations (that his being 12 when the child was fathered). But suppose that there are no such glaring inconsistencies (which is also entirely possible). In that case dude, you are so screwed it's not even funny. Now I realize that my friends situation didn't involve the FBI database, but the FBI database is build from the other databases, and that's the problem.
So it's to my understanding from this article that the FBI now wants to use data which is even more suspect then the current data. And I'm fine with the idea that they may be using suspect data in an investigation. When solving a case investigators have to try and line up the pieces and see what fits even when they don't have everything neatly laid out in front of them. That's what doing an investigation is about; if all the facts were known, then it wouldn't be an investigation. *BUT* Make sure that:
- Suspect data is identified as being suspect
- For tractability the source of data is identified as well as the
date and time of data entry.
- All requests for data from other other agencies must be logged
and made available to the person for whom the data is about.
- And MOST important of all, a procedure *MUST* be mandated which
allows for the update of the data in the individual organization AS
WELL AS any other organization which has received this data. These
update must be a push from the updating organization to the
requesting organization, and not a pull from the requesting
organization. If it is left for the requesting organizations to pull
the updates, they will not know when the data has changed, and will
still continue to base their assumptions on incorrect data.
It seems like the justice system needs a good ISO auditor.Geheime Staats Poletzei translates as "Secret State Police". Near enough to Homeland Security.
We might save a lot of hot air on this if we could remember the fact that he is guilty as hell, and as such the only fair trial/treatment is one where he is punished. There is no miscarriage of justice here; no innocent being railroaded.
You know, hunting criminals is always so much easier when you can just make up information about them. Remember playing Where in (x) is Carmen Sandiego? You'd get frustrated trying to find that last elusive clue to get you a warrant, and so you'd just GUESS a hair or eye color? And what invariably happened? You SCREWED UP and caught the wrong guy.
Well.. I got one funny, one insightful?, and one troll. :) Guess I pissed off a republican, ammused a democrat, and confused some poor independant ;).
Sorry for all the typos, haven't re-read before posting.
Do you know how much money it would cost to take a case up to the European Court of Human Rights? It's a rather theoretical safeguard.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Chief Wiggum: I would rather let a thousand guilty men go free than chase them.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
If you don't like it, move;
Won't work. In a few years, American troops will be sent to "liberate" me, and before that, senior American officials will berate the goverment for allowing me to voice 'anti-American sentiment'.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Since the 4th Amendment is also a huge burden on law enforcement which requires much administrative overhead, why don't we just get rid of that additional burden, too, while we're at it?
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
The FBI has been known to majorly screw over innocent people, and I don't trust them at all. It is a little known fact that the FBI has successfully been sued under RICO (the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations act). It happened in the early 1980s, so there is no internet source, but it was apparently quite a precedent setting case--I personally know the people involved, and their story sounds like something out of a movie script, only it's true.
The people involved owned a used car lot in Illinois, and one day had the FBI show up at their door to arrest the car dealer for dealing in stolen cars. It turned out that the cars in question were originally stolen and had been recovered by the FBI, and since insurance had already paid the theft victims, the insurance company took possession of the cars and sold them at auction. The dealer had bought the cars at auction, having no idea of the history of the cars (not that it mattered, because they had been recovered by the FBI and had been cleared to be auctioned off). When that information came out, he was cleared of the charges, and decided to sue the FBI for false arrest, among other things. In the course of their research for the lawsuit, they discovered information that led them to sue under RICO for triple damages. No one had ever sued the government for racketeering, and they had to go to court argue that they could indeed sue the feds under RICO, and it was ruled that the government is not immune to racketeering charges. It took them something like 8 years, but they were able to get the evidence to prove that the FBI was not only engaging in racketeer type activity, but also that they had a profit motive to do so, and they won the lawsuit, forcing the FBI to pay them triple damages under RICO.
So, with the FBI having been considered a Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization in a court of law, I don't really trust them with anything, certainly not with the ability to store information about me that they haven't proven to be true (because, like the car dealer friend, it's probably false).
Eagles may soar, but weasles don't get sucked into jet engines...
I've always accepted as one of the most basic principles of law that it is far better for a guilty person to go free than for an innocent person to be punished. What is happening to us as a society? Have we really become so paranoid and afraid that we're willing to risk the consequences for a negligible increase in safety?
I've said it before and I'll say it again: given a choice between sacrificing personal freedoms (a la USA-PATRIOT Act) and facing a slight risk of dying in a terrorist attack, I'll chance the terrorists. At least you'd be afraid of the bad guys then.
The last sentence is kind of awkward. What I meant was, "At least I'd only have to fear the terrorists [and not my own government] then."
Always use Preview, kids.
This will seem offtopic at first, but I have a point. I'll get there.
When I worked with a certain company's MIS department a few years ago, I had one boss who was somewhat unstable and not terribly well-qualified. He'd frequently become overwhelmed by minor problems and setbacks, and he'd take his frustrations out on everyone by implementing ridiculous policies across the network--for instance, someone exceeded his disk quota one day and he took down the whole file server for a day. Kind of like what Ashcroft and company are doing with the Justice Department.
They're clearly overwhelmed by the problems facing them, and are too frantic about the situation to take a step back and notice the long-term effects that their actions will surely have upon the lives of everyone in America. Such knee-jerk reactions don't even benefit the offenders: my boss was eventually fired for his antics, and Ashcroft's days as a credible, respected political figure (heh) are numbered.
If you beleive the goverment shouldn't be questioned then *you* should move to a country such as China where that is the norm. Freedom lovers can remain.
Guilty until proven innocent.
How else will they be able to reconcile erroneous data?
thats what im saying. MY post was in support of my parent. Which says that people need to leave if they dont want to question.
My reply was essentially a "me too" to the parent.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
Oops, OK
Well put.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
The color pink (in general, the shade is more specific and no I can't name it off hand from memory now) is quite a legitmate desert camoflauge color. I am not sure exactly why it works, the scientific details, something to do with how human eyes work in that sort of terrain and climate, but it apparently does. The SAS have used a similar color with their desert rovers at times.
.50 calibre BMG the coalition uses. It is quite similar though, close enough to "the same" ballistics.
And it is more likley the Iraqi militias are using warsaw pact/soviet era designed weapons, meaning their heavy machine gun is a 14.5 mm, not the
The popular press is not well known for extreme technical accuracy in describing machinery of any sorts.
I remember one amusing scene on the television. Some scoundrel had been apprehended with his "arsenal" along with the loot and drugs, etc, the normal routine. The police were showing off their "haul". Laying out their confiscated bounty on the "exhibit" table with all the other evidence they were gloating over, and showing off to the press, was a lone benjamin air rifle, most clear to see. Not a one of the press noticed this. It was quite typical.
...the end of that particular road is already here.
They don't have to prove a thing to drop you into a very, very deep hole from which you will never be seen again.
Think it can't happen? Just ask Mr. Padilla.
Counterspin is produced by the center for Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. If you get your news from US media, you _need_ to listen to this weekly half-hour show. They have all their archives online back to 1996!
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
I attended a little conference at a local community college on hacking, at the time I was working for a major police department in IT. The agent made a comment about the magazine 2600 and the frequency of the Captain Crunch whistle, then said he didn't know if it was 2600 Hertz or 2600 MHz. I commented that it was Hertz as 2600 MHz would up in the microwave band. He made the laughing comment that I must be a hacker. As it happens, I am an amateur radio operator and have a bit of a background in RF.
If the dude doesn't know the diff on a factor of 10^6, and he's an 'expert' on computers and hacking, I think it's a lost cause.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.
I'm afraid that this isn't a new item. The NCIC database has been the source of trouble for a number of innocent people, whose names happen to be "like" those of convicts or suspects, ever since it was established. The problem is that now the FBI will no longer be obliged to clean up any errors in the data; which is what the old procedure was supposed to be. It won't be long before a lot more people find themselves hauled into police stations because of errors in the database. The concept of "innocent until proven guilty" has just taken another shot to the head.
Given the current administrations' penchant for closed trials, secret widespread wiretaps, and its desire to tie any criminal activity to terrorism, the U.S. just got a lot less free. The new regulation must be causing John Ashcroft to have wet dreams. Now the Department of Injustice will have all the excuse they needs to haul in anybody that they want. All that has to be done is to insinuate false data into the NCIC and voila, the local police will take care of the problem without the people in Washington having to dirty their hands.
The use of falsified police records is not new nor is it confined to this country. When Hitler wanted to depose the chief of the German General Staff, Generaloberst Werner von Fritsch, in 1936 the SS trumped up the evidence. However, they did not produce the "evidence" of von Fritsch's alleged homosexuality out of thin air. Instead, a "mistake" was made and the confession of one Otto Schmidt was used to incriminate von Fritsch (see _The German Army 1933-1945_, by Matthew Cooper for more details.) I'm afraid that we'll start seeing the same thing in this country to silence those whom the administration finds troubling.
Bush is out of control, Ashcroft is way out of control, Chaney is out of control.
Just my $.02,
Ron
Impeach Barack Obama for violating the Constitutional requirement to be a "natural born" citizen to hold the office of P
I had a fellow inmate in the hole at Florence FCI in Colorado. Guy was about my age (late forties at the time). He told me that when he was petitioning to go to a lower-security institution, his case manager told him the BOP couldn't recommend it because of "that incident at Alcatraz".
Inmate said, "What incident? I was never at Alcatraz!" Case manager pointed out a notation in the inmates Central File concerning some violence or escape attempt or something engaged in while he was an inmate at Alcatraz.
The inmate pointed out that Alcatraz had closed in the early 60's when he was about 14 years old - and they didsn't put 14-year-olds in Alcatraz...
Didn't faze the case manager.
The hallmarks of government: malice and incompetence...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I will point out that it isn't quite as constant as the other. Both of them make me sad though.