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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."
I too live in the USA for 40+ years and it does destroy our right to privates.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Benjamin Franklin
So do the Liberals! Repubs dictate Morality while Liberals dictate economy! Libertaians do neither. Libertarians only want the govenment to protect people from unwanted agression from others.(rape,robbery,forgery ext)
Learn lisp today!
But for how long?
The problem isn't necessarily that we can't trust law enforcement officials; its just that's not how our system works. Our system is based on transparency and accountability, because in the long term it works better.
The last time the US was in a situation like this was after WW2. Things looked, if anything, bleaker with the communists advancing throughout the world. We let agencies run wild on the "desperate times/desperate measures" theory. They ended up doing a lot of stuff that was just pointless, like experimenting with LSD on unwitting citizens, or having our legislature take part in a witch hunt that was in the end turned out to be run by a pathetic liar.
The institutions that did these things didn't start being disgraceful and stupid; indeed they were not entirely or even mainly so. But they ended up doing a lot of things they wouldn't have otherwise just because they had a license to operate without outside scrutiny and criticism.
Panic is not a good mode to run a war in. The Patriot act is just congressional platform for political posturing that doesn't do anything real for security. It's all a big sideshow. The 9/11 hijackers could have been stopped with the laws we had then, had we only taken the threat of air piracy seriously. We could have stopped them then if we had the will. Years later now we still don't have the will. Sure the air travel system is a bit more secure, but it's only a matter of time before somebody who is not a prankster sneaks a weapon on board or walks/forces his way through an unsecured perimeter.
What we really need to do is hard, expensive work. We need to do a lot more scrutinizing of critical facilities and hire armies of people to secure them and more armies of people to check up on the those guys. Sure, we're doing a little of that, but it is not even within two orders of magnitude of say the Iraq effort, which is absurd when you consider their relative security value (note I didn't say Iraq had zero value; it might have had some but on balance probably has negative value). What we've got, however, is the Patriot Act which does nothing for our security but gives our elected representatives the all important political "cover". Look! They're passing laws! They're having debates! They're talking about security! It's harsh! Like brusing your teeth with Clorox!
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