Slashdot Mirror
FBI Widens Use of National Security Letters
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post reports that the FBI has drastically increased its use of National Security Letters (NSL), which permit it to collect information without judicial oversight. According to the article, the use of NSLs is up by a factor of 100, and the records are kept forever (in the past they were thrown away if the subject was cleared). Deep in the article, the author reports that NSLs were used to collect records '[...] of every hotel guest, everyone who rented a car or truck, every lease on a storage space, and every airplane passenger who landed in [Las Vegas]' for a two week period, in response to a terrorism threat in 2003. Those records, apparently, will be kept forever by the federal government. There's an ombudsman, and a procedure to resolve complaints, but the mere existence of an NSL is secret, so it's not clear how anyone can complain!
Man, I want THAT job.
Person: Are you the ombudsman for National Security Letters?
Me: Yes.
Person: I'd like to complain about the FBI's issuance of one against me. I was cleared and they're now storing all my personal information forever.
Me: Sir, you're not supposed to know about that.
Person: But I...
Me: I'm afraid you're now a threat to National Security.
Person: Wait, what the... No, I'm an innocent man! I'M INNOCENT DAMN-*gunshots* *silence*
Me: I love my job.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Just track everyone: Piggy back RFID/GPS chips on every sperm that swims
I was in Las Vegas during said time and won 3 million dollars gambling but never declared to the NRA. Thank goodness for chef boyardee.
...clearly subjective.
Another reason not to visit America.
When I was a kid I wanted nothing more than to emigrate to the US of A. At the moment, I don't even want to visit it as a tourist.
How things can change in less than a decade...
One the one hand it's useful, but on the other it contradicts our constitutuion. Man I love polidicks[sic].
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
In unrelated news, the price of Aluminium today is up by a factor of 100.
"I don't know why people are buying so much metal, but it's great for business!" says one happy new investor.
Did you guys really vote for all this, um, stuff? Take your country back.
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
Well, I would imagine that just by posting to Slashdot you are registered 'for all eternity' in some federal register. So, what's your point?
When we have sensible Supreme Court justices installed, who understand we're at war with an ideology that will never die, national security rules by the president will never be subverted by the meddlesome Congress. Or the people, who don't know enough about security intelligence to keep ourselves safe by electing Congressmembers. We need more justices like Roberts who insist on the privilege of the president to keep us safe, and out of the danger of risky "due process". Too bad we can't get Miers back, who saw the towering intelligence of our current defender. But Alito's committment to the security power of the supreme executive should keep us perfectly safe.
--
make install -not war
Yea yea, it's the "gateway drug" and I'm sure they'll use it to pass similar, and worse, laws later on, but does anyone really care about this? I don't. If they want to keep on record that I rented a car and a hotel room for a week in Vegas 3 years ago, kudos to them. I have other things to worry about.
In unrelated news, the price of Aluminum today is up by a factor of 100.
.. can't even trust them to correct^h^h^h^h^h^h^hchange the spelling of Anonymous cowards even
Damn those slashdot editors
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Welcome to Amerika, please surrender your rights here!
Karma: a simple way of silencing those with unpopular views regardless how correct or just that view might be.
"Take your country back" Who should, the Native Americans?
My credit card company!
Which I used to rent the car, purchase the plane tickets and secure my rental garages.
They also know where I live, my phone # and my mother's maiden name!
Only criminals will go to the trouble to avoid being caught in such a web of information collection, leaving innocent private citizens as the only victims in this process.
Like is said for gun control laws, if you outlaw it, only the criminals will have it. This sort of crap will ensure that only criminals are outside of the jurisdiction of legal daily surveilance, thus achieving nothing but ill will and a semi-police state.
If you think this is a troll, try again... When the government invents a reason to spy on you without your permission or that of the courts, they have found a way to be the big brother that we all despise and fear. Never mind tin-foil hats, when they know what you had for breakfast without having to lift a finger, the tin-foil hat does no good.
How long will it be before it is made illegal to thwart such efforts by use of misleading electronic activities, and botnets that spoil the information gathered with false information and misleading information. How long before identity theft is not the real problem, but being accused of anti-american activities is the problem because of clever botnets that have seeded the government databases with information about you and your activities?
Where is the oversight to stop the government from doing that, then arresting you on trumped up charges based on bad information... damn, the US started an entire war on bad information...
FSCK, this is bad!
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
There's an easy solution.
Everyone should complain.
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
I recall posts from about 7 years ago where our American brethren would profusely claim such laws would (could) never exist in the U.S., and it was kind of comforting to know such a human-rights haven existed (contrast: we don't have a bill of rights in Australia).
But it's frightening how Uncle Sam has managed to sidestep such safeguards in the name of "national security".
I shake my head in disgust when I think of the governments trouncing basic rights to protect us against a threat that claims as many people per decade as cancer does in one day !!
Hey, where's the poster complaining that this FBI privacy invasion story isn't "News for Nerds"? Are nerds finally starting to find a consensus that they're just like everyone else, and "News for Police State Residents" is also news for them, too? Maybe those nerds who have always realized that security/privacy is nerdy will finally get recognition, if only from other nerds... nah, nerds are no good at that kind of social awareness.
--
make install -not war
I'm not sure how reassuring this is, but keep in mind that most reports indicate that the FBI is fabulously inept at analyzing the information that they have already, and this is merely going to further overwhelm them. To be sure, there are genuine civil liberties issues here, but I'd be far more concerned if they were investing the same resources doing things the old-fashioned way (infiltrating groups, hanging out taking notes, reading mail, tapping phones, etc)
"All successful systems accumulate parasites" -- Hal Hixon
Well, in today's present society the first step would be to automate voting, and get rid of the electorate delegates - that would ensure the majority actually does rule (assuming the techonology is implemented correctly).
Second step would be (this I'm sort of deriving from an article I read) - to send the senators and representatives home, and allow them to use video conferencing instead. I think this would allow more "real" people to eventually get elected - and be *willing* to get elected, since they wouldn't have to move out of their home towns - leaving friends, family, and a sense of what's going on locally in their state behind them.
On certain issues you could also institute country wide referendums. More technical issues would have to be decided by the senate/house - which is why electing competent people would still be important.
Last but not least, it might be a good idea to make being a senator/representative a part time job, and let them keep their day jobs. That would keep them in touch with daily life, and also effectively curb the amount of useless legislation that's passed each year. (Along with mitigating the effects of lobbyists - since they wouldn't fear losing their jobs, they would merely be doing a service for their country.)
Oh, and term limits might also fit into that plan quite well to enforce the idea that "this is not your permanent job".
Not that the scenario will ever happen in my lifetime without a nation-wide catastrophy or revolt, but it doesn't hurt to throw the ideas out there.
I don't think any of the Jews I know are any more in touch with those "hidden facts" about Jesus you cite than are any of the non-batshitcrazy christians I know. I guess just Transhumans are privy to the secret Jewish conspiracy. How do they get those horns under those little hats, anyway?
--
make install -not war
I think the submitter missed an important part of the article, which is this quote[ ...In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed. Late last month, President Bush signed Executive Order 13388, expanding access to those files for "state, local and tribal" governments and for "appropriate private sector entities," which are not defined. ...]
This lack of respect to privacy is troubling....
"Take your country back" Who should, the Native Americans?
Some scientists are talking of trying to restore the US to a pre-human state, BEFORE even they settled the Americas, they've found several large species that died out around 12k-14k years ago because of various pressures of humans that arrived in the Americas.
And I thought the FBI was wasting time on porn cases and such, but the waste of time and effort that must of gone into that vegas data mining with such a wide net was epic. What could they hope to have found, considering the FBI hasn't managed to handle their other low level basic database problems so well. And considering all these false alarms they get as they roust people all over the world. Our street-level intelligence is truly clueless and out of touch and adding the epic waste of mass data mining is surely going to have the FBI chasing ghosts as our freedoms erode.
You should have more faith in our benevolent overseers. Sure, they might act all sneaky and underhanded, but they're only trying to do their jobs.
I love what gets deemed as insightful here. This'll be a good one for the meta mods.
"This is considered plagiarism."
Due to disclosures detrimental to the interests National Security, and generally ruining the suprise, the parent of this thread will be flogged. Oh yeah, insert vague refererences to war on terrorism, Bin Laden, Al Queda, and the Easter Bunny as precident and justification for said flogging.
Beware the fury of a patient man
- John Dryden
OK, I'll bite. Why would any of this make any difference to you or, for that matter, an American? Contrary to the FUD found here, this is just the collection of information and in no way strips any rights from you (well, you're not American so that's a given) or any American. That information collection gives law enforcement the tools to fight that nasty thing you might have seen in the news: terrorism. By the way -- we do a better job of fighting it than anyone else.
And while we're at it, where is home for you? I suspect you are in better shape when you get off the plane here in the states than you are back in your Euro-hamlet. Do you even have a Bill of Rights? Perhaps you'd like to roast marshmellows in Paris?
And as we ping-pong between a left and then a right majority, the government grows more intrusive in areas the left and then the right desire. What we need is more consideration for the minority view and more of a live and let live America.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
Aren't you christians the ones who invented that whole "it's a choice" argument?
Religion is a choice, not a matter of birth. People are born black (or gay) - no one is born a christian.
was planning on surrendering to the secret gulag to begin my sentence, but alas I can't find it. Would someone please let the authorities know I'm at 48 e 26th street in baltimore. I haven't done anything wrong ... I just figured the sooner I put this part of my life behind me the better.
Vegas is probably the most surveilled city in the U.S. Keeping rental car records and hotel receipts pales in comparison to the information stored by the casinos. What's frightening is that the government collecting such information about ordinary Americans doesn't amount to much on its own in terms of fighting terrorism, but it would offer unscrupulous feds a convenient database of information for blackmail purposes (as well as for a variety of investigations, both legal and illegal). A call by the feds to your hotel/casino could probably garner fairly detailed information about your activities in the city, including video of most of your public activities on the strip and in many cases even your activities in your room. Again, if the suspect isn't holding a terrorist or mafia meeting in Vegas, such information is probably not worth much for investigative purposes, but imagine its utility for blackmail purposes.
When someone drops dead of cancer it's their family's problem. No one who dies of cancer does so in a fiery ball that destroys a Billion dollars worth of infrastructure.
It doesn't matter how many people die. What matters is how much money it costs us in the process. It's always about the money.
- that would ensure the majority actually does rule (assuming the techonology is implemented correctly)
I'm not sure we want the majority to rule. The purpose of a democratic republic is to seat a group of informed representaives.
make being a senator/representative a part time job, and let them keep their day jobs.
Nah. People pay attention to where their bowl of rice is coming from. We don't want them paying less attention to their senator/representative job than they already do. This would make them (if possible) even more susceptible to bribes and lobbying.
term limits might also fit into that plan quite well
I object to term limits because imagine you have really good representation, a really good, effective member. Couple years, bang! He's fired. Someone new comes in, probably not as good as what you had. I know it's hard to imagine now, but let's don't force good people out of office.
I think a better start would be to revoke the corporation's right to free speech, and forbid them from contributing to campaigns. Period. Corporations are not people and do not act like people, so we should not let them drive our elections. They are far too able to throw large volumes of cash at election campaigns. They have too much say over how we are governed.
I also think we should try really hard to break up the power structures in the two big parties. There is such a huge interlocking collection of debts and favors controlling who gets to be a nominee that it is (usually) impossible for anyone fresh and different to get on the ticket. Does anyone really believe that there is nobody in the Republican Party better qualified to lead the US than George W.? Neither party puts forward their best candidate anymore. They put forward the one who best manipulates the existing power structure.
Reminded me of an old (say 20 years ago) Steve Martin joke.
"I believe Ronald Reagan can make this country what it once was - a vast frozen wasteland covered in ice."
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
To quote one 'Madpride' from another board:
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
Well, the Female Body Inspectors need something to do.
http://freenet.sourceforge.net/
The FBI came calling in Windsor, Conn., this summer with a document marked for delivery by hand. On Matianuk Avenue, across from the tennis courts, two special agents found their man. They gave George Christian the letter, which warned him to tell no one, ever, what it said.
Under the shield and stars of the FBI crest, the letter directed Christian to surrender "all subscriber information, billing information and access logs of any person" who used a specific computer at a library branch some distance away. Christian, who manages digital records for three dozen Connecticut libraries, said in an affidavit that he configures his system for privacy. But the vendors of the software he operates said their databases can reveal the Web sites that visitors browse, the e-mail accounts they open and the books they borrow.
Christian refused to hand over those records, and his employer, Library Connection Inc., filed suit for the right to protest the FBI demand in public. The Washington Post established their identities -- still under seal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit -- by comparing unsealed portions of the file with public records and information gleaned from people who had no knowledge of the FBI demand.
The Connecticut case affords a rare glimpse of an exponentially growing practice of domestic surveillance under the USA Patriot Act, which marked its fourth anniversary on Oct. 26. "National security letters," created in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism investigations, originated as narrow exceptions in consumer privacy law, enabling the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents. The Patriot Act, and Bush administration guidelines for its use, transformed those letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies.
The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters -- one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people -- are extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.
Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports. The Bush administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and has offered no example in which the use of a national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot.
The burgeoning use of national security letters coincides with an unannounced decision to deposit all the information they yield into government data banks -- and to share those private records widely, in the federal government and beyond. In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed. Late last month, President Bush signed Executive Order 13388, expanding access to those files for "state, local and tribal" governments and for "appropriate private sector entities," which are not defined.
National security letters offer a case study of the impact of the Patriot Act outside the spotlight of political debate. Drafted in haste after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the law's 132 pages wrought scores of changes in the landscape of intelligence and law enforcement. Many received far more attention than the amendments to a seemingly pedestrian power to review "transactional records." But few if any other provisions touch as many ordinary Americans without their knowledge.
Senior FBI officials acknowledged in interviews that the proliferation of national security letters results primarily from the bureau's new authority to collect intimate facts about people who a
I eventually had to go down to the cellar. With a torch. The notice was on display at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "beware of the leopard".
Rubies and Pearls are not what you think.
... the majority is stupid. Plus 50% of the general populace didn't vote for the last election, and that's a once every 4 years occurance, what makes you think people will care about the little stuff?
The current system works, the problem is people don't pay enough atttention when they are electing their representattives.
-everphilski-
out of your taxes? Because this stuff isn't just dumped - it is backed up, tested for classification. When the uber search is going on, its' moise will be trawled through and will take time.
Are you happy with your taxes going on this and millions of other such wastes of resources?
In the last ten years, traffic has killed about 400.000 Americans. Terrorism has killed less than 4.000. I'm still amazed how the American public is prepared the give up all kinds of civil liberties just to fight the risk that is 100 times smaller, not to mention that the success chances are doubtful. Accepting a small - tiny! - terrorism threat is a small price to pay for a free society.
If you receive one, you need to get legal advice before complying.
The proposed legislation to criminalize NSL noncompliance, S.1680, has no cosponsors and isn't going anywhere.
The FBI can still go before a judge and get a subpoena, but that requires judicial authorization, and you can fight a subpoena in court if it's overreaching.
That's gotta be one of the most wittily ironic posts yet. I still can't tell if ThreeE was trying to be funny, or if he really is such a pathetic tool.
This kind of thing is very clearly illegal under the fourth and fifth amendments. The lesson here, is that the constitution is no guarantee of our liberty. Freedon ultimately depends on the will of people to demand and enforce limits on government's continuous attempts to expand its power.
This will go on until someone who is presented with a "national security letter" says, "Fuck you, get a warrant", and is preparted to fight the case all the way to the supreme court.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It's simple -- Americans like cars, and they hate other cultures. The 4000 deaths are just an excuse.
And, after all, that privacy represented the privacy of every american taxpayer who paid taxes to support Miers in doing this, so by keeping all that information secret, they were helping out each and every person's individual privacy.
or that all-time favorite,
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
I read this interesting bit of information in the Jan 2003 Reader's Digest. The Anthrax epidemic (or the handwritten letters thereof) was basically traced to a scientist that was employed by a contractor of the CIA. The CIA rather effectively railroaded the FBI's investigation of the case. The writter of this article was a Professor who moonlights as an FBI detective, and was rather irked about the handling of this investigation.
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
People just need to do it (tell) and fight it under this letter being a clear violation of the 1st Ammendment.
The reason people don't fight this is because people don't know how often this is happening because the people that get these letters are chicken shit to acknowledge their existance and fight them.
[quote]The writter of this article was a Professor who moonlights as an FBI detective, and was rather irked about the handling of this investigation.[/quote] That source doesn't sound shady or anything...I'm sure you just forgot the name...I mean, it was in RD, it must be true.
This too shall pass.
Huh?
While the National Rifle Association is always asking for donations to fight for our rights, last i heard you didnt have to declare anything to them...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
- Yellow road signs - Marriage fidelity - Nutrition information on the label - The 10 Commandments - Speed limits ...merely "suggestions"
>Did you guys really vote for all this, um, stuff? Take your country back.
Do you really think the average voter has any idea what a national security letter might be and if they did the proper checks and balances such a thing would need. Or if they are even aware of the big privacy debate going on? They don't. During the last election, from what I was told first hand, people voted on:
1. Terrorism: Usually "Bush will teach them 'Rabs" kind of attitude.
2. Gay marriage: This was surprisingly everywhere before the election and no where now. Funny how that works.
3. Abortion: The usual crap here.
4. Vietnam: Kerry's status as a vet opened up the old vietnam wounds.
Only political junkies cared about privacy, civil rights, economic stability, social security, judge appointments, etc.
I don't think most countries are too different, the LCD tend to vote on hot button issues and the educated and elitist classes take on everything else. Asking "Did you people really vote for this stuff" is kinda non-starter. People don't even vote on this stuff, they vote for what they know.
Essentially this is your classic "raise the discourse" argument, but one of the nice things of being at the top of the world as a superpower in about a dozen different ways is that there's little incentive to learn about foreign policy, civil issues, other countries, other systems, etc. As long as there is wealth and safety one can remain fairly ignorant of a lot of things. This eventually does bite one in the ass and will probably coincide with the loss of a superpower status as Europe and Asia keep rising.
Canadians are nice folks, but there is nothing of interest in the country... and the ones that you might find interesting are in the french part.
P.S. The french surrendered to the rioters tonight.
The traffic accidents of which you speak did not:
1) Cause billions of dollars of damage in less than an hour's time and shut down an entire industry for days.
2) Generally result from malicious intent from people who have declared they will not be happy until millions of Americans are dead
3) Paralyze an entire nation's ability to move people and goods
4) Happen as the result of an accident
Also, please provide a source for your 400,000 dead in past four years statistic. Statistics I've found from 1998 say around 49,000 died in North America from car accidents that year. Sounds like you're pulling your numbers out of thin air.
"- Is not free
Ha! By what definition? You're not free to create anarchy, but I'd say you're a lot more free than most countries."
By the definition of our own Constitution. The Patriot Act does away with little things like due process and equal justice under law...
"- Is not democractic
Again, by what bizarro definition do you think this is true? We have elections which is more than some countries have, representative government, etc, etc. You might not like the pols that get elected, but that's tough. You don't always get who you want. Fortunately, the elections are regular enough that we have the chance to vote 'em out next time around if we don't like 'em."
Putting election fraud aside, only 12 % of the elegible voters actually voted. Contrast this with Germany who the US likes to try to kick around with a voter turnout of 79%. So you are telling me that 12% is representative? By what book?
"- Has a completly corrupt and criminal political system
Well, considering one of the parties has ex-KKK members (Robert Byrd), people that drive people have bridges and don't report it until much much later (Ted Kennedy), I'd have to say that there are corrupt and criminal Senators, that's for sure. Strangely, no one in that party seems to have a problem with racists in their part of the Senate."
Both parties have very bad apples. It is the lesser of 2 evils. Look at Strom Thurman or the current crop in the form of Trent Lott, Scooter Libby, et. al. Again, that is what you get when the voter turnout is so low.
"- Has more poverty than any other 1st world country
That's also complete crap. Again, check out France. Those rioters aren't pissed off because they have jobs, bub."
Hurricane Katrina.....Need I say more...
"- Has an increasingly horrible education system
That completely depends on where you are in States. There are a lot of places that have crappy school systems, but there are many many more that have good both public and private schools.
And the last time I checked, there sure were a helluva lot of students from other countries coming over here for school."
Rearrange your wording there and align it to the wealth of the community and you will see the correlation. Poorer communities don't have the resources that richer ones do. It goes to class.
"- Have their own world history which differs quite a bit from the history that the rest of the world knows.
"the rest of the world knows...."...Yeah, right.
Facts are facts. You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts."
Histroy is written by the victors. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. There is a huge skew in our history especially when dealing with our justifications for military actions. That skew is seen not only in schools but in our news media. Just look at how many people who watch Fox News think Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks when the reality is the majority of attackers were Saudi.
"- Indoctrinates it's people about the same as old Soviet Union did and about the same as todays North Korea and China.
Except, if that were true, you: (A) Wouldn't have been able to post that message and (B) probably would already be arrested just for stating it."
And the Patriot Act allows for just that. He still can be arrested for that post just like I can be for this one. Worst thing is they could keep us indefinately without access to attornies for as long as they like. Just ask anyone they rounded up after 9/11....Oh wait, you aren't allowed to ask them...
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
Before folks get all riled up just remember, there is a limit here. Heck, F.B.I uses three letters and NSL uses another three leaving a total of 20. At the rate they're going, they'll be out of letters in no time at all.
I take exception to that. We have the best justice money can buy!
You can love your country and hate the current administration. There is no conflict between those positions.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
While the "internet" came out of a US DARPA research project in the 1960's, it was little more than an obscure research channel until the development of the web. This was done at the CERN Physics lab. If you don't know where the CERN lab is, I'll give you a hint. Start looking in Europe.
Actually, no, it was not "little more than an obscure research channel until the development of the web." I was on USENET for at least 8 years before I got access to the www.
But every sperm is sacred!
I wonder if our policital leaders can be sued out of office based on violation of contract to represent the people. I mean, isn't that what it is, a contract, especially considering we live in such a litigious and capitalistic society?
When the "World Wide Web" came out of CERN in 1990, it was little more than an obscure research channel until the development of Mosaic. This was done at the University of Illinois. If you don't know where the University of Illinois is, I'll give you a hint. Start looking in the United States.
Honestly, some people have no sense of history. Everything is built on everything else. HTML and HTTP are built on other similar protocols and formats. There was Gopher, there was SGML, there was Ted Nelson's Xanadu and hypertext and hyperlinks. There were already search engines (Archie and Veronica). What we ended up with is certainly not the best we could have had.
Jose {adilla certainly did not get any justice. It took him, what, a full year to get a lawyer, and only because the lawyer appointed herself and petitioned the court. After two years, he got to the Supreme Court and the high court threw it out because the habeas corpus writ was served in the wrong jurisdiction-- because the government secretly moved him part way through the process. The high court replied that, of course, the gov't couldn't have done that on purpose. So, the clock started all over for him.
It took another year for him to get to the 4th Circuit Court who said it was just fine for him to be held indefinitely without charges and thus far, he is still in prison.
OK, if the government is protecting us, and Padilla is a terrorist, then why can't them come up with coherent charges and a trial in almost four years. What keeps them from doing this to anyone else, say, a person who resists an NSL? They do not have to say why they are holding you and no one can talk about the NSL. Even if you do get out after five years or so, so what? Will you refuse the next NSL you get?
It's sad, the newspapers mentioned very little about this case. Most people just buy that the FBI caught a terrorist and that's good enough.
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin
...because mods of the Slashdot mods are fucking morons. That statement alone warrants +5 Tell-Us-Something-We-Don't-Already-Know.
Because then we expected death to come in the form of bombs on ICBMs, or perhaps as armies marching across Europe. Nobody figured that an individual would do much damage.
Not that an individual couldn't do some damage, but it wouldn't particularly advance the USSR's goals to kill a few people at a time (or even a few thousand). And if they did piss us off by, say, flying planes into a few buildings, we knew right where the USSR was and could drop a few bombs of our own on it.
The war we're engaged in now is one of individuals doing a little bit of damage at a time. It can't bring down the US the way a full-on war with the Soviets could, but it is very demoralizing to be subject to terror attacks and it does lousy things to the economy. And when it happens, there's no place to bomb in retaliation (at least not without filling the media with pictures of civilians killed in the process.)
The old enemy wore uniforms, so you can't even tell which of those dead civilians really were planning to kill you.
So they check the individuals a lot more closely, both on entry and in the country. Illegally closely, perhaps, but that's not my point. You can, perhaps, feel safer knowing that the odds of you being wiped out along with the entire rest of the country in a nuclear holocaust are far, far lower than they were two decades ago. But it'll still kinda piss you off if you happen to be in the vicinity of a dirty bomb, suicide bomber, or whatever nasty trick they come up with next.
We know that given the information everyone is connected to any other specific person by at most, what 8 degrees or less? IIRC, the average connection is about 5. Therefore, what are your chances of getting caught up in this web of "multi-level surveillance"? Pretty high I'd suspect (no I haven't done the math feel free to do so and post it, anyone, anyone?). Hell I'm three degrees from the White House, and thus four degrees from any member of Congress through that route. On the other hand, I've met a couple congresscritters so I'm actually one-two degrees from there.
;) Do the same for email. Perhaps a nice email summing up the numbers periodically and routinely emailed to all congresscritters and a lot of reporters.
...
There you go, everyone start putting their congresscritters in their address books and periodically call them. If you get a live person and they ask why you are calling, explain to them that since the Senator/Representative has not managed to get NSLs revoked, you are ensuring they (including the person on the phone) get caught in the web too. Do the same for reporters.
I wonder how many people would have to do this before the odds of having all of congress caught in the NSL web of abuse approached near certainty.
Can you imagine what would happen if an alleged "suspect" was a telemarketer?
Or going off of that thought, I suppose the actual terrorists would want to start randomly calling a bunch of numbers, maybe even "targeting" a few specific people by calling them multiple times. Why? Make the job harder for the enemy. Standard practice to throw the other side off the trail. Remember "the solution to polution is dilution". What if they picked a few notable bankers and simply called them frequently, perhaps even regularly. Wonder how the managers of respond to getting NSLs for their employees?
And since under NSL the FBI/whatever will then get their records (the multi-level part), periodically call from a set of payphones. Make it even more suspicious.
Well gotta go, there's a knock at the door
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Score 2? Slashdot Censors = Idiots!
This kind of EU bashing make me feel like really bad about the USA. Is a war coming between EU vs US! Don't provoke us, or you will have it that way.
Jose {adilla certainly did not get any justice.
Neither did Korematsu, and neither did Dred Scott. This proves my point, which is that the document is not a guarantee, but simply a statement of wishful thinking unless we demand that our government comply with it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The lesson here, is that the constitution is no guarantee of our liberty.
The Constitution has never promised perfect preemptive protection of our liberties. It sets out what the government can and cannot do, but it's up to the citizens of the nation to apply that.
Freedom ultimately depends on the will of people to demand and enforce limits on government's continuous attempts to expand its power.
Exactly. The U.S. is the land of freedom and responsbility, not nanny protection. If we don't like something about our government, it's up to us to challenge it. The Constitution and the U.S. Code sets the structure and processes by which we do it. Think of it as codified revolution--you're changing the government but instead of guns the weapons are communication and lawyers.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Damn. You beat me to it. And don't forget...
"And I believe that they should allow all foreigners into this country, provided they can speak our native language... Apache."
This space unintentionally left blank.
Note that the purpose of the law allowing NSLs was to foil terroristic activities, not to deter crime per se. Use of NSLs for criminal prosecution is IMO illegal as the law is defined. That is the reason why the above numbers on criminal indictments versus foils should be collected - to determine if the law is being abused to make criminal prosecution easier rather than to pursue terroristic threats.
The above statistics could help in analysis of the effectiveness of NSLs vis-a-vis subpoenas, search warrants, and other legal instruments. Such statistics may indicate that a given legal instrument is ineffective and therefore, although it appears useful, is truly not so.
IOW I would like to see statistical proof that NSLs are a useful legal instrument for fighting terrorism and not merely legal instruments that will be abused by some later administration with consequent loss of our civil rights.
My personal belief is that NSLs are ineffectual and serve primarily as a distraction (and a huge waste of effort) from the FBI's proper role in law enforcement. Certainly there is an argument to be made for the use of legal instruments such as NSLs in a domestic counter-terrorism organization (such as MI-5 of England) but, since the USA has no such organizations (the FBI being relegated by law to pursuit of only criminal indictments, the CIA to purely foreign operations, and NSA et al restricted from domestic operations) I do not see a proper place for NSLs in the current legal structure. Consequently NSLs will eventually be defined as illegal by the courts. Unfortunately this is a very slow process.
-xeo_at_thermopylae
and they are rioting in France...
the United States are not any more
""- Has more poverty than any other 1st world country That's also complete crap. Again, check out France. Those rioters aren't pissed off because they have jobs, bub."" they're rioting because the french government is one big ol' source of institutionalized racism, actually. can't argue the rest of what you said, but only because you didn't back up any of your claims with any evidence to attack. they still suck.
He wants his agenda back.
In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed. Late last month, President Bush signed Executive Order 13388, expanding access to those files for "state, local and tribal" governments and for "appropriate private sector entities," which are not defined.
Is it just me, or does this demonstrate nothing but the most vile contempt for the citizens of the U.S.?
Well, there is this bi-annual conference I'd like to attend.
:-(
It's in California next year, and I'd really like to attend and meet some of the people I only had
contact to by email within the last years.
I was really tempted to trade in my dignity for this, I have to decide on it till the end of next week.
And I'm not going because it's going to be in the US. I'd feel much better if it was in China - I personally haven't been there but people I work together with have been, lately.
Although chinese people - especially those with low education living outside the big boomtowns - are suppressed by the government badly, I'd feel way more safe than in Orwells North-America.
This is really sad - when I was younger I often dreamed of living in the US
k2r
Let me clue you in -- the last two national elections were stolen by the neo(Con)artists. Unless and until there is (1) elimination of electronic voting machines with no paper trail, (2) elimination of the single political party control over all three branches of government, (3) major changes to eliminate the mega-corporation control of most of the news media here, and (4) major campaign finance reform, the current lock of mega-corporation control of the government will remain. One of the things most needed is term limits on our politicians, since most of the people currently in control have lost touch with the people of this country.
President disbarred after man date blown.
I see that as blaming the victim.
"Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights."
-- Albert Einstein
http://www.monthlyreview.org/598einst.htm
while working for a laboratory in Switzerland... which is funded by several European governments...
It's actually more like 1.5 parties. While there are some differences with respect to social programs, neither party has any desire to stand up to any corporate contributor, so our fair use rights to things we buy are being whittled away rather quickly. Then the corps. lobby to make treaties dependant on US-style rules being put in place.
Of course, I think Switzerland should sue; after all, their states (Cantons) united around 1515 or 1518, as I recall. That's definitely prior art, and here we parade around calling ourselves the (unqualified) "United States".
"A plan's just a list of things that don't happen" -- Mr. Parker, "The Way of the Gun"
This just goes to show that these two continents belong to each other, and neither could exist without the other. After all, the USA, as we know it today, was built by expat Europeans. The above doesn't mean that I would support today's administration of the US or that I would want to live there. I haven't been there since 2000. Until they change the current border entry systems, I won't be back either. Having lots of friends there, it's not an easy thing to do. - an European
Did you guys really vote for all this, um, stuff? Take your country back.
No, we vote about abortion and tax cuts.
People hear rarely talk about freedom, much less vote because of it.
Keeping records on citizens is something governments are supposed to do. With regards to keeping records on citizens, the government hates competition with the private sector and reserves the right to investigate and access those records. How many of us who own homes/cars/banking accounts are "off the radar"? We're not, nobody who owns anything in the United States is really invisible. For companies out there who farm consumer information much of what we do is either an aggregate or a drill down away from a report. By keeping a record of association and activity the FBI/USGOV just rounds out the picture.
There are moments when I think Ted Kazcynski (Unibomber) is/was spot on.
I think it's important that we remember there are only two kinds of citizens, the kind who are convicted and the kind who are guilty. Everyone else is in charge of them and thus excused from prosectuion unless they break ranks.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
When I was laid off during the tech bust I went to Denver General and had fair-to-good care for a $5/visit $5/prescription charge. When I took a low-paying job my copays went up to $20. Now that I'm back at a high-paying job I don't qualify for anything but rack-rate, but I can afford health insurance.
Works pretty well, based solely on income. I know not everywhere has such things, but I'm consistently surprised by students & low-income friends who don't know about it.
I don't know what to make of your immigrant comment, I'm not aware of any programs that are only open to immigrants. Our hospital spends a lot of money on emergency-room care that is never paid for, and a lot of this is immigrants.
Man, you really need that seminar!
That's silly. As if humans are some kind of foreign extraterrestrial invasion that need to be counteracted.
No surprise that the average Jew - especially those outside of Israel - is as ignorant of their own religion as the average Christian. Very few people read religious archaeology journals or even the various popular treatises about the discoveries of the last century or even the known history of their own religion.
Most Jews have probably never read even any quotes from the Zionist literature, either, just as most Christians have never read any quotes from Catholic priests and Popes going back centuries concerning the Jews.
All of the Catholic priests charged with studying the Dead Sea Scrolls (at an institute in Israel, no less) were hardcore anti-Semites, for instance. One of them even absconded with a critical fragment of the documents and has never been found since. The Scrolls are considered the archaeological scandal of the Twentieth Century, since their import was concealed by the Catholics for forty years until photos of them were leaked by a Bechtel relative (Bechtel was financing the institute studying them, apparently), allowing other academics to access them. The one secular researcher was kicked off the team back in the Fifties when he realized their import.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
So what kind of Jew are you, who is privy to this secret lore? And if antisemitic Catholics are part of the conspiracy, what makes it "Jewish"? Especially since most Jews are "outside of Israel", who exactly are you talking about when you refer to "the Jews"?
I'd point out that I personally looked at the Dead Sea Scrolls, along with any other member of the public who visited their museum in Israel (coincidentally, in the country in which they were written, stored and discovered). But of course those scrolls were fakes, or redacted, right? And the international academic community of archaelogists and bible researchers, only a tiny percentage of whom are Jews, are all covering up the fact that they're fakes. I'd also ask what great secret is hidden in those scrolls, to which you happen to be privy, but you're probably just more disinformation distracting us from the real secret, which is known only to thousand-year-old antisemitic Jews running the Vatican. Did I get that all right?
--
make install -not war
Corporations can pay for the PAC's operating expenses, fundraising expenses, and ad campaigns...It is the ad campaigns that are killer.
It's the ad campaigns that I was mostly talking about. It is in the nature of the modern political campaign that more ads yields more votes. We should not be allowing corporations to influence this.
But what can be done about that? Ban political advertising from anyone other than a candidate's election committee?
No. Ban corporate money from political ads. No funneling through PACS. No funneling through individual donors. No corporate money in political campaigns. If people want to support candidates, let them, but no corporations. The purpose of corporations is to create wealth for shareholders. This is the wrong incentive for such a powerful part of the American political process.
The problem is not with the corporations -- they're just organized. The problem is that everyone else is not organized.
The problem is with the corporations. If we as citizens have to change the way we participate in the political process in order to protect ourselves from these 'artificial people,' then I think the 'artificial people' are not serving us well. WE should not have to change to accomodate THEM.
I am no great political thinker. It just strikes me that almost every time I come across something that I think is really oppressive and lame, I mean really crappy, it turns out that there is some company or industry group throwing money at the problem to keep things crappy. And invariably I am helpless because I am just a citizen. I am pretty sure that is not the way things are supposed to work.
No, you got none of it right, mostly because you don't have the foggiest clue what you're talking about.
a cts.html/ is a link to The University of North Carolina at Charlotte which outlines the basic timeline of the Scrolls which includes the following remarks:
If you haven't read the history of the discovery of the Scrolls, nor read any of the translations, obviously you are clueless, right? Nowhere did I say any of these scrolls are fakes, in any event.
There's absolutely nothing secret about them NOW, since as I so carefully pointed out, they were fully exposed to the academic community as a result of photographs released by a member of the Bechtel family. BEFORE THAT, the scrolls were only examined by a select group of Catholic priests in Israel.
Here http://www.religiousstudies.uncc.edu/jdtabor/dssf
8) The bulk of the scrolls were in Jordanian control and were placed with a team of Christian (mostly Catholic--no Jewish) scholars who over the next four decades published eight volumes of material. The team was left intact by the Israelis after the Six Day War (1967). The publication schedule was constantly delayed and many outsiders found the official team to be arrogant and unyielding. The team was expanded in the 1980's and was much more broadly based, finally including Jewish scholars and a more open approach to sharing materials.
9) As much as 40% of the Scrolls, mostly fragments from Cave 4, remained unpublished and unreleased (photos), until pressure mounted in the 1980's. A breakthrough occurred in the Fall, 1991: the photos were published by the Biblical Archaeological Society in a non-official edition; a computer reconstruction, based on a concordance, was announced; the Huntington library pledged to open their microfilm files of all the scroll photographs.
Wikipedia also has a nice overview.
Read "The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception" by Baigent and Leigh for the full story - especially the direct anti-Semitic quotes from the Catholic priests involved in the study.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Well, I've got to admit I don't know what you are talking about. You're spinning some kind of pointlessly mysterious yarn with all kinds of Jewish/Catholic conspiracy trappings about scrolls you now say are published in full. Yet I don't see any upshot of anything you're saying. Certainly not anything to justify your dark mutterings about Jesus and Jews. How about cutting through the mystery for a mere homo sapiens, and come out and say what you're getting at? Someone's story that Jesus wasn't crucified proves that Jews control the US government? It couldn't possibly be Cheney, the VP, Secty Defense in the last Iraq war, head of Halliburton, Powell's boss, Rumsfeld's career enabler, old Nixon hound? Nah, it must be the Jews - they're always good for a laugh.
--
make install -not war
I suggest you read my initial comment (I'll not say again so as to give you benefit of doubt...)
I'm saying that "I hope this kind of christian attitude gets you hell on earth, because that's what it deserves". My biggest beef with christians (and nearly all religious groups), is their insistence that they aren't judging people, while simultaneously insisting that they not only deserve to but WILL burn in hell.
Saying "I hope you burn in hell" doesn't make me a Christian any more than would saying "I hope Kortar sails you to Gre'thor" make me a Klingon. Is your geeked out mind better able to comprehend that analogy?
It's not natural. It's not why we have sexual organs. They're for procreation, not recreation.
What an incredible, steaming pile of horse shit. If you believe in a just and LOGICAL god then why the fuck did he bundle more NERVES in these places than anywhere else? What fucking sense does that make? We are not animals - we are humans capable (allegedly) of logical thought and therefore do not need "sensory pleasure' to motivvate us to reproduce - we are capable of understanding the need for procreation no matter if it feels good or not. giving birth stresses the female anatomy in heinous fashion - what sort of "kind, loving god" would then stuff this area with so many nerves as to make the act of birth as painful as possible?
Why did god give us tastebuds? So we could discern poisons? Then why do so many poisonous plants taste sweet? Why can we see in color when so many animals do just fine with black and white vision?
Get over yourselves. You're a bunch of brainwashed idiots being controlled by the MIB. You fuckers are destroying this country by undermining everything the patriots fought and died for, and that treasonous motherfucker (and his warmongering jewboy sidekick) you idiots put in the whitehouse should face down a firing squad.
But I do believe I understand the Bible, and I do believe it's the word of God...
So which is it? Either the bible is "the word of god" or it's just so many parables collected and bound and preached by a bunch of zealots. The bible clearly states man is not at all created of animals but was put above them and that whole "evolution" thing goes out the window - along with any need for those sexual dysfunctions you so quickly passed by in response.
What makes you think I am "far left?" Because I fucking hate Christians? But I hate Jews and especially feminists, too... so wouldn't that make me "far right?"
You blather on about namecalling while turning that hose upon me?
You fucking hypocrite...
You are right, these things are best taken with a grain of salt. Actually the RD article was reprinted from an article in Vanity Fair (The magazine that disclosed the identit of Deep Throat). The professor who wrote this article was Donald Foster, an english professor at (http://english.vassar.edu/faculty.html?bio=Donald _Foster) Vassar College.
His research specialty is analyzing anonymous next for linguistic patterns that match other known texts. He uses this method to successfully disclose the anonymous author of "Primary Colors" as Joe Klien, a Newsweek Columnist.
Using similar linguistic analysis, he traced the anthrax letters to Steven Hatfill, a US bioweapons expert.
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open