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Kerry's Record On Electronic And Civil Rights
An anonymous reader writes "John Kerry lambastes John Ashcroft and the Patriot Act, positioning himself as a crusader for civil liberties. The question is, how much substance is there to his rhetoric? This article was an eye-opener to me, in evaluating just that. Slashdotters tending to be passionate about the Patriot Act, encryption, and electronic monitoring - subjects this article tackles with respect to Kerry."
For John Kerry, the specter of Attorney General John Ashcroft trashing Americans' civil liberties has been a useful campaign prop. In campaign stops, Kerry has promised to "end the era of John Ashcroft and renew our faith in the Constitution." In a Kerry administration, he promised the liberal group MoveOn last year, "there will be no John Ashcroft trampling on the Bill of Rights." In his 2004 campaign book, A Call to Service, Kerry accuses Ashcroft and the Bush administration of "relying far too much on extraordinary police powers."
In contrast, Kerry positions himself as a civil libertarian -- or at least as a proponent of a reasonable balance between liberty and security. "If we are to stand as the world's role model for freedom, we need to remain vigilant about our own civil liberties," Kerry writes in A Call to Service. He calls for "rededicating ourselves to protecting civil liberties."
Kerry, like every other senator in the chamber except Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), voted for the USA PATRIOT Act in the wake of 9/11. Now he is co-sponsoring the SAFE Act, a bipartisan measure that restricts some of the powers that the PATRIOT Act granted the government. Furthermore, he is critical of the package of proposals from Ashcroft's Department of Justice (DOJ) that has been dubbed Patriot II. Citing his experience as a prosecutor -- he was an assistant district attorney in suburban Boston in the '70s -- Kerry writes, "I know there's a big difference between giving the government the resources and commonsense leeway it needs to track a tough and devious foe and giving in to the temptation of taking shortcuts that will sacrifice liberties cheaply without significantly enhancing the effectiveness of law enforcement. Patriot II threatens to cross that line -- and to a serious degree."
Sacrificing Personal Privacy
This isn't the first time Kerry and Ashcroft have been at odds over civil liberties. In the 1990s, government proposals to restrict encryption inspired a national debate. Then as now, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and electronic privacy groups locked horns with the DOJ and law enforcement agencies. Then as now, Kerry and Ashcroft were on opposite sides.
But there was a noteworthy difference in those days. Then it was Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.) who argued alongside the ACLU in favor of the individual's right to encrypt messages and export encryption software. Ashcroft "was kind of the go-to guy for all of us on the Republican side of the Senate," recalls David Sobel, general counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
And in what now seems like a bizarre parallel universe, it was John Kerry who was on the side of the FBI, the National Security Agency (NSA), and the DOJ. Ashcroft's predecessor at the Justice Department, Janet Reno, wanted to force companies to create a "clipper chip" for the government -- a chip that could "unlock" the encryption codes individuals use to keep their messages private. When that wouldn't fly in Congress, the DOJ pushed for a "key escrow" system in which a third-party agency would have a "backdoor" key to read encrypted messages.
In the meantime, the Clinton administration classified virtually all encryption devices as "munitions" that were banned from export, putting American business at a disadvantage. In 1997 Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) pushed the Secure Public Networks Act through his committee. This bill would have codified the administration's export ban and started a key escrow system. One of his original co-sponsors was his fellow Vietnam vet and good friend from across the aisle, John Kerry.
Proponents such as McCain and Kerry claimed that law enforcement could not get the key from any third-party agency without a court order. Critics responded that there were loopholes in the law, that it opened the door to abuses, and that it punished a technology rather than wrongdoers who used that technology. Some opponents argued that the idea was equivalent to giving the g
Kerry's record in this regard is awful. But so is Bush's. So, I guess that leaves us with Badnarik who has all rhetoric and no record.
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
"In that case, you're also likely to be someone for whom there's no doubt that Kerry will be at least a marginal improvement."
I'm pretty sure Kerry will be bad, different bad, and the calculus of badness is pretty hard so I'm not sure I'd be so bold as to say Kerry will be a "marginal improvement", I'd just stick with they are both going to be inevitably bad. What do you expect when you have two spoiled rich kids, Yale grads, Skull and Bonesmen, elite of the elites, never done an honest days work in their lives.
Though I should qualify there is a big plus in having different parties controlling the White House and Congress because grid lock is a big plus when both major parties have gone insane and are completely corrupt, since it slows them down, they can't make major policy changes and are confined to colluding to hand out the massive pork to their friends. Gridlock is kind of like a straight jacket for the criminally insane. So if the Republicans hold Congress, having Kerry in the White House would probably be a marginal improvement and vice versa.
Me I'm taking the long view so I think it would be best if Bush/Cheney win, the Republicans get 60 seats in the Senate, build their lead on the House, and get the Supreme Court stacked early in the next term. It would be especially good if the election looks really tainted, rigged and stolen.
Why you ask? Have I gone insane? Well no, you see I'm pretty sure the Republicans will tilt in to an insane binge of right wing extremism in the next term if they hold power and especially if there is another terrorist attack to use an excuse. In fact I'm willing to bet they will stage their own attack if Al Qaida doesn't oblige, like the Anthrax letters. Terrorist attacks are pure gold when you are trying to seize power.
Why is this good? Because things might get so bad it might wake up sane Americans that their government is no longer of the people, by the people or for the people, and it doesn't really matter which party has power because they are both screwing the people. If Kerry were to win people might say, whew, glad thats over, and not realize Kerry and the Dems are screwing them pretty much the same as Bush and the Republicans, just with a different style.
Maybe, just maybe, if things gets really bad people will wake up and unite to do whatever it takes to take their government back, either peacefully through a real third party, or if it appears the Republicans are stealing the elections using as much force as is necessary, something which I'm pretty sure all the founding fathers would bless. The founding fathers knew and feared tyrannical government and they thouroughly expected one would eventually seize power in America despite their best efforts in the Constitution to prevent it and we are pretty close.
The U.S. is in desperate need of a renewal of its Democracy and ping ponging between really bad Republicans and really bad Democrats is precluding that rebirth. America needs a Master Reset and a reboot to clear a corrupted system.
@de_machina
I'm not entirely sure but I think if any candidate manages to get 3% of the popular vote he'll receive some federal funding for the next campaign.
... and five, ten years down the road, they win!
And then what?
Maybe if you're really, really, lucky, your candidate will gain popular support
A third party president! How exciting!
And then what?
The two major parties are going to start nipping at the heels of your platform, reorganizing their own positions to eat into your party's base. You'll have to compromise, build coalitions, to remain in power. Eventually, the political coalition-building will tip to the point where one of the three parties is no longer viable.
And, voila, after all your hard work, after all those votes that sacrificed immediate advantage for the long-term hopes, you're right back where you started: two parties, both of them sprawling coalitions that don't really please anybody all that much, but please about half the population juuuust enough.
Even if you win, you lose.
This already happened once. Back in the 1850s, the Democrats and the Whigs where the two major parties. A third party came along, got their candidate elected, chaos ensued, and within five years, the Whigs were defunct, with the political boundaries redrawn, but only two parties left. That third party was the Republicans.
Yes, ponder that: the Republicans were once a third party.
The problem is, you can't escape Duverger's law: as long as we have plurality votes, we'll only have two viable parties, except in times of extreme political chaos.
The presidency is not a horse race. The winner is not a foregone conclusion with voters "placing bets". Your vote decides the outcome. If you and your friends and their friends vote for Badnarik, then he will win,
I wish that were true, but it isn't.
While it is true that if most people voted for Nader or Cobb or Badnarik, or whoever, that person would win, but the system is designed in such a way (either intentionally or not) that it makes it harder for a third party candidate to win, even if that person would win based on everyone voting their true preference.
just as assuredly as Kerry would win if you vote for him or Bush if you vote for him. If you don't vote for what you believe, you'll never get what you want. It's not as if Bush/Kerry is going to pay more attention to what you say since you voted for him - he'll just be laughing all the way to the White House.
You are right, but that illustrates my point. In order to vote for the "spoiler" (which is to say, of the three people, you would have voted for your #2 choice, but instead are voting for #1), you have to accept the possibility that your vote will have the effect of actually helping your last choice pick win the election.
In essence, you are no longer voting for President, you are voting against President. If choices 2 and 3 are so similar that you don't mind the getting choice 3, or if the polls are so overwhelming for one of the candidates, then chosing your #1 pick can make sense, but don't delude yourself into thinking that you are actually voting for President. To do so helps justify and reinforce the system.
It's true that you are throwing away your vote (for President) if you vote for Badnarik (because you know he can't win), or if you vote for Kerry or Bush, but really don't like your choice (because you are then no longer voting for who you really want for President). If you make either compromise, then the real battle should be for election reform, to enable a system where a vote for your ideal candidate and your "strategic" vote don't have to be at odds.
Nader tried to build a third party, but a three party system is unstable in the way our elections function. You'll inevitably end up with two parties again (even if they aren't the original two parties). He is doing a great service (as did Perot in '92) in making it far more difficult to believe the system currently serves the people. Perhaps through their, others, and our own, efforts, we'll move to a more democratic Presidential election, and for once have real choice.
PS You want Condorcet, not IRV.
Probably. IRV was just an example.
I'll even go further then argue Kerry voted for the Patriot Act.
HE ACTUALLY AUTHORED PROVISIONS IN IT! AND SO DID JOHN EDWARDS!
But let's get past the political hackery that Reason is promoting... "WHAAA! John Kerry voted for the Act, and now he's criticizing it, how can you trust him!? Whaaaaa!!!!" It's an amazingly thoughtless critique, even more so intellectually dishonest in that it criticizes Kerry for criticizing the Act.
But the truth of the matter is the Patriot Act wasn't a well thought out bill, or one that was even debated thoroughly. What it was, was a collection of hundreds of little issues that various Congresscritters had brought up over the years, all jammed together. So when Kerry and Edwards wrote parts of it, they wrote the parts which deal with dealing with money launderers and things like that.
And when they criticize it, they're complaining about the parts that allow the FBI to search your Library checkout records.
And GW Bush would have you believe the opposite, that Kerry and Edwards are complaining about the parts they themselves wrote.
The truth is... Parts of the Act are Good, and parts are Bad. AND THAT IS WHY JOHN KERRY IS SUGGESTING WE REVIEW IT!
The reason.com article is intellectually dishonest in suggesting otherwise.