U.S. Gov To Spider Internet

again.. by Pavel+Stratil · 2006-02-09 02:57 · Score: 5, Insightful

This won't help dealing with the terrorists at all.
What if they communicate via

- plain old websites/ftps
- internet storage servers, irc, etc?
- instant messangers
- VoIP
- decentralised networks?

Lets not forget that they can

- obsfucate.. simplest method would be typing stuff into a CAPCHA-like image. OCR has no chance...
- use slang
- encrypt!

It will end up as an intrusion to the privacy of ordinary people unaware of this and/or private communications among companies.

Re:again.. by aztec+rain+god · 2006-02-09 03:06 · Score: 5, Insightful

I sort of remember a Bill Hicks quote about the War on Drugs that I'm thinking applies to the War on Terrah- "Its not a war on drugs, its a war on personal freedom. Keep that in mind at all times".
What this amounts to is tracking thought-crimes, how can you know someone is going to commit a terrorist act until they do it? People say lots of things, people think lots of things. Whither freedom.

--
Sig cannot be found.
Re:again.. by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-09 03:07 · Score: 2, Insightful

Mod Parent Up.

One flaw in this who plan though it's assuming that the evil doers will use the internet at all.

What's not to stop them meeting up every so often, or passing messages through people networks?

What about using coded normal messages.
For example, "lets meet in a bar tomorrow" could mean "I agree, everything is going to plan".

Or they could just write in l33t! ;)
Re:again.. by 7*6 · 2006-02-09 03:41 · Score: 4, Insightful

Not only do I agree that this is a 'war on personal freedom,' i also feel that this project has disaster written all over it. This 'AI' will have to be pretty intelligent to tag and organize all of this content in a meaningful way, and on top of that, those analysing the data will need to be pretty friggin' brilliant to use it correctly.
as you say, "People say lots of things, people think lots of things." I personally feel that there is no one who can honestly or accurately see all comments and verbalized streams of thought for what they are worth - usually just contemplation or teen angst.
while it is certainly *possible* that terrorists might use (or have used) globally accessible modes of communication to plan a major attack, monitoring the news wires and blogs is probably not the most effective way to prevent the attack.
we must continue to demand privacy at all times, however i feel that the push by the top levels of government to gain access to our souls could be our downfall as a society as we distance ourselves from each other in fear of relinquishing too much information.
Re:again.. by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-09 03:46 · Score: 1, Insightful

It has nothing to do with terrorists. It has everything to do with lowering an electronic surveillance system on the 99% innocent population. And consider that this surveillance has probably been going on for decades. What we're seeing is merely a rolling out of the technology. They are doing it slowly in stages and watching people's reaction, i.e,, deliberately revealing the electronic prison and trying to prevent a panic at the same time.

And electronic police state will make a cashless system possible. It's all very clever, but using deception is perhaps the wrong way to go about all this. Maybe not. I'm sure the powers that be have many scientific studies under their belt and they think they are going about this in the correct way.

Yeah, I expect this to be modded out of existence.
Re:again.. by hahiss · 2006-02-09 04:01 · Score: 2, Insightful

Yeah, you misunderstand the idea of a ``thoughcrime"---which is the crime of THOUGHT. That is, the crime is merely thinking, absent the commission of any other crime. Hate isn't punished, though if it is a motivation for a crime it is an additional factor to be (or at least seen to by in current law) relevant in doling out crime.

Intentions (that is to say, a person's thoughts) are necessarily a part of the law; they distinguish the varieties of murder, for example. (Unless you don't think that premeditation means ``thought of ahead of time".) They may not make a difference in EVERY law or EVERY case, but any legal system that fails to take sufficient notice of thought's role in a crime would be unjust.

--
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." - H.L. Mencken
Re:again.. by Kjella · 2006-02-09 04:19 · Score: 4, Insightful

If you kill a gay man because you hate gays how is that anything other than a murder?

If the purpose of your murder is to incite fear and terror in all gay people, then yes. It is far beyond a death threat - a criminal offense in itself - you've already gone through with it, the only question is who's next. Multiply that with the number of people you've threatened and we can easily put you away for good.

Hate thought isn't illegal, any more than other thoughts. What is pure hate crimes would have been called slander, libel, threats and more if they were done against an individual. You can't treat gays as inferior to straight people without treating a single gay man as inferior to a single straught man. Where does that leave your "All men are created equal..."? That it's okay as long as you insult many enough at once?

--
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Re:again.. by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-09 04:27 · Score: 2, Insightful

Actually, all murders are hate crimes. If you didn't hate the person, why would you kill them?
You were paid to do it? They witnessed you doing something wrong? They were blocking your promotion and you wanted them out of the way? You get a sexual thrill from the act of murder?
Re:again.. by slavemowgli · 2006-02-09 04:58 · Score: 2, Insightful

Hate crimes are in essence thought crimes too.

Huh? No, they're not. The people who killed Matthew Shepard, for example, did not go to jail because they were homophobes; they went to jail because they killed someone. The fact that they did so out of homophobia may have gotten them a harsher sentence (or maybe not; they still didn't get the chair or anything, after all), but you should keep in mind that the *important* thing - that which they actually went to jail for - is that they committed murder.

The same goes for any other crime as well. If you do something bad, then expect to be punished for it, and don't whine if you can't use your homophobia as a defense afterwards. It's not a thought crime unless it actually did not have a physical component; and evaluating the motive of a murderer etc. and adjusting the sentence accordingly is something that's been done forever, anyway, without anyone ever crying "thought crime".

--
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Re:again.. by jrp2 · 2006-02-09 05:32 · Score: 5, Insightful

"And why is a murder committed out of hate worse than a "regular" murder? The victim is equally dead either way."

Good question, perhaps this will put it into perspective.

First, let's make this battery instead of murder. Murder is so heinous it is indeed hard to consider a major difference between one derived from "hate" vs. other reasons (being cheated in some way, result of a robbery, etc.). They are both "high crimes" no matter how you measure it, serious punishment will likely occur regardless of the hate component. Battery might be a better crime to illustrate the point, and probably one of the more common uses of hate aggravation (along with vandalism).

A non-hate battery crime usually is an event with some guilt on the part of the victim. Not saying they deserve it, but they probably did something to instigate it (insulted your friend, smashed into your car, etc.). The escalation was likely avoidable by apologizing, running away, or just keeping a cool head about you.

Take a hate-crime battery, and the victim was probably completely innocent, just being black, gay, muslim, etc. and at the wrong place at the wrong time was enough.

The perpetrator in the non-hate battery is likely regretful later, and is probably not an inherently evil person. They may need drug/alcohol treatment and/or anger management classes, etc. They are likely to learn a lesson, and will likely avoid repeating the offense in the future. There likely was no premeditation to it either.

The hate-based batterer is generally not regretful, perhaps even proud and satisfied. They will highly likely repeat it, and there is very little a victim can do to avoid it. This is a MUCH more dangerous person, and the punishment (and/or rehabilitation) needs to be much stronger (IMNSHO).

Another situation is a gay neighbor of mine that got burglarized. He came home to find his home burglarized, and "die fags" spray painted on his wall. I have been burglarized, and it was painful and scary, but I did not take it personally and I was not traumatized. I took it as a random, unfortunate, event not directed at me personally. Some druggy looking to finance his next fix. I could definitely see a difference in these situations, my neighbor was totally traumatized, as would I be. I definitely see the crime perpetrated against my neighbor as a far more serious crime than the simple burglary I endured, even though, at their core, they were otherwise similar.

Also be cognizant of other factors that can aggravate criminal sentences, such as recidivism, no remorse, etc. These are along the same lines as hate crime aggravations. They are all an attempt by society to allow for differentiation between one-time mistakes by the offender, and the much more dangerous criminals that will likely repeat and perhaps escalate their crimes. It is just codifying "hate" as an aggravation at the same level as some of the other factors.

I am not sure how well I am making my point, but I guess the bottom line is if you look at the victim impact, the impact of a hate crime on the victim (including their family and community) is far greater than than a non-hate crime. There is little a victim of a hate crime can do to prevent it. As well as the perpetrator of a hate crime is much more likely to repeat it.

I agree with earlier points, it can be difficult to determine when a crime is hate-based, or not. But in many cases, it is not all that hard. I do agree that assigning "hate crime" status to a crime should not be taken lightly or capricously, and if there is any reasonable doubt, should not be applied. I think (I hope) it is applied very carefully, and sparingly, in real life.

--
The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon - Douglas William Jerrold
Re:again.. by lawpoop · 2006-02-09 07:23 · Score: 2, Insightful

Well, in that case, premeditated murder is a thought crime. The only difference between manslaughter and murder is *intent* -- a thought. The only difference between murder and pre-meditated murder the the *plan* to commit the murder -- a collection of thoughts. So by your logic, a murder charge is a thought-crime charge -- after all, the only difference between murder and manslaughter is intent.

Personally I have no problem with giving more punishing for hate crimes, because its a kind of terrorism and inflicts fear on a community. If one guy kills another for sleeping with his wife, nobody else should be afraid (unless they are sleeping with the killer's wife). However, if somebody decides to kill a black or gay person *because* they are black or gay, then all blacks and gays have reason to be afraid.

--
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Re:again.. by ConceptJunkie · 2006-02-09 10:27 · Score: 2, Insightful

An investment banker killing a gay a colleague over a promotion isn't going to keep gay people from becoming bankers

No, but it might make his other colleagues leary of getting promotions.

Different circumstances, same result, if you ask me. The "magical" difference in your examples seems to be that "sacred" attribute of being gay.

You can't hate someone for getting a promotion? I don't think so.

You see the problem with "hate crimes" is that some reasons for committing a crime are supposedly worse than other reasons for committing a crime and carry stiffer penalties. If you ask me, murder is murder. The only circumstances that matter are those that distinguish first-degree from second, and so on. But now there's suddenly another extenuating circumstance that exists entirely inside the head of the attacker (above and beyond intent).

In other words, a "hate crime" is a bona fide George Orwell vintage THOUGHTCRIME.

I can commit a "Hate Crime" against a gay person. But what about a straight person? What about a Republican? What about a gun owner? What about a rich person? Just what separates this totally novel kind of crime from all the things people have doing to each other since the founding of the Republic?

Can I commit a hate crime against a random person? If not, why not. How is premeditated murder of a business partner to get his money less bad than premeditated murder against someone who is, say, black, or white, or a Microsoft user or a CEO of SCO?

How long until it's just the thought by itself that's a crime? After all, if you subtract the murders from the two cases above, you still have punishment left over. Punishment for what?

--
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.

The Erosion of America by TripMaster+Monkey · 2006-02-09 03:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

Proponents of this initiative boast that other data mining systems, such as Starlight, have already proven their worth in the fight against terrorism. However, given the fact that the current administration knew full well that Osama bin Laden intended to use hijacked airliners as missiles in a terrorist strike, but chose not to act, and that the CIA managed to uncover this information without a wholesale violation of the privacy of American citizens, I really can't see the justification here.

Why exactly does the Bush administration need such vast amounts of information to conduct their 'war on terror'? And why were they unable to use the perfectly good intel they did possess to thwart the worst terrorist attack ever on American soil?

One thing's for sure...it doesn't really matter whether the people OK this initiative or not, as Dubya & Company have amply demonstrated a complete contempt for the law of the land.

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____

~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

Big Brother ADVISEs you! by digitaldc · 2006-02-09 03:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

I wonder how long it will be before this system is used for political and/or selfish purposes?

George Orwell would be writing non-fiction if he were alive today.

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He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson

Robots by krgallagher · 2006-02-09 03:04 · Score: 4, Insightful

"Perhaps as one of the first high profile uses of Alexa's WebSearch Platform, the U.S. government plans to search, link and reference every news site, blog and email on the Internet, using sophisticated AI codenamed ADVISE to do the correlations."

I don't suppose this is going to honor the rules in my robots.txt.

--

Insert Generic Sig Here:

It won't work. by AltGrendel · 2006-02-09 03:06 · Score: 5, Insightful

Terrorists already know how to work around this stuff for critical communications. Go low tech. Don't use phones, don't use email, don't use the web. The method that Al Queda uses to get the videos to the media demonstrate that they already have a very good low tech infrastructure to do this.

This just looks like the security people are getting desprate and trying to cast a wider net. The secret wiretaps used on citizens was a wide net that seems to have had poor results.

--
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination

- Douglas Adams

Another sad day by ElephanTS · 2006-02-09 03:08 · Score: 2, Insightful

I had no idea the loss of personal freedoms would be so fast. This thing will not be given to Google to do (as some earlier post asked) as they intend to do illegal and pernicious things with it. I am glad I can remember the world when it was free but sorry for my children who will know nothing but surveillance, total information awareness, and AI face recog as normal.

What a way to deal with resource depletion!

--
spoonerize "magic trackpad"

The quote that annoys me... by meringuoid · 2006-02-09 03:08 · Score: 5, Insightful

Starlight has already helped foil some terror plots, says Jim Thomas, one of its developers and director of the government's new National Visualization Analytics Center in Richland, Wash. He can't elaborate because the cases are classified, he adds. But "there's no question that the technology we've invented here at the lab has been used to protect our freedoms - and that's pretty cool."

Excuse me?

If what he says is true, then it's possible that the technology has been used to protect our lives. Our freedoms are a different matter. Which of the two you consider to be the more important is a pretty strong indicator of whether you're a free country or a police state.

--
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.

Re:The quote that annoys me... by edumacator · 2006-02-09 03:22 · Score: 3, Insightful

Very true. It seems that there are a lot of folks out there, in both political parties, who are confusing safety and freedom. The irony seems apparent to me. Freedom, by its very nature, compromises much of our security.

Finding a balance between the two is important, and the politically expedient simplification of the two into one will never help us truly balance these two important principles.

--
An important change for education.
Re:The quote that annoys me... by Dhaos · 2006-02-09 05:57 · Score: 2, Insightful

Give me liberty or give me death!- Patrick Henry

If you're so afraid of being killed by terrorists that you will consistently choose safety before
your own personal freedoms...

then those who wish to destroy our nation have already won.

--
It's not what you know, or even who you know- It's how many people recognize your damn .sig

Exactly how by hey! · 2006-02-09 03:09 · Score: 3, Insightful

are they going to monitor e-mail?

Blogs and news sites are things we publish to the world and are easy to spider. Emails are private communications. In order to monitor them you have to either intercept them in transit or search records on private servers. Even if the email is available via webmail, you have to gain unauthorized access in a way that is generally considered trespass.

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Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.

Interesting by voice_of_all_reason · 2006-02-09 03:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

I can't wait to see history books in about 100 years or so. Bin Laden's going to be up there with Sun Tzu and General Meade for the title of "greatest strategist ever."

Singlehandedly causing the West to self-destruct is no small potatoes.

The jokes/fiction detracts... by Paraplex · 2006-02-09 03:27 · Score: 2, Insightful

...from the seriousness of this.

Modern times have led us into an age which reflects a lot of our worst fictional nightmares and we are allowing it to happen because we are accepting it because there is a "cmon, that was just a book/movie/joke. it won't *really* be like that" type of attitude.

The fact is that this sort of "total information awareness" nonsense is absolute power, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Again, not a cute "quote" written for posterity, but a cold hard fact.

I believe that crime is a necessary catalyst for change, and that many things that were illegal in the past are now no longer illegal because society has recognised that these "crimes" were overblown, and that the thinking of the time would have labelled every person a criminal. Today the vast majority of people are labelled criminals by one group or another.

The point of all this is that a "Total Information Awareness" or a "Pre-emptive criminalisation" or even an instant criminalisation in the case of security cameras etc. lead us to a situation where our society is made up of criminals, 100% policing is necessary, and zero social change can ever occur.

--
Rich Gentlemen Hide - The Existential Comic

Re:Pretext Incidents used by the Elite to start wa by Brushfireb · 2006-02-09 03:55 · Score: 2, Insightful

"So try the elite in court for treason. We now have the legal precedent. Perhaps."

First of all, how do you try a class of people in a court? 1 at a time?

Second, even if we assume that its possible, how do you plan to win?

Your only chance is revolution. Good Luck, becuase most people arent on your side.

Let me give you a little hint -- its easier to move from the "bottom" to the "top" than it is to war against them.

how do you spell encryption? by lophophore · 2006-02-09 03:59 · Score: 2, Insightful

If I had something I wanted to move over the internet, without anybody being able to read it, I would use a one-time pad or some other nearly-as-secure encryption. It's so easy to do.

This program will only catch the foolhardy, and will could be used for nefarious purposes against (mostly) law-abiding American citizens.

So it is a bad idea.

Remember, as Americans, we have the right, and duty, to inform our congress-critters and other representatives when we think the government is heading the wrong way. Send a fax to your Senators and Representatives today. Fax their local office and their Washington office.

--
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't

What "Erosion of America"? by mi · 2006-02-09 04:09 · Score: 2, Insightful

However, given the fact that the current administration knew full well that Osama bin Laden intended to use hijacked airliners as missiles

The article you are linking to is from 2003. The commision, creation of which they are talking about there, has actually released their findings since then. Nothing like your "Bush knew full well" allegation was in them — you are simply wrong on this one.

If anything, it is the Americans' trait of fearing their government more than the foreign enemies, that is to blame... The latter fear has increased substantially in recent years, hence the public's acceptance of the administration's eavesdroping antics.

Your attempts to whip the former fear up, on the other hand, are so far fruitless, because, although the government has not become much better, it has not become much worse either... I'll take the unauthorized eavesdropping on terrorist suspects over the authorized raid on the child abuse suspects any day.

wholesale violation of the privacy of American citizens, I really can't see the justification here.

What "wholesale violation of the privacy"? The article talks about harvesting web-sites. No more invasive, than what Google and other search engines do for a living... Carnivore or the Clipper chip — yes, that could've been threatening...

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In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.

I'm not defending Bush but by HangingChad · 2006-02-09 04:17 · Score: 3, Insightful

One thing the intel community does is collect information from traditional news sources both foreign and domestic. There is a lot of useful information in the press. It sounds like they've merely extended that to web-based information sources. I'm not sure it's as much a thought control measure as simply making a catalog of existing public information, which a web site is. To me this seems like a normal function of intelligence gathering.

I think the inclusion of email is what gives this the swarmy, big brother overtones. We've also have ample evidence that the Bush administration can't be trusted. The combination of Bush political flaks with no regard for privacy or the law and large amounts of personal data is what makes it scary to me.

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That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage

It would be much cheaper to build a Google API app by smagruder · 2006-02-09 04:20 · Score: 2, Insightful

But of course, from the "brains" who are behind bolstering the costly, debt-exploding military-industrial complex (for fighting unjustified elective wars, no less), we are now seeing the formation of yet another unneeded program to scrape the web, with American tax dollars^W^W^Wproceeds of treasury bond sales to China (interest paid for by our children/grandchildren).

On top of this, we have a regime with widely demonstrated incompetence and/or willful negligence deciding to build a program like this. They couldn't even deal with the plain-language warnings they received regarding al-Qaeda's plans to hit tall buildings with jet planes. What I'm driving at is they can collect all the data in the world, and they have no ability to understand it or act on it, at least as long as His Lordship, King George is in power.

--
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist

Government able to do anything? by cejones · 2006-02-09 05:01 · Score: 2, Insightful

I'm sorry, but government agents had all the pieces that pointed to what happened on 9/11. And yet they were not able to put the pieces together until what? A year later? So, even if this spidering works as stated by the government, isn't there a 0% probability that they still won't be able to actually USE that data to help deter anything? And I agree with one of the other posts here... I doubt they will respect robots.txt. If they did, then all the terrorists would do it set that up on their web server... What the government needs to do is clamp down on how the terrorists get their MONEY. If the 9/11 hijackers were cut off from the big Oil baron money coming from Al Qaida even three months before 9/11, they would not have had the ability to buy airline tickets and perform the terrorism... Instead of listening in to my phone calls to my grandmother, I think the government should scrutinize EVERY single monetary transaction that is initiated from outside the US into the US. That seems alot easier and more effective than spidering the web for some obfuscated terror information written in Farsi code.

The most terrifying quote in the article by prospero14 · 2006-02-09 05:57 · Score: 4, Insightful

"This sort of technology does protect against a real threat," says Jeffrey Ullman, professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford University. "If a computer suspects me of being a terrorist, but just says maybe an analyst should look at it ... well, that's no big deal. This is the type of thing we need to be willing to do, to give up a certain amount of privacy."

This is not something "we" need to be willing to do! My civil liberties are NOT YOURS TO GIVE AWAY! I'm terrified that a CS prof at Stanford thinks that it's no big deal that the US wants to spy on its own citizens and deprive us of our rights under the 4th and 5th amendments. (Yes, the 5th ammendment too, since US Citizens have been held on US soil without being charged with a crime, and thus deprived of due process of law.)

How can any educated person think this loss of privacy is "no big deal"? I'm at a loss for words.

Re:The most terrifying quote in the article by Money+for+Nothin' · 2006-02-09 18:01 · Score: 1, Insightful

My civil liberties are NOT YOURS TO GIVE AWAY!

Couldn't agree more!

How can any educated person think this loss of privacy is "no big deal"?

Perhaps because computer scientists are trained to think about how to dig through more data, and not one whit of attention is paid towards privacy in 4 years of undergraduate education? Or if anything, CS students might write one very weak encryption/decryption program, which CS profs assure would be useful for "sensitive" transactions like financial or medical records. But rarely does the concept of *individual* privacy enter the discussion...

I speak as a recently-graduated BSCS myself, after all...

We don't learn about ethical issues. We don't learn the politics of privacy. We don't learn that liberal artsy-fartsy crap that everybody else in our college learns... We learn math and statistics theory. Data structures and algorithms. Specific technologies (which might be horribly outdated, if not at the time of teaching, then probably by the time we leave school).

Thoughts about society and culture are for those *other*, stupider people with non-technical minds (or so we CS students are told); for people who major in Political Science or the ever-worthless field of Sociology, or Gender Studies, or Non-White-Male-Studies, or English, or Theater, or Literature, etc... All the inane social studies and studies of things we learned in 1st grade (like English) that any alcohol-addled monkey can get a 4.0 in, if they bother to show up for the finals.

Admittedly, for as much of a privacy advocate as I usually am, there are times when I think a "Transparent Society" like David Brin's might be a better world. But I immediately recognize the idealism of that view, return to reality, and realize that Orwell's "1984" is far-more likely: a society in which the elite 20% get privacy, at least occasionally, whereas the the lower 80% of society (the proles, etc.) do not.

And really, in the long-run, I don't see privacy being protected. We are being dragged, kicking and screaming, towards a "1984" society, whether we like it or not. Technological progress ensures that it is technically-possible; political and business interests ensure it is psychologically and politically-possible. Scott McNeely was right when he said "privacy is dead" (I just haven't gotten over it, as he finished that sentence suggesting).

I'm frankly only mildly-surprised that this Stanford prof. thinks this sort of dataveillance is a good idea. Most CS profs, for as mathematically-brilliant as they are, can't see the ramifications of their work beyond their own nose. They are the "useful idiots" that more-strategic, less-technical, more-conceptual thinkers -- politicians, businessmen, etc. -- love to employ, because such gifted technical minds will do their bidding without considering the consequences of their work. Their innocence is their only cover for their incompetence at understanding the real world and dealing with people, and it is a poor cover, IMO.

--

Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?

Re:Dude! You are too sane to be posting here. by Schmendr1ck · 2006-02-09 08:47 · Score: 3, Insightful

Unfortunatly the reality is 'hates crimes' laws are a product of the modern 'civil rights' movement and just as much of a sham of doublespeak and deceit hatched by Democrats.

So rather than having federal civil rights legislation, you would have us go back to a time when non-whites were intimidated or ignored, had to use separate bathrooms and water fountains, and could be prevented from attending a white school by National Guard troops? If we didn't have this movement and the legislation that grew from it (most importantly the Civil Rights Act of 1964) how far do you think we would have moved from those times?

Secondly, Democrats in the late 50's and early 60's were extremely divided over civil rights legislation. Many Democratic senators from southern states were strongly opposed to it, and even Eisenhower and LBJ weakened the first attempt (the Civil Rights act of 1957) to the point that it was practically useless.

First off I don't think I'm saying anything controversial when I say that those on the books already are applied in a totally bigoted fashion and will only get worse as more are passed

I don't think it's controversial so much as plain false. Can you back this up with some factual data? The FBI 2004 Hate Crime Statistics indicate that about 63% of reported hate crimes with known offenders are committed by whites. Does this mean that hate crime laws are applied disproportionately against whites, or simply that more whites are committing hate crimes? Back up your assertion that the laws are applied in a "bigoted fashion".

Anyone who has watched the antics of the left over the last fifty years knows it is only an intermediate step along the way to their goal of crimethink laws, i.e. making it against the law to disagree with Democrats. It is an old joke that a 'bigot' is someone winning an argument with a liberal. They have realized that just hurling 'bigot' at an opponent isn't enough to win an argument anymore so now they would rather simply jail the opposition like all their heros did. (Stalin, Castro, Mao, etc.)

Anyone who has watched the antics of the Bush Administration over the past five years would think twice about making this statement. Try to get into a Bush "town meeting" if you're a registered Democrat. Try to get federal funding for scientific research that contradicts Bush's theological views. Try to stay out of jail for telling your patrons at the library that the government was snooping through your records. Try to keep from being blacklisted by Karl Rove if you are a Republican that doesn't toe the party line on the warrantless wiretaps issue.

Try to tell Mr. Bush that you are neither with him nor with the terrorists and see what he says.

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