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The Continuing Hunt for PATRIOT Act Abuses
Throtex writes "Orin Kerr, Associate Professor of Law at George Washington University writes at The Volokh Conspiracy that the Department of Justice is having trouble finding abuses of the USA PATRIOT Act. This follows from the fact that what the media originally aired as abuses were merely allegations of abuse at the time. Could it be that there has just been a lot of fuss over nothing?"
How about Guantanamo Bay, at least if there were some way to actually question the people being detained there? Some 545 people from 40 countries are being held there. Nearly all of the detainees are being held without charges and some have been imprisoned there for more than three years.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
1. What about of the one-quarter of all complaints that were outside of OIG's juristiction?
2. What is a rough itemization of the unwarranted complaints? The government's own PDF only gives cartoon-like examples of people who clearly need to adjust their tinfoil hats. This story is highly dubious since the wording, figures, and conclusions sseem to suggest that people who question the PATRIOT act are stupid, crazy or both. A story that would be much more illuminating would be one that investigates the government's report, instead of simply parroting it like a good comarade. But then, where are the names? How would a journalist even go about such a story? And more significantly for the times we live in, how would such a story ever see the light of day in the mass media. It wouldn't, that's how.
It's way past 1984.
I Want To Believe
It does not matter if the government has actually abused citizens via the Patriot Act. The only thing that matters is that it can.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
"Department of Justice is having trouble finding abuses of the USA PATRIOT Act"
These assholes covered up the murder of a Federal inmate at the Oklahoma City Transit Center, among numerous other situations.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Bush knew he was on somewhat thin ice with the Patriot act. Therefore he didn't push it too far.
The problem is that now there is legal precidence for abuse later.
We need to get rid of it incase the next president is even worse!
Personally? I don't care if there was a single abuse of the Patriot Act or not. It should not have been passed in the first place. The simple fact of the matter is that the government should not have passed an act that allows for civil rights violations.
"Could it be that there has just been a lot of fuss over nothing?"
Hopefully that is the case but it also shows why it is important to "fuss". You cannot just mindlessly accept things and hope for the best. If you don't agree, and many people do not (although only 1 senator doesn't) then it is important to raise a fuss to let them know you're watching.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
If a government action that would otherwise be illegal becomes legal under the patriot act, is that an abuse? Or does it have to be blantently obvious and clearly wrong? What about the patriot act being used for non-terrorism related purposes? Isn't that an abuse?
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Of course he won't find them, if he's only relying on publically disclosed information.
(not read TFA)
it will be very difficult to prove wrongdoing as long as all the evidence is kept classified. any incriminating evidence can just be hidden.
Whether or not there have been abuses (and whether or not the public at large is aware of them yet - no small matter considering the fine print of the Act), has absolutely nothing to do with whether we are "fussing over nothing." We are discussing the unraveling of hundreds of years of sacred American values and traditions.
Consider the meaning of these traditions. The fact that someone working for our president can point his finger at you and say, "you, come with me," and then you spend years in a cage without a lawyer, due process, a phone call, etc, is bad. The only time it is not bad is in the theoretical and impossible perfect world where we all have perfect, omniscient knowledge and only, ever, use this power for good.
The rules we have to regulate our law enforcement activities are not there to make law enforcement easier or harder. They are there to protect us against ourselves - they inscribe a well-known and ancient protection against human nature, and our ancestors had to bleed into the earth for many, many generations to secure these freedoms, after wearying, inconceivable repitition of abuses, time, after time, after time.
We made our constitution difficult to change to protect our children from cowards. Cowards who run crying, begging for protection from terrorists at any price - even though they kill fewer people than slipping and falling, even though they are selling freedoms that sufficed for us through many, many crises before. I'm sure there are many here who are scared enough of Osama to sell out their civil rights on the chance it will make them a little safer. It's the price we all pay for the general ignorance of history.
The PATRIOT act itself stirs up a lot of confusing debate because it is a beast of many parts; I hope we can stay on topic and remember that we are not objecting to interdepartmental communications and red-tape reductions in law enforcement, but rather the rolling back of safeguards that were established very recently - and in response to abuse of power by American law enforcement so systematic and staggering that even Congress and the President were frightened into enacting them.
Hoover's FBI is not ancient history, it is recent history. And we are Americans - it is shameful to forget our past so conspicuously as to suggest complaints over the PATRIOT act are trifles and fuss. These are matters of principle, of black-letter constitutional law. We do not need to wait for abuses to "fuss." The abuses have already happened, again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again... This is why we had safeguards for PATRIOT to remove in the first place. How many times does it have to happen for us to really get it? How thick is America's collective skull?
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>Department of Justice is having trouble finding abuses of the USA PATRIOT Act.
Have they searched in cuba?
This follows from the fact that what the media originally aired as abuses were merely allegations of abuse at the time.
Although the fact that publicly reporting you've been charged under the act is itself a crime doesn't help.
You're looking for quotes? See my journal.
The fact that nobody can cite abuses is rather obvious, isn't it, given the first two rules of the Patriot Act?
Perhaps the Department of Justice, like many government agencies, are so biased for themselves, they can't see their own failings. That combined with a total lack of accountability leads to the inefficient operation and complete inability to change seen across the government.
Because no abuses are being found. That is a danger sign.
I was an investigative journalist ten years ago. I investigated a psychiatric hospital, where there were continual 'rumours' of patient abuse at the hands of staff. The management told me that there had been no complaints. What it turned out that mean was that there had been 600 complaints, but none of them had been upheld. The investigation consisted of the management asking patients and staff what happened. The staff denied the abuse and their word was taken as truth, because the inmates were mental patients and therefore could not be believed.
After my piece aired, there was a year-long public inquiry into conditions at the hospital and wholescale reform.
Whenever someone tells you 'there is no abuse', worry. If there is scope for abuse, it WILL happen.
I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
haven't been able to talk to thier lawyer or any outside contact.
If this really has been a lot of fuss over nothing, shouldn't we be upset that the government did such a crapass job explaining it to the public? The fact that the Patriot Act may not be the first step to Big Brother doesn't excuse the botched execution.
It's called "change management". I have to do it at my job, so should my congressman.
No battles to the death are recalled. Mumpsman can hit to attack and cause brainsmashing.
Considering that major provisions involve secrecy and nondisclosure of disclosure, how does the DoJ expect people to complain of abuses? By definition the surveillance targets don't generally know anything has happened.
You receive a National Security Letter demanding that you turn over information. You consider it an abuse, but you can't argue with them and you can't tell anyone about it (or you're in violation). So it's a big secret, nobody has to know, and they don't have to report it to Congress.
So there could be hundreds of abuses that we'll never know about...all because it's written into the law as a big fat secret.
The PATRIOT provisions requires the Deparment of Justice Office of the Inspector General to collect and respond to complaints, when appropriate, and issue a report on its findings twice a year.
The March 11, 2005 report is here.
And from TFA:
Consider the stats from the latest report, released on Friday. DOJ received 1,943 complaints about alleged civil liberties abuses. Of these, 1,748 either did not warrant an investigation or were outside DOJ's jurisdiction:
Approximately three-quarters of the 1,748 complaints made allegations that did not warrant an investigation. For example, some of the complaints alleged that government agents were broadcasting signals that interfere with a person's thoughts or dreams or that prison officials had laced the prison food with hallucinogenic drugs. The remaining one-quarter of the 1,748 complaints in this category involved allegations against agencies or entities outside of the DOJ, including other federal agencies, local governments, or private businesses. We referred those complaints to the appropriate entity or advised complainants of the entity with jurisdiction over their allegations.
Of the 195 complaints that did warrant investigation, 170 involved what the report describes as "management issues" rather than civil liberties abuses, such as reports by "inmates [who] complained about the general conditions at federal prisons, such as the poor quality of the food or the lack of hygiene products."
The bottom line is that PATRIOT, while not itself a "law", merely modified existing statutes, mostly to bring them up to date (e.g., dealing with cell phones, wireless devices, email, etc. in the context of "wiretaps") and expand definitions in others. The result is imperfect, like all laws, and should be watched for abuse. But there is nothing inherently evil about it. Interested persons would do well, at a minimum, to at least read the text of the act.
One word: TERRORIST!!!
Government investigates itself and doesn't find any problems. News at 11.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
No. Because the fact that there is now a potential for abuse means that someday it will happen even if it hasn't already. The lid on Pandora's box is wedged open and the tyranny that Jefferson and Adams and the rest of the founding fathers fought to protect us from is slowly escaping to menace us once again.
I feel compelled to point out that the ACLU does not actually defend the constitution, but simply uses (or mis-uses) it whenver it's convenient to advance their agenda. As Nadine Strossen pointed out in the October 1994 issue of Reason
First rule of being abused by the Patriot Act:
You don't talk about being abused by the Patriot Act.
http://www.patriotdebates.com/
Rather than listening to the tinfoil hats here, there is some real information at that website from people who know what they are talking about.
"Hard work never killed anyone." -- Some Dead Guy
According to Wiki, the US Patriot Act includes computer fraud (aka terrorism). Most of the surveillance portions expires on December 2005 anyway.
--------------------------------------------- SignalGod ---------------------------------------------
any actual bugs in WinXP despite his hunt to find
them. He declares all the complains about WinXP
are mearly a "fuss over nothing." Also, Gates later
declares there are no good reasons to use Linux or
BSD instead of WinXP despite other people thinking otherwise.
Yes, its slashdot. What better place to do some M$ bashing.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.
> This follows from the fact that what the media originally aired as abuses were merely allegations of abuse at the time. Could it be that there has just been a lot of fuss over nothing?"
The fact that we're able to ask questions and write articles about the PATRIOT Act indicates that the PATRIOT Act is not being abused. If the PATROIT Act really were being abused, we wouldn't know about it -- because the victims (and anyone foolish enough to write about them) would be disappeared.
Likewise, you'll know that PATRIOT is being abused - if and only if you stop finding evidence that it's being abused, because all the evidence will be private. Except for this evidence, which (because it's public) is evidence that it's not being abused.
The logic sounds complicated, but it's really quite simple:
...but unfortunately I'm not allowed to talk about it.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
There should be more fuss over "nothing" because the last person to introduce a law such as this in a so called democratic nation was Hitler, and his wasn't as violating as the PATRIOT Act. Study the past, history repeats itself.
And, uh, if you trust the DOJ to publish PATRIOT Act abuse its time to get off the prozac, buddy.
One can only imagine what the BOFH for Homeland Security (or the equivalent) would be doing about now. I mean, just imagine....
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
anything that might be considered 'abuse' under other circumstances is prefectly legal under the PATRIOT act. Kinda like the military using amphetamines on active duty - it's a perfectly legal 'use', not an illegal 'abuse'.
The guys in the suits and dark glasses failed to show up and take me aw
Table-ized A.I.
who investigated themselves and found themselves not-guilty for torture
the sad thing is all these abuses just increase the hate and distain for USA, make no mistake USA will pay for its crimes one way or another
but the world is safer right ?
In our top story tonight, the Justice Department can't find evidence that the Justice Department did anything wrong.
In other news Ken Lay shockingly revealed that he doesn't think Ken Lay mismaneged Enron, and baseball owners who reaped huge profits from the steroids abuse of the players reveal that they had no way of knowing that these abuses took place.
the media doesn't just report conclusive facts that arrive after proving their case? I mean, what is the liklihood that the media will report information to get ratings. Geez and here I thought that everything the media said was gospel.
Come on folks, we already know that the media will report everything. While I do not mind this and think it is a valuable tool - I also realize that an allegation is an allegation. Sometimes the news goes out of their way and reiterates "this is just an allegation" but most of the time those needed words are quickly glossed over...so the person hears "bla blah blah was accused of committing this crime", but the persons mind registers "blah blah blah committed this crime."
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Why is it that you idiots keep equating the Patriot Act with Guantanamo Bay? Don't you morons know that those are two completely separate things?
Wen Ho Lee, Mazen Al-Najjar, and Allah knows who else, happened during the Clinton/Reno era, so they don't count (since we can't blame their cases on Bush, Ashcroft, and the PATRIOT Act).
We will never know thanks to the gag orders.
Part of the patriot act I, is that you are not allowed to talk about the use or the abuse of it. To do so, is major jail time. Instead, any investigations should focus on patriot act II and that it allows for secret laws to be made. Efforts should be made to find out what has happened there. In addition, I would be looking at how campaigns shake out. If information seems to flow one way, all the time.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Could it be that the corporate media reported only flimsy allegations of Patriot Act abuse, because it was cheaper, and more convenient for the Justice Department to deny? And never investigated more serious abuses, covered up by the Justice Department, because it was cheaper, and the Justice Department is investigating only those reported in the media - not the more serious abuse? Could it be that the Justice Department is investigating only those abuses easily dismissed as mere allegations? Could it be that the corporate media is reporting only the Justice Department press releases, without investigating whether these investigations are serious?
Once the Justice Department is being run by partisan bureaucrats (including Ahscroft and Gonzales) who will create and defend an anticonstitutional Act, authorize torture and rendition and other abuses, what would make them investigate their own abuse? Why would a media corporation that missed the story when it was "news" ever cover it again, when we're supposed to be "over it"?
--
make install -not war
Wait: did I read that Our AG, the Godfather of Torture, says everything's OK? I feel so much better now.
I read the story as this: a university has been studying possible abuses caused by the PATRIOT act but have had trouble finding any. do you slashdot readers have any examples, what with all of your legal experts and dedicated researchers, that GWU researchers just happened to miss? and if you don't, doesn't that mean that there are none and could never be any?
seems like a useless story. if it had just been a blurb about how they are having trouble finding examples, that would have been one thing. but then pretending like total non-experts should now be able to come to final conclusions about it is just ridiculus.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
What about the case where some guy was given a longer sentence due to usage of the Patriot Act for prosecution of non-terrorism activities? Seems the act should only be applied to terrorism.
Table-ized A.I.
It doesn't matter if there have been any abuses or not.
What matters is whether the potential is there for abuse or not.
America has stayed free for 200+ years because her people learned a lesson earlier than most others: you don't wait for the secret police to show up at your door to start demanding your rights. Because by then it's too late.
Read my blog.
Personally, I think that the PATRIOT act is both problematic and unecessary. However, I do not think that it is the end of American civilization. In fact, the most problematic elements of the act are those which seem to suspend Habeas Corpus, at least under certain circumstances. However, during the civil war (and, arguably, during WWII w.r.t. Japanese internment) Habeas Corpus was suspended outright. Was this a problem? Yes. Was it the end of everything? No.
So, take a deep breath, relax, and rest assured that you will have another chance to unseat the dastardly Republicans in a couple of years. And, if you want PATRIOT repealed, lobby your congressman in the meantime.
As long as you're still free to decry the PATRIOT act, I don't think we have a major problem.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
For all the talk of how the PATRIOT Act is somehow systematically unraveling our freedoms, it's not the only time this sort of thing has been done during a time of war.
During the Civil War, President Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus entirely, essentially ignoring the right of jury trials and the Bill of Rights. Clearly American democracy did not perish afterwards, and the right was later reinstated at the end of the war. No matter how odious the PATRIOT Act really is, it barely compares to Lincoln's actions.
During the Second World War, President Roosevelt was granted the power to try American citizens as enemy combatants as well. In the landmark case Ex parte Quirin Chief Justice Stone wrote:
It is quite clear that members of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda are enemy belligerents in every sense of the word. They deliberate target the civilian population, do not follow the rules of warfare as laid out in the Geneva Conventions, and are willing to use the most deadly weapons in existence in order to kill as many people as possible without regard for their status as non-combatants.
More recently, library records were instrumental in locating Andrew Cunanan, the man responsible for the murder of Gianni Versace. Yet very few civil libertarians seemed to have an issue with this. If it is acceptable to search library records to find a serial murderer, why not a terrorist. And why a library records so sacrosanct when other private records such as phone conversations and financial records could already be examined by the government under RICO and other laws?
There is something about the furor over the PATRIOT Act that suggests its motivated more by political opinions than an honest belief in civil rights. Certainly those who protest the PATRIOT Act now must recognize the horrendous erosions of civil liberties that occurred in the previous Administration under the guise of the "war on drugs" including no-knock warrants and other practices.
I can find some agreement with those who say that the PATRIOT Act goes to far, and there is nothing wrong or unpatriotic about holding the law to a high standard. However, I would lend far more credence to those who make their arguments in full understanding of the nature and intent of groups like al-Qaeda. We cannot afford to give more civil protections to Tony Soprano than we do to Osama bin Laden, which was the state of US law before September 11. If the PATRIOT Act is too onerous, the critics have the obligation of suggesting how we might better balance the needs to protect the safety of our nation while maintaining civil rights.
In September 2001, I wondered whether the C.I.A., or perhaps some renegade arm of the U.S. Army/Navy/Air Force, had instigated the attacks in order to immediately double their top-secret budget. Naah... no American would ever do something like that, right?
Then again, as far as I know, all the executives at Enron were U.S. citizens, and so were the officers who performed the notorious interrogations at Abu Ghraib. In the 1980s, the U.S. government secretly sold arms all over the world to renegade governments and rebels who were thought to be preventing the spread of Communism. Who knows what really goes on in government departments before the papers are shredded and the tapes erased?
Okay. Now I can look for abuses.
Hey! I don't see any abuses ! You all must be wrong...Can someone turn the lights back on now?
Wouldn't the release of our FBI files to foreign governments in trade for their terrorist files be considered an significant abrogation of our rights?
Frankly, I didn't even know I had an FBI file until I was pulled out of line by Canadian Customs at the Canadian border and asked dozens of humiliating questions in front of gawd and everyone!
thoughts?
OT. I know.
... Wtf happened to that Apple/Linux/Power/IBM article?
But
Did they just yank it out of embarassment or what?
When we have British citizens held at Gitmo and tortured and threatened until they sign "confessions" that are easily disproven by the British authorities ... but the US government investigates Gitmo and finds NO EVIDENCE OF ANY VIOLATIONS ...
What WOULD constitute an "abuse" of the PATRIOT Act?
How would YOU know that such an abuse happened? That the government was CORRECTLY investigating it?
We are holding prisoners in Gitmo specifically because it is non-US territory so our government can violate our most basic values regarding due process and justice.
Our government has attempted to redefine "torture" to allow people to "interrogate" prisoners with what would be called "drowning" if al Queda did it to our troops.
It all comes down to definitions. What is an "abuse" and who defines it as such.
After a serious review of my hard drive, I can report to the RIAA that I have NO illegally downloaded music on my hard drive either. Hey, if it works for the justice department....
Move along
The effect on public libraries is abuse enough, IMO.
It's forced librarians around the nation to literally go around destroying records to protect their guests from anonymous, unreportable scrutiny.
Doesn't one of the PATRIOT Act's more objectionable portions say that information regarding the use of many of the act's more easily abuseable portions is classified? For example, if my library records get pulled under the PATRIOT Act, or even if a request's submitted, it's a Federal crime for the librarian to tell me about it, tell the media about it, or even consult a lawyer.
Are these classified incidents included or excluded from the report?
"Putting all that aside, I don't want to dwell on constitutional analysis, because our view has never been that civil liberties are necessarily coextensive with constitutional rights. Conversely, I guess the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty."
Of course this is true. The Constitution recognizes civil liberties, rather than grants them, in the view of the founding fathers. In this respect the ACLU and the writers of the Constitution agree. You quoted this as if it were a bad thing to have an idea of civil liberties independent of the Constitution.
It's all just a sham to try and get people to think there is no problem with it. No one will find any abuses because there is no trail to follow. Don't believe me? Go read the laws. The PATRIOT Act touches so many little niches in the existing laws that it has many ways to be abused with little to no way to track any abuses.
Unless someone uses those records in a case, no one can ever know because the librarians or companies from which they got the info are gagged. Probable cause, you know that section in Amendment IV, went out the window with this Act because no body will ever know when anyone got any information. All they need is to play the 'terrorism' card to get access to whatever they want without needing to give out a lot of information. All in the name of 'National Security'.
Just tell me where you are going to get the information to even try to point out abuses assuming there were some. It's all just smoke and mirrors.
This is part of the problem. You're more than willing to give up your rights so that 'bad guys' get stopped. The patriot act makes it easier to stop the bad guys because it lowers all Americans down to their level, making you all suspects in crimes yet to be committed. I understand what the act is trying to accomplish and I don't think it was created with bad intentions. It is law now however, and because of it the potential for abuse exists, a study from the DOJ saying that everything is fine doesn't exactly comfort me.
You just crossed one of the hallowed "everybody knows" lines of SlashDot that submits not to questioning. Next thing you know, somebody will suggest that Linux isn't really ready for prime time, or that every piece of software or media that somebody wants shouldn't be given to them free of charge.
Or, Linus forbid, that open source programmer nerds actually aren't very well informed when it comes to political issues...
>what the media originally aired as abuses were merely allegations of abuse
This falls into the 'court of public opinion' wax pile.
Be skeptical of allegations like this since they are designed to a) increase television ratings and to b) get an opposition party candidate elected president.
... the Patriot Act being used to enforce copyright.
w2^7me out.
Your reasoning is brilliant. You should hope that your familiy isn't included in that .01% for where it is abused.
You clearly have no understanding of our laws and why they are designed to protect the innocent even at the expense of letting a few bad guys go.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
Orin Kerr, Associate Professor of Law at George Washington University writes at The Volokh Conspiracy that the Department of Justice is having trouble finding abuses of the USA PATRIOT Act.
The first rule of the PATRIOT act is that you do not talk about the PATRIOT act.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
How do we know that noone in military prisons outside US boarders are not political prisoners incarcerated due to the authority of the PATRIOT act? How in depth are independent investigations from groups like Human Rights watch or Amnisty International allowed to go?
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Yeah great and when the .01% is you what good does that do.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
http://www.bushpresident2004.com/ashcroft.htm
From the article:
In the Spring of 2003, Ashcroft's PROTECT Act was signed into law limiting judges' discretion in sentencing criminal offenders below the Justice Department's sentencing guidelines. While each individual case carries with it countless unique circumstances that a judge uses to form a fair and appropriate sentence, John Ashcroft acted bravely to prohibit judges from considering the individuality of cases for fear of being black-listed by the Justice Department.
This caused uproar among judges across the nation including conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Members of Congress inspired by Ashcroft's success are proposing the VICTORY Act to employ tactics similar to the Patriot Act on suspected drug offenders.
The Bill of Rights Amendments specifically affected by the Patriot Act and other Bush Administration efforts are the following:
The First Amendment: The Patriot Act allows the search of libraries' and religious organizations' records without cause. This might infringe upon the First Amendment's declaration that the government may not abridge freedom of speech nor prohibit the "free exercise" of religion.
The Fourth Amendment: The Patriot Act allows searches and seizures of U.S. citizen's property without probable cause and without a specific warrant. This is expressly prohibited by the Fourth Amendment.
The Fifth Amendment: The Bush Administration claims it may designate Americans as "enemy combatants" and detain them without conviction in court. This is in direct violation of the Fifth Amendment stating that persons may not be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." The Supreme Court has regularly upheld the "due process" requirement even in national security crises.
The Sixth Amendment: With the claim to designate Americans "enemy combatants", the Bush Administration also states that it may imprison persons indefinitely without trial, without access to an attorney, and without any means to challenge their detention. The entire Sixth Amendment is essentially shredded in this case.
[End of quoted article]
I don't think that's a lot of fuss about nothing. I can think of several abuses already, including Jose Padilla, who has been held for years now and has never been charged with anything. He's a goddamn US citizen for chrissakes. If you don't think that's scary that the Feds can come lock you up in a military brig indefinitely without charging you with any crime, then you need to pull your head out of the sand and take a look at what's going on around you.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
This is THE place to find paranoids by the thousand, and you ask your question here? What do you expect the answer to be? The only place I've found to have a higher ratio of (para)noids to norms is the audience of the Art Bell radio show. Sit back and enjoy the nest of bees you just poked.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
You are simply, and rather blatantly, misreading me. Your misreading makes me out to be "making too much fuss." But I am not suggesting by any means this is the end of everything. "Merely," the unraveling of hundreds of years of sacred American values and traditions.
Very trivially:
"unraveling of hundreds of years of sacred American values and traditions" != "the end of American civilization", "the end of everything"
Living like slaves didn't end civilization in China (yet). I suspect there are people not able to make distinctions this fine, but I hope you are not one of them.
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I dislike the Patriot Act very much and think it is completely against the ideals that America (used) to stand for. However, not everyone I have talked to feels this strongly about the Act. What I'm wondering is how I could prove my point better in this (abbreviated) hypothetical conversation:
Me: "The Patriot Act is bad because it allows the government to legally detain, without trail or due process, anyone they label 'terrorist'. Also, it allows them to search the same group without a warrant."
Other Person: "Well, if a corrupt government really wants to do that, what is to stop them? It doesn't matter if it is illegal or not, the government could still lock me up and no one would ever have to know about it."
I think the counter-point is valid to a certain extent. I don't believe our government is corrupt enough to do something like that if it was illegal...but there is really nothing stopping them but their own laws. I know the Patriot Act is bad because it gives the gov an opening to commit acts that are against our rights as citizens, but even if the law was changed back who is to say the government would stop such actions?
SIGFAULT
but trust me there are cockroaches
the Department of Justice is having trouble finding abuses of the USA PATRIOT Act.
The DoJ investigates abuse by the DoJ and finds none.
Sounds like everything is doubleplus good!
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
You want to destroy our way of life, don't you?
Yeah, right.
Defenders of the USA Patriot Act love to defend it by asking its critics how the Patriot Act has personally affected them. Well, I love to turn this argument against them by asking how terrorism has personally affected them, because for the vast majority of the public, terrorism has not affected their lives in any way. The government's response to terrorism, OTOH, has made life much more difficult though for law-abiding citizens.
The reality is that the 9/11 attacks resulted in very few people being killed compared to the number of people that die in, say, auto accidents. The potential for abuse by government officials is simply too great, and even if no abuses have yet been found, the track record of the government is pretty poor in this regard.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." -- Ambrose Bierce
They say there was no abuse by officials of the doj. Yep there probably was no abuse by officials of the doj. That's like saying that the Canadian guy who was extradited (by the US while he was en-route to Canada) to Syria and tortured there wasn't tortured by American officials. It's absolutely true; he wasn't tortured by American officials. But they caused it.
If my librarian violates my privacy by giving the FBI my library records, my privacy wasn't violated by the doj, it was violated by the librarian. Well gee, if the librarian violated my rights then that's not something the doj can investigate. It's not their jurisdiction.
Look I am open minded. I want you to give me ONE, credible non-biased account. Of the government looking at little Susie's library records and using the information to harm her. Give me ONE example where an AMERICAN CITIZEN was put in jail for an extended time (1 Week Plus) for no valid Reason. Sometimes search warrants are done at the wrong house because of a clerical error, I want you to show me a MAJOR use of this law in a bad way. I do not see the abuses that everyone is discussing!!
http://www.john-neal.com/
"it is truly 99.99% bad guys getting trampled on"
The problem is, who are 'bad guys'? What is to stop someone else from re-defining bad guys to include you or me?
The Constitution was written to protect rights (and limit government) for a good reason - without hard, fast well-defined limits politicians wanting power will trample anyone in their way. Outrage at the loss of freedom, is a bulwark of our society (although you wouldn't know it since the 1930s).
And those today who, however good their intentions, tell us that we should trade freedom for security are on that downward path [to the totalitarianism of the ant heap].
Ronald Reagan, Mar 20, 1981 (and 1964)
In a democracy, personal liberties are rarely diminished overnight. Rather, they are lost gradually, by acts of well - meaning people, with good intentions, amid public
approval. But the subtle loss of freedom is never recognized until the crisis is over and we look back in horror. And then it is too late.
Judge Andrew Napolitano, October 2001
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment of men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
Louis D Brandies, 1928
The one clear Patriot Act abuse I am aware of is the issue with Steven Kurtz whose genetically engineered artwork is considered in violation of the Patriot Act Sec. 817: Expansion of the Biological Weapons Statue.
You can read more about this case here.
Um, for starters I am not trying to kill people just because I hate America. Have you ever contemplated the ease a person can just walk in a building and do everyone harm. The patriot act will only be used FOR me not against me, because I am a Patriot. The ACLU / Media would be all over the government the SECOND they abused this law on people for no reason. GIVE ME FACTS TO BACK UP THIS, what if, they could, what if , is nothing. Give me the smoking gun.
http://www.john-neal.com/
On Slashdot?!?!?
Get out!
The ACLU is wrong on lots of stuff. And this comes from a dues-paying member! I like groups that take unpopular stands even when I don't agree on everything. I feel sorry for anyone that makes a knee-jerk decision based on the ACLU stance.
You're going to want all your civil liberties when, one day, something stupid you've said - like, say, "I can't wait till someone attacks China. It would make my day I hate China." - resurfaces to bite you... sounds like incitement to terrorism, if you ask me.
there have been exactly *zero* successful prosecutions of terrorists in the USA under this act--so, was it really worth it, or even necessary to pass this bill? what *good* has it done? this is just a classic example of 'lowering expectations'...
and of course, the Bush disinformation machine continues cranking at high speed--even the network news is delivered prepacked and 'on message': Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News
so forgive me if i don't breathe a sigh of relief about this 'news'...
Is it so incomprehensible to you that in this world of 5 billion people that there may be a few hundred who are hell bent on inflicting as much violence as possible on innocent people.
Japan had imprisoned a bunch of innocent US citizens
If they were innocent, you're right, they'd be an outcry. If they were picked up in a foreign country fighting with the Japanese Red Army, most Americans would say good riddence.
Hi,
Take a look at this book and it will give you a great insight into why protecting the law (in particular the Constitution) is critical:
Constitional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws by Andrew Napolitano.
(He is often on Fox News, is a judge etc). It isn't *particularly* about the Patriot Act but does include commentary about some of it.
Could it be that it was so broadly written that it is difficult to claim abuse?
C|N>K
The abuses are top secret for reaons of national security?
Well, they would, wouldn't they?
Even with the best will in the world, internal investigations by any agency are seldom anything but whitewashes. If it's not an independent investigation, with full access to DOJ information, it has no credibility. Even if a true independent investigation comes up with a dry well, absence of evidence is not conclusive proof that everything was always wonderful-- only that that particular investigation didn't find anything. But if the DOJ denies the appropriateness of outside scrutiny, I for one would be profoundly suspicious of their reasons why.
This is especially true since so many provisions of the Patriot Act allow secret action by the DOJ. Not easy to establish accountability under those circumstances.
Put differently, if you were to ask Ashcroft or Gonzalez if they think they overreached in any way, what's the likelihood that they'd ever admit that they had only been crying wolf and that it would have been far better if the DOJ's authority were more constrained? I hope you're not holding your breath waiting for that.
Anyway, this whole approach is backwards. The principle should be that the DOJ has to positively demonstrate the benefits that have been derived from these encroachments on our rights. Not just the empty assertions that have been made so far. Then, that benefit should be weighed against the real costs to everyone of their draconian policies.
And there are moral principles at stake that supersede any such cost/benefit analysis. For example, if the DOJ has had any role in handing over people to be tortured in other countries, that's not a criterion for extending the Patriot Act-- that's a crime against humanity.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
This has been a slippery slope....
I didn't say anything about attacking America like a certain College Professor. Less than a 100 years ago we were fighting a war of ideals with China. China is not our friend no matter what you think. There are just greater evils in the world. For starters people that empower the wicked to continue to hurt the weak like you.
http://www.john-neal.com/
The problem isn't the abuse of power, it's the power to abuse.
-metric
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I guess it depends on what is considered abuse. Since Paypal was sued and lost millions because it allowed people to use its service to pay for online poker and gaming. They were sued due to the Patriot Act. (institutions aiding in the transfer of funds used for illegal purposes) Furthermore, the RIAA is MUCH MUCH stronger now due to the Patriot Act, since individuals downloading music are terrorists, they have the right to obtain search warrants now and track you down through your ip address. Thank God for the Patriot Act! Way to keep those 13 year old music download terrorists at bay! This IS TRUE, the Patriot Act enables the RIAA to charge unknown people with crimes, and THEN find out who did the crime later. I think we should be careful when we allow a law that takes away our Constitutional rights. We must make a stand and let people know that it is not right. The Patriot Act has done much more harm than good as far as I can see, it has furthered the Corporate agenda in this country, but done little to get rid of terrorism.
"the Department of Justice is having trouble finding abuses of the USA PATRIOT Act"
This just in: Al-Qaeda is having trouble finding instances of violence by muslim extremists.
You are misinformed.
Jose Padilla in not in Guantanamo:
"Padilla was transferred to military control and transported to the Naval Consolidated Brig, Charleston, South Carolina"
Neither is Yaser Hamdi:
But when his American citizenship came to light, the government transported him from there to the brig at the Norfolk Naval Station.
Neither were charged under the PATRIOT act.
Does it bother you that you don't know what you are talking about?
I am aware of all the evils that could occur. I just want somebody to give me some documented evidence of some of these evils occuring today with American Citizens arrested on American Soil.
http://www.john-neal.com/
Under the Patriot Act, animal rights activist groups are also defined as terrorists. I read a story on the BBC's web site no less than a few days ago about how a group of animal activists with anti-bush bumper stickers got arrested and had all their computers confiscated over the investigation into an arson attack at a California Humvee dealership. The actual perps were caught later but the activist group claims they were never really suspects and that the FBI used the situation as an opportunity to gain access to their computer and network information -- all without warrants. I can't find the article on BBC today -- if someone can they should post it.
Wow, on one hand, many Slashdotters are concerned about abuses of the Patriot Act, and anyone supporting this idea gets good moderations. On the other hand, people who merely express an opinion that the Patriot Act may not be bad get modded as troll. How hypocritical.
I mean, someone could be building a list of "offenders" right now... you know?
(If this registers as complete bullshit, I'm not sure how to address you. But if it's not complete bullshit in your mind, then you have an opinion that should be heard.)
Since this is about abuses of the PATRIOT Act.
But if the actions in question are "legal", then those actions cannot be an "abuse".
So his analogy would be on topic.
Who gets to define what an "abuse" is?
Gitmo is certainly "legal" if you ask our current government. Yet it is also completely contrary to our stated VALUES of due process and justice.
So, is Gitmo an "abuse" of our justice system?
If "yes", then we can talk about abuses of the PATRIOT Act.
If "no", then the discussion is meaningless because the word "abuse" has no meaning.
The ACLU has NEVER stated that the entire Patriot Act was wrong or bad. There's so much crap in there that it would be near impossible for them to not agree with at least some of it. The problem is that the 10% of it they don't like, THEY REALLY REALLY don't like. So arguing that they are ok with 90% of it is really no argument at all.
The ACLU even has a video where they say they don't disagree with the entire patriot act (this video is typically given free to new members of the ACLU). The same video also documents abuses of the patriot act that the government, surprise surprise, can't seem to find.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
This follows from the fact that what the media originally aired as abuses were merely allegations of abuse at the time. Could it be that there has just been a lot of fuss over nothing?"
The fact that they can put librarians away for even mentioning that such an abuse has taken place might put a damper on their reporting of such abuses. Now, most libraries have taken the sensible step of erasing your records as soon as you check the books back in.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
And that was the genius of the bills name. How can you be against the Patriot act? You're a patriot, aren't you? The point is the potential for abuse is there. Maybe it hasn't been abused, YET. But that yet is a big one.
Were the PATRIOT Act abuse complaints that the DOJ Inspector General dismissed without investigation really so unbelievable? The Inspector General's report states:
Judge for yourself:
A current US program of involuntary human experimentation
New Technologies Threaten Human Rights
Electromagnetics and the Mind
http://www.geocities.com/mrmistermicko
http://www.datafilter.com/mc
http://www.angelfire.com/or/mctrl
One of the odd things about debates over the Patriot Act is that even its harshest informed critics actually only oppose a very small part of the Act;
Why is that odd?
No, really, I don't get it. It would be utterly astonishing if that wasn't true. Treating that as news is like treating it as news that only a small number of incidents of speeding or drunk driving actually lead to accidents, or that the majority of suicide attempts don't lead to death.
Do you have a point, or are you just trying to muddy the waters?
If ever there was an appropriate time to say:
"...Move along... nothing to see here.... move along..."
In this case, since it's forbidden to report on Patriot Act abuses, why would we find any?
Someone else commented that "it's only a small part of the act that..." To that I say, anything that takes away due process may be small in words but huge in effect. You could write law that is 10,000 pages long and only a small part of it saying "you're fucked" and the result is the same.
I've come to the conclusion that a lot of what the pro and anti stuff is overblown.
Basically, USAPA provisions seem to mainly contemplate the "ticking timb bomb scenarios". It would not have prevented 9/11, because nobody knew the clock was ticking. On the other hand, it does not direct the government to do anything it wouldn't do, without legal sanction, in these scenarios. Contemplating the demands of necessity in these sorts of situation could potentially allow the government to prepare for them better. If the government exceeds the legal powers in USAPA, it could also be argued that we have laws that regulate this situation that have already spelled out the powers the government should have. Both of which are good things.
Any time you empower the government, though, the potential for abuse necessarily increases. Which is a bad thing.
My own sense is that the act could be greatly improved by creating mechanisms of oversight and accountability when the government exercises these powers. This will never happen in this political climate, unfortunately, because this would be painted as "weakening" the Patriot Act. On the day after the next big attack, any politician brave enough to support this kind of change to the act would have a big red target on his back.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Its NEVER a fuss about nothing when it comes to my freedoms, even if it "seems" harmless! Freedom isn't something to be taken and given at will, depending on the threat of the week. Even if this hastn't been abused yet, it will be, mark my words. If you want to sacrifice a little liberty here and there for a supposed sense of safety, I'm sure Aus or England would love to have you.
I am not worried about today, I am worried about tomorrow, my children and their children. Many of my ancestors died so I could have liberty, many of them choose death over a loss of liberty, I find it cowardly and wrong that we live in a time where fear of death makes us destroy liberty.
"Give me liberty or give me death" - Patrick Henry
In this day and age we are saying "Take our liberty, just prevent death" and it is a dishonor to everyone who has shed blood creating the freedoms we have. Or our concepts of freedom. American Citizens on American soil is such a narrow and hollow remit, our founding fathers would have laughed at the narrowness of that, as it flew in the face of what they were trying to achieve.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
Patriot Act has nothing to do with Guantanamo Bay detainees.
Doesnt the fact that the 'Act' include measures which forbid disclosure of many potential abuses?? eg, librarians are forbidden from telling the public that an investigation is under way .. Stiff fines too!! This is a dictatorial act!! Bill of Rights??
riight...
"There are 11 kinds of people: those who know binary, those who don't, and those who could not care less!"
So who's juristiction IS it under? Cuba's?
the Department of Justice is having trouble finding abuses of the USA PATRIOT Act.
...
Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?
but seriously, the DoJ under Asscroft was the ones who pressed for the passage of the act in the first place. and have been defending the Act ever since.
Nothing to see here, folks.
It's kinda hard to raise an objection to something thet you're not allowed to look at, or even know is being collected about you.
The Patriot Act is overkill for the losers the Administration is catching with it.
However, during the civil war (and, arguably, during WWII w.r.t. Japanese internment) Habeas Corpus was suspended outright. Was this a problem? Yes. Was it the end of everything? No.
... a euphemism for "they were murdered in American concentration camps," but we aren't really aloud to say that out loud, because we want to continue to believe that America hasn't had, doesn't have, and never would have concentration camps, no matter how hight the mountain of evidence to the contrary.
Everything? I guess not. But it was VERY BAD if you were japanese and you were placed in internment.
And for some of the detained, it was the end of everything. They "died" while being detained
In any event, for those who are "lawfully" murdered under such toxic laws, these abuses really are "the end of everything." Life will certainly go on (though perhaps only at the microbial level if the worst of the worst were to happen), civilization will probably go on (though as history shows, at some point we'll have one abuse too many, and civilization will fall. The more abuses we heap on, the sooner that day will come), and for most of the detainees, some semblance of continued existence will go on, though certainly diminished in emotional and financial terms from what they would have had had they not been subject to such abuses.
As for America's formerly good reputation for fairness, enlightened, and lawful behavior, that is gone and probably will never be recovered. The PATRIOT act, however, was just one nail in the coffin of that dead ghost, however. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice et. al. have hammered a bunch of them in, the litany of which (Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and so on) should raise the hairs on the back of the neck of every decent human being, everywhere.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Seeing as how Kerr's biography states that he clerked for Justice Kennnedy (a big supporter of "anti-crime" measures) and is both a former Justice Dept. attorney and an attorney with the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. This is not exactly a guy who is going to look at the Patriot Act with an unbiased eye.
Mod grandparent up. I agree totally with these two posts. Just because you don't agree w/ it doesn't mean it is not informative and it isn't flamebait. Read the Geneva Convention, then comment on what that says and not what you think it says.
Many of the actions of the Patriot Act are "protected" by automatic gag orders with jail time for any disclosure of what happened (say a search and seizure of property). If you can't speak up without going to jail, and possibly being tagged as aiding and abbetting terrorists, who would dare to speak up to say they've been victimized?
Just imagine how prosecutors will try to get people classified as terrorist.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
The Act should be challenged from a Constitutional standpoint with regard to the suspension of hebeas corpus.
Lincoln explicitly suspended hebeas corpus during the Civil War; to the best of my recollection, Bush has done no such thing and the PATRIOT ACT does not explicitly do so either. Whether or not it implicitly does so, however, is another question.
There is nothing in the Patriot Act about Guantanamo Bay. There is nothing about torture, or deporting people to countries where it is practiced. Nothing about depriving anyone of the right to counsel. Nothing about secret trials. Nothing about the way people who aren't subject to the Geneva Conventions are treated.
Do these things happen, and should we be concerned about them? Absolutely. Do they have anything to do with the PATRIOT Act? Nothing whatsoever. Do people who complain about the PATRIOT Act being responsible for these things spread FUD and cloud the real issues? Yes. Is that a real problem? I think so.
That seemed like a great idea for a journal entry, so I created one. I hope you don't mind that I stole your idea. :)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
This discussion supposedly is about abuses of the Patriot Act. Whatever you think of it, Gitmo is a detention facility created and maintained by the U.S. military, not the PA. And there are plenty of Gitmo prisoners who have been released to talk to, particularly the ones who got picked up a second time for attacking U.S. troops.
From what I understand of the PATRIOT act, there are many situations where discussing it's use publically is illegal, such as company's being forced to reveal private information, without a court order, and are then forbidden from telling the public what they did it. Therefore many abuses would be nearly impossible to find.
Abusing people may not be happening, but that does not mean that the Patriot Act is not stomping all over our rights. You are not "abused" if your free travel is interfered with; but your rights are being interefered with...
So the government cannot find evidence of the government doing wrong? Hmmm...
The terrorists never really have to do anything else in the US other than use rhetoric...did it not occur to anyone in government that one terrorist act was all they would do? Then just make threats to screw up everything here...
Come on, it's all secret. Your ISP can't talk about Patriot Act actions.
Your local library can't talk about Patriot Act requests.
If you can't fly because you're in a no-fly list, your airline can't talk about the rules.
This proves the law has built-in mechanisms to shield law enforcement not from terrorists, but from accountability.
Here's an example of abuse of the Patriot Act (regardless of how much respect you harbor for the author of the article):
You're right. It's all Cuba's fault.
Get a clue. The US has control of that area of Cuba, not Cuba.
It may not (note: "MAY NOT") be illegal, but it certainly is under US jurisdiction.
Don't deceive yourself.
In fact, read how the U.S. has now decided that the World Court is not convenient for the purposes of the bush administration.
Perhaps the World Court would not agree that the bush administration could blatently get away with their bullshit.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Here is something you have to eat.
Only 1% of it is poisonous.
It is 99% good! See, you should eat it!
What are you fussing about?
Oh, that that 1% may kill you? What kind
of a whiny left wing socialist are you?
Eat!
David
emt 377 emt 4
It's one thing to say this law does no actual harm but unless it demostrates actual provable goodness or utility then it has not a single reason to exist in the first place and would eventually be subject to abuse.
Librarians are opposed to the Patriot Act because they know what the FBI will do given an inch. American librarians successfully fought off the FBI in the 1970s, when it wanted to peek at library records to determine who was reading subsversive materials. In the 1990s, I personally witnessed FBI personnel violate patron privacy in a library with the help of library staff who were not librarians versed in the principles of patron privacy. Just because there aren't any public incidents, don't assume that the FBI isn't using the Patriot Act to intimidate librarians. The FBI has done it before, they will do it again, and they are probably doing it now.
"National Security" [includes] "Anything that might lead to Civil Law"
Face it, America, you have lost control of your government, and it is running amok. PATRIOT Act was among the last 'acts' of a grand tragic play that may as well be called "The Death of America".
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
The US Constitution specifies some things that the federal government shall do and specifies particular procedures for doing those. Much of the rest of the Constitution is a list of things the federal government cannot do.
This stands to reason. If there is no limit to what the federal government can do, or no limit to what can be accomplished with a majority vote, why bother to have a constitution? Without the long list of limits, you could have written it on a 18th century Post-It note: "We the people of the United States of America empower the government to do whatever a majority of our elected representatives vote for and the elected president signs. The supreme judiciary shall verify that whatever is done is done according the letter of the laws we pass." This, of course, is a recipe for an elected tyrany.
So, no, it is not possible for something under the Patriot act, or any other law, to make legal a government activity that would otherwise be forbidden by the Constitution. If any offending part of the Patriot act is used to bring someone to court, it will immediately be struck down.
This does not, however, prevent Patriot act powers to be used to pursue someone, then find other offenses under other laws (tax evasion, for example, Mr Capone?) to charge them with, thus shielding the Patriot act powers from court scrutiny. Remember, you have to have standing in order to challenge a law, i.e. you personally must be charged or restrained under the law in order to challenge it.
I think that Congress should review the prosecution history of the Patriot Act powers. If someone has not been successfully prosecuted under a particular section, or the agencies involved cannot positively indicate when they will begin court proceedings under that section of law, then obviously, that power is not valuable for the purpose it was passed, and should be repealed. You don't leave matches in the hands of babies, firearms in the hands of violent felons, sportscar keys in the hands of teenagers, you shouldn't leave unneeded powers in the hands of government.
It does not matter if the government has actually abused citizens via the Patriot Act. The only thing that matters is that it can.
It doesn't matter if I actually punch you in the nose. The only thing that matters is that I can.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
There is a real traitor in the whitehouse who DID give up the name of a CIA operative. That is treason by law, and by common sense. That person should be executed by rifle, in my book. In addition, the WH is sheltering this person. They should be arrested for aiding and abbeting a known criminal.
OTH, there are americans being held in Gitmo, but it is not known fully known what their status was. In at least one case, it is believed that it was simply somebody on the wrong side of the line. No gun. No ammo. Nothing on them to indicate that they were treasonists. Yet, they are denied access to legal aide and are held in unknown conditions.
However, if they are tried in a normal court with adequate access to legal aide, and was found to be treasonists by taking up arms against us, then fine; Shoot them as well.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Quid fellatinatio swallonis est maetherfuga inonasti?
Wow. The grand-parent post went from "+4 Insightful" about an hour ago to being modded down as "+1 overrated flamebait."
Post quotes Orin Kerr -- subject of the article: check.
Post quotes Orin Kerr on the PATRIOT Act -- subject of the article: check.
Post inlcludes criticism of ACLU -- verboten here at Slashdot, where independent-minded right-thinking people do not tolerate criticism of the ACLU.
Yet somebody who doesn't understand basic set theory gets modded up to "+3 Insightful."
The first part of Strossen's statement, "never been that civil liberties are necessarily coextensive with constitutional rights," is correct. There are civil liberties that are not mentioned in the constitution. The 9th amendment specifically staes that "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
For example: terminating fetuses is not mentioned at all in the constitution, yet the ACLU devotes a disproportionate amount of time and effort to abortion rights (thus duplicating the efforts of groups like Planned Parenthood and NARAL). There is nothing wrong with protecting unenumerated rights.
Where Strossen gets it wrong, however, is the second part of her statement, "the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty." If the rights mentioned in the constitution can be ignored because they don't fit some group's idea of "civil liberties," then they don't mean anything at all.
Think of a Ven diagram: There is one small circle that represents "constitutional rights." There is a larger circle that represents "civil liberties." Circle 1 should be completely inside circle 2.
According to the ACLU, circle 1 is not inside circle 2, but merely intersects it at some points -- where it's convenient for the ACLU's agenda, of course.
Reading the rest of the website, it would seem as though there is a pro-Administration political bent: therefore, in the author's opinion, the government says there's not a problem, and that's fine with him. When you're done reading that, you can go read his attempts to prove an evil college professor (the new "communist-liberal threat") called Bush a war criminal, and a brave soul challenged him.
If the government is willing to share with us such detail, maybe you can explain why some FOIA requests have gone unanswered for 18 years. There's a reason why we have a free press. And these debates lend even more credence to a concern that we are indeed a nationalistic state, complete with loyalists and apologists. We have become everything we were raised to hate.
Life is irony, and nothing ever goes as planned.
Sometimes I think the fed's think they can treat us like 8 year olds and we won't know the difference. Who thought that we could ask the government to report on itself, whether or not they have abused the laws given to them to follow? Especially when it is the same department doing the investigating as is using the law? My eight year old says the same thing when I ask him if he ate all of the fruit snacks, "I didn't do it daddy.", as he stands in his own pile of snack wrapper litter.
Give me a break. I am smarter than that.
How did 9/11 affect a "huge" number of people as you assert? This is the problem that the OP was referring to, people saying that "you have to be honest" and agree with a baseless premise. There is a greater likelihood that people NYC know somebody who was directly affected by the attack, but that number is several magnitudes lower than those who claim to be *directly* affected. Many of these claims seem to boil down to pity, people who want to be affected by it, but really weren't. What the gov't has done is create a law that forces people to be directly affected, so now we have people like you who think that it is this way because of the attack. But it isn't, it's only the government who has affected you.
This is to say that being shocked by watching the attacks on TV is not the same as being directly affected.
Perhaps the administrators of /. could emphasize the purpose of modding more than they do now.
That they didn't find any abuses.
The "lack of evidence" does not exonerate the government.
My guess is that much of the abuse is either ignored or passed over as "well, that isn't really abuse of the Patriot Act", as if they were some Obi Wan Kenobi.
Abuse is abuse is abuse. When the citizens are not allowed to watchdog their government, such abuses will occur and will not be reported.
It is like asking polluters to watchdog themselves. How's that been working out so far?
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
I would love it if /. filtered these out.
Remember, RICO laws were set up to fight organized crime, but now has been used to attack "pro-life" organizers, Boy Scouts, etc... I worry more about the long-term use of the Patriot Act (of which 99% of the law I agree with).
No Gumbo for you!
If the administration didn't let Rumsfield resign over Abu Gharib, why should we think it's going to let the Justice Department give it's favorite roll-back of civil liberties a bad mark? It's just not going to happen.
We're producing propaganda pieces and selling them to TV stations as news stories, and we're going to come clean about Patriot Act abuses? Not a chance.
I mean, what do you think the Chinese government is going to conclude if they set up a task force to look into their possible human rights abuses??
what one does not want to find... That is the case with this DOJ in this political climate.
The only real problem I have with the criticism of people showing up at your door is that the police already have those very same abilities when it comes to suspected drug dealers and such.
When put in that context, I don't see why it's such a big deal to give anti-terrorist investigators the same abilities already afforded to local law enforcement. I mean, the potential for abuse is the same, right? Yet police go crashing into houses all the time without public outcry.
DOES that APPLUY to people CAuGHT in Afghanistan and I-RAq, since those are, like, not ind the COUNTRY USA?
THIS sentence has NO period either
>Of course this is true. The Constitution recognizes civil liberties, rather than grants them, in the view of the founding fathers. [emphasis added for this post]
Absolutely right, for the part I emphasized.
In this respect the ACLU and the writers of the Constitution agree.
That part I'm not so sure about. The founding fathers believed that our rights came from God, our Creator. Those rights came with responsibilities to God, and our government was intended for a Christian people. At least one of the founding fathers claimed that it would be inadequate to restrain a non-Christian people. That doesn't sound like the ACLU position at all.
Perhaps more to the point, any liberty recognised in the constitution is there because it was a fundamental liberty, in the view of the founding fathers.
>You quoted this as if it were a bad thing to have an idea of civil liberties independent of the Constitution.
Of course our rights pre-exist government, and exist independently of the government we erect to secure those rights. Of course the rights enumerated in the constitution are not the only ones we have. The ACLU honcho being quoted above seemed to be saying that rights guaranteed by the constitution may not matter, but folks (like maybe the ACLU?) can always dream up new ones if they want to. Both parts of that approach are bad.
See what I've been reading.
Between september 11th 2001 and April 2003 I flew within the US 13 times and I was "randomly" selected to be searched 11 of those 13 times. I believe this is on account of my religion. In 3 of the searches my personal property, was damaged and no apology offerred. In 4 cases I missed my flight.
So what happenned in April 2003. I packed up and left the US. Which I think was the agenda of the PATRIOT act authors anyway.
Ahh /.
;-)
Breeding ground of intelligent discussion for almost a decade
My entire post is open to interpretation. Thats just one possible scenario. I thought it would be fun to point it out. You can argue both ways but I hate the presumption that we are outright denying these guys rights. Maybe we are, maybe we aren't. How can we really judge since we don't even know who most of these terrorists or would be terrorists, or maybe terrorists, or "folks" as GWB puts it are? I am just saying, the Geneva convention doesn't instantly apply because we have them detained at Gitmo.
There will always be collateral damage. My heart goes out to the truly illegally detained. Its a messy world. How can we possibly make everyone happy?
Jeremy
Here's a basic list of just a handful of abuses I came up:
And finally, maybe there haven't been as many abuses as there will be once all 2nd legal track the preparations are in place.
The Media may have been making alot of fuss about nothing, but I happen to believe that if nobody had fussed, then there would have been some severe abuse.
Then again, I can't prove that.
So how much did your little investigation cost the hospital? How much did it cost me as a taxpayer? Your paranoia helps noone and hurts everyone. Can you prove you made a single person's life better, other than your pride of course?
Since you say we should worry when someone says they are not guily of abuse, what abuses are you guilty of, and against whom?
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out
because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out
because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the labor leaders, and I did not speak out
because I was not a labor leader.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me, and there was no one
left to speak out for me.
--The Reverend Martin Niemöller
I do not want to ignore Guantanamo.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
break into a computer system.
Please note that the identical AC post in this story was me, but I accidentally posted it as AC the first time.
Here's a basic list of just a handful of abuses I came up:
And finally, maybe there haven't been as many abuses as there will be once all 2nd legal track the preparations are in place.
---
I have nothing to hide. If somebody heard my phone call's, read my email, looked at my computer. Nothing major there. I really wonder what are you afraid of. You are pulling the big bad wolf scare tactic. I am for full disclosure. If every last citizen had there fingerprints / dna on file. Then un-solved murders would skyrocket down. We need a national id system. You may think its not a good idea, but within the next 100 years it will take place, so get used to the idea. Our founding fathers would not believe all the evil their ideals are being used to protect today. They would yell string them up. They did not have a very liberal way of looking at traitors.
http://www.john-neal.com/
I cannot believe how anti-conser. slashdot is. Just because I do not agree with the opinion the government is EVIl they are turning into 1984, everyone hurts my score. Ya'll are so un-open minded its pathetic.
http://www.john-neal.com/
where are your references?
The party was founded on hate. It thrives on hate. Some Republicans still refer to their party as "the party of Lincoln." They worship the civil liberties he destroyed. They love the fact that there were 1.1 million casualties. Their bloodlust has not yet been satisfied. Never forget that.
NEVER is a long time. The no-fly list causes more problems then the Patriot act. If you have the same name as a terrorist then you get to go thru hell to get on a plane. All I hear is a bunch of fluff, just tell me one EXAMPLE! Even now, people keep posting disagreeing with me but NO-ONE can tell me of a case where the Patriot Act was gravely mis-used.
http://www.john-neal.com/
So I would trust him to try and get rid of the stupid act.
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
the wold's most dangerous and inarticulate "leader"?
Of course, his handlers won't let him vomit anything without
cue cards; a teleprompter, and President-Vice Cheney's arm.
Patriotically as always,
K. Trout, CEO
Well the goverment would get that information to arrest somebody usually. So give me an example of somebody arrested, that was later found innocent. When a person is picked up on Terrorism stuff it is pretty obvious to the person being arrested. There are prison guards, police officers, and many people that have in some way handle these people. Our government makes a secret military plan to attack XYZ and its on the evening news before the end of the month. But people are being arrested and kept in jail FOR NO REASON. AND THERE ISNT A PEEP. Come on, the people that are getting picked up mostly deserve it anyway. They are in that world of evil to begin with. Evil begots evil. The government will not be arresting me because, OMG I am not doing anything illegal. See I have a family. Like everyone else. If I just dissapeared , WOOSH, my family would be like wha??? And I would not be kept in prison for the next 50 years with nothing happening. I just do not see the massive goverment evil you do.
http://www.john-neal.com/
The reason that the Department of Justice has not found any abuses of rights caused by the USA PATRIOT Act is because of the nature of the Act. It allows the government to detain anyone, anytime, without providing a reason, without allowing a trial, and without ever having to let them go. We don't know about any abuses because the abuse is also in the covering up. There may be thousands of prisoners held somewhere, not knowing why they are held, or how long they will be held for, but we will never know, because they are held, and the USA PATRIOT Act allows this to happen. They can't tell us that they're being abused because they have lost all of their rights. For those of you who are skimming, here it is in one sentence: There are no reported abuses by the USA PATRIOT Act because the Act itself suppresses reports of abuse.
All your
From the site "Professors not opposed to Academic Fraud and Terrorism: One hundred and ninety-nine faculty members at the University of Colorado at Boulder dishonored their school today by signing an advertisement in the Boulder Daily Camera in support of Professor Ward Churchill."
The article post is a lot of fuss over nothing, and here's why; I believe nothing on this highly partisan, truly tashy site that publishes junk such as the above is worth reading.
Who said the people are getting picked up? This broad legislation allows much more than that. Come back when you've read what this thing does.
see subject line
How can we possibly make everyone happy?
In the US, we call them trials. You know, where the government gets some smart people together, and they come up with this totally incredible thing called "proof" and convince this group of people who do nothing but sit all day and stare at the theatrics that they are, in fact, correct.
Or yeah, we could just throw random people into jails and claim they are obviously terrorists because otherwise they wouldn't have been thrown in jail. That works too.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The funny part is...1% of a lot of things are poisonous. Everything in the proper quantity and it's safe. Abuse that limit and you're in trouble.
The supreme court decision this is based on came out of the end of WWII when MacArthur was prosecuting the Japanese war criminals in the Philippines (the 11 nations wronged by Japan were allowed to conduct war crimes trials, the US ran the ones in the Philippines). The race to the gallows was so fast, so free of any of the legal protections we take for granted it provoked something of a constitutional crisis.
Ultimately, the US Supreme Court elected to turn a blind eye. After all they were Japanese, their behavior was well beyond infamous, they deserved what they got, and when would it come up again, what's it matter. But this wasn't a widely held view. The decision was close, five to four. The dissenting opinion was written by the lead prosecutor of the Nuremburg trials. In his dissenting decision Justice Robert Jackson lamented that we won the war but lost our ideals.
It's funny how another supreme court so many years later hid behind this earlier decision, considered to be one of the blacker (even if smaller) marks on American history. It's things like this, with their history, that really bring the fragile, petty, humanity of the people holding the office into sharp relief.
>Idiot. The courts get to determine where they have jurisdiction. Further, if you read the news, you would know that the Supreme Court has ruled that it does.
"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it." Be's Jean-Louis Gass
The whole purpose and idea of the patriot act is abuse. It rescinds the rights people once had. How can you abuse something that is already so abusive?
The USA is not at War. War is declared by the legislative branch.
That those faculty members didn't take out an ad supporting a plagiarist who got his job under false pretenses?
Clear, Dark Skies
Bin Laden = Goldstein
Woooooosh!
Hope you found a penny while you were looking at the ground.
Although in fairness even the not so subtle tends to be lost in translation.
Hint:
1) Read the grand parent then the parent.
2) Think.
3) Bask in the warm glow of epiphany that only laughter can bring.
4) If you didn't laugh during step three return to step one or just concede my point and join the growing number who do not find me funny.
"...it's a list of what the GOVERNMENT can do..."
That portion is rather important
"It says ANY PERSON. That means anyone, anywhere, at any time."
"...unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger;..." (my emphasis added)
Folks, this is what happens when contributors to Slashdot blindly copy and paste. What you just read was more than just a trivial typo or grammatical error. That was a self-documented mis-understanding. If left un-challenged, it could (and probably would) lead to further mis-understanding.
I am not a lawyer (then again neither are you, just a hunch), but if you really want to formulate an educated opinion, do some research about the Constitution on your own.
U.S. Constitution (Gutenberg.org - HTML)
U.S. Constitution (Gutenberg.org - plain text)
But it's wrong. The supreme court decided this long ago at the end of WWII. It was five to four, and the lead prosecutor at Nuremburg was one of the four. But their decision was clear. It was legal for the US Military to murder prisoners so long as they held a fake trial. (In the Philippines, odds are the prisoners were guilty in large numbers, but if you're not holding real trials, the possibility of their guilt isn't really a factor since it's not something the trial entertained.)
One of the main things wrong with the Patriot act is the ability to unreasonably search without probable cause. Do you want evidence?
Work at a bookstore, or a library. If you do, you will eventually see it. My brother is a manager at Barnes and Noble, and before that at a B.Dalton's. When he was working at B.Dalton, agents came in to the office and, under the Patriot Act, were given access to all of the purchasing information that the company had on record for all of their customers.
Let's state it plainly, now. The essence of the Bill of Rights, as it pertains to unreasonable Search and Seizure, strictly forbids so-called "blanket searches": searching the records of innocent and guilty alike to find evidence of guilt. These protections were put in place to secure our freedom: implicitly our freedom of privacy, and explicitly our freedom to not be harassed by the government on the grounds that we may have possibly committed a crime (they only have yet to figure out what crime that was).
Why, do you ask? Because dictators behave that way. Monarchists behave that way. Every form of Government that restricts the freedom of their people behaves that way. We fought the Revolutionary War to escape the binding power of Monarchists, and the foul practices such as the ones now allowed by the Patriot Act.
And the fact of the matter is, even if no one was arrested because of the search they conducted that day (how could they be arrested? Purchasing a book isn't a crime... and that's another closely related issue), the fact that they performed that search on honest Americans is a crime. It is a crime against the trusting people of America: the people who, more than 200 years ago, constructed this Government for the PROTECTION of our FREEDOM, not merely for our protection: and certainly not for our protection at the expense of our freedom.
Call me a Libertarian if you wish (indeed, I would be honored), but I would rather die a free man than live in Tyranny.
Even the fact that they now have the legal grounds to perform such searches is a travesty and a slap in the face to the motives and purposes of our forefathers. Need I remind any of you about the document that founded the seeds of our Revolution all those years ago?
We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their creator with certain and unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights Governments are instituted, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed.
The fact of the matter is that, even if searches like these weren't going on, the fact that they could is reason enough to banish this law from existence forever. People talk a great deal about Patriotism these days. Perhaps they should wake up and realize that part of Patriotism is standing up for the essence of our beliefs, no matter the cost. A core essence of our beliefs is in the Bill of Rights, and it is not a belief that we should give up on even if to hold true to it is to stand a greater risk of death. Perhaps those who waive the flag around the Patriot Act should consider what the true meaning of Patriotism is.
-Vendal Thornheart
First, you have been trolled by the parent post.
Second, a world government is bad because it is SO distant from the common man. In the United States, according to the Constitution, I have the right to elect those who rule me, on a state and federal level (lets leave the electoral college out of this one for simplicity's sake). However, my life is impacted by globalization organizations like the WTO, which passes laws or rules or resolutions or judgements which by treaty force my elected federal government to change our laws or enact new laws to stay in compliance and avoid punitive action. What say do I have in the WTO, and how exactly did I agree to be ruled by them. I understand how we got here and I understand how some people see a need for such, but I believe that supernational governments like the WTO or the EU or even the UN, disenfranchises citizens like me who are members of a democracy, who have established the federal laws and system by which we agreed to be ruled, and suddenly have found a new layer of government on top of us which is far far out of our reach. All the anti-globalization protesters who show up at WTO meetings and shout outside may have the right to protest if they live in a nation like the US, but they don't have the right to actually vote against actions on that organization.
Supernational organizations with binding authority disenfranchise the common voter in any nation that allows voting, in my opinion. That's one of the reasons I pity my European cousins now living under the EU. I'm just waiting for the American Union to be created so that my national represented officials will have to share an equal vote with not only Canadian and Mexican officials, but officials from the Dominican Republic can also make decisions and vote to affect my life. Thanks but no thanks.
Can I have your credit card number?
Come on, you can trust Jesus.
The heavenly father just needs another small donation in advance of this Sunday. You can post it here if you want. Don't worry, anyone else who takes the numbers will be strung up by their entrails and roasted in Hell for all eternity. Or if you want you can email it to my holiness at d4j3sus6969@hotmail.com. Yes, it's tax deductible.
Don't forget the expiration date, and the little three digit CVN on the back, from the signature block.
A pertinent question, but one that has many answers. Certainly, 'because they're Bad Men who've done Naughty Things' is the one many people will assume, but it doesn't follow.
In several cases, the true answer is much closer to 'because the US offered a bounty on terrorists, and several groups of Bad Men in the middle east kidnapped random people and handed them over to collect the bounty'.
And in other cases, the answer might well be 'because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time', 'because they happened to look like a known terrorist', 'because they have the same name as a known terrorist', 'because the CIA's secret knowledge systems flagged them up as a possible suspect and they didn't have a good enough alibi', 'because other people accused them in order to save themselves', or ultimately 'because they wore a turban and looked funny'.
The result is that you can't assume guilt follows from detainment. You can't assume anything from it. There's a good reason why juries aren't told of previous convictions, and why the press is barred from naming certain suspects for legal reasons. (It's also one of the reasons why my country abolished the death penalty, but let's not go there.) That reason: people make mistakes. We've already seen that some of the Guantanamo detainees were there due to mistakes. How do we know that doesn't apply to any or all of the others, too?
I fact, I'd like to ask another pertinent question: If there's any evidence that these people really are terrorists, why doesn't the US reveal it? Putting them on trial would not only allow justice to be done as well as letting it be seen to be done, it would also act as a deterrent. So the fact that none of these people have even been charged with any crime makes their status all the more questionable.
You're assuming that torture, sorry, interrogation, is used to find the truth. But it's never been a reliable way of getting the truth from people. It's always been far better for getting people to say what you want them to say. A signed confession looks good, even if it was extracted under duress and has no truth in it. (Something else that we know occurred at Guantanamo.)
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
...and there ain't no such thing as the Mafia, either - after all, that's what the Mafiosi always say...
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
They will put this stuff in one bill or split up all the laws in a bunch of smaller bills.
The Milk for Orphans Bill with an ammendment to wiretap everybodies home. What polition will vote down a bill that gives milk to Orphans it would be political sucide if they did. At least the the Patriot Act everthing is out in the open for the public to see and catorgized as such. Unfortunatly most Americans had this odd sience of safety before 9/11 and after that they are in panic mode, and forcing the politions to do this stuff. No I dont agree with the Patriot Act, becuase it doesn't make the US any safter just more complicated.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It sounds like you miss the good old days, and also don't understand why it ever improved.
This IS a real issue, and the only clouding of real issues going on right now is
A) the fact that the Guantanamo issue is seperate but being spoken of in here (which is true, it is a seperate issue and doesn't have a relevant place here) B) the dismissal of the Patriot Act as being some kind of harmless bill. The revision of our core beliefs as a country is not harmless, and the only Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt that exists in my mind is the (quite valid) Fear that this shows a disdain for our basic rights, the very real uncertainty about the possibility of it being expanded (also valid, do a quick Google on the Patriot Act II and the pending vote to extend the original Patriot Act), and the honest and real doubt about the motives behind creating such a blatent violation of our founding principles.
You use FUD as if it's some kind of accusatory finger, as if you can throw a quick label on those who oppose it and they are suddenly wrong. Unfortunately for that appeal to ridicule, the fear, uncertainty, and doubt are not without justification. There are certain beliefs that this country was founded upon: to be a member of this country is to, implicitly (by birth) or explicitly (by immigration and citizenship) value those core beliefs.
When those beliefs are challenged or thrown into upheaval (even in theory only: even if they had never been put into actual practice and were only there for some theoretical future use), we have every right to doubt it, to challenge it, and to fight against it.
Why? Because the Government has broken its moral contract. Our continued stay in the United States implies a moral contract with our Government, one that is partly defined by our explicit contract known as the Constitution and its subsequent Amendments. When those are challenged, without our approval and against the basic beliefs that we hold in our implicit agreement, it gives us every right to question it. To say that we don't have that right is to imply that we do not have the freedom to dictate the terms of our contract: which is to imply that we are living in an Authoritarian society. I didn't sign up for that contract, and no American that believes in our core ideal of freedom would either (simply because they are Diametrically opposed).
So no, the Patriot Act is indeed a real problem, and to me those who raise questions about the Patriot Act are the real Patriots, and should not be dismissed so carelessly by you or anyone else.
-Vendal Thornheart
To take a shot at putting this in fewer words:
1) "The PATRIOT Act isn't abusive."
2) "The PATRIOT Act isn't being used for abuses."
--are two very different statements.
The first is about the ethics of the law itself. The second is about the specifics of its enforcement. Given how some people pretend legality IS ethics, the second statement can become downright tautological--and that is probably all that the cited report is saying.
What people have been protesting is that the PATRIOT Act clearly states conditions and dictates which if enforced will reduce what semblance of freedom and democracy exist in the USA. If some law enforcement personnel have had the decency to not enforce certain aspects of the law, then that is not any credit to the law itself nor the institution advocating it. It merely means that for the time being a few people still have a sense of ethics and therefore aren't doing their job.
This is entirely ignoring issues such as the legality of using Gitmo, and internal nonsense in the law such as gag orders. Guess it's pretty hard to be short-winded when the death of democracy is at issue.
Hey, here's a vaguely related idea...
If Gitmo is legally Cuban territory, then what is stopping Fidel from doing this: Invite Russian/ Chinese/ Iranian/ etc. elite forces to have a little live-fire training exercise, and let them keep half of any territory gained? Any drawbacks, besides the depleted Uranium pollution?
I'm not sure if this might be because of the Patriot Act, but I do know that this is profiling because of 9/11. I used to buy stuff from the states because its cheaper than Canada. When I go to the states, to pick up electronic gadgets (e.g. mp3 player) I get harassed by the US border customs every time I enter. They ask me the same questions over and over again, what is your reason for coming (normal question), where do you work, what is your occupation, when did you buy this car, do you own this car, how long have you owned this car, have you ever been denied entry into the US. Can you turn your car off, give me the keys and open your trunk. This might sound something routine, but my caucasian co-workers don't get bothered at all. The serbian girl who works with me told me that she this has never happened to her, and she has a serbain accent and all. My other colored friends have all told me that they get harassed as well. Well guess what, now I don't buy stuff from the States anymore. A number of us avoid a stop over at the States while travelling by plane. This dumb attitude by the US, doesn't help their already crappy image in Canada.
Then we should be able to get rid of that odious piece of crap legislation that no legislators even read before voting for it.
And you do not talk about being abused by the Patriot Act...
Because it is unpatriotic to do so?
How exactly do you uncover abuses when part of the patriot act is keeping things secret?
No, I didn't RTFA, but come on people. Can we seriously trust the government to find abuses within its bloated self? Especially in DoJ?
Oh right, and let's not forget how incredibly useful the Inspector Generals are.
Wanna know what they do? They audit their own department (internal affairs) to make sure there are no abuses, corruption, etc.
Wanna know what's useless about the way the system is setup? The Inspector General of each department is appointed by the President. So, the same guy who doesn't want people trashing his departments (because he wants everyone to think that he and his administration are doing a great job) appoints the very same person that is supposed to be pointing out their flaws.
And people wonder why the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security got canned after releasing damning reports of how horrible everything was running and how incredibly insecure it was (is)...
Please. Of course they're not going to be able to find abuses. They want to keep their nice, comfortable government jobs, that they can't get fired from. Yet another plus of our government system. Fear for your job = productivity. Total job security = big fat-ass American going to BBQ every weekend, putting off work and lying about things to avoid work.
01100111 01100101 01110100 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110010 01100101 00101110
Guantanamo does not fall under US jurisdiction.
You, my friend, have been utterly lied to if you believe that. I don't blame you: there's a lot of people out there who would want you to believe that, but it's just not the truth. Allow me to provide you with some information about the terms of our lease of Guantanamo Bay (from the U.S. Navy's own website: http://www.nsgtmo.navy.mil/gazette/History_98-64/h ischp3.htm)
Over the leased areas of land and water, comprising the Naval reservation, Cuba consented that during the period of occupation, the United States would exercise "complete jurisdiction and control over and within said areas", including the right to acquire for the public purposes of the United States any land or property therein by purchase or by right of eminent domain with full compensation to the owners thereof. On the other hand, the United States recognized "the continuance of the ultimate sovereignty of Cuba over and above the leased areas". "Ultimate", meaning final or eventual, is a key word here. It is interpreted that Cuban sovereignty is interrupted during the period of our occupancy, since we exercise complete jurisdiction and control, but in case occupation were terminated, the area would revert to the ultimate sovereignty of Cuba.
There you have it, from the Horse's mouth: We have complete and total Jurisdiction and Soverignty over Guantanamo Bay until the expiration of our lease.
Perhaps you want to re-phrase or retract your previous statement.
-Vendal Thornheart
Why is it that we have to wait until something goes wrong before fixing things? Especially considering the relative youth of the PATRIOT Act.
"Well, there aren't any abuses, yet... So everything's A-OK."
If the issue here is the government can abuse power, then aren't there many places that can and do happen. Why do we focus so much on the Patriot Act? It seems like this is the "en vogue" thing right now, but is this really the issue?
The USA-PATRIOT act was signed in the hysterical, paranoid aftermath (within weeks) of the the 9-11-01 attacks. It received broad bipartisan support, naturally. At the time, though, people in podunk towns all across America were deathly afraid that terrorists might fly planes into the local piggly-wiggly or tastee-freez. When a populace is hysterical and paranoid, they'll agree to anything that purports to increase safety or allow law enforcement greater power to identify and lock up the evildoers. Once you've identified a person or group of people as "Evil", you can do anything to them -- even inhuman, unethical things -- because they're not human.
The act allows library and bookstore records to be searched under secret warrant. If such a warrant is served, it is unlawful for the librarian/bookseller to disclose the event or its parameters -- the secrecy must be maintained because you don't want to tip the terrorists off and you can't compromise national security. What if someone's browsing for books about poisons or explosives? This would mean that they're thinking about poisons or explosives, and if they're thinking about these things, they may be thinking about a crime. So what is the secret search trying to find out? It's trying to find people who may be thinking about things that could be related to crime -- thoughtcrime. The Orwellian quality of it is frightening.
The act permits secret warrants to be issued for unannounced secret searches of any and all premises that are the subject of terror-related investigations. Anything can be confiscated or taken, without any public record, as a part of the search. The owner of the premises need not be informed of who did the search (or even that a search took place) or what was taken as a part of the secret investigation. The act basically allows law enforcement/intelligence/covert/homeland security agencies to conduct burglaries of any property in the US without any evidence or charges being brought beforehand. Speculation is all that is required, in addition to the secret sanction of a judge who (as it turns out) is bound by the law to not reveal that the investigation, warrant or subsequent search and seizure of property ever took place.
No-fly and watch lists -- enough has been posted about these already.
To return to my introductory point, so much of what the act allows is so secret that there is no way to determine if abuse has taken place. What's especially alarming is that in the 18 months following the 9-11-01 attacks, sooooo many things (like drug abuse and insurance fraud) were being implicitly associated with terrorism. What were ordinary instances of bad judgement or lawbreaking pre-09-11-01 suddenly became wrapped in terrorist clothes. After passage of the act, its scope seemed to snowball and since we don't have any way of knowing how the growth in scope has been exploited (since its all secret!), we may have unleased a Stasi-style security apparatus under the aegis of USA-PATRIOT.
The whole thing gives me the willies. It's doubleplusungood.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
Here's the KF's Press Release, here's a "12 Key Findings of the survey" booklet, here's a link to the full report, and here's the KF's collection of media reports about their study.
There's lots of other interesting stuff to be found on the Knight Foundation's site too.
what kind of propoganda do they show the kids in highschool these days that makes (some/most of) them spineless apathetic boobs?
I think you can find the answer to that by switching on your TV.
is this really the future of america?
I hope not. Here are some ideas for doing something about it.
Let's remember several things:
1. The Act is written in such a way as to hamper investigation of its results. The built-in secrecy is such that Congress has raised alarms in the past, citing its inability to monitor results of the Act.
2. The truth about an accusation often falls somewhere in the middle of what is alleged and what is finally admitted. It isn't easy to prove something against government in the best cases.3. Whether any evil can be proved to result from tyranny is no excuse for tyranny. Patrick Henry did not declaim: Give me liberty unless tyranny will make me live easier!
The PATRIOT Act is simply unamerican, and no one who loves this country will rest until it is reversed or expired.
If someone told you that you wern't allowed to say 'foo' (and there was no viable reason, other than retaining more than his/her fair share of power) would it matter at all if it wasn't enforced/used? Wouldn't it make you mad that someone had the right to violate your free speech at all?
This is about the principle of the law. It allows governments, at will, to violate your rights. While it may not be immediatly proveable that they are abusing it, the *very fact* that it's there is a threat to americans.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
And in other news today, the Justice Department has reported that it is not abusing it's power. To quote the Fuhrer, uh, I mean, director: "A bunch of people called us to tell us we were abusing the system, but then we looked into it and those people are totally wrong. And even though a couple of those people were sort of right, they totally called the wrong number to complain, so they don't really count."
Guantanamo is outside of the US, so it's not officially under US juridiction.
While Guantanamo isn't part of the US, by treaty it is US jurisdiction. The only other party that would conceivably have jurisdiction would be Cuba but if Cuba were to try to assert such authority the Bush admin would have a heart attack.
FalconShould there be a Law?
They claimed that they couldn't change my address from my home address to a billing service address because of the patriot act. They wouldn't give any further justification, and refused to send my bills to any other location.
I called back and got another operator, who took my new billing information and would change it. She didn't.
I called again and finally got an operator who would change my billing address to a PO box for a bill payment service.
I don't know if this really has anything to do with the patriot act or not (requiring a home address?), but it sure did piss me off and cause me a lot of trouble.
Congress enacted USAPATRIOT because they were told it was just a modification and update of existing statutes.
Since then, as more information has come in, Alaska Republican Don Young has said "Everybody voted for it [the PATRIOT Act] but it was stupid, it was what you call 'emotional voting'...because we didn't follow it through, we didn't study it. I say it's the worst piece of legislation we've ever passed."
Congress didn't have time to read and analyze the whole thing. If they had, they might have noticed that without a judge's approval the authorities can show a "National Security Letter" to your bank, your library, or your psychiatrist and force them to turn over records without giving you a chance to contest the search. That's section 215.
It is provisions such as that which led Bob Barr to say "We can't say we'll let government have these unconstitutional powers in the Patriot Act because they will never use them. Besides, who knows how many times the government has used them? They're secret searches."
Newt Gingrich's comment "I strongly believe Congress must act now to rein in the Patriot Act" was aimed more at the abuse of USAPATRIOT for non-terrorism-related investigations.
Idaho Republican "Butch" Otter has tried to block section 213, which provides for secret searches.
Even the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee can't get straight information about how the new powers are being used. Sensenbrenner said ""I can't answer that because the Justice Department has classified as top-secret most of what it's doing under the Patriot Act. The burden will be on the Justice Department and whomever is attorney general at that time to convince Congress and the president to extend the Patriot Act or modify it. But because of the fact that everything has been classified as top-secret, the public debate is centering on (the act's) onerousness."
If you want to defend USAPATRIOT from unfair criticism, you can point out that people are blaming it for completely separate problems. The "enemy combatant" doctrine under which people are locked away without charges or public evidence is distinct from USAPATRIOT. Ditto the prosecution of Brett Bursey for holding a "No War For Oil" sign, and Homeland Security agents being sent to arrest Texas Democrats.
...we're started abbreviating acronyms!
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
"You liberal hippy pot smokers"
I was right there with you riding to glory till you threw the "pot smokers" in. The rest of te post was sweet though!!!
If you really want to talk about the Patriot Act, then let me be so bold as to suggest that even if it isn't being abused now it will eventually be abused and probably not even against terrorists. Recall how the RICO statures were intended to be used against organized crime. Nowadays the Feds will threaten RICO prosecutions against just about anybody to force a favorable plea or seek harsher sentences then the normal laws will provide.
Reminds me of what the Volusia county sherif's office was doing in Florida several years ago, how they used RICO to seize people's private property just because they thought the person was suspicious. The only way these people could get their property back was to hire a lawyer and sue, which could cost more than what was seized.
Might I even be so bold as to suggest that I don't really trust the Federal Government
Agreed 100%. Don't really trust state government either, but at least the closer the government is the more responsive it is to the citizens.
Why does the Federal Government need to step in and take yet more power away from the states? The role of the Federal Government should be to assist the states -- not bypass them. In any case you know that power is going to be abused in the future.... we've already had cases of the Patriot Act being used in drug cases. Hardly what Congress had in mind when they passed it I'd say.
The federal government ignores what the US Constitution says and that the Founding Fathers specifically wanted a small and limited government. As typically happens bureaucracies want more and more power, and so do congress critters along with presidents. That's why I supported Michael Badnarik in 2004. Bet not many people recall what Ralph Nader did when congress was working on the PATRIOT Act, he said he'd give to any charity $10,000 the congess person chose if they could answer correctly a quiz on what was in the act. Not one of them took him up on it, they couldn't because none of them read it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Acutually the Constitution referrs to "persons" not citizens. Citizenship is mentioned in the requirements for holding office etc.
In fact the word citizen doesn't appear at all in the Bill of Rights.
Here's an example where the government is trying to deport a canadian who was caught with marijuana when he was 15 years old. http://www.atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2005-03-03/ news_feature.html
Though I haven't sat and read through it I got the book several years ago after a few friends recommended it. After I got it I realized it had to do, at least in part, with the Christian apocalypse and lost interest in reading it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
actually you ignored the word "fundamental". Fundamental means part of the foundation or basis. AGREE or DISAGREE: the right of due process is more fundamental than, the right of states not to be sued. But both are in the bill of rights.
Get it?
The right to hold slaves is in the constitution somehwere. So is the right to refuse to quarter government troops.
Are you saying these two rights are equally fundamental to civil liberties?!
Also, how do you equate Strossen's "doesn't necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty" with "can be ignored"? Courts won't ignore it even if Strossen does...
I meta-moderate regularly, and I have to say that I think it is more difficult that moderating, unless I read the original article and thread. Sure sometimes it is obvious, but when something is moderated as a Troll or Flamebait, I have to make sure I know for sure that it wasn't before I'll meta-moderate against it, which means that unless I know the issue cold, I have to go back and read the article and the posts, and the other posts around it that form context. And even then I may not know enough to be sure that the post isn't a cleverly crafted falsehood, so I have to pass.
I've always seen that slashdot is too US-centric. But this discussion makes me sick.
As far as I can see, to slashdoters, non-american citizens are not even humans beings. They have no rights and nobody should care if US goverment abuse of those people.
The foundation of the US Constitution is the understanding that individuals will abuse power, and that government power must be limited to prevent these abuses.
No amount of "reform" will prevent erosion of freedom, given a sufficient level of gov power, as power has a very powerful, inherent positive feedback.
This is indeed what has happened to the US. The US Constitution isn't much of a barrier to the expansion of gov power.
Lew
The use of, definition of, "Liberal" has changed quite a bit. The earliest liberal I know of was Thomas Jefferson and to him it meant a small and limited government. Though they didn't last long what with the Terror going on, some of the leaders of the French Revolution were the same as was, was his name Pasqual in Corsica?
FalconShould there be a Law?
You have nothing to hide by the rules of today, but if the rules change would you still.
That is what I am afraid isn't my actions, but the giving the power to judge my actions to others, knowing their rules may change. The unpredictable nature of that and the ability for it to impede my life, through no action of my own, is worth defending against.
Our founding fathers knew the evil that their purposes would be used for, but they found those evils less than the evil of abuse that happens when you let a system limit individuals.
It is hard to say since all of our found fathers were traitors. They were British Citizens, they revolted against king and country for freedom.
Our lives are easy in the States. But we should not forget the struggle that made it so, and we would be fools to surrender freedoms, we did not win, but we enjoy, just to avoid hardship and struggle.
Your argument has changed you say you have nothing to hide, nor do I, but you are may have something to hide if the criteria changes. So that is something major.
I have not pulled any scare tactic never once did I say or lay any problem with the Patriotic act. The scare tactic is being played on you and me.
I would be for full disclosure if it were a two way street. If you could look up the information held on your self and verify it.
Have you ever suffered from a mistake in the paperwork for any government document you have ever filed. I have with my drivers license change of address form, it was quite frustrating but was easy to fix. If an agency can mess up a form that has check boxes and OCR character scanning blocks, how can you make sure that conversational context, or even pronouncitational misunderstanding won't happen, and without two way disclousre how would you fix it. The problem with large databases of such nuanced data, like conversations is context is lost quickly and the likely hood of error is much greater than the mistake on my change of address form.
If you trust your government to always work in your best interest, to not make mistakes fine, would you trust that for your children, their children and the future generations. Because that is the legacy we leave. I want my family until the end of time to have the freedoms I have had and that my ancestors struggled for. I will not let a bunch of terrorists scare my fellow country men into destroying their way of life.
In my opinion, if we strangle our liberties with silly laws now, Bin Laden won, and we lost full stop. We may be alive and living in nice houses but we destroyed our future and we starve our children of liberty just to feel safe. The Patriot Act on its own is not evil, but its precedent and its unknown future use can be.
I repeat again
"Give me liberty or give me death"
And you would be a traitor to throw away liberty in your fear of death.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
Think for a second. Forget whether or not the bill of rights applies to their situation, and ask yourself: Why did we pass the bill of rights? What is the value behind it? When a suspect is so obviously caught red-handed doing a bad thing, just what is the point of giving them due process, instead of lynching them on-the-spot?
Those questions shouldn't be hard to answer. If they are hard, then you're a American poseur, comrade.
But assuming you can answer them, you will see that all the reasons for those principles applying to American citizens, apply to everyone else too. The people at Gitmo should have trials, not because it's the law, but because it's how Americans should want their government to behave. Alas, most of us don't really want it anymore, because we lost the cold war with USSR and they assimilated us into their culture. (Am I joking? Is that tongue-in-cheek? I don't even know anymore.)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Banned guns will only mean criminals will have them leaving law abiding citizens defenseless. From THE TRUTH ABOUT GUNS, CRIME AND VIOLENCE
Guns make it easier to kill and injure people. Therefore, it is obvious to the most casual observer that reducing the prevalence of guns will reduce the prevalence of death and injury.
But, what about people who aren't just "casual observers"? As with many issues, if a person cares enough about the issues of violence and liberty to actually make the effort of getting all the relevant facts about gun possession, things are no longer so obvious. And there are a lot of really technical facts related to the costs and benefits, to us all, of private citizens possessing firearms.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Just 45 days after the September 11 attacks, with virtually no debate, Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act. Many parts of this sweeping legislation take away checks on law enforcement and threaten the very rights and freedoms that we are struggling to protect. For example, without a warrant and without probable cause, the FBI now has the power to access your most private medical records, your library records, and your student records... and can prevent anyone from telling you it was done.
The Department of Justice is expected to introduce a sequel, dubbed PATRIOT II, that would further erode key freedoms and liberties of every American.
The ACLU and many allies on the left and right believe that before giving law enforcement new powers, Congress must first re-examine provisions of the first PATRIOT Act to ensure that is in alignment with key constitutional protections.
http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID =12126&c=207
Content goes here
Retired from software... maybe. Sort of.
-Yndrd1984
The only one to vote against it in the Senate, in the House Ron Paul and if I recall right one other person voted against it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Kenneth Lay can't find violations at Enron
OJ is still looking for his wife's killer
Now, the Justice department can't find violations at Justice department
Someone call Nixon's speechwriter...
The criminal justice system should be about justice, and the only justice for a murder victim is for the murderer to be put to death.
And what if the person just executed was found to of had been innocent afterall? Is it still justice? If that's justice to you then I don't want your form of justice, which is more like injustice.
Ooh, btw are you for or against abortion? Seems to me most antichoice people are for the death penalty. Can anyone say "Contradiction"?
FalconShould there be a Law?
One everyday consequence of the Patriot Act is that your government is making your bank spy on you. I recently moved some money from a money market account that I have with one bank to my checking account at another bank. I then wired the money from that account to make an investment. (It was easier for me to wire money from my checking account). I got a call on my answering machine from the bank saying that it was about my checking account. I figured they just wanted to be sure it was me who was wiring that money, not some thief with my drivers license and bank card. So I called them back. The lady at the bank started asking all sorts of questions -- who I worked for, where the money I had deposited came from, what the "business purpose" of my investment was, etc. I asked what this was all about and she said it was required by the Patriot Act.
You have no privacy any more.
What about the innocent who was executed?
FalconShould there be a Law?
It's not something over nothing. If someone has power over you that he should not have, but decides not to use it for a while, does that mean he should be able to keep it?
There's always the threat of not abuse, but use, which will be hanging over our heads. We have less rights as Americans while this law is in place.
It's gotta go.
Thanks.
It wasn't until I kicked back to read my initial post and fired up some very serious turboponic (I favor legalization of pot but this stuff might have to stay illegal) that I realized a good hippy bashing wasn't complete with out a pot reference.
Of course by then I was so baked that I didn't realize that certain turbo enhanced edits I made to an otherwise tight and consistent post could now be construed as trollish or even worse that somehow I was circuitously making the point that maybe certain US forces and contractors might not be entitled to protection under the parents interpretation of the Geneva Convention (I know, there should probably be a comma in that sentence somewhere).
I would like to disavow that and any other misinterpretation of my original post that I would consider anti US.
Again, thanks.
On the night of the 2004 election, when I heard that you re-elected George W. Bush to be your leader, after four years of what he had done, I thought to myself "The american citizens deserve everything that happens to them."
... maybe you don't realize that the 'whiners' are probably people who did not vote for Bush. Yes he won, 51% to 48%, but that's hardly a mandate. We are a very divided nation right now, and a 2% change in the vote is all it would take to make the US, in your eyes I guess, a nation less deserving of bad things.
-G
www.pixelstatic.com
That is what we have been told but if you were accused of the same or any other crime then thrown in the clink, you'd expect to have the opportunity to give your side of the story. At the core of a democracy is that all people have that right.
If I were falsely accused of murder, I'd want the prosecution to be seeking the death penalty. I'd want the high-priced defense, and the automatic appeals. I'd want people to think they have to be "really certain" before finding me guilty.
For me personally, I'd rather face death than to be locked up for years. I was like that before I had a bad accident and am even more that way now. I'd rather be dead than to loose my freedom. I realize however that's just me and am otherwise against the death penalty. Just as many of the USA's Founding Fathers believed I believe it's better to let 10 guilty people go free than the falsely confict one innocent.
FalconShould there be a Law?
[couldn't] the prosecution of terrorism [] be left to the State Government(s) of whichever state was targeted using laws already on the books? If we captured the "20th hijacker" from 9/11 why couldn't he be indicted and prosecuted for about 2,800 counts of murder in the first degree and conspiracy under New York State law?
Yes you could prosecute them various crimes under state law. But that's not the point of the Patroit Act.
Criminal prosecutions require individualized suspicion before any evidence can be gathered. And criminal prosecutions require that a criminal act has ALREADY TAKEN PLACE. While planning to commit mass murder and taking at least one step toward implementing the plan IS a crime, the rules are such that some number of crimes actually go to completion before there's enough probable cause to even start an investigation.
Law enforcement is not so much to prevent crime as to deter it, by raising the risk to exceed the reward and removing from circulation those who repeatedly commit crimes anyhow. But the mechanisms to suppress crime can also be used for tyranny. A runaway government would do enormously more damage to the citizens than any concevable crime wave, and governments tend to run away. So strong limits were placed on what the government can do to fight crime. A significant number of robberies, rapes, murders, extortions, frauds, and other bad things result. But it's still a good tradeoff - even if you're dealing with organized crime.
But it's NOT a good tradeoff when dealing with a war. Armies marching, bombs detonating, surprise attacks, organized violence on a massive scale, repeating until it is forcibly stopped or the whole country is captured, subdued, and added to a foreign government's assets. Then you're already dealing with the downside of runaway government. So you do the best you can to fight back. That includes preemptive information collection and preemptive use of force on the basis of it, even when it's incomplete and error-prone.
War isn't the same as crime - even organized crime. The "kingpins" are governments and their high officials - who may be psychopathic. The bulk of the people you actually have to fight may be conscripts - and even volunteers may just be law-abiding citizens.
The "laws of war" are an attempt to minimize the damage to the people (and their land and resources) who were sucked into it. They work by setting up rules for "civilized" warfare - where torture, germs, poisons, and disguising soldiers as civilians are forbidden. But if one side uses these things and the other side doesn't, the side that does has an advantage. How do you convince anyone to abide by the rules in the face of this? By making it more costly to break them. So the laws of war ONLY apply to combatants who abide by them. Show insignia, use only conventional weapons (many of which - including assault rifles - are intended only to incapacatate rather than kill), don't use noncombatants as human shields, don't torture those you capture. Then your own people will likely be treated Geneva Convention style in turn. Even by non-signatories. Even if rogue personnel occasionally break the rules (but if caught are tried and punished for it).
The problem with terrorism is that it is neither crime nor war. Terrorists aren't soldiers: No direct responsibility to a government (or proto-government), no clear chain of command from an institution that can negotiate a peace, no visible insignia, hiding among civilians, kidnap and torture, attacks directed at non-combatant civilian populations, etc. It isn't ordinary crime: Blowing up skyscrapers, poisoning or nuking a city, and the like are far different from, say, arson for profit or murder for revenge.
With ideological motivations and an expectation of a heavenly reward, the combatants can't be swayed by the cost-benefit tradeoffs used in either law enforcement or "civilized war".
Terrorism is somewhere in between. And the tradeoffs in fighting it may
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Qui custodiet ipsos custodes?
Who watches the watchmen?
I have a problem this fact: the PATRIOT act abbrogates the right to a speedy trial. Previous constitutional protections guarenteed that a person could be held for only a very limited time without a trial, and they must be charged with a crime. Under the Patriot Act the executive branch can, at their own discretion, detain a person for an indefinate period of time. The only legal requirement is that the President considers them a national security risk, but he can keep detainees a secret, and there is no judicial review of the process. In fact, he doesn't even have to accuse them of any crimes or place them legally under arrest, just "disappear" them. This sounds like something I would expect in a banana republic, not in the USA. The fact that this frightening aspect hasn't been used so far is not reassuring, and in any case, if a few political trouble makers just 'disappeared', how would we even know?
I find it ironic that conservates, who during the Waco and Ruby Ridge episodes were ranting about the evil Janet Reno threatening their civil liberties, have rolled over on the very rights the claimed to care about. Not that liberals are much better - after all, the only senator to vote against the PATRIOT act was Russ Fiengold.
-G
www.pixelstatic.com
Now, you can claim it's not a deterrent all you want, but how does a dead criminal commit crimes?
They don't, but then again if a murder knew they'd be executed then they may figure they should take out as many people as they could.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The NY Times had a great article yesterday on how the Bush administration is doing everything it can to manipulate the media and public opinion through carefully managed propogada campaigns. So color me surprised when the Justice Department can't find any abuses of the PATRIOT act that just happen to give the DOJ incredible Orwellian powers.
When U.S. Attorneys clamed that one, quite a few judges asked the very important question, if not U.S. jurisdiction, whose is it?
Judges weren't going to let them pull that shit, it isn't cuban jurisdiction, it is a U.S. facility, so pretty much it has to be U.S. jurisdiction. There has to be rule of law at the facility. The courts were not going to allow the military to create its own little countries where there is no law.
This type of idea, i.e. little pieces of U.S. soil outside of the U.S. is well established in embassies, so why not here.
Then why haven't they been shot? Perhaps because they would either violate the Geneva Convention or they would be committing first degree murder under civilian law. It is that cut and dry.
And for the record, activities that went on prior to the adoption of the Geneva Convention (Oct 1950) should not be held as example where the Convention may be ignored.
What about "the Abu Ghairab of Brooklyn?"
c .html m ain564189.shtml
- day-feb04.htm
http://nydailynews.com/front/story/282716p-242172
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/21/attack/
What about the mass roundups of immigrants that occured in 2002?
http://www.notinourname.net/detentions/solidarity
These are just to name a few...
Do you trust the DOJ??? Seriously, it aggravates me because people's lives have been apart because of the legislation and accompanying anti-arab paranoia.
Supplant EU for USA and you can see why the rest of the world is a bit pissed. Seriously, america has gone into countries and f*cked them up for many many years. Look at what the USA is trying to do to poor chavez RIGHT NOW. Or do you really think that the USA has no "world power" or "wolrd influence". I would rather an organization be thinking Globally - as in for the benifit of all mankind - then locally, as in the benifit of one country like we have now.
Who do you think a major interest in the WTO is? America. Do you seriously think those WTO protesters are right wing?? whats the name of this universe you live in...
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
What are the sources for your assertions other than statements of the Bush Administration, and why should we believe either them or you?
Tech Public Policy stuff
http://www.personsofinterest.org/synopsis.html Very interesting. Just hope you're not Middle Eastern.
...especially considering that parts of the PATRIOT Act consisted of the laundry list of expanded powers law enforcement agencies couldn't get out of Congress previously.
Don't be surprised if most of the PATRIOT Act is there because of the political opportunism and power grabs.
And unlike the headline/snippet, the argument here shouldn't be about confirmed abuses anyway. Expanded federal power is almost always a bad idea because concentrated power WILL be abused. That it might not have yet proves nothing.
Yes, after a lot of fervent slash-dotting, Al Capone turned himself in. Once he realised he was doing bad things and not just being biased and inefficient, that is.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Air is good for you. Marshmallows are 90% air so they must be good for you.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
I'm for the concept of the "death penalty" - yet I never thought it was for reasons of either "retribution" or "prevention". I've never bought into that idea that putting folks to death for murder will scare others into not doing the same thing. (Most murderers act suddenly/swiftly because of intense anger. They're not thinking rationally when it happens. Still others do it because they're simply not quite right in the head. Insanity perhaps, or just an unwillingness to work with the rest of society and our "rules" of conduct.)
My only reason for the death penalty is because I feel that when someone reduces themselves to the level of an animal, and casts aside the *human* ability to think on a higher level than that - they deserve to be treated like one. When a wild animal goes on a rampage and starts killing innocent people, we put it down. Yet, when a human being decides he wants to act the same way - we have all of these issues?
Is it really an 'abuse' when it's supposed to be used for dictatorship purposes?
Which also begs the question, is it really corruption when governments have always been there for the purpose of doing these things? Or, why do some people use the phrase "misuse of the DMCA" when corporations use it to exercise totalitarianism?
THAT'S WHAT IT'S THERE FOR.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
Even if one accepts this argument, it doesn't justify the way most of the people held prisoner by the US are being treated, because most of them are certainly NOT terrorists. Aside from the fact that an unknown percentage seem to be innocent bystanders, most of the people captured in Afghanistan and held at Guantanamo bay were Taliban SOLDIERS. I have no sympathy whatever for their cause, but they were part of an organized military force. Here is a review of the Taliban forces as of October, 2001 by Jane's. They may not have been organized in quite the same way as most armies, but by any reasonable standard this was an organized military force, not a bunch of terrorists. However much we may dislike the Taliban, the fact is that they were the de facto government of Afghanistan and had armed forces, most of whom had nothing to do with terrorist operations.
Why do you curse people in such way? On your page "Debunking the Buck Act", it is unqualified and unfounded comments. Your nom' de guerre is trivial: Ronald {emm} Wilcox. I suppose you think the "M." is a middle name intial, not to contribute any witness to any text someone walking in a true name may refute in the mouths of two witnesses. What is your true name, or do you hide behind a person
7 85486 cures your multiple-personality disorder.
Regarding the rest of "your" Department of Defense prescribed content, you are one of those types that feels the need to comment on every topic met to ears in the wind with unsubstantiated opinion that does no more to help anyone than it does in wasting someone's time to read the text.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=140662&cid=11
-Gregory
Oh come on, everybody knows that the Chinese government operates in their own interest, while the US government operates in the interest of the people.
Now excuse me while I go throw up.
You took his stuff. You pound him.
With apologies to Ernest Lawrence Thayer
The outlook wasn't brilliant for the student march that night;
The quads were filled with rent-a-cops and not a picket sign in sight;
With Cooney busted for possestion, and Barrows, the riot laws;
A sickly silence fell upon the supporters of The Cause.
A straggling few got up to go, in deep despair. The rest
Clung to that hope which "springs eternal in the human breast;"
They thought, If only Gay Concern could be rallying that mob,
We'd put up even money now, with Concern at the quads.
But Flynn preceded Concern, as did also Jimmy Blake,
And the former was a no-good and the latter was a fake;
Forlorn, that stricken multitude discouraged by the odds,
For there seemed but little chance of Concern's getting to the quads.
But Flynn let fly a bottle, to the wonderment of all,
And Blake, the much despised, set a bomb off in the hall,
And when the dust had lifted and men saw what had occurred,
Jimmy beaned the Dean of Students, while the bombed out library burned.
Then from five thousand throats and more there rose a lusty yell,
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell,
A Harley roared up from the street, and was tearing up the sod,
And Concern, Gay Concern, was advancing through the quads.
There was ease in Concern's manner as he wheeled into his place;
There was pride in Concern's bearing and a smile on Concern's face,
And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly gave a nod,
No stranger in the crowd could doubt `twas Gay Concern at the quads.
Ten thousand eyes were on him as he gunned the throttle loud;
Five thousand tongues applauded as he signaled to the crowd.
And while the nervous officers grabbed the night sticks from their hips,
Defiance gleamed in Concern's eye, a sneer curled Concern's lip.
And now a can of tear gas came hurtling through the air,
And Concern stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there,
Close by the haughty Concern, the can unheeded sped --
"That ain't my style," said Concern. "Break it up!" the coppers said.
From the streets, black with people, there went up a muffled roar,
Like the beating of the storm waves on a stern and distant shore.
"Kill them; kill the pigs!" shouted someone from the mob;--
And Concern guns his engine, and wipes-out on the lawn.
With a fist of protest shaking, Concern's visage shone;
He jumped back on his Harley; he bade the march go on;
The Harley takes off through the quads, 'till it hits a vicious bump;
And Concern sails through the air, landing smack upon his rump.
"Fascists!" he screeched, "Capitalist, Imperialist, Racist, Sexist pigs!"
"If I must I'll ride a tricycle, but we'll have this march - you dig?"
They saw his face grow stern and cold; they saw his muscles strain,
And they knew that Gay Concern wouldn't lose that bike again!
The sneer is gone from Concern's lip; his teeth are clenched in hate;
He sniffs with cruel derision as he lets go of the brake.
And now he throws it into first, the clutch he now he lets go,
And now the air is shattered as the bike takes off - alone.
Oh! somewhere there's a campus town where they drum and chant all night.
They protest for the rain forest, and demand the wart-hog's rights.
And somewhere bongs are being passed, and somewhere radicals shout;
But there is no joy at Old State U -- Gay Concern has Wiped Out!
Mod me offtopic if you wish, but...
Is anyone else sick of hearing these people called "detainees"? One of the things that disgusts me the most about the current US administration is the feeling that it's run my a marketing company. Detainee just sounds so much nicer than PRISONER, doesn't it? Just like enemy combatant sounds better than ILLEGAL PRISONER.
I even heard a report on NPR this morning where the PRISONERS at that maximum security prison riot/breakout in the Phillipines were referred to as "detainees". The practice seems to be spreading, and I for one think it's double-plus ungood.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
If you try and find out about President Bush's arrest and conviction record you have a hard time. The CIA is doing a purge of de-classified information, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=4535175
If you research the Bush Family history back a few generations where Congress had to intervene because of War Profiteering (seeling goods to the other side of a war we were fighting), and some of the original moneys to build some "synthetic fuel" plants in Germany that were later made famous for other reasons. You can see that is is easier although time consuming to cover your tracks and sanitize history.
This presidency has the reputation of being the most closed with regard to sharing information. That is our publicly elected representative does not want us to interfere with his proper running of government. But aren't we suposed to audit his business dealing?
My point is that with the new powers given in the Patriot act, it may be hard to get to the evidence of abuse as that would be classified information and not availble possibly even with the use of the Freedom of Information act powers.
If all else fails, shred the evidence, whoever they are, after all we don't want to look bad on camera do we. Is my collar straight? Smile
An effort is underway to require Congress to read laws in their entirety, and then allow a 7 day "waiting period" for public inspection and comment, before being able to pass them. The effort is being organized by Downsize DC. Currently the effort is in the research stage, so the website lacks any detailed information. One should subscribe to the mailing list to get updates.
And w/the PA in full bloom you never will:)
I agree with you completely.
Note that I wasn't trying to support the administration's arguments with respect to the holding of prisoners - with which I disagree on several points - just to explain what I think is their reasoning, suplemented with some of my own.
I'm especially concerned about holding prisoners indefinitely, in an offshore facility, with no access to compulsory legal process to determine whether they are being held improperly or otherwise whether and under what terms they should be released.
IMHO the simplified decision-making process for the disposition of war prisoners is justified, to the extent it is at all, by the need to avoid spending resources on this process in mid-engagement. Once they're removed from the scene of battle and sitting in a long-term holding facility there's no further reason to hold off on determining, on a case-by-case process, whether holding each of them is proper.
And since one purpose having the judicial branch do the processing is as a check on misbehavior, errors, and overzealousnes by executive branch officeholders, letting the executive branch deny access to the judicial branch indefinitely is improper.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
discussing yet another government whitewash. So, how many people are going to vote out the incumbents over this? Or any other abuse? One...maybe two percent? Nobody is thinking about the PATRIOT act when they might be able to vote themselves another tax cut. Tell me. Where does the blame really lay???
What?
Who cares about the Patriot Act?
I was distributing bomb making info before it passed, and still do.
I was devoted to the overthrow of any govt that ignores its own constitution before the Patriot Act was passed, and I still demand the overthrow of the US Govt. I hope to overthrow the govt and restore the US Constitution through electrions, but if they start executing and imprisoning my candidates, then things will get violent. (Of course, my last 2 presidential candidates were arrested - Michael Badnarik and Rick McClaren - so we're getting really close.)
Anyone want instructions on blowing something up? If so, eMail me. I've got a 4.5 Gig DVD of explosives information in PDF format that I've compiled.
An act of disobedience a day keeps the tyrant away, but if that doesn't work, there's always 7.62x39 and C4.
Andy Out!
okay, everyone lay down and die to protest the patriot act. Give me a break!
This is a different type of war that must be fought through somewhat unconventional tactics. Keep in mind that the enemy has far less restrictions than our soldiers do, and the states that support terrorism have far fewer laws and much, much, much lower expectations of political correctness. There's nothing wrong with holding our government to high standards. But there's something wrong with losing this war and the best way to win is to make it very difficult for terrorists to operate. Fight fire with fire!
I think it is fine to accept some restrictions on some activity during times of war. I'm sorry if you think I'm a traitor for having this viewpoint. I'd would just hate to see these islamic idiots hurt us again and I have no problem giving the government additional tools to win this war we're in. Who do you think is against the patriot act most of all? Terrorists. Think about that.
We don't need proof. We just need a reason to protest the Bush administration! Haven't you figured this out yet?
The so-called Patriot Act is definitely being abused. I have been placed on the no-fly list. Because it is secret, I can not find out who placed me on it or why and there are no procedures to challenge the listing.
I'm pretty sure I'm there in retaliation for political activities that are covered under the First Amendment, but the Bill of Rights is completely meaningless under the Bush Regime.
because for the vast majority of the public, terrorism has not affected their lives in any way
Some media outlet (I forget who) pointed out that, adjusted for population, Iraq has a 9/11 every week. Helps to put things in perspective.
The potential for abuse by government officials is simply too great
That and it would be nice if they would increase real security, like securing hazardous chemical factories and searching more cargo containers, instead of mainly hassleing guys named Mohammed at airports while allowing a WASP kid to smuggle in bomb parts repeatedly onto airplanes to prove how weak secuity is.
I hesitate to wade into this argument, but I feel compelled to point out here that the argument about "deterrent" vis-à-vis the death penalty is not that it deters the original perpetrator from going on to commit further crimes, but rather that the understanding that certain crimes carry the death penalty would deter would-be criminals from committing said crimes in the first place. Consequently, simply in logical terms, bringing up the executed party as proof of deterrence is irrelevant and misleading.
Just my ¥2 here...
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
I would have sworn that it was in /. that I read about an individual of some public awareness (sorry that I can't remember who; a penalty for growing elderly) who was not allowed to board a plane because of a requet for some irrelevant (to him) information which had never been required before. I ewxpected to see the matter brought up under this topic.
The individual asked why and was told that it was required by the Patriot Act. He asked to see what law? No one at the airport could tell him. Afterward he tried to pursue that matter through legal channels, but was told that the law requiring that information was secret.
So, not only does the Patriot Act prohibit telling individuals that they are under surveillance as a consequence of that Act, it contains material that prevents telling affected individuals what law they are running afoul of in their lives.
We will be hurt again we will be hurt from now until the end of time. And it is how we respond to the hurt that defines the war. The question is what is America is it a collection of people or is it the ideals on which that society is founded on? I like both but without the ideals that society would fall apart.
We have large problems in the world from our policies. We would stop more terrorism by not supporting terrorists or terrorist regimes. Our support of Iraq and Bin Laden in the past is from our history of Real Politic. And it causes problems that we are now facing. The solution is not in internal review of the law of America but a review of our external policies.
The change is slow as was the effects of our past policies, but we live in a democracy our political memory is short, the terrorists who have attacked us live in regimes where the political memory is longer. We are suffering for our past mistakes, to minimise the future problems we need to work with cause and affect here.
I am currently living outside of the states with the job I am on. And I am seeing just how amazing our freedoms are. How precious they are, and how they are worth fighting for. Give me liberty or give me death was a call to arms, by Patrick Henry and I quote it again here because we are being called to arms but losing liberty in the process. I believe we should be called to arms and fight the threat to our culture and society. I believe we can win the war on terrorism. But if we damage our culture in the process will it be truly be a win.
My personal opinion is economically our currency is used by most of the world and we are economically in control of most of the legal processes. We should start adding states to the map and just officially run the whole place. But that is my silly opinion on the matter.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
Who said lay down and die.
I mean not to be afraid to die and fight for ourselves while keeping our rights and liberties.
Something called courage, recognising the danger and standing up to it. Not letting it change our ideals out of fear is one part of it but the other part is to act to stop it.
You say fight fire with fire some would argue that is what the defined terrorist groups have been doing. Fighting our clandestine involvement in their local affairs with said violence on our shores.
The best way to win this war is to give the terrorists something else to occupy their time. But I answer that in another post.
I just want to see Americans have some good old fashion courage again not this pansy yellow bs where we cave in on ourselves destroy our ideals and let the government get on with protecting us.
If we are at war why is our armed forces having recruiting troubles. Something is wrong if Americans don't have the courage to fight for their country, and it usually is the government has something wrong either in their propoganda or approach to policy. We can win this war but to do it will not be through laws and controls on people but through actually attacking the terrorists and not our ex allies in the region.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
When a wild animal goes on a rampage and starts killing innocent people, we put it down.
Then why is Bush still around?
The Nurenberg trials established the principle that you can prosecute grunts for committing war crimes even if they were only obeying orders. But the Taliban grunts weren't committing war crimes; they were simply resisting the American invasion. (What they did to get into power was a separate story; it's not like they were nice people, but the way you deal with war crimes is to hold trials.)
A large part of the motivation for the Geneva conventions is that governments agree to treat each other's PoWs in a civilized fashion in the hopes that their own PoWs will be treated in a civilized fashion, as opposed to throwing them in tiger cages and subjecting them to constant beatings and torture the way the Vietnamese did to US PoWs. Now that the Bush/Cheney Administration has declared that their policy is to disappear PoWs and stick them anonymously into tiger cages, beat them, freeze them, water-board them, and do various things on both sides of most definitions of "torture", and reinforced it by the way they've treated random detainees in Iraq, they've endangered any future US soldiers caught by anybody for the next few decades. It's shameful and Un-American.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'm sorry but there is nothing new here, you were just unaware of it. Banks and retailers have been required to report certain transactions, or patterns of transactions, for years. IIRC it all started decades ago in an attempt to find organized crime and drug dealers.
Similarly your air traverl has been monitored for decades. People who fit certain travel profiles have been stopped and interviewed. Happened to a coworker in the 80s who did on-site tech support and did a lot of flying with short stays.
Each generation thinks that they discovered that the government is spying on the public, it is very much like each generation thinking they discovered kinky sex. The truth is that each generation merely starts out ignorant of what went on before.
Concentrate more on promoting than on demoting. The real goal here is to find the juicy good stuff and let others read it. Do not promote personal agendas. Do not let your opinions factor in. Try to be impartial about this. Simply disagreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it down. Likewise, agreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it up. The goal here is to share ideas. To sift through the haystack and find needles. And to keep the children who like to spam Slashdot in check.
Whoa, hang on there. First of all, the UCMJ was created simply to provide a single code of regulation for all branches of the military. It happened shortly after the DoD was created. Military law has existed in the U.S. since the Revolutionary War.
Second, it's an extremely misleading generalization, at best, to say that the Constitution does not apply to military members outside of U.S. territory. Parts of the Constitution have territorial bounds, but most of it does not. No amendment in the Bill of Rights has a territorial boundary, and you'll note that the Fifth Amendment specifically excludes military personnel in time of war-- not necessary if the document as a whole did not apply to them. Also, please note that the the UCMJ is Federal law, enacted by Congress under its Constitutional power to regulate the military.
There has been a great deal of debate in civilian and military courts about how the Constitution applies to military personnel but there has never been any question that it does. In fact, much of that debate seems to have been rooted in the wording of various articles and clauses of the Constitution. You can find several cases and articles on FindLaw.
They used the "Patriot Act" to bust him for selling bongs.
That's a blatent abuse of an act that was supposed to combat terrorism.
70's pothead comedians aren't blowing shit up in this country.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
My thoughts are somewhat similar - I think that once someone has committed murder, they have broken down an important psychological barrier. Repeat murder rates are far higher than "normal" murder rates.
There is a very low repeated murder rate for those given the death penalty...
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
The fox claims that the hens are not being abused. I, for one, don't believe him.
If it is unconstitutional, then as soon as somebody is unlawfully detained under it they can take it to court, and the appeals process will send it straight up to the supreme court at which time it will be declared unconstitutional and be repealed.
And before anyone says "But the law itself prohibits people from taking it to court because they're detained without a trial," I can only give the following two responses:
1. A law written as hastily as the Patriot Act was is bound to have a loophole or two that can be slipped through.
2. Prove it.
It's wonderful living in a self-regulating system - even if people don't see that it is one.
...but is it art?