Slashdot Mirror
Deconstructing the Patriot Act PR Campaign
Aaron writes "The Center for Democracy and Technology offers up an interesting point for point rebuttal to the the claims made via the 'rah-rah-esque' DOJ's website, part of the PR campaign (including Ashcroft speaking tours) to convince the public the Act is good for them. I think this Broadband Reports article also brings up a good point: among the groups attacking the Act, why do so few of them bring up Echelon? It already gives the government much of the surveillance ability they claim they're lacking, and without congressional oversight. The UN this year even launched an investigation into the use of the system to spy on UN diplomats without much fanfare."
They were gathering signatures for a petition against the "Patriot" Act.
Did you sign it?
Hammer of Truth
The Patriot Act has served it's purpose. It's time for it to go now.
-- $G
I also wish that those folks who argued against the PATRIOT Act would get more publicity. These are things people need to be aware of and to think about. If it wasn't for /., I would never have known those people even existed or have read their arguments.
There is no spoon or sig.
The US goverment doesn't want to protect us, they want to get reelected.
If they wanted to protect the USA they would do something to secure our borders. It does no good to post a guard at your door/airports and leave the network/borders unprotected.
meep
All the privately held guns in the US couldn't stop a military attack by the federal government, if the government really were so inclined to attack its own citizens.
Shrug. The privately-held guns in Iraq seem to be doing a reasonable job.
I would never take those 3000 lives for granted, nor my love for my country.
Terrorism has a failure rate of 100% (another tv rip off), because people get on with their lives.
Everybody knows that they are not truly safe because we get jacked up the the security check point at the airport. All we're doing in that case is trading freedom for peace of mind. This is the same way, all I am doing is giving up my information, aka right to privacy, for the illusion of safety.
Terrorism will not be stopped in America. It cannot be prevent as a whole because any system has flaws. By trading our freedom for these flaws, we are helping fuel the motives of terrorists.
If the US federal government were to decide to execute a large scale attack on its own citizens, it would be over in short order. Remember the military is made up of our own citizens, and a great many of those personnel would not stand for such an attack.
Privately held guns can still help one to protect themselves or others against intruders. Fortunately, privately held guns cannot allow a single individual to kill a milion people.
There are numerous precedents for things such as the Patriot Act. They have usually been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but they have always stuck around until they reached the point of being struck down. For example the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 were blatantly unconstitutional and designed to give the government the power to crack down on their opponents. Of course it wasn't taken out until 1840, not exactly a quick response.
Then of course we had the Espionage Act and Sedition Acts during WW1. Similar things in WW2, the relocation of Japanese-Americans... all sorts of precedents have been set in this regard.
Reflections of Unconstitutional Precedence
TImeline of American Hegemony
The goverment does not care if the laws that they pass or the actions that they take are unconstitutional. That is the one thing history has taught us again and again. It doesn't matter at all unless the Supreme Court is going to rule against them. These sorts of unconstitutional practices will be allowed almost without fail. Perhaps years later public opinion will shift and people will add another chapter to the history books on unconsitutional precedents.
Hopefully the SCOTUS gets the balls to do something about it. Although I highly doubt that our current court will become involved. We already know how they rule on major issues that affect our country. The precedent is to allow the govt to do whatever the hell they want, worry about the Constitution later. Especially when the ideologies of the different branches of govt meet.
Anti-social? My code is just platform-specific.
That no patriot can stand such an odius piece of legislation which tears apart our civil liberties and turns the Constitution and freedoms our forefathers fought so hard for into courtroom toilet paper. I love my country, that's why I want a government bound to the Constitution and that doesn't send us abroad, as John Quincy Adams put it, in search of monsters to destroy. We built the beast that seeks to annihilate us because we paid lip service to our founders' timeless advice and made-and empowered-enemies in foreign lands.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
So let's establish the balance of the trade. For 3000 deaths, you are willing to give up your liberties in return for security - for how long? Forever? Until something (what specifically?) happens? Until you have caused a commensurate number of deaths for the enemy? (Define the enemy; you're not going to kill folks indiscriminately, right?) And exactly how much of you liberty are you trading in for exactly how much security?
A trade is a trade. You gotta have some well-understood rules and condtions. Before you lay them all out in detail, you can't really know if the trade is fair and if you're getting a good deal, can you?
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
He was saying, don't let the gov't take my gun because I may need it to protect myself from intruders or even the gov't.
Why would you think that anyone would need to protect themselves from the gov't? Could it be because of the threat of tyranny? Let's turn this around, shall we? Couldn't this act be the very sort of thing that you claim he was talking about?
You can quote dead white men all you like, but it doesn't change the fact that in the past two hundred odd years society has changed significantly and a single individual's ability to wreak widespread havoc has been increased million-fold.
First thing. 19 people killed 3,000 people. This is 157.89473684210526315789473684211 people killed per killer. If we assume that your statement about a millionfold is correct, then in Franklin's day, the same killer could have killed about 0.00015789 people. That is, no one could be killed unless 6,333 other people worked together. This is obviously wrong. There were murders without mobs of 6,333 people in the past. OK, so there may be an increase, but not as much as it may seem, I would hazard. Furthermore, if we look at the number of deaths relative to the size of the population, it would likely be lower. Indeed, on 9-11, only one in one hundered thousand people living in America died. More died in car crashes, more died from the flu, more died from alcohol than died on 9/11. Yes, 9/11 was a horrible thing, but let's keep perspective, too. For an example of perspective, consider that anywhere from 7784 to 9596 Iraqi civilians were killed by US troops since the War in Iraq started (source). Given this, how do you think that the Iraqi people should react? I leave you with these thoughts.
#define DRM chmod 000
However, such an argument fails precisely because a gun couldn't have stopped two airplanes from flying into the WTC.
Um. Am I the first to suggest that the PATRIOT act wouldn't either?
Terrorists of today could reproduce 9/11 quite well (though with different targets, of course). The only difference is that the government is given more power. The only people subject to the power are innocent.
Not to mention, am I the only one who thought it strange that 9/11 was used a reason to go to war against Iraq? Why not use "I was mugged on my way to the store" as an excuse to go murder everybody in your office....
Fuck you. A pedophile has the right to say "I enjoy sex with children, in fact, I masturbate every night to the thought of fucking a seven year old." A pedohphile crosses the line when they threaten or perform a sexual act with a minor. That's the point when you liberally apply the death penalty.
However, I'm disgusted that you think that it isn't important to protect the speech of all. If you only protect speech of those that agree with you, then you don't protect speech at all.
few (if any) of the people against it have actually read it
... it is a large and complex law that had over four different names and several versions in the five weeks between the introduction of its first predecessor and its final passage into law"
even worse, few (if any) of the people who enacted it in to law in the first place ever read it.
"The bill is 342 pages long and makes changes, some large and some small, to over 15 different statutes.
if you are not upset with the patriot act, maybe you should read it closer. some key points:
post911timeline.org
Here's to finally giving Bush his exit strategy in November
by giving it up
The ACLU fights for us all. The KKK, pedophiles, religious minorities, racial minorities, those who are subjected to illegal DUI-check roadblocks, Nazis, those who are threatened by the DMCA, etc.
They fight for freedom, the freedom for everyone. Not just whatever group that happens to be popular. If they did not defend the rights of the most despised amongst us they would not be for liberty at all, just selective liberty.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - wrongly attributed to Voltaire
It's like the whole Noam Chmosky/holocaust denier controversy. Because Noam defended the right of Faurisson to write whatever the hell he wanted even if it is considered to be "evil and bigoted" Noam was labeled a Holocaust-denier. Obviously Noam was for freedom, and the rights of us all to be free. Even those considered to not "deserve" the right to be free.
So now Chomsky gets called an anti-semite all the time because of his defense of the rights of free speech. It is an unfair connection to make, just as trying to paint the ACLU as a terrible group because of who they defend is unfair.
A criminal defense attorney is not a bad person because they represent murderers, sex offenders, and war criminals. They are fighting to maintain liberty for us all, even the worst of us deserve the same rights that we enjoy. Otherwise those rights are meaningless.
Anti-social? My code is just platform-specific.
" ...such an argument fails precisely because a gun couldn't have stopped two airplanes from flying into the WTC..."
I call bullshit on this argument. Don't even try to convince me that if someone had a gun in those airplanes that they would not have been able to stop a bunch of razor toting fanatics.
The biggest fallacy is the assumption that 'times are different' and therefore protections we enjoyed in earlier times do not apply. Again - bullshit.
I have news for you, people have not changed all that much, and one bullet in the forehead will kill you as fast in 1895 as in the year 2003. The destructive power of an airliner was available since the first one flew back in the 1920s. The only difference is the will of someone to try to use it. That does not justify flushing the Constitution down the toilet to make ignorant people feel 'safe'.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Where do we draw the line in too much? I mean the government feels now that without the Patriot Act you have no life or freedom, but this isn't the case.
The Patriot Act IMO is too undefined. It talks about terrorism and what powers the justice system has but it doesn't really ever define terrorism. In the long run it's a lot like statistics, you can make the numbers read however you want. The Patriot Act is the same way, the government just has to justify somehow that something is "involved with terrorism" and then its fine to apply the law. Does anyone remeber the ads that said marijuana supported terrorism? How about that recent drug bust that used the powers of the Patriot Act? I hardly doubt 10 years ago people would say a drug dealer was on par with terrorist orgnizations like al qaeda. I believe its already been mentioned that pirating movies and software is an act of terrorism. I mean come on!
It wouldn't at all suprise me if eventually, if we don't stop this, the government gets "paranoid" of the people and believes everyones a terrorist, and who knows what laws might be in affect by then. People just need to wake up and realize that no amount of laws and removal of freedoms is going to make you completly safe in this world.
With that in mind, the presidental elections are coming, do those of us that support having the act removed have any choice of canidates that want the act removed? Probably the better question is: Have any canidates voiced that they too support the removal of the act?
Scrap the "Patriot Act" and replace it with the otherwise identical "Terrorism Surveillance Act". The problem here is that this bill could be about anything and some people will violently defend it because the name implies opposition equates non-patriotism. Others will fight it just as vehemently just because they hate being cornered into someone else's definition of patriotism. See other postings in this forum for examples.
This bill is nothing about patriotism (which cannot be legislated except maybe in Soviet Russia, Communist China, etc) but is instead about expanded law enforcement powers concerning terrorism detection and prevention. So let's rename the thing to something that actually describes what it is about and get on with rational debate about its actual provisions instead of getting all in a bother over the emotions tied up in the name.
A WWII veteran said to me one time as we were watching news coverage of a protest:
"Those who compare Bush to Hitler do a disservice to all those who fought and died in WWII and an even greater disservice to their cause
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
That's not entirely true. Terrorism has been successful in many many places. South Africa for instance is no longer under apartheid thanks to the ANC's militant terrorist arm. The malaysians threw the British out by using the terrorist tactics which by the way the British had trained them to use against the Japanese which also succeeded somewhat. You could say the revolutionary war in the US was an example of terrorism success. You could also say the communist vietnamese were terrorists. Interestingly enough the most successful anti-terrorist method is negotiation which Britain under took with the IRA with fairly good results. Violence just tends to encourage the terrorists to fight on for the cause.
BTW you can replace "terrorist" anywhere in this post with Freedom Fighter
Unless of course someone on the plane(s) had a gun, and used it to shoot the hijackers. Which might explian why the airline pilots union has been campaigning to let its members carry guns in the cockpit.
However, such an argument fails precisely because a gun couldn't have stopped two airplanes from flying into the WTC.
Oh, I don't know. You sit me on one of those flights with a gun and they are not going to hijack that plane. At least they are not going to order it slammed into a building after they do.
"But you couldn't get on the plane with a gun!!!!" True, but your scenario doesn't make a lot of sense either way. NOT possessing guns wouldn't have prevented 9/11 either. (And may I ask, how did a debate on the Patriot Act turn into one about gun control?)
That's what the Patriot Act is all about, getting these systems to finally work properly so that we can stop another 9/11.
No. As you admitted yourself, we had the intelligence, we simply did not communicate it properly and did not fit all the pieces of the puzzle together properly. The Patriot Act is about increasing the government's ability to spy on us. Once they've decided we're not a threat worth watching, as they evidently did for the 9/11 hijackers, the PA has no effect.
And this one is just ridiculous: I think that many people are finally latching onto the concept that freedom to live safely is more important than freedom to be a criminal.
Do you know that Martin Luther King, JR. was spied on by the FBI? And we all know what a terrible terrorist he was, with all his sit-ins and peaceful protest! The movement to repeal the law isn't about protecting criminals, it is about protecting people who are doing nothing wrong from unjustified surveillance. The entire purpose of the Constitution is to protect us from the government, not from terrorists and regardless of how many more people a single individual nutcase can now kill in one fell swoop. History has proven that government, like most people and organizations, will abuse any power they are given (DMCA, anybody?). The solution is not to give it to them or to ensure what authority they have is locked down so tight it is as hard as possible to abuse.
Apparently these dead white men understood what freedom meant better than people today. If I have to die because a law like the Patriot Act is repealed, I would consider myself lucky to die for freedom. Thank god people like Franklin and Jefferson, true American patriots, were there at the founding of this country and not cowards like yourself.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Ahhh, preach it Mr. Dead White Man.
"Well the world is a different place. "
It isn't. What happened on 9/11 is in many ways less severe than what happened on December 7, 1941.
But that's really beside the point. If the act of fighting an enemy makes you like that enemy, than you've lost far more than 2 ugly buildings and 3,000 lives; you've lost the reason that makes you special, different, and better.
We used to hold the moral high ground in so many things, today, I feel like we're no better than China or Russia in terms of how we treat ourselves.
No, the world didn't change on 9/11. What changed is we forgot who we are and who we stand for. And for that reason, we must elect a new president. One who knows what the hell he's doing, and one who has actually read the Constituion.
Perhaps Ashcroft will be tried for treason some day. I think he's the worst thing to happen to this country since McCarthy.
Ben Franklin and Winston Churchill both said, but in different words:
Those willing to sacrifice freedom in exchange for security will have neither and deserve neither.
Note that a militia is not under the direct authority of the U.S. Armed Forces. One could argue that the 2nd amendment does not explicitly guarantee individuals the right to bear arms, but it does explicitly give groups of citizens that right. Of course, those citizens have to stare their weapons somewhere.
In other words... I'm John Q. Public. And I'm a militia of one.
All the more reason for the citizens to be able to defend themselves.
I beg to differ. See my previous comment about being a militia of one.
Disclaimer: I have no end of gratitude and respect for joe who is overseas right now getting sh!t done. Having said that, I think you have a little too much faith in your local police and your state's notional guard. I've personally worked with guardsmen who haven't touched their 20-year old rifles in over a year. And I should trust someone like that to defend me? I've met guardsmen that I wouldn 't trust to load a water pistol without wetting themselves, let alone defend me. As far as police are concerned, I have a friend who was on the police force in my area. While he was in, it was a standard practice for each officer to not only carry a registered sidearm, but each one also carried what they called their "fire and forget" pistol. Each cop had an unregistered handgun, one that could never be traced back to them. I don't trust people like that to defend me, but I do feel a compelling need to be able to defend myself from them.
I'm not saying that every citizen has a clear need to be walking around with a 50-cal. It would make life more interesting, but that's besides the point. The "gun nuts" cling to their weapons for the same reason so many slashdotters cling to the F-bomb. If I don't have the freedom to say "FUCKFUCKFUCKETYFUCKFUCK", then who's to say you have the freedom to say whatever's on your mind? The same is largely true of gun control: what the gun nuts fear is a state where the only people with firearms are the criminals and the police.
Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.
I was on the jury of a murder trial that included just such evidence
And what did that evidence tell you? "Oh my god! that person read Stephen King, he MUST be a murderer?!"
What can one possibly read that would be so important to a case that the fact the person had read it had to be entered into evidence? Did they not have any other evidence? "Yeah, we were at a loss and we had exhausted all our leads, so we took a trip to the library and picked up this guy reading an Agatha Christie book about a guy who got stabbed in the back, and well, our stiff got stabbed in the back, so ladies and gentlement of the jury, ignore the wookie and find this man guilty."
In all seriousness, name ONE thing that can be learned from a book that makes it "interesting" to the law enforcement. How to kill a person? CSI is a faster teacher. How to make this poison or that poison? Look under your sink.
And finally, did the FBI have a case against this man, and then got these library records to back it up? Or were the library records their entire case until they pulled more evidence up? If it was the latter, what is to keep them from arresting everyone who checks out a murder mystery at least for conspiracy to commit murder? "They checked out the book, they must have been thinking about killing someone.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Ahhhh, but Echelon is supposed to be for spying on non-US citizens and if it truly exists it is almost certainly illegal. Any evidence Echelon uncovers of a danger to national security is useful as it can be kept secret even from the defense due to national security concerns. But any evidence Echelon uncovers about domestic terrorism, financial or political crimes, etc. cannot be introduced in court lest Echelon be unmasked!
The government needs a 'legal' tool that allows them to spy on the people which is admissable in a domestic court of law.
Come play Moral Decay!
I'm sorry if I just don't get it, but I did not really see any mention of anything that actually refuted any of the DOJ claims.
All I see is a bunch of clarification of the points that would not have been appropriate to mention at a press conference (the likes of which the soundbytes were taken from).
I also notice that none of the new powers can simply be used willy-nilly. They all require the permission of a judge (who may well interpret the warrant request as, well, unwarranted).
No, no, no no, NO!
The famous "They that give up essential liberty to obtain temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" is NOT about guns. You could not be further from the truth.
The quote means exactly what is says- if you're willing to give up your freedom, you didn't deserve it in the first place- because if you truly valued and appreciated your freedom, you'd understand that being truly free has risks- the risks that someone will abuse that freedom.
That risk is the price you pay for being a US citizen, and in this day and age it is such a minute risk it is absurd(WTC=3000 people, once. Highway deaths EVERY YEAR? 40,000. Heart disease deaths EVERY YEAR? 700,000).
Ben Franklin is flipping in his grave as Bush and Ashcroft- who have done more damage to our personal liberty than anyone else in our history- call themselves "patriots"; they are lying, grandstanding cowards- little more than scam artists who have show the public a future where the Bad Man With The Turban goes away if they just bend over at the airport. True patriots are willing to take the risk so that they remain free. Sheep are willing to trade their freedom for safety.
Please help metamoderate.
Don't forget that the Patriot Act passed both houses of Congress. By a wide margin.
So instead of demonizing the man in charge of prosecuting our nation's laws why not blame your representative in congress for passing it?
According to Gallup, 67% of people believe in ghosts.
Those polls don't prove anything, except most people are ignorant. You don't need a poll to figure that out.
I never said my ideas would create a utopia, though a 1/2 to 1% reduction in gun crimes would be great. Also, 1/2 to 1% is not 0%, so obviously some criminals do use them.
Um, no. Not 1/2 to 1%, less than 1/2 OF 1%. Meaning Furthermore, I believe the government should act deontologically when it comes to rights.
You have the right to that belief, but you're wrong. From a deontological point of view, one can justify ethnic cleansing because most of the people in a given place may think that it is for the best.
If there's any legitimate use, then it should be legal (though possibly regulated).
Legitimate or not, constitutionally protected trumps that.
My argument is based on principle: semi-automatic weapons do not have any uses among citizens that do not deserve heavy regulation (or even banning).
Crime prevention. Hunting. Collecting. Recreation. All of which are legitimate uses, but the fact that firearms ownership is constitutionally protected makes none of that relevant.
Your utilitarian arguments do not sway me.
The purpose of this debate is not for either of us to sway the other. It is not possible. You have made up your mind, I have made up mind. If you were to try to persuade me that black licorice is delicious, you'd be wasting your breath. Same here. It is to sway those who are undecided.
I know utility is the normal justification for gun control, but I think deontology is more consistant with my other positions in politics and supports my reasoning adequately.
I don't care. Be it deontology, or the flip of a coin. Your justification for your position on this is meaningless to everyone except you.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
What about the questions surrounding the U.S. Government's knowledge of 9/11 prior to the event itself?
What about the fact that the U.S. Government trained and armed what would become Al Queda in the first place?
What about the fact that the U.N. Weapons Inspectors couldn't find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Saddam had no involvment in 9/11, despite the general cloud of confusion that the President has spread over that particular issue. Quite a few experts maintain that Saddam was no threat to the U.S. as long as he was left alone. I won't say the world isn't better off without Saddam but it's the motivation and execution that bother me.
Does none of this inconsistency bother you in any way?
My username does not make me Apathetic. It's irony, get it?