Bill Could Restrict Freedom of the Press

WerewolfOfVulcan writes "The Washington Post is carrying an article about a disturbing Senate bill that could make it illegal to publicly disclose even the existence of US domestic spying programs (i.e. NSA wiretaps)." An aide to the bill's author assures us it's not aimed at reporters, but the language is ambiguous at best. From the article: "Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said the measure is broader than any existing laws. She said, for example, the language does not specify that the information has to be harmful to national security or classified. 'The bill would make it a crime to tell the American people that the president is breaking the law, and the bill could make it a crime for the newspapers to publish that fact,' said Martin, a civil liberties advocate."

Comments

Re:This will never fly...

[eric76]

it would be shot down SO fast by the courts that it would make their heads spin

Or they could arrest people, hold them in jail for a while, charge them, and then before the courts can make a decision, drop charges and let them go with stern warnings.

That way, the courts don't get a chance to shut them down since they have to have a real dispute, but the administration can use it to silence opponents.

Re:Yeah whatever

[Adult film producer]

Now it's being used in child porn cases as well. This should come as no surprise to anybody that lived through the 80's. Back then the politicians promised us that RECO legislation was only aimed at the Drug King-Pins and international cartels.......

Re:I used to think that.

[dynamo52]

You make some interesting arguments and while I don't completely disagree, I'm not totally convinced GW won in 2004. Ohio still looks awfully fishy to me. When was the last time you have seen exit polls so out of line with official results? And none of it auditable? We all know about Diebold.

Yes, far too many Americans voted out of ignorance and fear, and are reaping their rewards, but the process was corrupted

Re:fuck

[forgotten_my_nick]

>Most of the people causing the trouble down there are trained terrorists,

Actually most of the people causing trouble are ex-military, disenfranchised civilians and those who have lost out on the regime change to the point where it is better to fight. TBH actual terrorists like AQ would make a small percentage of that.

>The civilians are the ones getting stuffed by a war they didn't want

http://www.harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html

Its a good read. Would like to see an update on it though.

Re:broken promises

[ultranova]

I'm not too worried about the U.S. government decaying into tyranny. I am worried, however, that the U.S. could lose our global position and end up back where we were in the late 1800's... That is, hardly a force to be reckoned with, either militarily or economically.

Which would propably be a good thing for everyone, even the US. It would make the US stop being a target for terrorism, letting you put your economy and society onto healthier ground than the current debt-taking production-outsourcing trend with constant warmongering thrown in for bad measure. But there's likely to be a lot of grief when the house of cards crashes.

A situation where a single power completely dominates the whole world is simply unmaintainable. The question is not if the US empire will come down, but how bad the collapse will be. You better hope that you get a smart president next, someone who dismantles it peacefully, before it will collapse violently. A peacefull dismantling, if combined with a sharp reduction in military budget and a large upscaling of social services, still lets you keep a good standard of living, while a violent collapse resulting from the foreign money lenders refusing to give you anymore, or all the places you've outsourced production to from nationalizing the production plants to reap the rewards themselves, or the countries currently engaged in "free trade" with you simply realizing that it is in their best interest to quit those deals and protect their domestic production with tariffs, resulting in sharp decrease in your ability to export your products, will result in complete economic chaos in the US, whose economy is heavily in debt to begin with.

Basically, you are not going to stay a superpower for long anymore, you just don't have the resources to continue dominating the world. Better abdicate peacefully and keep some of your power and riches than being thrown out by force and facing the guillotine.

Not trying to troll or bash the US, just pointing out what I think is the truth. Every empire in the history has fallen eventually, US is no different. I simply think that the fall will happen pretty soon, since the US economy is based on taking debt and is already heavily indebted, and its military hasn't managed to pacify Iraq and doesn't seem able to, in the near future, putting that much more strain to the economy. Add heavy corruption in both government and major corporations, and you have a pretty nasty mess brewing.