Patriot Act Game Pokes Fun at Government

The Miami Herald is reporting that a new game based on Monopoly is taking a crack at Patriot Act and what creator Michael Kabbash describes as the curtailed freedom that has resulted. From the article: "The object of the game is not to amass the most money or real estate, but to be the last player to retain civil liberties. 'I've had people complain to me that when they play, nobody wins. They say "We're all in Guantanamo and nobody has any civil liberties left," he said. 'I'm like "Yeah, that's the point."'"

Comments

Nothing to see here...

[Evil Closet Monkey]

Slashdot provides its own brand of humor as I attempt to load the story and receive the following error:

Nothing to see here, move alone.

(or something to the effect) But a quick reload showed that "The Man" did not in fact supress the story.

Re:Nothing to see here...

[jamie]

Your internet connection has been traced. Agents will be arriving at your door shortly. Please surrender quietly.

Priceless

[TripMaster Monkey]

I'm downloading this right now...looking forward to playing it with the in-laws next Sunday.

Here's one of the 'Homeland Security' cards:

According to FOX News, your criticisms of the President during wartime make you "guilty of granting aid and comfort to our enemies";
Roll the dice to see if you are GUILTY OF TREASON
A roll of even = not guilty; a roll of odd = guilty - sentenced to GTMO

Absolutely priceless.

Re:Priceless

[Krach42]

This post has been labeled sedicious... please report to your local terrorist detainment camp, and allow them to re-educate you to be a Proper Patriotic American.

You commy filth piss me off... *gets a whisper from an aid in the ear* Oh... I mean, you TERRORIST filth piss me off...

Re:Priceless

[JamesonTheIrish]

I'd like to see a card with: "You break your leg falling from the top of a Abu Ghraib-style ass pyramid. Pay $200 in doctor fees."

Re:Priceless

[kypper]

Why can't we hate Clinton AND Bush?

Re:Priceless

[orthogonal]

But honestly, how many people griping about Bush/Ashcroft today thought that Clinton/Reno were A-OK?

Hell, I thought Clinton bad enough that I wanted Bush to win in 2000. Horrible mistake. I ever bought his lies about the war enough tat I tepidly supported it.

But by 2004, I was volunterring for Kerry.

Why? Mostly because of Ashcroft and Gauntanamo and Abu Ghraib.

Let me state that again: in 2000 I was disgusted with Clinton and happy to see a Republican President. Never again.

In the five years Bush has been in office, I've seen our Constitution shredded, Madison's checks-and-balances blown away, a disastrous war and obscene war profiteering, growth of the Police State eclipsed only by massive deficits and new entitlement programs and corporate welfare and corruption, the destruction of an American city while Bush literally strummed a guitar, and the dismantling of government-funded science in favor of corporations and religious nuts.

Maybe you still don't get it: I shared most of your so-called conservative values: I was for small government, against nation-building, for lower taxes (during the Clinton years I had a good job, you see), against Washington corruption. I saw Dubya as a breath of fresh air.

It's not me who has changed. It's the Republican Party. They control all three branches of government, and yes taxes are lower, but the deficit is now nine billion dollars, government's gotten bigger and more corrupt, and it's listening into phone calls without getting warrants.

Now I see Dubya and most of the rest of the Republican Party as a threat to the future of this country.

Damned right I thought Clinton and Reno were wrong. But your Dubya's a total and unmitigated disaster on all fronts. Now I'd welcome Clinton back in a heartbeat, and so would half of my conservative friends.

Re:Priceless

[Alsee]

Much of the criticism about Bush has nothing to do about principles or civil liberties, because it was (and would be) fine when their guy is doing it.

Bullshit. I am not, and never have been a Democat. I was neutral and I didn't pay much attention to politics. I considered them all Republicrats and equally currupt. Back in the 2000 election I didn't see much difference between Bush and Gore and didn't vote and didn't much care who won. As for the Supreme COurt ruling on the election, I figured it may as well have been a damn coin toss, and didn't much care.

It is Bush that has had DRAWN my attaention and criticism. I would never have accepted Bush's crap from Clinton or anyone.

Bush's approval rating is about 36, with some major polls pegging it at 33% and 34%. You cannot hit the low to mid 30's based on partisan politics. You cannot hit that dismal level without losing virtually the entire middle PLUS pissing off and losing a signifigant percentage of your own party. The criticisms of Bush are coming from the Left, coming from the Middle, signifigantly and increasingly coming from the Right.

Anyone dismissing the criticism of Bush as partisan is themselves guilty of partisan bias.

-

Re:Priceless

[Kombat]

Actually, the building you are referring to was WTC 7, and Larry Silverstein, the owner of the WTC complex, admitted in a PBS interview shortly after 9/11 that he ordered the building to be 'pulled'. More details can be found here.

Wow, what an insightful, well-researched, and thought-provoking website. I went to the main page to see what other conspiracies had been covered up by the US government, and once I scrolled past the obviously legitimate banner ads for Ephedra, Viagra, and penny stocks, I found all sorts of op-ed diatribes based on shaky and unverifiable claims.

WTC 7 was not slated for demolition. It was not wired with explosives. It caught on fire, burned from the inside out, and collapsed. TLC (a reputable media outlet, unlike the whacko nutjob websites that come up with you search for "WTC 7 collapse") mentioned the collapse of WTC 7 in their documentary about why the towers collapsed. Officials were surprised and disturbed that buildling 7 collapsed, seemingly on its own, and learned a lot from the experience. The events revealed that conventional construction wisdom wasn't as reliable as builders had assumed, and they learned principles which they used to improve the safety of other buildings.

If, as you and all these other Area-51 crazies assert, WTC 7 was deliberately razed, you haven't answered "why?" I also love some of the other peer links that come up when "researching" your claims, like this gem: "Come on folks, no planes hit the World Trade Center on 9/11/01."

Demolition experts immediately went on record as saying that such a collapse as a result of an airliner strike was flatly impossible,

If they're "on record," then link to it. Who are these "experts," and how exactly did they acquire their "expert" knowledge on the dynamics of airliner strikes on large skyscrapers, given that it's never happened before?

With respect to your crazytalk regarding the attack on the Pentagon, you demonstrate the classic flaws of a conspiracy theorist. That is, you ask the wrong questions, make the wrong assumptions, and ignore obvious counter evidence.

For example, evidence supporting the truth is overwhelming, undeniable, and readily available. If there really was no "Flight 77", then what do you make of this list of victims? The passengers and crew of American Airlines Flight 77? Are these fake names? Why not call up some of the family members and see if these people actually existed? Google them. Locate addresses and co-workers. Where did all these people go, if Flight 77 didn't hit the Pentagon? Are all their family members in on the conspiracy, and perpetuating a lie?

Also, simply research the flight plans for that day. FAA flight plans are public record. See if Flight 77 actually existed. Or dig up the tax records for American Airlines and see if they actually owned a 757 with the registration number matching the one that "allegedly" hit the Pentagon. Where did that massive airplane go, if not the Pentagon?

As for your ridiculous claims that there was no fire, there most certainly and obviously was. It penetrated several layers deep into the rings of the Pentagon. Media and photographers could only photograph the outside. Or are you surprised that large amounts of media members were denied access to the flaming, chaotic top-secret inner rings of the Pentagon in the middle of a massive terrorist attack on the US?

Finally, let me also address this assumption that many people make regarding impact holes. People seem to think that an airplane should punch right through walls. The truth is, airplanes are actually light, fragile tubes of thin metal. Take a piece of paper and roll it up like a paper towel tube. Now smash it down onto the top of your desk. Did it go through? Did it even lea

Re:Priceless

[Kombat]

This is way too long, and you've not credibly refuted anything I've said, so I'll post without Karma bonus to try and avoid the wrath of the mods.

Because in the documentary [...], [Larry Silverstein] made the following statement: "'We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse."

I'm not disputing that he said that (although I suspect he said "pull out," not "pull it"). But it is YOU and the website that are making the completely unsupported assumption that "pull it" means "demolish." In fact, when you read it in context, such an assumption doesn't even make sense. Why would he justify proactively demolishing it by saying "we've had such a terrible loss of life" already? Why not just evacuate to save lives, and wait and see if the building can be salvaged when the fire burns itself out? How would evacuating and then deliberately blowing it up save any lives? Don't you see? It makes no sense.

If that in fact is true, than it's the third steel-framed building to ever collapse from fire, the first two being WTC 1 and 2. The simple fact is: steel-framed buildings don't collapse from fire. Period.

You're illustrating my point for me exactly. This is exactly why the building architects were so surprised by the fact that they did collapse from fire. Everybody thought that was impossible. The steel frames of the buildings were coated with insulating foam to prevent exactly this scenario from playing out. But what they hadn't counted on was the fact that the buildings' ages and poor maintenance would effectively erase the safety built into the design. Again, I cite the documentary Why The Towers Fell for a very thorough and insightful explanation of how things transpired on that fateful day.

And the reason that those 3 buildings were the first 3 steel-framed buildings ever to collapse from fire is because they were all designed the same flawed way (as have been many more since then that thankfully haven't had massive fires to test them).

The towers were designed to constantly withstand wind pressures equal to 30 times the energy of the airliner impacts.

Quit with the red herring. The "energy of the airliner impacts" had nothing to do with it. It was the heat from the fire that brought down the buildings. The buildings did withstand the impact of the airliners, just as they should have.

In July of 1945 a B-52 bomber, lost in heavy fog, crashed into the Empire State Building.

First of all, it was a B-25, not a B-52. The B-52 hadn't even been invented yet, and is a MUCH bigger airplane. The B-25 that crashed into the Empire State Building was 53 feet long with a wingspan of 67 feet. The airliners that crashed into the twin towers were roughly 3 times as long with double the wingspan. Plus, the airliners were fully loaded with fuel for a cross-continent journey, whereas the little B-25 bomber was on its way home, and thus had relatively little fuel on board.

Oops. Guess you forgot about that part, eh? But let's not get bogged down in facts. Please, continue on.

[Where are all the people who were supposedly on the non-existent AA flight 77?]

I just love it when people throw this up as an 'argument'. Their bodies have not been found, and they never will be.

That's your answer? They existed, but they've simply vanished? All at the same time? Without anybody noticing? They were secretly diverted somewhere else and killed off in the name of freedom? I'm going to need a little more explanation than that, please. Who ordered this? Who were the people who carried it out? Why would American Airlines pilots and US military service men and women kidnap and murder innocent American citizens? A conspiracy this big would requi

Re:Priceless

[Kombat]

The problem with your theory is that it requires the cooperation and secrecy of hundreds of people outside the government. Such as:

• The airline executives themselves who are sacrificing expensive airplanes and pilots
  
• The pilots themselves who divert the planes (with passengers and crew) to wherever the government will "dispose" of them. Effectively committing suicide.
  
• The air traffic controllers, who must somehow forge and lie about radar tracks and radio conversation records for the flights in question.
  
• The demolition experts employed to carry out the precise, deliberate destruction of the WTC towers and Pentagon.
  
• Building security at the towers, who must've had to look the other way while these explosives were set up. And then show up for work on the day they knew the buildings would be destroyed. Like the pilots, effectively committing suicide.
  

Why would all these people play along, when in many cases, it meant their own deaths? These are not top-secret, covert, CIA/NSA/FBI/military operatives we're talking about. I could maybe buy that those guys would play along and keep quiet in the name of "patriotism." But why the airline execs? The air traffic controllers? Why wouldn't someone have come forward with a story supporting your crazy assertions?

Download location

[Anonymous Coward]

The game can be downloaded here.

How about Yay for raising public awareness?

[TripMaster Monkey]

One of the most troubling things about the current situation is that your average Joe Sixpack has no idea how far the current administration has gone in their efforts to decieve them and strip away their inalienable rights. Once they're properly appraised of the situation, they're usually pretty damned mad about it.

Getting the word out is one of the most important ways we can fight this assault on our liberty. The people in power thrive on ignorance. Anything that deprives them of that is positive.

Not a waste

[Red Flayer]

And if more people become aware that there is a brewing problem with attrition of their rights, how is that a waste?

What's more beneficial to the bottom line of a popular movement -- one individual sending a letter, or one individual getting two people to send a letter? Or how about one individual making 1,000 people 0.2% more likely to write a letter?

Few people want to talk about civil liberties at the water cooler during their afternoon break. This game is interesting enough to be water-cooler fodder, which is a good thing -- raise awareness of the issue.

Re:Yay for wasting time...

[Red Jesus]

But if these people would have spent a little more time working with their representatives, or mobilizing petitions, or SOMETHING that actually affected the political systems, they might actually have what they want. Now, they've got a much talked about game, and rights are still just as infringed-upon.

Do you really think that if these people had petitioned their representatives, the Guantanamo/Patriot Act/everything else issues would be solved? I used to write letters to government officials when I was in high school, but that didn't accomplish much. Right now, we need to educate the voting public about the serious issues facing them. And the gamemakers did exactly that.

RJ

This is how you affect the system

[Gogl]

Have you ever written a representative or senator? Ever gotten anything besides a standard intern-generated-and-stamped form letter? The only people who actually have access to politicians are big donors, and they're generally part of the system and part of the problem in the first place.

Petitions are nice, but the real way to raise awareness is to go to the people, not the politicians. If a game like this can raise awareness, more power to it. At the very least, it made some newspapers, and now Slashdot.

So don't dismiss it so quickly: I would say the creator of this game has already done more than you to bring about change. Awareness is important.

Live action version

[MarkusQ]

Looks like a diverting way to spend an evening. My question though: I've heard some talk of there being a MMRT/LA* version and I was wondering if anyone had any information on how to opt out?

--MarkusQ

* Massively Multi -Player Real Time / Live Action

I'd like to add one more thing...

[AnonymousPrick]

I think it's also this perceived liberal vs. conservative, us vs. them, or the "bipartisanship" of America. As soon as a viewpoint is labeled "liberal" or "conservative", it immediately polarizes many people. But when you actually dig down into the base issue, beyond the hyperpole and mindless rhetoric, I usually see some common ground - a big swath of it.

It's the "sound bite" media that's really doing us in. And "they", the media, are doing it because that's where the money is. There's no profit in being rational, careful, insightful, and just using common sense. Sensationalism has overtaken the media. Trying to get the issues past that, well, is impossible. Let's face it, folks want the sensationlized version. They want to feel superior to the "stupid" people who have a different opinion from theirs.

Re:I'd like to add one more thing...

[harrkev]

I agree. And as far as partisanship goes, both are bad in different ways. Liberals tend to tear away at the 2nd amendment, and the current conservative administration has chipped away at the fourth and fifth. I happen to be quite fond of all ten of them. As an American, I should not have to pick-and-choose which amendments are the most important to me.

Re:I'd like to add one more thing...

[smellsofbikes]

My boss calls himself 'fairly conservative' and I call myself a left-wing lunatic. And guess what? on almost every issue that the two of us think really matters right now, we're in 100% agreement: free speech, privacy, civil liberties, and general government-intervention-in-private-life. When we talk about this we decide that we would've been at completely opposite ends of the spectrum when Carter was in office but by now we're almost indistinguishable in what we'll be voting for next time around. Now if only someone that actually encapsulated what we want was going to be running, but that's probably not going to happen.

Mourning a genre

[Y-Crate]

The glory age of political games has long past, and hardcore fans of the genre such as myself have found ourselves lacking in new titles. You won't find successors to Conflict: Middle East Political Simulator, Hidden Agenda and Shadow President made these days. In the past decade, we've seen only a tiny, tiny handful of games in this genre, one of which is the original Tropico - which if you install the expansion pack, is quite a fun game that lets you examine all kinds of political systems by implementing them yourself without restriction. If you have a Mac, Simbabwe is certainly worth your attention (and it's free!)

"Welcome to Simbabwe, where the property is already owned and the houses built and you compete to burn and dispossess them. Bounce around the map plundering farms, denying grain silos to opposition supporters and robbing the community chest."

Political sims are truly the best ways to combine entertainment and education, and I sincerely hope that some indie developers reading this looks over some of the older games I've linked to and is inspired to develop a cross-platform title, as there isn't much to choose from right now.

Your line of reasoning rang a bell

[MarkusQ]

Yeah, we're losing all our civil liberties but some guy is still free to openly criticize the government without fear of the FBI showing up on his doorstep.

Your line of reasoning rang a bell. Where did I hear it before? Oh yeah, I remember:

First They Came for the Jews

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

-- Pastor Martin Niemöller

You are confusing "going away" with "gone"; just because at sunset there is still more than enough light to read by, you can not conclude that daylight is not going away, and should not draw comfort from the fact that it isn't as dark as it is somewhere else on the planet.

--MarkusQ

Re:Your line of reasoning rang a bell

[Firehed]

It's almost ironic, I was just discussing that poem not twelve hours ago in my class about the Holocaust (about which it wasn't specifically written, though well applied). We also had some outright bizarre analogy that gets the same point across about slow removal of rights: Try to put a frog in boiling water and it will jump right back out. Put it in room temperature water and put it on the stove and it'll boil to death (perhaps Hitler made this analogy... it came up in the class as well. I'd suggest nobody try it lest have PETA come torch your house).

Translation: people respond drastically to sudden changes, but it's very easy to make those same changes over a longer period of time and have little reaction. Now I'd hope most world citizens are smarter than the abovementioned frog, but it still works in principle. Consider Sony: they moved in way too aggressively with the rootkit, and it massively backfired. If they'd attempted a much more subtle approach, they'd have probably gotten away with it.

"We've still got more rights than China" (etc) just doesn't cut it for me. I don't care whether we're the best or the worst. I couldn't care less about our relative position. Guess what, my cafeteria food is better than it was at middle school, but it still sucks. Likewise, I may be a bit free-er to blog than the Chinese, but that doesn't mean me saying the wrong thing isn't going to result on a rather unpleasant knock on the door.

Maybe non-slashdotters don't care about the Constitution being shat upon by the administrations (not just Bush is to blame here, though he's definately worse than most, though IMO the last couple elections were lesser-of-two-evils even if the stronger may have won, and further IMO the two-party political system is the worst thing in the history of democracy), but every non-techie friend I've talked to on the matter is totally clueless, whereas /. and forums seem to be much more aware of what's going on. Maybe it's the international input, rather than just the biased local media. So many fail to realize that while Fox is obviously hardcore right-wing, all American news sources - however poilitically 'fair' they are - have a pro-America bias. I don't mean to bring up a touchy subject, but stop griping over American deaths in the War on Iraq while we're going 50:1. Forgot about that part, didn't you, American media?

I've gone a bit OT I suppose. My original point remains, though - slowly removing rights doesn't get noticed by the masses, even if removing exactly the same rights overnight would cause rioting. Go back to just before the '01 elections and see if Bush would have been elected knowing he'd be wiretapping citizens and using terrorism as a reason. I don't want to throw too much bias into this post, but it seems strange to me that people who are predominantly more religious appear to be more concerned by terrorism - I'd figure they'd be a lot less freaked out by potential death (be it from terrorism or being run over by a steamroller).

The first one to say...

[CanSpice]

..."the only winning move is not to play" gets smacked.

Re:The first one to say...

[ahem]

*smack*

Re:stupid nerds

[KingBraden]

I know this is offtopic, but I just read the entire thing. I wanted everyone out there to know this was not funny, nor was it clever, Do not do what I just did.

Re:Yay for wasting time...

[hey!]

I rememeber hearing Mel Brooks interviewed after his film The Producers was made into a broadway play. The interviewer asked him how it was that he, a Jew, felt it was appropriate to make jokes about Nazis.

Brooks responded that you can't fight a dictator by getting up on a soap box. Dictators are, by nature, natural spell-binders, and you'll never outdebate them. But what you can do and what works is to make them look ridiculous.

So, in this case you paint the administration as a bunch of goose stepping blockheads who are besotted with fascism. It's not the way our system is supposed to work, but it's the way politics works.

Re:Yay for wasting time...

[Guppy06]

"But if these people would have spent a little more time working with their representatives,"

Those representatives are in gerrymandered "safe districts." They don't have to care, they're the government.

Police State, anyone?

[kingsmedley]

This game sounds eerily similair to Police State, a game that was developed in the 1960's and inspired by life in the Soviet Union. The goal was a little different - you were trying to become the Soviet Premier (basically, the only person with any rights) while avoiding being denounced by others and sent to Siberia. The game board was even vaguely Monopoly-ish (in appearance, not in play).

If you're curious, you can see the game here.

Re:We're doomed!

[bahwi]

Yes! Look that way! At China! Now THEY have it bad! Don't look here! No! You can still criticize us! Look over there!

Oh! Got a law passed. Haha, no you can't criticize us! Good job paying attention to China.

An old idiom goes, you don't have to be better than someone else to make it, you have to be the best. So no, what's going on in China is important, but you have to ALWAYS look and see what is going on here.

And there are far more civil liberties than "The right to free speech"

Re:We're doomed!

[G)-(ostly]

The president has claimed that he has the power to declare any living being, American citizen or not, an "enemy combatant". He has further claimed that enemy combatants are neither covered by United States civil law, nor the Geneva conventions, and he has exercised his power to secretly detain them, without charge, indefinitely. Once detained, he has denied these people rights to an attorney, the right to a trial, and even the right to see the evidence against them.

It wasn't until the court stepped in and slapped him down that some of this changed.

At which point it was quickly made clear that the judiciary is the tool of evil leftist terrorists. This has resulted in people ranging from terrorist right wingers to elected lawmakers calling for the judiciary to be either outright collapsed, or made a pawn subject to the whims of the Congress (in fact, right wing terrorists even publicly called for the Supreme Court justices to be assassinated). This call has been furthered in relation to preventing them from exercising the power to rule on cases involving discrimination against gays, and in relation to cases such as Terri Schiavo's where it was determined that there was no grounds for the government to interfere in the legal rights of Mr. Schiavo.

Furthermore, please note that George W. Bush is yet another individual "elected" to the presidency against the will of the people.

On top of all that, Mr. Bush has authorized the NSA to go ahead and secretly wiretap, with no public access to information, anybody he deems requires wiretapping. Mr. Bush requires no justification, as there's nobody to stop him.

But, don't worry. I'm sure that's not really that bad, and that it's just a matter of things being "blown out of proportion".

Good.

[TheNoxx]

You know, more games should (no, not kidding) have political leaning and teach people about the political situation of today, and the history of American meddlins in the middle east. Maybe, just maybe, people will become aware of what their tax dollars have done to their fellow man in impoverished countries, and just maybe, with enough people, a few small but key changes could come about.

I always give a great deal of respect and support and love to people who try to keep an eye on the government, and even more when they have a sense of humour about it. The reality of the situation, for all citizens, is kinda like a parent trying to keep an eye on a really mischevious kid who likes to steal your stuff and money and beat up other kids, but instead of an unruly pubescent child, you have an army of secret agents and powermongers to try and keep from running amok.

Re:For the love of Pete...

[CompSci101]

Well, for instance, the Fourth and Fifth Amendments are pretty soundly trashed by the PATRIOT Act.

The surveillance powers granted are in direct circumvention of the Fourth Amendment, whereby a judge must be asked for a warrant for law enforcement to conduct any action against a citizen. The argument against is that informing the "Terrorists" of what is going to be searched/siezed in advance (which is what the Constitution requires) is inexpedient. The problem being that, if you're not a terrorist, you're pretty much screwed and have no recourse because any warrants issued (if they were issued at all -- see the National Wiretapping problem) were issued in secrecy and to talk about them is a crime according to other sections of the PATRIOT Act.

The Fifth Amendment is violated because the actions law enforcement takes deprive you of due process. You're not allowed to see the "evidence" against you until you've been exported to Egypt for "questioning" and returned.

Basically: the whole reason the Fourth and Fifth Amendments exist -- to protect citizens against overreaching Executive law enforcement powers -- is trampled by the PATRIOT Act.

Please see: The Bill of Rights

Re:We're doomed!

[PhreakOfTime]

Moderate, or respond? RESPOND!

You do know that american idol was taken directly from a EUROPEAN TV SHOW called pop idol?

Trying to call the american public 'stupid', along with saying that somehow the abuse of power commited by certain individuals in the US governemnt is to be blamed on the general public shows me all I need to know about your line of reasoning. Otherwise, can you support your argument with something other than straw? Using the phrase 'some people say', or 'some believe', and then countering with your own statement, is a horribly wrongly overused style of debate. You may have heard of it, its called setting up a 'straw man'. The only purpose of which is to knock down, making you look like you are actually debating something.

You believe leaders to be god like figures who are destined to rule over the 'unwashed masses' who dont know any better.

Blowing things out of proportion? warrantless wiretaps, detainment wihtout legal representation, arrest without being informed of your crimes, media used for propaganda, and now PHYSICAL warantless searches as well. Exactly at what point do you think it would be appropriate to stand up for yourself? When the boot is already on your neck?

I hate to tell you, but you ARE necessarily defending what the government is doing. Saying you are 'not necessarily' defending it is to soften your language to fool yourself into believing your own words. Unfortunately, subjective thought matters little to objective reality. Looks like you fooled someone else beside yourself though, as you were marked as 'insightful'. I wonder if it was one of those guilty, stupid, uncaring americans who modded you as such? Maybe it was one of those 'enlightened' Europeans who are smarter because they made 'pop idol' a smash hit in europe first?

Believe it or not, you are advocating fascism. Stop trying to put makeup on a pig and telling me it is beautiful.

Re:This is America...

[Tim Browse]

They haven't come for the Communists.

Ahem.

Or did you just mean not recently?

REDACTED

[Zenmonkeycat]

You know, REDACTED had a chance to look over REDACTED, and it looks to be a pretty REDACTED REDACTED about the problems us REDACTEDs are facing with the increase in REDACTED's REDACTED, even as REDACTED's support wanes here in REDACTED. But REDACTED wouldn't worry, since REDACTED sure REDACTED will REDACTED before REDACTED's too REDACTED. Then again, REDACTED just a bleeding-REDACTED REDACTED, so what do REDACTED know about REDACTED?

Re:This is America...

[Cheerio Boy]

Forgive me all for responding to a Troll but:

They haven't come for the Jews.

No. But they've come for the Muslims

They haven't come for the Communists.

No. Because it's profitable to ignore them.

They haven't come for the trade unionists.

No. Because they no longer matter.

And they haven't come for you.

They won't bother because we don't matter.

I must've missed the memo...

[wedg]

When did Civil Rights become Civil Liberties?

When they become Civil Priviledges, I'm running for the hills.

Re:I must've missed the memo...

[deblau]

From answers.com:

Civil liberties: Fundamental individual rights, such as freedom of speech and religion, protected by law against unwarranted governmental or other interference.

Civil rights: The rights belonging to an individual by virtue of citizenship, especially the fundamental freedoms and privileges guaranteed by the 13th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and by subsequent acts of Congress, including civil liberties, due process, equal protection of the laws, and freedom from discrimination.

In other words, civil liberties correspond to 'natural law' rights, or human rights -- rights you are born with. You have civil liberties in spite of the State. Civil rights are rights granted because of State involvement, like the right to vote.

Nobody Seems to Mind!

[moxiejkk]

While it seems like most of us slashdotters are in agreement of how the Patriot Act is dangerous and unconstitutional, it seems as if the majority of the American people support it. Their mentality seems to be this, "Well there's no reason for ME to worry". We need to change this viewpoint in order for change to occur. This game is a step in the right direction.

Nuance

[xihr]

Well that's really clever. Next I'll be making the game Nuance, where if you're an individual or a labor union or an activist of any type, you automatically win, and if you're a corporation or the government or a capitalist then you automatically lose.

At least games will be shorter than his droning crap.

Re:For the love of Pete...

[barefootgenius]

Heres a few from the ACLU. (PDF waring!) http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/toolkit/images/pri vacy_checklist.pdf

I am a counter example

[MarkusQ]

But honestly, how many people griping about Bush/Ashcroft today thought that Clinton/Reno were A-OK?

I for one, dislike them both (see here and here for just a few recent posts predating this thread, to substantiate my claim...google should turn up more, back to the Clinton years, when Marc Rich and the Gubernatorial pardons of attractive women roused my ire). But whenever you attempt to level a rational criticism of a politician you discover that you will be instantly labeled a partisan, and the substance of your point dismissed.

Which leads me to a conclusion: attacks on politicians are frequently non-partisan (especially during primaries, when the parties eat their own to impress the masses) but defenses of them are almost always partisan. This includes the sort of "why don't you criticize this guy instead" defense going on here. It's my firm belief that reasonable people of both parties (for what it's worth, I happen to be a Republican) are appalled at the sort of shenanigans that get pulled by the leaders of both parties, but that the highly partisan yahoos always jump to the defense when their side's in power.

What Bush is doing is wrong, and frankly he should be in jail. The fact that Clinton may well deserve the next cell over is not an excuse, it's an example of how bad the problem realy is.

--MarkusQ

Re:We're doomed!

[C0C0C0]

Furthermore, please note that George W. Bush is yet another individual "elected" to the presidency against the will of the people.

I was with you until you pulled out the not-really-quotes. Dude's a loser, but close-enough-to-half of us voted for him. Just cause your side lost doesn't mean the other guys cheated. Sometimes, stupid people hold the majority. Hell, MOST times.