Court says: 'Terror Fears Can't Curb Liberty'

jettoblack writes "Finally, a glimmer of sanity... according to the AP, "Fear of a terrorist attack is not sufficient reason for authorities to search people at a protest, a federal appeals court has ruled..." Another great quote: "We cannot simply suspend or restrict civil liberties until the War on Terror is over, because the War on Terror is unlikely ever to be truly over..." Judge Gerald Tjoflat wrote for the panel. "Sept. 11, 2001, already a day of immeasurable tragedy, cannot be the day liberty perished in this country.""

Comments

No Shit

[Tyndmyr]

Glad someone finally figured it out... Does this mean they'll be getting rid of the real threats to our freedom, like the Patriot Act and Bush?

Re:No Shit

[gothzilla]

Those odds have always been small. Nobody made them that way. The last attack on US soil was in 93. It's annoying when people try to use an extremely short period of time as evidence of anything. Even before we had any type of anti-terrorism anything the odds were small. Even before 9/11 when Bush was on vacation constantly the odds were small. If anything, the odds have gone up since we invaded Iraq. They're still incredibly small though.

Re:No Shit

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Last attack by them furriners was in '93, you mean. But terrorists are more often Americans than middle-Easterners.

Think of Columbine, Oklahoma City, hundreds of pipe bombs not limited to the "smiley face bomber", anthrax dude (probably American), family planning clinic doctor murders, etc.

Terrorists are more likely to be fundamentalist white guys than fundamentalist brown guys.

Re:No Shit

[eyeye]

The only reason those odds are small is because of local and international efforts to keep them small.

Oh sweet fallacious logic.

Hey I have some elephant repellent here to sell you, it causes cancer but hey you dont see any elephants around here do you so it must work.

Re:No Shit

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

Actually the killing of family planning doctors (or more accurately, planned parenthood doctors) is a type of terrorism. They (the activists) are hoping to frighten (and thus TERRORize) the doctors from commiting further acts of what they consider to be unspeakable cruelty and murder.

There is hope for my waning faith in Americans.

[spikexyz]

Maybe soon someone will see that this whole security thing is a farce. Saying it has prevented terrorist attacks is like Bush holding up a stick and declaring the stick repels Gorillas. -- Well you don't see any gorillas do you?? It's a farce and it's freaky that you're all falling for it!

Stop being lemmings. Question your leaders. Listen to Jon Stewart!

You put men on the moon; there has to be some smart people in the country...get them out of the closet...and make one of the president. PLEASE!

Re:There is hope for my waning faith in Americans.

[Edax Rarem]

Very nice.. the parent makes a valid point and you feel the need to to point out that his logic has holes.
This is about civil liberties being taken by this administration and those that oppose or go against this "regime" are tagged as UnAmerican or just thrown into jail.
[http://www.elfis.net/phorum/read.php?f=45& i=139&t =139]

Using detectors to detect bombs or weapons is common sense, but jailing someone for wearing a t-shirt is WRONG. Finally someone with authority has said so.
Please loosen your sphincter.

Re:There is hope for my waning faith in Americans.

[scotch]

If one credits the Bush Administration for keeping us safe after 9/11, doesn't one have to blame the Bush Administration for not keeping us safe on 9/11? Just curious - I'm not saying you have that opinion, exactly, and I certainly don't, but those who support the present administration because of the feeling of safety they get should think about that. The real reasons for the lack of terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11 are

• The terorrists have limited resources
• Even in our non-security-aware pre-9/11 day, terrorist attacks in the US were extremeley rare
• The intelligence community has been tracking terrorist activity for decades. They're doing more of it now, sure, but they were doing in before.
• General security measures at airports and other places (metal detectors, bomb sniffers, id checks, etc), while not perfect, certainly limited the types of action terrorists could take.
• Conducting a terrorist activity in the US probably takes brains, connections, money, time, and other resources. Putting all that together in a group of non-self-destructive extremists is probably rare

Of course, it may and probably will happen again. I personally think a better approach is a strong intelligence and home-land security community working on the problem behind the scenes. The public shouldn't need to get all slathered up about it with threat levels and campaign trail bullshit. Civil liberty restrictions are of course wrong and probably counterproductive as well. We don't need to be triggering the McVeihs whlie we're doing this.

As far as being glad the shit is going down in Iraq rather than over here, that's pretty sad. Is that a new justification for the un-justifiable war? Stir up some hornets' nest in some country we don't care about to keep us safe at home? Will your opinion change with the number of US casualties exceeds those of 9/11 (non US casualties are already way over the 9/11 numbers, but not every cares about those people).?

Re:There is hope for my waning faith in Americans.

[Edax Rarem]

How is it healthy for people to be jailed for non-violent protest?
How is it "private" if anyone can buy a ticket? (as they did)
And you are saying it is obnoxious to wear a tee-shirt?
I got news for you... that is called freedom of speech, freedom of press and freedom of expression and what you are suggesting is OK and "healthy" is what I would call Facism.

The charges of tresspassing were dropped, but only after the damage was done so the President didn't have to see that some people don't like him.

This is exactly what is wrong with this administration. They refuse to believe that more than half of America and most of the world don't approve of what they are doing and they are willing to trounce upon, ignore and remove our civil rights for their own agendas.

And you think this is healthy?!?

Here is a better link (google cached)
http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:VVEb em1ytvcJ: abcnews.go.com/wire/US/ap20040914_1592.html+couple +arrested+wearing+anti+bush+shirts&hl=en

There are plenty more out there too...

Re:There is hope for my waning faith in Americans.

[Edax Rarem]

When was the last time you were accosted by a t-shirt?

Your comparisons about privacy are apples to oranges.
They weren't speaking to anyone rudely. They were wearing clothes. Then they were hadcuffed and detained. Is this right?

If you wore a "Cat's Sucks" T-shirt to the play Cats, there is not a damned thing anyone could do to you.
It means that, in an extreme example that if the current powers don't like the little polo guy on your polo shirt, they could have the secret service remove you because they can't play polo.
Then they could make you wear that polo shirt all the time so they know what you represent, then they could put you in a camp with all the other polo shirt wearers.
Do you see where this is leading?
Are you still for arresting people because of what they wear? If so, I would like to introduce you to some of my jewish friends.

Re:There is hope for my waning faith in Americans.

[Edax Rarem]

What law did they break?
The charges of trespassing were dropped.
So that ain't it.

Your ticketed event defense only holds up if it is a private members only event. If that was the case how did these folks get the tickets and how were they then allowed in? The fact that they were allowed in tells me that at one point, they were welcome. The minute they became unwelcome was when they exposed clothing that someone didn't like.

Did the event specifically say "No Anti-Bush T-shirts"? I doubt it because that may have been grounds to remove them and they wouldn't have had to use Trespassing as an excuse. Even then it isn't grounds to ARREST them.
Re: Validity
My entire arguement here is validated by the fact that these people are SUEING because their rights have been infinged upon. When they win (as the Judge in the topic of this thread has made apparent that they have a good case) I expect you to at least try and see it another way.

Re:School of the Americas

[mintrepublic]

Understandably, SOA Watch is very biased against WHISC. They neglect to mention all of the great humanitarian things graduates have done, along with overthrowing fascist and corrupt governments. Yes, some techniques are questionable, but again, it's not the US doing the foreign work. The hippies that protest there (and it definitely happens more than once a year) see that it has caused some unneeded violence over the years and lobby to close it, ignoring the good that these people can do.

And in other news

[b-baggins]

An judge also ruled that fear of a murder attempt is not sufficient reason to search individuals at a public place because we will never eliminate all murder.

The judge then retired to his gated community after checking in with the security guard.

It's more complicated than that

[Tau Zero]

Letting two FBI agents, one on a criminal investigation and one on a terrorism investigation, share information -- does that strike you as controversial?

It should. It means that the terrorism investigator can pull all kinds of information without reasonable cause and hand it to the criminal investigator. This effectively guts the erstwhile Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search.

This would be one thing if the ability to use such information was strictly limited to terrorism cases, but it's not. It essentially gives government a whole new set of tools to get anyone they really want to get, and they don't even have to hide the wiretaps and other (once illegal) searches and intercepts any more.

Article Summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish Slashdot would just report political news without the slant. Anyway, while the Summary stated that

"Finally, a glimmer of sanity... according to the AP, "Fear of a terrorist attack is not sufficient reason for authorities to search people at a protest, a federal appeals court has ruled...""

The article said "In the absence of some reason to believe that international terrorists would target or infiltrate this protest, there is no basis for using Sept. 11 as an excuse for searching the protesters,". Which is nice and all, but I would feel a lot better if the word "international" wasn't in there. There have been Terrorists born and raised in America.

I noticed many people quoting Ben Franklin in the comments to this article. Do you realize you are quoting him out of context? He did write (and often said) "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Do you know what he was referring to? Not Al Quadia or their ilk for sure. He was talking about welfare and the welfare state. The essential liberty he spoke of was our right not to be unreasonably taxed by the government. Surely if he saw our government today with all of it's socialist programs he would roll over in his grave.

If you read some of his writing you will find many quotes to that effect. Such as

God helps them that help themselves.

Learn well!

[Guppy06]

It would seem that the branch of government most concerned about our civil liberties is the one that isn't directly elected. Direct elections aren't always the best way to guard our liberty.