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Viet Dinh Defends The Patriot Act
Grrr writes "Wired News has posted an interview with Viet Dinh, who worked on the PATRIOT Act for the Justice Department. In the past he said, "Security without liberty - it's not an America I would want to live in." And also, in this interview, "I think right now at this time and this place the greatest threat to American liberty comes from al-Qaida and their sympathizers rather than from the men and women of law enforcement and national security who seek to defend America and her people against that threat." Several of his replies are (predictably / necessarily / discouragingly) less than direct."
Secret arrests, supposed "terrorists" being held indefinitely without trial, widespead wiretap priviledges.. the list goes on. Is this what you call a "breeze rustling the trees?"
The Patriot Act is already being abused to prosecute all manner of crimes that have nothing to do with its original intent. If there were any checks and balances in the act itself, this wouldn't be happening.
Pull your head out of your ass and smell the Totalitarianism!
I guess I would trust Bush'es administration a tad more if they were not using the excuse of 9/11 to prosecute organizations such as Green Peace. A more or less complete story can be found in The Miami Herald. If they are capable of using such antiquated law as ''sailor-mongering,'' (intended to deal with people would board a ship and use liquor and prostitutes to lure away the crew) to prosecute organization that is trying to stop illegal logging, how can you trust them they won't use Patriot act in some insidious way?
A religious war is an adult version of a fight over who has the best imaginary friend
YOU CANNOT PRESERVE FREEDOM BY DESTROYING IT
I hate to seem like I am shouting, but I am shouting. What the Patriot Act does to the civil liberties of citizens is unconstitutional and wrong. There is no way that any part of that law should be renewed. It is essentially a declaration that the terrorists won. This is not what I want, and I don't think it is what the American people want to say to the rest of the world.
Always look on the briight side of life! (whistle, whistle)
Dinh: I think it is very easy to employ sweeping rhetoric and personal denunciations. I think it is much harder to back it up with facts and concrete examples. [...]
And it is much harder still to back up any sort of reasonable discussion up with facts and concrete examples when the people defending the act in question also have discretion over the facts and concrete examples that are released for public review.
I forget what 8 was for.
How about all those UN resolutions and the 11 years when nothing was done?
Nothing was done about what? The complete lack of threat from Iraq to any other nation?
If international law alone is so important (IE enough so to go to war because someone is ignoring some memos from the UN), why is the Emperor and his corporate advisory board so adamant that US citizens must be immune to the ICC?
The real reason wasn't just to get saddam, it has changed the middle east
You're right - in a few years, the Middle East (except for Israel of course) will be entirely under hardline Islamic law.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
"These days, presidents don't seem to declare war on things that can possibly be ended by a peace treat (drugs, poverty, terror, etc). Tell me, Mr Bush, is the war on terror going to be over before or after the war on drugs?"
Absolutely.
"The suspension of due process indefinitely is an abomination to liberty, which I could've sworn was what we were fighting for in the first place."
I would argue that suspension at all is an abomination to liberty.
As for the rest of your comment, I must take issue with a number of things. First of all, you're definitely not a southerner, else you'd be calling it the War of Northern Aggression, which better illustrates the illegal nature of the war. There is nothing in the Consitution telling the Federal government that it had the power to stop secession of one or more states. Thus, as per the 9th and 10th amendments, the right to secede from the union remained with the states and those within those states. The North invaded, conquered, and ultimately burned to the ground a foreign nation because it was unable to survive, economically speaking, without it. But I digress.
You use the 'Civil War' (not getting into a semantecs debate) as one example of a time when citizens were imprisoned without due process. Luckily, we've had a court ruling on the matter, entitled Ex Parte Milligan, in which the imprisonment of a citizen under martial law was reversed, and in which the Supreme Court held that the very declaration of martial law was, itself, unconstitutional. From the court's decision:
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"Martial law cannot arise from a threatened invasion. The necessity must be actual and present; the invasion real, such as effectually closes the courts and deposes the civil administration."[Emph mine]
"If, in foreign invasion or civil war, the courts are actually closed, and it is impossible to administer criminal justice according to law, then, on the theatre of active military operations, where war really prevails, there is a necessity to furnish a substitute for the civil authority, thus overthrown, to preserve the safety of the army and society; and as no power is left but the military, it is allowed to govern by martial rule until the laws can have their free course. As necessity creates the rule, so it limits its duration; for, if this government is continued after the courts are reinstated, it is a gross usurpation of power."
And most importantly:
"Martial rule can never exist where the courts are open, and in the proper and unobstructed exercise of their jurisdiction. It is also confined to the locality of actual war."
My personal favorite part of the decision:
"But, it is insisted that the safety of the country in time of war demands that this broad claim for martial law shall be sustained. If this were true, it could be well said that a country, preserved at the sacrifice of all the cardinal principles of liberty, is not worth the cost of preservation. Happily, it is not so."[Emph mine]
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Ergo, example 1 was shown to be illegal. Shall we look further at example 2?
In World War 2, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which called for all the 'japs' to be rounded up and put into internment camps. This already looks pretty bad, doesn't it? In Korematsu V. United States, the Supreme Court gave the 'thumbs up' to the internment camps, rolling over like trained puppies for the popular wartime President. However... Over time, people actually got their heads on straight and took a good look at what had happened. In 1976, President Ford issued Proclamation 4417 which terminated Executive Order 9066. It was called "An American Promise", and it promised that such an action would never again be taken, while acknowledging that it was wrong in the first place. In 1983, a Federal district court ruled the detention
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Yes, just remember one simple fact: Hitler was elected. And his whole plan for government was clearly stated, both in his book "Mein Kampf" and in the Nazi Party program. Read William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" for further details.
"I think right now at this time and this place the greatest threat to American liberty comes from al-Qaida and their sympathizers rather than from the men and women of law enforcement and national security who seek to defend America and her people against that threat."
It seems to me that the only person(s) capable of restricting, denying, or otherwise effecting MY liberty are those individuals in authority to whom I am supposed to defer. That would be law enforcement, national security and those who rule them. Al-Quaida and its sympathizers have no control over me, none. I can't recall ever having to obey their rules, or having them tell me what to do. Attitudes like this piss me off to no end. I am not an infant, I can bloody well take care of myself, and I would thank my fellow Americans if they would stop acting like babies, expecting to be coddled by the powers that be and their tools.
Always remember that a jail also protects those within from those on the outside.
They never said they hate the idea of a free, tolerant, pluralistic society - they hate the result brought to them because of it....
... things he considers sins against Allah). If you read the whole letter you'll notice a lot of it has to do with Palestine....
Did ANYONE EVER read the letter from Bin Laden to the "United States".
Here's an article from the Observer containing the full translated text.
Here's some key pieces of the text for those who are too lazy to click on the link:
Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple:
(1) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us.
a) You attacked us in Palestine:
(i) Palestine, which has sunk under military occupation for more than 80 years. The British handed over Palestine, with your help and your support, to the Jews, who have occupied it for more than 50 years; years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion, destruction and devastation. The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its*price, and pay for it heavily.
And here's a part regarding liberty and freedom...
(3) You may then dispute that all the above does not justify aggression against civilians, for crimes they did not commit and offenses in which they did not partake:
(a) This argument contradicts your continuous repetition that America is the land of freedom, and its leaders in this world. Therefore, the American people are the ones who choose their government by way of their own free will; a choice which stems from their agreement to its policies. Thus the American people have chosen, consented to, and affirmed their support for the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the occupation and usurpation of their land, and its continuous killing, torture, punishment and expulsion of the Palestinians. The American people have the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their Government and even to change it if they want.
Again, it's out of context, you need to read the letter to understand the point he's making.
I don't necessarily agree with what he's saying, but let's get the facts straight. It's not that they hate a free society, but they hate the fact that this free society allowed the oppression they've supposedly felt.
I have a feeling that if history occured differently, there would be a bit more acceptance for the things he argues against later in the letter (such as gambling, drug use,
To add to that, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't even be in Afganistan if Gore were president. Al Queda would still be operating under the protection of the Taliban. Airline security still would have changed, but nothing else would have.
Let's set the hyperbole aside for a minute. I'd be willing to bet that our response to 9/11 would have been identical if Gore'd been President.
There might still have been something *like* the PATRIOT act, although it would probably be less extreme.
The 9/11 Commission probably wouldn't have gotten much farther than it has under Bush -- all the same CYA interests would be involved.
We wouldn't be in Iraq, and as a result, we might actually have a stronger presence in Afghanistan at this stage.
Lacking the push to war in Iraq, we wouldn't have pissed the entire world off, and we'd likely be in a better position in the "War on Terror" because of this.
But in 9/11 what-if terms, it's not even a very interesting question. The really interesting question is this -- what if John McCain had won the Republican nomination and the national election?