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Part Of The Patriot Act Shot Down
jtwJGuevara writes "In a victory today for the ACLU, (and many Slashdotters I presume) the section of the Patriot Act which gives power to the FBI to demand confidential financial records from companies as part of terrorist investigations has been ruled unconstitutional by a U.S. District Judge. Victor Marreo, the District Judge who made this ruling, states that the provision of the Patriot Act in question 'effectively bars or substantially deters any judicial challenge.'"
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Its so cute! the courts balls just dropped!
Judge Rules Against Patriot Act Provision
Sept. 29, 2004 -- NEW YORK (Reuters) - Part of the Patriot Act, a central plank of the Bush Administration's war on terror, was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge on Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Victor Marreo ruled in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the power the FBI has to demand confidential financial records from companies as part of terrorism investigations.
The ruling was the latest blow to the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policies.
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that terror suspects being held in places like Guantanamo Bay can use the American judicial system to challenge their confinement. That ruling was a defeat for the president's assertion of sweeping powers to hold "enemy combatants" indefinitely after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The ACLU sued the Department of Justice, arguing that part of the Patriot legislation violated the constitution because it authorizes the FBI to force disclosure of sensitive information without adequate safeguards.
The judge agreed, stating that the provision "effectively bars or substantially deters any judicial challenge." Think about your breathing.
Under the provision, the FBI did not have to show a judge a compelling need for the records and it did not have to specify any process that would allow a recipient to fight the demand for confidential information.
Copyright 2004 Reuters News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
first one
IAAL (I Am A Lawyer) and this is entirely meaningless unless it is ruled by the supreme court. Hopefully on appeal the Supreme Court accepts this case.
Sounds like a defense of CORPORATIONS rights, which are more and more behind the scenes, creating laws and running the country. We have separation of church and state - we need separation of business and state as well.
You can be sure that all giant corporations are grateful as well.
Under the provision, the FBI did not have to show a judge a compelling need for the records and it did not have to specify any process that would allow a recipient to fight the demand for confidential information.
Checks and balances is overrated anyway. I mean, those Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution several hundred years ago when there were no terrorists. Oh wait, didn't they act like terrorists against the British...?
On how many straw man arguments are posted in this thread before it is over. Anyone want to take a guess? I'm thinking around 40.
Nothing to see here folks... move along, move along.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I do hope this isn't merely a bone thrown to the anti-Patriot crowd... If it is, other more important issues may be compromised on because of this. -- When in doubt, mod +1 insightful and pray.
I'd be willing to be that this one will see the Supreme Court. Hopefully they'll not overturn this extrordinarily wise decision.
I moderate Mr. Marreo +1 : Liberty.
Its an uphill battle against bureaucracy, against the thirst for more power and its fought by decent civil libertarians amidst others who are running the risk of being labeled as unpatriotic girly men by Fox news and the Republican party.
ACLU has been moderately successful in chipping away provisions of the Patriot Act, desperately trying to limit its broad sweeping powers acquired during the aftermath of Sept 11, when the notion of security drew a shadowy veil over our eyes and across measures of oversight and provided us with the promise of a secure land but taking away our freedom in its place. The people behind it were clever enough to threaten us with more attacks and a terrible outcome if these measures were not passed, but put nothing in place to provide oversight, nothing in place to limit its ever stretching arm, reaching out to our private lives.
Now, the Republican party is getting ready with "Patriot Act II" in response to the findings of the Sept 11 commission, but in stark contrast to what's required, has granted far greater power and reach to the security agencies while dramatically eroding constitutional protections and providing a fraction of added security.
Republicans now more than ever seem to be under the belief that they could throw any dissenting american in to prison and blow up anyone voicing their dissent outside the US and are on a collission course with the stark reality that while we may never die from a terrorist attack, we will surely feel the ever tightening grip of a police state.
Rapid Nirvana
I know that Kerry wrote some of the "financial crime" parts of the Patriot Act. I wonder if this was his? Does anyone know?
At last, some justice!!!!!! Down with the patriot act!!!!
Music today is so uninspiring it would make Martin Luther King want to watch Friends. The patriotic act is merely protecting shitty music, shitty movies, and other contemporary shit designed to make money. Who cares.
Unless that corporation happens to be your bank and they want your financial records.
Hopefully we will start to see more challenges against this kind of legislation. Like the old saying - you gave him an inch, he will ask for a foot, it does apply to both ways though.
:) or did it?
It's also lucky that the PA didn't give FBI the power to ignore unfavorable rulings
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
The judge agreed, stating that the provision "effectively bars or substantially deters any judicial challenge." Think about your breathing.
It should be pointed out that the FBI can still demand confidential financial records without this provision of the "Patriot" Act. Basically, without this provision the FBI just needs to provide a reason WHY to a judge to get similar access to the same records. (Previously, it was all hush-hush.)
was it shot down with a Patriot missle?
---
Those who can, do
Those who can't, teach
Those who don't know how, supervise
Higher courts, including the supreme court, have the ability to overturn this decision but until that happens this decision is the opinion of the U.S. court system and has the full force of law.
ACLU's site is getting hammered; the decision has also been posted on EFF's site:
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/Terrorism/ PATRIOT/20040929_NSL_Decision.pdf
(EFF's press release is here.)
"The terrorists have won", Ashcroft will croon...
than this BSD box, your own towel in NetBSD posts on theN Jordan Hubbard
If you are a lawyer, then you should know that if this gets upheld on appeals and the SCOTUS refuses to hear the case, then it stands...
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
What follows is from another site but it shows the ACLU isn't as consistant as some say they are.
v eRights.cfm?ID=9039&c=146
e rty.cfm?ID=10778&c=140
Quoted text follows.
Explaining their support for taxpayer-funded abortions, they say this:
http://www.aclu.org/ReproductiveRights/Reproducti
What about those who are morally or religiously opposed to abortion?
Our tax dollars fund many programs that individual people oppose. For example, those who oppose war on moral or religious grounds pay taxes that are applied to military programs. The congressional bans on abortion funding impose a particular religious or moral viewpoint on those women who rely on government-funded health care. Providing funding for abortion does not encourage or compel women to have abortions, but denying funding compels many women to carry their pregnancies to term. Nondiscriminatory funding would simply place the profoundly personal decision about how to treat a pregnancy back where it belongs -- in the hands of the woman who must live with the consequences of that decision.
Yet when they describe their opposition to school vouchers, they say this:
http://www.aclu.org/ReligiousLiberty/ReligiousLib
School voucher schemes would force all taxpayers to support religious beliefs and practices with which they may strongly disagree.
IAALT (I Am A Lawyer Too), and this judgement is binding in his federal court's jurisdiction. It might just be his part of district two (which I think covers NY), or it might be all of district two (which I think covers NY and some surrounding states). It is good law there, until either overruled by the Supremes, or made the Law of the Land by the Supremes.
I'm not entirely certain whether or not I appreciate the assumption that most slashdotters are "Pro ACLU." Perhaps that's not the insinuation and I'm just reading it wrong.
...U.S. District Judge Victor Marreo announced his early retirement from the judicial circuit, citing "Personal Reasons".
Elgon
Please remind me of all the Dems that voted against the patriot act.
Thanks in advance.
darn activist judges, the laws name has word Patriot in it! Doesn't that in itself make it immune to judicial review? I mean it not like it's name is communist act or something.
In German its called "Amtsrichter".They are overhelmed by hunderts of thousands of "your fence are 2 inch to close to my ground"-Cases.... So stating something on CNN or the big Newspapers would make him very happy,i think........
Whats the big deal about the Patriot act, unless your a terrorist, why is everyone so afraid of it?
Why don't they take out the parts that infringe on the individuals rights? They just added the loophole for companies like *AHEM*ENRON*AHEM, and HALLIBURTON to slip through. Big fucking step in the right direction I'm sure. Next we should outlaw all investigations into large corporations to begin with.
You are about to give someone a piece of your mind, something which you can ill afford...
We have separation of church and state - we need separation of business and state as well.
... Now thats a good idea! We can call it Citizen Protection Act.
... i'm dreaming...
While we're at lets make a law that puts some accountability on those that write laws later found to be unconstitutional.
If anyone ever needs a lawyer, ask them if they post as "detriment" on /. before using their services :)
great news for anyone who wants to deal in illegal business practices and fund the terrorist. how can this be good?
We all know that it doesn't matter what the intent of the FF was if the terrorists have already won.
I think that George Tennet gave the most damning testimony against the PATRIOT Act during the 9/11 commission, and he didn't even realize it. In his closing arguments, he said that the US knew everything it needed to know to stop the 9/11 attacks, but everyone held a different piece of the puzzle but didn't want to share that piece with anyone else. The government doesn't need any more power to stop terrorism, they just need to get rid of the bureacracy, which is why this new intelligence office is total BS: they are trying to fight the problem of too much bureacracy with.....MORE bureacracy(yeah, I can't spell). Unfortunately both major political candidates think this the real way to reform intelligence......
Monstar L
Superficial inconsistancy isn't the same as insanity.
Comparing the abortion issue and religious school vouchers program aren't even the same damn ball park.
Republicans now more than ever seem to be under the belief that they could throw any dissenting american in to prison and blow up anyone voicing their dissent outside the US and are on a collission course with the stark reality that while we may never die from a terrorist attack, we will surely feel the ever tightening grip of a police state.
You had something going there until this last bit of dribble.
I hardly think you can blame Republicans when 98 senators and 337 Representatives voted for the bill. Those senators of course included your beloved John Kerry.
Cannot the court subpoena the same records only with more time and difficulty involved?
-- Checking emails and kicking cheats `till the day I die.
to wash your brain? It worked really well!!!
WATCH OUT Codeguru!! There's a Republican behind you thats going to try to kill your children!!
I work in an academic library that's also a federal depository. I've had to deal first hand with the implications of this POS raping of our rights
I also live in a city where provisions of this act were (mis)used not to go after terrorists, but after "garden variety" criminals.
In making purchases off of the internet or at a store, I had to pick and choose what I wanted to buy with a CC. Afterall, in the hands of an overzealous prosecutor with an axe to grind, my purchase of the book/film for Lolita and The Tin Drum could be turned into "evidence" of my pedophilla or some other such rot. "Would it play well in Peoria" became my yardstick for all CC purchases. No really. I deal with a government that would inflict such craplaw as the Patriot Act on us with extreme paranoia.
(But, one part of me has a tiny twinge of sorrow at watching this act of justice delayed. It's mightily hard to be fiscally irresponsible when you've switched to a "cash diet" to make all your major purchases. It's going to be a little harder for me to be "good" now.)
OS X:*nix for the real world.
Wow, shorter and much more informative than the abcnews story. The wikipedia link for the patriot act is here.
-jim
There is a fine line to be found between protecting the rights of individuals and protecting the right of the People to be secure. The Patriot Act sought to define the line, giving the Executive more power to track these financial transactions, without scrutiny of the individual being investigated, and with limited oversight.
We need some kind of oversight, because the Executive may abuse the power. Not every executive will be as trustworthy as others in regard to protecting the rights of individuals.
One thing to consider, however, is that with judicial oversight, you can have another form of tyrany, where an overzealous judge prevents an Executive from doing his job to protect the People. We only have an appeals process for this, which hopefully results in a well-reasoned balance of rights. However, as the judicial confirmation process becomes more and more politicized, you can expect more and more partisans being placed in lifetime-tenured posts.
No judge is ever going to rule less power for the Judicial branch. I, for one, do not welcome our judicial overlords. Lex Rex.
There's no time to stop for gas, we're already late.
This means that the FBI has to get a warrant before raiding your ISP you dirty hackers you. Not that my ISP wouldn't just give any information to anyone who asked if they slightly represented federal officials.
-- Checking emails and kicking cheats `till the day I die.
What do you expect them to throw at the problem? James Bond doesn't work for the US government.
As a humorous aside, I lied, there are several "James Bond"s working for the US government and they don't like the 'licensed to kill' jokes at all.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Russ Feingold. Wisconsin. The only one with enough balls in the whole Senate to vote against that hurtling turd.
Seriously, whenever I hear about any of the freedom-reducing provisions of the Patriot act, I can't help but ask myself, "What exactly do these people like about America? As for myself, I always felt very proud of our freedom, but these jokers keep taking it away bit by bit, and don't even appear to feel bad about it."
Bush calls the terrorists "freedom-haters", but ironically I see his administration as one of the biggest "freedom-reducers" in the past 20 years. Heck, under their own logic, by cutting our freedoms, aren't they giving the freedom-hating terrorists what they want?
Is having a free country hard? Yes. But as a country, don't we pride ourselves on doing the right thing, even if it's tough? I thought we did. Is there an alternative to the Patriot act that would preserve our safety and yet not place such restrictive burden on our freedom? I think there is, but it doesn't feel like we even tried looking for it.
P.S. Would the Patriot act have prevented 9/11? This is a guessing game, and it's hard to characterize such a giant bloated act, but most of the provisions under the Patriot act don't seem like they even begin to address the real problems that allowed 9/11 to happen. So ironically, we've given away a lot of freedom for a bunch of laws that wouldn't have made us safer.
In the house that would be:
0 1& rollnumber=398
_ li sts/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=107&session=1& vote=00313
Baldwin, Barrett, Blumenauer, Bonior, Boucher, Brown (OH),Capuano, Clayton, Conyers, Coyne, Cummings, Davis (IL), DeFazio, DeGette, Dingell, Farr, Filner, Frank, Hastings (FL), Hilliard, Honda, Jackson (IL), Jackson-Lee (TX), Johnson, E. B., Jones (OH), Kucinich, Lee, Lewis (GA), McDermott, McGovern, McKinney, Meek (FL), Miller, George, Mink, Mollohan, Nadler, Ney, Oberstar, Olver, Otter, Owens, Pastor, Paul, Payne, Peterson (MN), Rahall, Rivers, Rush, Sabo, Sanchez, Sanders, Schakowsky, Scott, Serrano, Stark, Thompson (MS), Tierney, Udall (CO), Udall (NM), Velazquez, Visclosky, Waters, Watson (CA), Watt (NC), Woolsey, and Wu
and in the Senate: Feingold
http://clerk.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.asp?year=20
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call
that is why you might be receiving emails claiming Bush supports it to deflect from this damaging news.
Kerry favors "compulsory National Service" and the bills are already in Congress introducedd vby Democrats.I may be off topic but this is true check it out.
This was the last straw for me. I'm pulling out my wallet and supporting the ACLU. If not for these guys, we'd be living in Nazi America, 2004. These guys fight the good fight, and they're largely above politics. Go, ACLU!
I don't respond to AC's.
The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
Source
You'll note that there is no distinction between governments or civilians. One could argue that a rebellion (and yes, the Founding Fathers were British citizens at the time) is a form of terrorism, as is destruction of property like the Boston Tea Party and other attacks on forts & munitions before the Revolution was official.
Your argument would hold some weight if vouchers were only used to support relgiious schools.
But they are not. Just as some government funds are directed to fields that others may take issue with, so do vouchers just let a parent choose a school they would like to have students attend regardless of weither that school is public, religious, or otherwise (like montessori or homeschooling of some form).
Vouchers are an idea whose time has come - some time ago. It will not even meant the death of publich schools as some seem to think as most people will probably keep putting kids in public school and have the voucher money end up there. All it will mean is a little more choice for parents and more interesting schools devoted to innovative ways to teach kids.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It still is a precident that can be sighted in cases outside this district. It is hardly a meaningless ruling.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
The group going by that name has been for the last two years just an adjunct of the Republican party.
Hopefully we can change this in the coming years once the main Republican franchise no longer has 100% control of the federal government.
I thought you made an excellent point, I hope someone with moderator points stubles across your post.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...he was (to understate somewhat) irked by the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia during and after the first Gulf War.
Remember that Saudi Arabia holds some of the most sacred sites in Islam within its borders.
Could someone explain what 'nerd' category this falls under? I know this is under the YRO category, but, really, how does this affect your online life or rights?
I could understand news on the DCMA, but this has nothing to do with computers, technology, space flight, anime, or bio-chemical-energy-producing organisms.
Personally I feel as if I just got in the middle of a political lobbying scheme.
Mod for flamebait, but it has to be said: The reveiwers might want to consider whether a topic is relavant for 'Nerds' (Stuff that matters, and all that...)
I don't know why this was modded "Funny."
Contrary to what they want many peope to believe, the ACLU does not "defend the Constitution." They merely use it as a tool when it advances their agenda, and ignore it when it doesn't.
ACLU President Nadine Strossen said this about "constitutional rights" vs. "civil liberties":
source:
"Life, Liberty, and the ACLU: An Interview with Nadine Strossen"
Reason, October 1994
who go on bragging about the 'end of democracy in the USA'. It is alive and defending itself against abuse, as the NY ruling shows.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
I think the big issue behind vouchers is that it will take money from already struggling school systems. Unless they take the abortion funding from school districts, making it detract from the education of others, your argument does not apply.
There is, however, Judge Victor Marrero. He's a Clinton appointee.
Is that the government uses it against NON-TERRORISTS.
Not only that, the government has used it against non-terrorists MORE THAN it has been used against terrorists.
It's a bad law, just like the DMCA, that gives the executive branch too much power without the benefit of the checks and balances of which our government is based.
I don't think this specific judgement is binding yet? The full version of the Reuters article linked in the slashblurb contains the line:
In his ruling, Marrero prohibited the Department of Justice and the FBI from issuing the national security letters, but delayed enforcement of his judgment pending an expected appeal by the government. The Department of Justice said it was reviewing the ruling.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Even though it was ruled unconstituional, it is still a law. Courts interprit law. They cannot wipe a law off the books. This is left to the legislative process. So they can continue to use this portion of the Patriot Act, it just won't hold any water in court. Unless however, a higher court throws out the ruling this court made and then it will be enforceable again. But still, if you want that portion out, you have to write it out of the law books.
There is no such right. There cannot be, because it is impossible to provide it, as long as people continue to meet each other. At some point you have to trust your neighbor not to try to kill you; in part, you rely on people being mostly reasonable, and in part, you earn the trust by behaving in a reasonable manner towards your neighbor.
Oh yes, go ACLU!!! Go Free Speech!!! (Unless you are saying something I disagree with, in which case I try to mod you down to a troll).
abortion: a right
education: mandatory
In a touching moment,
Elle Woods will convince the Supreme Court that
the worldwide sisterhood of blonds is
threatened by the Patriot Act.
What woman wants the FBI to know when she gets her collegen treatments, botox shots, tanning booth sessions, and mud treatments!
A woman's stylist is her own personal choice,
and no one can take away her right to good shoes and pretty pink outfits !!!
Attorney Elley Woods Saves the Day!
how this will affect the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens? Will he be allowed back in the US?
IANAL, but I did read up on this case pretty heavily (the "Under God" one).
The Supreme Court ruled on the case, and overturned the appellate's decision on a technicality. The analysis I read (not my own) was that this could likely be used in another juristiction to force the issue directly to the supreme court on merits. Hence we have the (certainly unconstitutional and probably meaningless) Pledge Protection Act which is supposed to remove the issue of the Pledge from the eye of the court.
Now, it seems to me that this case is certainly going to be one which will go before the Supreme Court just because it is an important legal controversy.
My own opinion (layman) is that the Supreme Court will rule, as they did in case of Hamdi and the Guantamamo Bay detainees, that executive power cannot be removed from judicial oversight. Of course, they could also rule as they did in Padilla that the case was improberly brought before the court and send it back on a technicality. My layman's opinion though with the Padilla case is that Hamdi represents a strong enough precident to essentially challenge the constitutionality of Padilla's classification, so the technicality doesn't really give the government much wiggle room once the Habeus petition is properly filed.
Now to the case in question. Hamdi is of particular importance because in my analysis of how the court will rule (Layman's analysis IANAL, etc) because it exposes deep divisions within the Court with regard to the level of executive and legislative authority allowed within the framework of the War on Terror. In the opinion of the Court, even the fact that Hamdi was detained in the theater of operations of an armed conflict did not deny him the right to at least a minimum due process of law and some form of judicial check under Habeus petitions. Notably, the Opinion of the Court was only endorsed by 4 justices (Kennedy, O'Connor, Rehnquist, and Breyer) though Souter and Ginsberg's dissenting opinion eventually endorses the action of the court but under protest.
4 Justices in two dissenting oppinions in Hamdi actually held that the detention of Hamdi was in fact illegal, and that it was not enough to simply allow him to challenge his "enemy combatant" classification. The opinion of Souter and Ginsberg was that the detention was not properly endorsed by Congress and was therefore illegal. They did not, however, challenge the plurality opinion that Habeus Corpus and due process could be observed by merely giving Hamdi a chance to present an alternative view before the judiciary.
Scalia and Stevens dissented, arguing that *any* detention without charge or trial is a violation of due process and habeus corpus rights and can only be done in the event where Congress suspends Habeus.
Only Thomas suggested that the government should be able detain Hamdi indefinitely without trial.
The decision is available at the Supreme Court's Web site here. This link is included so that other laymen can read the opinions and reach their own conclusions.
If Hamdi is any indication of the court's responses to the question of judicial oversight in the war on terror, it seems that the 8-1 opinion is that the court *must* have strict oversight in such a way as to ensure that the Constitution and rights of the citizens are adequately protected. Of course, it could be vacated on a technicality, but this would still, I think, provide a powerful case for even individuals in other circuits. I don't at this time see the court doing anything differently.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Don't do this man! I've got a cold!
The USA-PATRIOT Act was not really built as a anti-terrorism act, but as a addon to the RICO statutes pre-9/11. After 9/11, they put a different wrapper on it and ramrodded it thru the houses. Even the media was snookered by the wrapper and the facade that was built up around it.
The law in question that got bobbed got a stargate fansite in the dip as I recall.. The posting's in slashdot's archives, but i've not the time to dig for it.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
Well the parent post was not intended to be trolling, but it has been deemed such. I can only complain.
Yes, it is the neoconservatives who initially steered the Republican party so far to the right that questioning their direction or leadership was unpatriotic. But Republican party on a whole is clueless if they dont wake up and realize where they will end up in the near future. The party is so tunnel minded that they cant see beyond George Bush, heck, GW cant see beyond GW. Thats the folly. This country is not looking to its past at the mistakes made in foreign policy, it is looking to solve the problems in the present with narrow minded, short term solutions with no clear idea as to how to tackle the future. This administration is blatantly campaigning in fear hoping that the public wont realize they govern in obfuscation.
I blame the whole house for passing the Patriot Act. The Act itself was everything the Justice dept was salivating for the past few years, but never getting enough proponents to get safe passage. In the aftermath of Sept 11, there was enough fear, enough pseudo-patriotism in the air that to question the absence of oversight would have been deemed unpatriotic. And everyone fell under the notion that Patriot Act would ride in on a white horse and save the day. The sad truth is though initially flaunted as the cure for domestic terrorism, it is slowly but surely being used to spy on our own citizens with no judicial oversight at all. That is scary. And anyone who say otherwise has lived a sheltered existance their whole life which is about to be a memory. Slowly but surely our personal freedoms would erode, and we will look back on these days and wonder what went wrong..
Rapid Nirvana
its designed to fuck terrorists royally by taking away even the pretense of rights assuming you're even a SUSPECTED one
oh and itmakes provisions so that *EVERYONE* can be considered a terrorist and anti-american
and btw when you're fingered as a terrorist and detained indefinitely without legal counsel and with automatic gag orders on even talking about the case (assuming you survive your brutal torture at the hands of american contractors)
its the antithesis of what a PATRIOT is and a sick joke fostered by the Bush administration and whoever wins both kerry and bush supported it, like they both support the war
there is no choice. your gov't is under big money control, go back to sleep
That will be all.
In a victory today for the ACLU, (and many Slashdotters I presume)
How about "a victory for all of the United States" ?
What?
If we were going to say "ok, it's fair to trade a little liberty for safety," there are so many better places to look.
The way America builds its cities around every family, preferably every *person* owning a car has killed untold millions in the last half century.
Alcohol and cigarettes sold at every corner store have killed millions.
Easily available guns have killed millions.
Sure, there are reasons we've kept personal cars, alcohol, cigarettes, and guns. We say they're a critical part of our liberty, or the we can't possibly win a war against alcohol and cigarettes.
Still, if we're going to fight a war we can't win, wouldn't it be better to fight one of the dangers that really do face us on a daily basis?
I don't think that it makes any difference to this case. Or if they do, our hope is that we don't have roll-over justices like Thomas (at least that was my reading of his dissent in Hamdi). My reading of Thomas's dissent was that the courts should stay out of all "enemy combatant" cases and should give the government maximum lattude in prosecuting the war on terror at home and abroad.
If you actually read some of the cases, you will see that this sort of case does not break down along label lines.
Don't get me wrong. I hope Kerry wins in November too and for many reasons. But I don't think that it will impact this case or other ones involving executive power in the war on terror (might impact other issues like abortion and gay marriage though).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
When Giuliani replaces Ashcroft in Bush Jr Part II, he'll be smart enough to pass a Patriot Act that won't get overturned, despite its fascist mechanics. Or you can vote for Kerry in November.
--
make install -not war
The problem with the patriot act is that throws the intended checks and balances between the legislative and judicial branches of the govt. Finally somebody stepped up and layed that out in plain english. The patriot act does absolutely nothing to combat terrorism. Bin Laden's camel rider letter carrier is not likely to be intercepted via a FBI wiretap.
Got Code?
You were just as stupid yesterday, when you were an astrophysicist.
--
make install -not war
And only 4 months before the bill sunsets.
The parent post is now 0: Troll.
ACLU Worship is a religion around here.
Criticize the ACLU, and the zealots/cultists who claim to be for free speech will hate you.
This is a perfect example of why the Slashdot moderation system is broken.
It is also evidence -- which is not to be confused with "proof" -- that Slashdot is largely a Leftist site.
"In a victory today for the ACLU, (and many Slashdotters I presume) the section of the Patriot Act which gives power to the FBI to demand confidential financial records from companies as part of terrorist investigations has been ruled unconstitutional by a U.S. District Judge. Victor Marreo, the District Judge who made this ruling, states that the provision of the Patriot Act in question 'effectively bars or substantially deters any judicial challenge.'"
Now half you people actually shouldn't be posting in this thread, given how you've been incessantly bitching on how this is the Patriot Act was the beginning of Imperial America, how the system is broken beyond repair, etc, etc, etc. I know it's hard to swallow, but here's a lesson made painfully obvious by this story: THE SYSTEM WORKS. Here's another fact for you-- The founding fathers were obviously more itelligent than you give them credit for. The specifically designed a government around the concept of paranoia, a thought that is ofter lost among the blithering on how their ideas are too antiquated for our time when the first hint of turbulent weather blows our way. Because they were wiser than most of you, extremes such as these always manage to even out; see McCarthyism, Japanese camps in WW2, and any number of other "the sky is falling!" events that this country has somehow survived.
If I could reach past my last 25 posts, you'd be in for a nice, ripe "I told you so."
You need a FREE iPod Nano
(Poster then continues on to educate Slashdot readers on the "real" legal facts...)
Thanks for your legal advice!
Some cats swing, and others don't. Don't you be the kind that won't.
"Victor Marreo, the District Judge who made this ruling, states that the provision of the Patriot Act in question 'effectively bars or substantially deters any judicial challenge.'" "
Another example of the failure of our immigration system.
They won when they successfully induced terror. Duh.
(New York Mayor) Rudy Giuliani was encouraging everyone to not give the attackers the satisfaction of becoming paralyzed.
It's the federal government who collectively peed themselves in fear and did a lot of stupid things in response. *That*, not the death and destruction of the attack itself, was what made it successful.
It was very clever force multiplication to use commercial aircraft to attack buildings. It was even cleverer force multiplication to use Congress to attack the Constitution and people of the United States.
The plane doesn't have a choice, but I'm really disgusted that Congress let themselves be used as puppets dancing to the attackers' tune in that way.
... if the goal of the terrorists was to uphold the Constitution, then I don't think that'd be so bad.
Something makes me think 'the terrorists' and Ashcroft have frighteningly similar opinions on -that-, though. Both would rather live in a theocracy...
The enemies of Democracy are
I will tell you what scares me, and it is not arbitrary imprisonment (I figure that is so unconstitutional that they won't dare do that one again without at a minimum Congressional authorization or better yet a full suspension of Habeus but if that happens, we might as well leave the country).
What scares me is the fact that the Bush administration is putting mechanisms in place which can be used to arbitrarily make your life miserable for whatever reasons the executive sees fit. These include no-fly lists, among other things. It scares me that these mechanisms could be used in ways which could effectively silence certain forms of political discourse.
I am not afraid that I might become the next Jose Padilla. I am afraid that I might become punished for talking about airport security, etc. and that I might be forbidden to fly or have other arbitrary sanctions put on my activities which may be difficult to challenge in court.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Here is the opinion.
An opposition to abortion does not necessarily have to be a religious one. There is a lot of purely scientific evidence to suggest that a fetus (depending on the gestational age) has brain functionality identical to a newborn baby, sees, smells, thinks, reacts, lives in the same way that you or I do.
The scientist Carl Sagan, definitely not a religious figure by any stretch of the imagination, wrote an essay looking at this from a scientific point of view. His conclusion is somewhere in the middle, that it doesn't make sense to say that a conceived zygote is a human, but that it does make sense to say that a third-trimester fetus is.
Consequently, one may believe that abortion (especially late term) is murder purely from a scientific and medical viewpoint.
Fuck them all. Bastards.
Here is another provision of the Patriot Act for you -- they can do surreptitious searches now w/o telling you about them. For as long as they want. Here is one of them (apparently) caught on the video.
Did anyone else here that Flava Flave is gay? Something about having hands all over him in prison? Who knew?
I am conservative when it comes to economic and defense issues, and liberal with regards to social issues. A conservative libertain? I dont know... Anyways, that being said, Ashcroft makes me very uncomfortable. Everyone, whether they realize/admit it or not, has philosophical presuppositions from which they derive their ideas (ideology) concering morality, law, etc. I guess one could view the Constitution as our government's philisophical presupposition. I find myself having little confidence that Ashcroft sees/respects the division between his own ideology and that of the Constitution. Accurate or not, I for some reason I get the feeling that he wants to punish all the 'sinners', and have the rest praying on rice. There is no real evidence I can find to support this, but still, its just not the kind of 'vibes' I like to get from the Attorney General.
Link Here - interesting read.
Now if only the rest of the PA could get tossed out as well.
Ave Molech Setting
Bzzzzt. Replace ". Period" with "but..."
They protect some speech, but not all.
They didn't fight for the rights of anti-abortion protestors when the RICO statutes were used by the National Organization of Women.
Rather than protect the rights of their opponents, the ACLU would rather link them all to terrorists (only a fool could believe that rhetorical tactic started with Bush/Ashcroft).
They (or more accurately, the Nebraska chapter) are trying to gag the press in a currently pending case. As Eugene Volokh points out
That was my favorite part. This affects the average citizen ZERO and it helps the FBI do their job of protecting citizens from threats on US soil.
What if the interests of the ACLU, a consortium of generally leftist attorneys and lawyers, and the slashdot crowd of techno-hobbiests was ever really truly aligned on an issue and these two groups realized it... scary. Imagine an activist politician attorney leading a mob of angry hackers. Ugh.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
And who do you think put those people in power in the first place?
The CIA (together with the British Secret Service) engineered a coup in Iran in 1953 to put the Shah in power after the elected leader Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, was planning to nationalise oil interests.
http://www.payk.net/politics/cia-docs/main.html
And who do you think put those people in power and kept them there in the first place?
Leaving aside the thorny issue of solid US support for Israel over the last fifty years...
In 1949, the CIA engineered a military coup to oust Syria's elected leader, President Shukri Quwatli.
In 1953 (together with the British Secret Service) the CIA sponsored a coup in to put the Shah in power after the elected leader Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, had nationalised western oil interests. Happily, oil production was returned to their rightful owners once the Shah was in control.
(as an interesting aside, 'Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf's father was stationed in Iran as a CIA operative during this period)
http://www.payk.net/politics/cia-docs/main.html
Of course, we all know what happened to Iran after the people voiced their opinion on his repressive regime.
Again, the CIA has a track record of interfering in Iraq through the 1950s and 1960s - backing a coup in 1963 that overthrew the left-leaning Gen. Abdel-Karim Kassem in favour of the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein. When things didn't go quite as intended, they backed a palace coup in 1968 in which Saddam Hussein's cousin became president, eventually passing on power to Hussein in 1979.
It's well known that the US wasn't averse to helping out Saddam Hussein in his war with Iran throughout the 1980s.
Jordan's King Hussein rewarded with millions of dollars every year from a secret CIA fund for a period of 20 years from the 1950s onward in return for intelligence reports of the Middle East.
In August 1982, Bashir Gemayel (on both the CIA and Mossad payrolls since studying in the US in the seventies) was elected president of Lebanon with a covert payment of $10 million signed off by Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, he was assassinated in September, but his brother Amin was sworn in as President. The Gemayel's Christian Phalangist malitia were responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacres, by the way.
The US isn't alone in this. The British were meddling in the Middle East for most of the first half of the 20th century. Much of the region was a British Protectorate after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following the First World War, when the Turks were allies of Germany. Winston Churchill is infamous for his ordering of the RAF to drop chemical munitions on Iraqi villages during insurrections against British-backed rule in the 1920s.
Returning to Saudi Arabia, the British were instrumental in assisting the House of Saud in a revolt against the Ottomans in 1902, and after a protracted civil war where they helped the al Sauds, were the first to recognise the expanded state of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.
While the Al Sauds had gained power with British help, the Kingdom was poor, with very little infrastructure to speak of; until the discovery of oil by a joint operation between Texaco and Standard Oil of California (SOCAL-later renamed Chevron) in 1936. The oil companies built the basic infrastructure of a modern state, and to defend their installations, brought the US military in, establishing the base in Dharan in 1944, when commercial exploitation of the oil resources began in earnest.
The House of Saud is still in firm control of the country to this day, with American weapons and British military training. Their track record on human rights isn't particularly good.
Your point that 'No Arabian pledged allegiance to the United States' is particularly pertinent in this context - it might seem that many of the leaders of Arab nations have done precisely that on behalf of their citizens, often in
Savage just called it huge victory for ACLU scum and I'll not repeat what he called the hispanic judge who issued the opinion. Technical data on the judge can be seen here.
Nothing out of ordinary. Started at 17 as assistant to the mayor, New York City. Clinton appointee.
I always viewed the Patriot Act as an imperfect, somewhat temporary, attempt to prevent catastrophy (like an A-bomb from leveling NY or incinerating DC), until significantly cripple terrorist orginizations and eliminate/reform the cultures that spawn/support them.
That being said, I do think that there are parts for the Patriot Act that need to be significantly clarified in order to prevent abuse of the powers it grants. That is why I see this Opion/Ruling as important - it will force congress to make these clarifications.
need to correct myself. The guy apparently got his B.A. at the ripe age of 13 and legal degree from Yale at 17. Typo?
So it occured to me that the fundimental failing of our political process is fairly simple. It became obvious some time back that you cannot successfully legislate morals, so the people in power pandered and began legislating what I call "moralisim".
The legislation of Moralisim is what happens when you cannot pass a ban on a book, so you establish a "community standards" test to allow each community to decide to ban the book because it would be bad to "force them to accept the book." In Moralisim, if you can not achieve the ban, you ban banning the ban...
It's a back-handed logical trick, like arguing to authority, where you open up patchwork of recursively nested micro-fifes. Consider "Dry" neighborhoods in "Wet" cities in "Dry" counties. You get to a place where you can't ban the book, so you ban yourself from controlling the ban on books and leave it up your political constituents to "decide for themselves".
It produces little political kingdoms where vocal extremests and idealogues can stake out parts of the landscape for various dogmatic purposes.
It also "levels the playing field" in a way that isnt right, but that "sounds fair" to those who are not paying proper heed. This ersatz seeming fairness can then be used as "authority" unilaterally. It rases a cloud of uncertainty where any stupid thing becomes possible as an "act of the people" because all "rights" become beasts of equal prescidence.
Consider: I have the right to keep and bare arms, you have the right not to be gunned down at the Circle-K. These two rights do *not* hold equal precidence, the right not to be gunned down is ever-so-more significant. This does *NOT* however mean that the right to keep and bare arms is somehow "punctured" and suddenly goes away. The fact is that these two rights are not really in conflict because the responsable exercise of one doesn't lead enexorably to the violation of the other.
Compare this then to "smoking", you have the right to smoke and I have the right not to. Here the right not to smoke trounces the right to smoke. You are asked to step out side. It didn't have to be that way, if the smokers had always "smoked responsibly" by observing other peoples right to smoke, they would have stepped out side all along and there woudn't have to be bans. (They probably wouldn't throw polyester butts on the gound either were responsibility the watchword in smokers... 8-) But the refrain of "why do I have to leave, I have the right to somke" with the hidden codicil "anywhere I damn well please no matter what the consequences."
See, the responsibility has gone, along with most of the burden of dilligence and accountability, and so "rights" rule supreme.
This is the inevetable result of Moralist policies. Moralisim is the proverbial washing-of-hands. "We didn't rule on this, it is the will of our populous and our populous has that right." Nudge nudge, wink wink...
The PATRIOT Act is a natural outgrowth of the Moralist agenda. It supports a vacation of responsibility and accountability in the name of preserving the "right to safety." The penetration and disapation of the "right to privacy and due process", it says, must be spent as the inferior right because in the moralist realm whenever two rights come into conflict one must be supreme, a "true right" and one must be defeated utterly as not having really been a right at all.
What's actually kind of funny is that Moralisim is a revival of the old Might makes Right paradigm. We set our ideals up against one another to see which one will beat the other to death in a court of public spectacle.
So there is a hierarchy of rights, but only in the presence of responsibilities and accountabilities.
But it really _isn't_ any kind of balancing act. You are not supposed to pay for one right, like safety, by betraying another, like due process.
You are supposed to pay for rights with the currency of responsibility.
We harvest today the fruits of terrorisim becau
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
When even with the info lower level agents get ignored because "terrorist" actions are merely part of the plan? something like a "new pearl harbor" like event And which is it again, when you are "following orders", do you investigate, or shine it on because some "superior" individual has connections with those you are supposedly investigating, so vital information gets ignored on purpose? Why is it, when someone with the legal and law enforcement cred of David Schippers, successful impeacher of a freekin president, successful chicago area mob prosecutor, can't even get word to ashcroft (I'm sure you heard of that gent) about upcoming bad news scenarios despite repeated and exhaustive attempts? Why is that, an "unfortunate intelligence failure"? Or was it because it was ON PURPOSE. Ignored, avoided on purpose?
Sorry, I'll be way way WAY more impressed when some white guys in suits and uniforms get indicted by a grand jury for some charges up to and including murder and treason. You can talk about "additional powers" then, once you effectively use the ones you already have, and a LOT more of you come forward like the small handful of TRULY brave and honest agents have,and stop being chicken for your careers over the nations safety. Follow your oath, not your paycheck in other words. Use your brain for something more than to absorb "commands". You're an agent, they are supposed to QUESTION things, not just blindly follow orders, they are supposed to deal in data, not be part of a massive coverup that's destroying a nation and imperiling the entire planet.
Nuhremberg established the precedent, "following orders" is no excuse for helping along high crimes and misdemeanors, and being as it's the internet age and some decent info is available, there's no excuse for remaining so uninformed other than laziness and an uncaring attitude and blind obedience and brainwashing.
Oh, the links? There's hundreds more, THOUSANDS more,just use google, 9-11, government prior knowledge is a good start. I'm not going to do your work for you, and if you had been paying attention even just on slashdot you would have already seen quite a few of them dropped, in many articles and in many comments.
Educate thyself before wanting to make all the US people some "enemy" to "investigate". We have had enough of the surveil/command/CONTROL aspect of this and the recent past US "regimes" and their (mostly) *mercenaries*. Stop being a stooge for them killers and thieves.
Here, I'll give you an easy one. How did WTC building 7 manage to fall down? Here's another easy one, bush and company, including rice, swore to the 9-11 "investigative commission" that they had "no idea that planes could be used for hijacking and then used as weapons" and etc.. uh huh. How do you explain terrorist hijacking scenario drills, one being run the same day as the attacks then? A COINCIDENCE? You smelling a rat yet? I hope so, I really do.. we need more honest cops, less blind order followers. I hope you are one of the former.
But remember, Guantanamo is in Cuba.
I think judicial review is a good thing for U.S. companies. However, for foreign-owned businesses and entities doing business here this part of the Patriot Act is fine with me. Perhaps a distinction could be made.
Do you have a citation? I'd like to read more about what Popper said on this matter.
you forgot the obligatory "Bush is jeebus incarnate" mindless praise. Overall, I give it a 9.5 out of 10.
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
They will do business with anyone as long as it turns a buck...
company != person
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
Where does the 95% figure come from? I would question it ESPECIALLY since there are virtually no voucher programs right now to derive such a figure from. You are merely echoing the hysteria from teachers union sure of their own destruction (which is also incorrect).
Would you say homeschooling programs are also 95% religious? These are the people that care enough about kids education to pull them out even without funding support from the state, the forefront of the kind of people that would make use of vouchers were they available. Well as it happens you'd be dead wrong if you thought so - look up "Unschooling" sometime. There are many many homeschoolers not bent on any religious course of study.
The reality of vouchers is that they would open up a lot of different kinds of schools to people, schools that cannot even exist today. Yes religious schools would be part of that, but who cares as long as the kids learn what they are supposed to (and more?). Instead we keep poor kids trapped in poorer schools, and to what end?
One last thought. I'm sure that your worry is that kids in a religious school would be "indoctrinated" and unable to think for themselves to become good little robots. But who is more indoctrinated, the sheep that go to public school or the kinds of kids catholic schools and the like turn out? If you talk to a lot of people with religious upbringing it does NOT automatically make them followers, in many cases it pushes them elsewhere. The fact is that the better education you get, the better you are able to think for yourself and make up your own damn mind about what's what.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
President Bush routinely tacks the following paragraph onto the end of almost every executive order, to attempt to evade judicial oversight of that order.
- This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or
benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity
by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies,
entities, officers, employees or agents, or any other person.
That appears at the end of every executive order issued this year, except the ones raising pay for senior politically appointed officials. Other presidents would do this occasionally for minor administrative matters, but Bush does it every time.Andrew Jackson is reported to have said this after the Supreme Court declared the illegality of forcibly removing native americans from lands they legally owned. He then set in motion the Trail of Tears, directly contravening the Supreme Court's decision. President Bush knowingly shattered the US Constitution when he chose to invade Iraq after failing to gain a Security Council approval. That decision was illegal by international law, as we all knew at the time. But not many people chose to remember our Constitution states explicitly that ratified treaties such as the UN Charter are "the Law of the Land." In fact they rate higher than laws passed by Congress, second only to the Constitution itself. When President Jackson said what he said, nobody challenged him. Our nation's honour was sullied, our democracy weakened. What will we do if President Bush is ever called to heel by the Supreme Court, and refuses?
AID the Indian AIDS seen ;-)
What are you implying?
It's not the "Patriot" act; it's the "USAPATRIOT" Act.
Please use the full acronym, or its full name: "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Trrorism".
The "USAPATRIOT" Act has nothing to do with patriotism, so calling it the "Patriot Act" is misleading.
(Considering how the Act is being misused these days, even using its full name is somewhat misleading (How is copyright infringement "terrorism"?).)
Personally, I pronounce it "the you sap at riot act" to avoid confusion.
Other pronunciations are "the US ap uh TRY ot act" and (as Jar-Jar) "the YOUsa pah TR-R-RE-E-E at act".
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
A chap in the UK detained under "anti-terrorism" laws was released a couple of weeks ago after 3 years of detention without trial or any due process.
To this date he does not know why he was detained.
Now, tell us again that we are not close to 1984 scenario.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
THen why to create more redundant, quasi facist, legislation?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Even though it was ruled unconstituional, it is still a law
Not in the jurisdiction of the court in which the ruling was made.
if you want that portion out, you have to write it out of the law books.
Are you just making this shit up or did someone tell you this and you believed it? When a law is found unconstitutional, it doesn't remain a valid law until we get around to publishing new law books.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Calling this 'law' the 'The Patriot Act' has carried a sour taste in my mouth since its naming.
Is it possible to sue to change the 'name' of a law?
I know the good guys are not many, and they're very busy going after the bad guys; But that name! No, no, no, no.
The law that was shot down was the 1986 law known as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, not the Patriot Act!
_ 28.shtm l#1096522582
See here:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_09
moo
According to Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy, the provisions being struck down were part of the Reagan Era "Electronic Communications Privacy Act". Mr. Kerr writes that "To be fair, the Patriot Act did amend some language in this section; just not in a relevant way. As best I can tell, the court's decision does not rely on or even address anything in the Patriot Act."
Volokh is right, it is the Reagan era law, the PA enters here only tangentially. Still the law stinks to high heaven.
As codified FBI can demand telecom (example demand letter here) records on its own i.e. w/o going to courts.
Volokh argues that since the recipient of any such FBI request can contest it in courts, everything is nice and dandy, i.e. the law is constitutional.
That's BS. If that was true, we could stop requiring judicially issued warrants and permit police/fbi to do searches and seizures at their discretion. Per Volokh that would be constitutional because you can always go to courts and contest it post facto. No self-respecting democracy would allow it.
Furthermore, the law allows FBI to issue permanent administrative gag orders to the recipient. The judge found it "previous restrain". Most rational people would concur.
Let me add that the FBI has similar rights (i.e to demand production of records at its discretion) in two other areas, basically any financial data about you from banks, etc. This is as unacceptable as the ability to demand telecom data that has been shot down by the judge here. This is unaffected by this decision.
Note also that the decision doesn't impede FBI in any way. Under the Patriot Act (sec. 215) they can still go to courts and after producing some evidence request that the judge issue identical order to produce the required data. What the heck, they don't even have to produce any evidence, just a verbal assurance (certificate) from an agent that he needs them. Once that verbal assurance is given the judge must issue the warrant.
This has to be struck too, the FBI has too sorry history to permit them this discretion. Normal standards i.e. showing of "probable cause" in open court (not ex parte or in camera) have to be reinstituted.
To clarify, this ruling was NOT about any part of the Patriot Act being shotdown. The court's ruling wasn't actaully read by, apparently, ANY journalists that reported on this story. The ACLU issued a press release that seems to have been the entire basis for any article about said ruling.
m l#1096522582
The ruling actually affects the 1986 law known as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.
Further info: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_09_28.sht
-VolVE
Yes, anyone can be a terrorist, but not anyone is equally likely to be one -- not by any stretch. So efficient prevention begins with focusing on the most likely culprits. This is plain common sense -- which seems to be in short supply these days. No, I'm not saying that we should let old white women off the hook completely, but certainly they don't warrant the same attention as 20-yr-old male Arabs.
But you are missing something....
I think that the real issue is that you want to spend the least amount of money on the best security. Your solution is to target people based on their "likely threat." You propose that this threat be dependent partly on, perhaps among other things, ethnicity, age, and gender.
The problem with this approach is such a risk evaluation system allows terrorists to target the system by using attackers who fall into a lower risk category. This buys us surprisingly little security but approximates ethic harrassment and would probably be illegal (IMO, IANAL, etc).
The TSA's No-Fly list is just as bad, even though it seeks to compile a list of information connected with a person. This is fundamentally problematic because there is no transparency nor yet has there been a process of judicial review. Hence it protects us from "terrorists" like Sen. Kennedy and Cat Stevens and offers no assurances that it actually blocks attackers.
Finally even if we can prevent attackers from boarding planes, the airports themselves are vulnerable. Our own justified paranoia combined with the lack of multilayer security perimiters allow for credible and anonymous live-explosive or hoax-type attacks within the unsecured portions of the airport. One should never underestimate the power of a credible hoax as a terrorist weapon when the nation is on edge.
Additionally some aspects of airport security, such as searching after the bag has been checked, play actually allow terrorists in foreign airports additional avenues of attack against Americans flying to other parts of the world (in addition to common theft risks usually avoided by locking baggage). These things are simply poorly implimented and indicate that the TSA doesn't care about travelers but instead are focusing on fighting the "last war" (i.e. preventing another Sept 11th).
Finally about the war on terrorism. There are two aspects to this war-- one is a law enforcement war involving bringing criminals to justice. The other though is a war against support and financing which may come from places in the world over which we have very little control (such as places in chaos like Chechnya, Iraq, and Afghanistan), or places where they have enough support as to be difficult to confront (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia).
This second aspect must be fought politically and diplomatically by addressing the grievances which the terrorists exploit to gain support both material and financial. In this we need not fear encouraging terrorism as long we continue to prosecute the attempts to bring these criminals to justice as strongly as we can. Thus we need to separate the ideas of the rhetoric of the terrorists and the actual goals. After all, do you *really* think that Bin Laden cares about the Palestinians? Or, as I believe, is this just a power play on his part?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
What was struck down, was a provision of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, Section 2709, authorizing the FBI to issue "National Security Letters". It has been available since 1986!!!!!
Yes, the Patriot Act amended part of 2709, BUT NOT THE PART that was found Unconstitutional.
Just remember who sponsored it in 1986: Senator Patrick Leady, a famous "right winger" (yeah right) who said it "provides a clear procedure for access to telephone toll records in counterintelligence investigations."
And to be clear: It is a HORRIBLE provision, BUT it was nothing to do with the Patriot Act or Ashcroft.
This is an issue of FACTs vs FICTION.