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Exception Expands Domestic Surveillance
drDugan writes "The Washington Post is reporting the next phase of American progress authorizing intelligence agencies to spy on law-abiding citizens without oversight. Primarily, new legislation allows an 'intelligence exception' to the privacy act 'allowing the FBI and others to share information gathered about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies, as long as the data is deemed to be related to foreign intelligence. Backers say the measure is needed to strengthen investigations into terrorism or weapons of mass destruction.'"
With every iteration of goverment expansion to 'help' or 'protect' people we end up with more of this horseshit. A few people are having problems getting enough to eat? Increase taxes and feed everyone (even those who can fend for themselves). Don't like your neighbor getting high? Start a war on drugs. Three thousand people get killed in a terrorist action? Take everyone's civil liberties away.
National governments do few things better than non-profit community organizations and local governments. National government policies are over arching and generic. They often do not take into account local priorities and rarely meet their grand objectives despite spending billions of dollars.
This action is nothing new. Surveillance will always be pitched in the guise of protecting lives. Nothing is ever said about the potential pitfalls of giving the government unlimited surveillance powers. If you listen to the proponents of universal surveillance, no one will EVER use the information gathered for political advantage. No one will EVER harrass a political opponent based on intelligence gathered in a terrorist investigation. And because all of this data is gathered under the cloak of NATIONAL SECURITY, no one will ever *see* the information in order to check its veracity.
This is just one more example of bureaucracies grabbing power in the midst of national uncertainty. If you have ever worked either in a federal agency or as a contractor to one, you will recognize this as one more example of empire building. After they get these surveillace powers, they will need more staff and resources to maintain them. That means more Directors, more Assistant Directors, more Section Managers, and so on. Their budgets will increase and the deficit will continue to climb.
Isn't it ironic that the Chinese government is helping to fund the War in Iraq AND the eradication of US civil liberties?
Open your wallet, bend over, and get ready to get your McCarthy injection.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
...for persons either:
1.) Within the physical borders of the United States, and/or
2.) United States citizens or permanent residents,
to legitimately be conspiring to commit actions against the United States or its citizens that would be outside of the bounds of the law, in concert or cooperation with a foreign influence?
What follows is a series of honest, and not rhetorical, questions:
Is it ever ok for US intelligence and/or military capability to use domestic surveillance and/or intelligence-gathering to protect our assets (be they life, property, and so on), or is it always better to err on the side of privacy in domestic concerns, and use the standard US criminal justice system to prosecute crimes after they have already occurred?
Is there ever a circumstance where preemption could be appropriate, or would universal privacy always trump, say, the lives of thousands of others?
Black-and-white liberty and freedom quotes aside, is there any gray area, any balance that can be struck between privacy and the desire of those charged with the protection of the United States to protect it, and indeed what I would regard a very important need to protect it from catastrophic (e.g., 9/11-style) harm?[1]
Is it possible to have appropriate oversight of such activities, or would you argue that such mechanisms for oversight and investigation already exist (e.g., warrants, etc.)?
If so, how can we expect the government and those charged with protection to keep up with all potential threats? There were numerous calls for better "human intelligence" after 9/11, including many by those opposed to the current war effort. If the collection of such intelligence is appropriate overseas, why is the same collection not appropriate in the context of people planning the same type of attacks against the US or its interests, but who are operating within our own borders?
I'd appreciate honest, and not cynical, answers.
[1] Please consider that no matter how much you personally may distrust the machinery of government, I would remind you that you would likely find that in face-to-face discussions with individual military, intelligence, or other government personnel, you'd find a genuine and deep-seated desire to do what is best.
Our basic rights that used to be protected by the Bill of Rights lost that protection decades ago. What's new? We still have those basic rights, government just ignored their restrictions on trampling those rights. It doesn't stop me from expressing them, I just have to be a little more careful.
I'm against government is every form, but I say to hell with it. Let them spy. The bigger and more intrusive government gets, the more people will flock to the underground economy and the more bloat and red tape will be created that will make the new intrusions pretty useless. Because the CIA and the FBI and the NSA are already off limits, they might be spying already and we have no idea. They just want to make it legit, in a country with the largest percentage of citizens in prison.
With another Congressman getting caught (taking bribes this time), the problem with our government isn't the CIA or the FBI or the War on Iraq or any of the usual suspects. The real problem we face today is the abuse of power that ALL government officers perform at every level of government. Do you really think the morons at the DMV don't abuse their power? Do you think the local cop doesn't? Do you think your zoning board doesn't abuse their power? Why would you think otherwise?
Government is one thing: a cabal with the unique monopoly on using force against anyone they please. Why keep voting for more thieves and murderers when you can do the right thing: stop voting, start finding alternate sources of income.
For those fearing chaotic nihilism from a complete lack of government: most minarchists, libertarians and even some anarchocapitalists such as myself are not adverse to very small governments at the city level. Want to live as a socialist? Find 30,000 other socialists and form a local government completely seperate from those outside of your town.
I do have a great solution to the abuse of power: unanimous majority voting. Don't pass any law without a completely unanimous voting group. If you can't get EVERY U.S. voter to vote YES for a law, try to get every Illinoisan to vote. If you can't get EVERY Illinois voter to vote YES for that law, try to get every Chicagoan. If that doesn't work, drop down to the district/precinct level. If that doesn't work, try to get everyone on your city block to vote YES. If you can't get a unanimous voting bloc there, guess what? You're witnessing the fraud of democracy. Anyone who votes in the next national election basically accepts all the atrocities the previous politicians enacted.
How is it possible to carry on a rational, rhetoric-free debate when even the summary is riddled with such a subjective premise?
I read
"Backers say the measure is needed to strengthen investigations into terrorism or weapons of mass destruction."
As opposed to what? In other words, what ways and means do we already have in place for handling the above situations, and why are they not working (implied by the fact that they're asking for more than what they already have).
The only party that truly believes in small government anymore is the Libertarians. Republicans gave up on the idea of small government years ago, and now the only thing separating republicans and democrats is their excuses for creating bigger government. There is no longer a great divide between the parties because it has become more about who can we get into office then pushing their ideas. It is this sort of who is or what opinion is more electable that resulted in Kerry instead of Dean. Democrats began to waiver when they realized that Dean was a true leftist that held true to most all party ideas (and took a real leftist stance), while everyone else was holding that nice centrist line to get elected.
I mean look at Bush, when he first started running, we were all enlightened with the term 'compassionate conservative'. Of course it also does not help that we traditionally have low voter turnouts for elections because of some gross voter apathy with the state of things.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
To Sid Meier:
When you make Sid Meier's Civilization V, you should make it more realistic by allowing America to convert to a Police State over the course of a few years without suffering a period of anarchy.
For those who don't play Civ IV: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/info/civics/
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
Actually, the McCarthy affair wouldn't have occured if our U.S. Congress stuck to their prescribed Constitutional powers. The Federal government is so restricted by the Constitution that no group would really have much power to do much, including Communists, Democrats, Republicans, whoever.
The answer is simple: reduce federal power to the Constitutional maximum.
"[They] first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't Jewish.
Then they came for the trade unionist,and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant,
Then they came for the homosexuals, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a homosexual,
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me."
--Rev. Martin Niemoeller, German Lutheran Pastor
"I've done nothing wrong, so I have nothing to hide" is the same thing as what Neimoeller was saying. When will people learn that they have to stand up to help each other if they expect anyone to care about them?
If you're sick of government intrusion and demand limited government it's time you stood up and started protecting your rights. This is the formula our Founding Fathers laid down.
(1) Participate politically using whatever method you have at your disposal. States don't run themselves, and if you aren't satisfied, then by all means, take it over lawfully. Ultimately, folks like YOU can become representative, senator, and president. So stop moaning and start getting elected.
(2) Arm yourself under the protections of the 2nd amendments. We're allowed guns not just to hunt prey, protect our country from foreign invaders, and ensure our private security, but also to protect ourselves from domestic threats (meaning from within our borders.) If and when our government has become so corrupt that reform through the ballot boxes is impossible, then it is time to turn to the ammo boxes. (I don't believe we are near that point at all. When we are, a whole lot more people will be reaching for their ammo boxes.)
America is founded on one principle: That people are smart enough to rule themselves. By corollary, the government is a reflection of the people, nothing more, and nothing less. If you don't like the government, get off your butt and do something about it. After all, you are in power here, not them.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
The Republicans have basically gone insane, as far as I can tell. There are some I can respect, even admire, like McCain. But come on... running a gulag in Cuba? Endless detentions without trials? Secret prisons in Europe? Allowing the government to spy on people with almost no checks? A vice-president who's lobbying for torture? Who the hell are we, the USSR?
Who gets to decide the definition of terrorism? The government can redefine the definition as time goes on to such a broad extent that any crime could be deemed terrorism. At that point you can be incarcerated without access to legal council or even a trial because you are a terrorist. The slope is getting very slippery here.
That's one of the best prescriptions for a solution to such problems that I've ever heard.
If the federal government's power was as limited as the Constitution laid out, the concerns about the broad implications of "spies" in government would be moot.
I thought the FBI was doing this years ago when they revealed they had files on many regular citizens and famous ones like Elvis, Sinatra, etc. But look on the brightside, federal surveillance won't be needed in 10 years, they will just buy it from corporations. They will know damn near everything about you...what you eat, where you shop and what you buy, the books you read, etc. It's a Brave New World.
gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/I know I've thrown out the following quote before when stories such as this previously came out but it bears repeating:
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The States and the People are the ones who need to arm themselves to protect against "terrorists."
Yes, leave it to the States and the People.
Our current Homeland Security activities show the problems with your above statement. Right now, though there is a Fed HLS org., there are separate state orgs, and there is currently a massive mess. The KKK doesn't exist in a single state, international terrorists don't only stay in a single state. If you don't have a single overarching entity like the Feds to help track, then you better get a whole lot better at coordinating individual states. People like to complain about beauracracy now, can you imagine multiple state agencies (both inter and intra) trying to coordinate with each other. What was and continues to be the biggest challenge facing these organizations? Coordination, you've just made the problem expoentially harder. Oh, and exactly how can an individual "arm themselves" against a suicide bomber, or some C4 planted in a subway train?
for the government person's self or family or friends.
And by your logic, I can automatically dismiss any POV you have since it obviously only serves your best interest. That statement is totally self defeating, as you're saying that no ones motivations can be trusted, so therefore you've given anyone a very good argument for why EVERYONE should be able to be surveilled upon, regardless of who they are and if they are currently doing anything to "warrant" such surveilence.
I remember when the news first broke, all sort of measures went into effect to "protect citizens," including requiring packages over two pounds to be shipped only from local post office (ironically after all the mayhem Unabomber has created over nearly two decades long terror attacks, post office never for once does this.) Prior to that event it was possible to drop packages of any weight into mail boxes (provided it fits.)
Later AFTER FAA declared the incident as accidental (true or not still appears to be a matter of debate, but I digress,) guess what? The package shipping restriction remains in effect. My own conclusion about this is that once something like this went into effect, it's never going away. Keep that in mind whenever government put more measures into effect to "protect citizens."
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
And I'm not trying to use a strawman argument. But your implication with your McCarthy statement ("bend over") was clear. How else should that be taken? And the thing always ignored about McCarthy was that he was *right*. I'm NOT saying that the ensuing methods and madness were appropriate.
Then you are not arguing that McCarthy was right. He never uncovered spies; he carried around a stupid brief case that he claimed contained the names of known foreign agents working in the State and Defense Departments. If, in the course of doing a random search for documents, we found that spies had infiltrated these departments it wasn't because of any evidence that Joe McCarthy had provided. He was challenged several times to produce his evidence and always declined. Then he would go out and do a couple of stump speeches and come back to the Hill to pound on a few people in the entertainment industry.
Who the hell cares if a fucking actor or director is a Communist? What compromise to national security did that pose?
But once we found and suspected paid Soviet spies in government and press, including some high posts, what should our reaction have been?
Well, if by WE you mean government staff working on probable cause, then they should follow the law and prosecute.
Nothing ol' Joe did followed proscribed legal principles that honored the presumption of innocence that is codified in the Bill of Rights.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
I would hate for the Soviets to have won and inflicted the KGB on us.
what's next, bread and shoe lines? (seems the gulag's are aparently already covered)
And the thing always ignored about McCarthy was that he was *right*.
Saying that McCarthy was right is like saying that the practice of lancing a patient and bleeding them half to death was right, because, after all, the patient really was sick.
But once we found and suspected paid Soviet spies in government and press, including some high posts, what should our reaction have been?
How about not going on a witch hunt? How about conducting a legitimate investigation? How about taking the evidence before a judge and getting a warrant to tap phones or search offices or whatever else needs to be done in the legitimate interest of national security? How about arresting and jailing or deporting those guilty once you've amassed enough evidence to convict them?
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
If the name Eisenhower doesn't ring a bell with anyone, I'd suggest some serious reading. During Eisnhower's reign, the FBI became what some might claim was dangerously close to a government-sponsored domestic terrorist group. It was commonly tasked with the disruption of peoples' lives that did not see eye to with the stated objectives of the government. The fact that part of this effort deals with counterintelligence is even more hideous - the story is already written, and it's title is COINTELPRO. It's just being adapted to accommodate several decades of technological advancement.
It's not like the government governs itself and is a seperate entity. The government cannot function without businesses, big powerful businesses. $1 = 1 vote? or should it be 1 business = 1 vote?
If all the small business owners in the country could vote and people who don't run businesses cannot vote, then the owners would most likely vote for a much fairer, free market economy. If all the business owners could vote, there would be no more monopolys like Microsoft. The RIAA would most likely be given an equal share but not all the money and power and we'd actually have more of a competitive economy. Right now I don't know, the government says we are at war, but wont say what we are at war with. A war on "terror" is like a war on "fear" or a war on "scary", it does not really make much sense and its not precise.
All of this deception just makes people not trust the government at all anymore, and while some people might still fear the terrorists, even more people fear a government that keeps getting bigger, that no one, not even the politicians involved can trust.
If the politicians don't trust the government, if the courts, the department of justice, the CIA, and the richest men in the world don't trust the government, it leaves the citizens in a complete state of confusion. If citizens cannot trust the government, it makes a war very difficult if not impossible.
So right now it seems like it everyone for themselves, in that people are just trying to secure their own futures and financial situations, if you have money, go ahead and buy your stocks, if you run a business, prepare your business for every possibility, and most importantly, figure out how to actually profit from the instability, otherwise if we face another depression, there will not be an FDR to bail you out.
McCarthy wasnt right you ass, he was a nut bent on destroying the life of anyone who got in his way. He was the anti-american. THere was no due process, there was no justice and his trials would make soviet russia look like jurisprudence.
... hi bingo
He wasn't taken to task. It was a dog'n'pony show staged to distract people from thinking about what really caused the event to happen.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
It's impossible to argue with the people who hold the purse-strings.
If the people had the ability to withold tax money without fear of prosecution or incarceration then you could argue that the citizens are at fault for not paying attention.
The way it works here, though, is the politicians have already decided to do whatever they want. They have an endless supply of money from the tax system. What they can't take out of taxes they'll borrow from the Federal Reserve. That increases the tax burden to the citizens at the sole discretion of the politicians and sells the citizens into inescapable debt. What recourse do the citizens have? The citizens have absolutely no power of veto at all. Elections are popularity contests, mostly, which are dependent on funding. It's impossible to fight a battle of finances against a group which has access to the tax money of an entire nation and holds those citizens in inescable debt.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
It's easy to have no evidence about Guantanamo, since the restrictions there are so tight. I'm sure you just ignore anything and everything Amnesty International has to say, but they do have this to say, plus a whole lot more:
Full judicial review of detention, and access to lawyers and independent human rights monitors, are basic safeguards against torture and ill-treatment, arbitrary detention, and "disappearance". Evidence that Guantánamo detainees have been tortured and ill-treated continues to mount, with FBI agents now added to the list of those making such allegations. Yesterday, the military announced that it will carry out an internal investigation into these latest allegations.
Anyways, I don't know about your home, but this picture from the BBC sure doesn't look like my backyard.
Look. I'm sure you enjoy playing word games, but Colin Powell's former chief of staff had this to say here:
"Lawrence Wilkerson, Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff in the first Bush administration and a former colonel, said Thursday that the view of Cheney's office was put in "carefully couched" terms in memos but that to a soldier in the field it meant sometimes using interrogation techniques that "were not in accordance with the spirit of the Geneva Conventions and the law of war" to extract better intelligence."
You may want to say that Cheney doesn't espouse torture, or that Guantanamo isn't torturing detainees. That's fine. You keep using your "carefully couched" language. Personally, I'm going to keep asking for trials and public disclosure, so we can figure out for ourselves what's going on instead of having to listen to endless talking around the subject.
This is headed to a very bad place.
When you have a government that has been allowed to get away with secret prisons both inside and outside of borders; Indefinite incarceration without due process; and the ability and authority to spy on any citizen with the cooperation and collusion of big business without any sort of warrant or any (even laughable) oversight- what do you think follows?
Disneyland? A safer America? Fuck No!
What follows is the same sort thing that has gone on for countless years in countries that the US used to decry for their cruel and unusual punishment. Basically anybody who disagrees with government or corporate policies loud enough or anyone who they think is a threat will disappear - They'll possibly be subject to torturous interrogation techniques and then will disappear (does it matter if it's into a mass grave, a shallow grave, a secret prison or a FEMA detention center)?
I am sure that there are government supremacists or apologists who will claim this sort of talk is overdoing it or exaggerating - probably the same people who claimed it was exaggeration when I warned everyone I knew about how dangerous the Patriot Act was/is - all I heard was "It sunsets in 2005" and "this is for extraordinary circumstances, it's all a cycle, it will turn the other way" and other similar useless crap.
This is America. WE AREN'T SUPPOSED TO TRUST OUR GOVERNMENT- WE AREN'T SUPPOSED TO HAVE TO. This is our system of checks and balances and it's going, going, practically gone.
There are Americans who just refuse to see it. It doesn't fit their paradigm or occur to them as even being within the realm of possibility that our system is terminally corrupt and heading at warp speed in an anti-freedom, anti-human, and COMPLETELY anti-American direction.
Especially now that "Homeland Security" is a commodity.
What are we going to do? What are you going to do? (don't give me that vote crap - I'm not saying not to vote, I'm just saying if you can even get an honest election and an honest politician that's not going to happen soon enough).
I think people are starting to wake up. Finally, but then what? -
You believe that people are too stupid to govern themselves.
So you imagine a method of only having "smart" people vote, but are concerned because it would exclude the "dumb" races. (Your thinking, not mine. I don't consider any race inferior or superior to mine.) If you are a racist, why not just tell people that you are a racist? Why do you insist on equalizing the races?
Then you think that by passing candidates through some certification course so that they can become electable is somehow fair. Well, who gets to determine who is smart and who is dumb? What certification should be used?
You are forgetting that maybe everyone else is right and you are wrong. Maybe, just maybe, the idea of majority rule was the best system and the system that the Founding Fathers (who are quite possibly far more intelligent than you are) decided upon for that reason.
As for me, I've read their writings and I've discovered that they had one core belief: That people should govern themselves. They dispelled the idea that there was something that the King and the nobleman had that the commoners didn't that allowed them to rule. They proved it absolutely absurd to think that anyone is any smarter than anyone else and more suited to govern!
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Has there been even one, single, solitary instance of a "terrorist" being caught by all this nonsense? What exactly is all this good for, other than spying on citizens at will?
The "evidence" against Padilla was apparently obtained by waterboarding (drowning reflex torturing) two al Queda members until they made up something that the torturers wanted to hear. No case, no evidence, no "dirty bombs", no admin officals declaring him guilty without trial on TV anymore. And he was one of their Big Wins By Using Theeir New Freedom To Find Terrorists.
Still, people don't understand what's happening to their rights. And they won't care. Torture, false imprisonment, stripping a US citizen of his constitutional rights by executive fiat based on stories made up under torture, keeping him prisoner and helpless to answer his accusers for over three years, then a nonsense charge to maintain face -- and he's still under the King's justice, unable to examine the evidence against him -- because there never was any. Why is a US citizen in a secret gulag under trumped up charges? Why don't people care? How many others are out there?
They demanded trust, and they blew it. They don't care about justice, just power. Don't give them more.
The funny thing about the VENONA files was that McCarthy had no access to them. Further, many of the people who he accused of being Communists weren't in the Venona papers.
You may be reading too much into Ann Coulter's writings -- your argument sounds suspicously similar to hers...and has the same flaws.
The fact is that it's simply not OK to make accusations with no proof. The man was grandstanding, and failed to offer any evidence...ever. Regardless of whether or not the evidence later surfaced, he never offered it, which suggests that this was speculative.
Finally, his goals weren't so much to expose traitors on the Soviet payroll, because he never offered an iota of evidence showing this. Instead, he attacked people as communists and communists sympathizers, thus advocating American thought police. You can substitute Communism with quite a few ideals or even religions and the whole concept of McCarthyism begins to crumble. Should Americans have a right to know who the Jews and Jewish sympathizers are? What about gays and gay sympathyzers? Libertarian and libertarian sympathizers? Republicans and republican sympathizers? It is all silly, because IMO, one of our deepest core values is freedom of thought.
Ultimately, it shows that the ends don't justify the means. McCarthy felt that his cause transcended the American justice system -- so he blew lots of smoke and used his power to ruin public figures. It's funny that you should advocate McCarthyism, since there are so many parallels which can be drawn to modern issues. The problem is that what all of these parallels have in common are paranoia, xenophobia, and intolerance...and I'm just not sure how I feel about these being our core values.
I just want to point out that you are making a straw-man argument. Nobody is arguing against looking out for our national interests. If someone is on our enemy's payroll and thus committing treason, bring them to justice. Put them in front of a jury of their peers, and try them using real evidence. The accusers should have proper oversight all the way. What opponents of McCarthyism (and opponents of the erosion of oversight and civil liberties) argue against is bypassing the justice system that helps make America free. IMO, this is more unamerican and more dangerous than the Commuinism/terrorism that we fight.
-Turkey
It has come to my attention that you have made anti-bush comments and are at this very moment having anti-bush thoughts. It is extremely un-patriotic to question the judgement of the President.
"[W]e can't love our country and hate our government."
-The President of the United States
"How dare you suggest that we in the freest nation on Earth live in tyranny... [T]here is nothing patriotic about hating your country, or pretending that you can love your country but despise your government."
-The President of the United States