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Bush Admin. Appoints Civil-Liberties Officer
Zephyros writes "The WSJ reports that the Bush administration has appointed a Civil Liberties Protection Officer in order to assuage the public's privacy concerns. From the article: 'As the son of a U.S. aid worker stationed in Guatemala during the 1970s civil war, Alex Joel recalls being unable to tell the good guys from the bad as both armed soldiers and civilians alike would order his family out of their car to search it. Those first-hand brushes with totalitarianism, says Mr. [Alex] Joel, have led him to take the rights of individuals very seriously.' It remains to be seen how effective he will be, but at least they're recognizing the concern."
Like Hitler appointing a blue ribbon panel to review the status of Jews.
Useless because he reports to the Director of National Intelligence. Now, if the Director of National Intelligence reported to HIM, then we might have something to celebrate.
An executive-appointed position--regardless of which party is in power--is precisely where we cannot depend on our civil liberties being protected.
I think this guy *knows without a doubt* that his place is to make the public feel better by showing the administration "cares," not to actually take the bull by the horns and enact any sorts of changes.
Talk about propaganda.
As the son of a U.S. aid worker stationed in Guatemala during the 1970s civil war, Alex Joel recalls being unable to tell the good guys from the bad as both armed soldiers and civilians alike would order his family out of their car to search it.
Let me guess. He wasn't scared because they had nothing to hide, just like all good americans!
Something tells me Joel's time in Guatemala was well spent taking notes.
May the Maths Be with you!
Does this really matter if the very administration that does the infringement is the same administration that appoints the officer? Their views will be in alignment.
"Although you might have concerns about what might potentially be going on,
those potentials are not actually being realized and if you could see
what was going on, you would be reassured just like everyone else," he says.
He lacks the same foresight as the rest of the administration. Even if you could say that the wiretap was legit, it sets a bad precedent; any forthcoming administration can establish the same program with ever stretching legal boundaries and say "Bush did it, it must be OK." And there wouldn't even be the oversight to say otherwise.
Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/
-Kurt
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I, personally, will take the gesture with a grain of salt. However, I'm more than willing to give this a chance. The worst that will likely come of it is nothing. I'm willing to give the guy a shot though..
Isn't it the role of the head of state to preserve civil liberties ? Especially those guaranteed by the Constitution ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
And so, they become propaganda tools and little else. They need to give the position teeth, but then that's exactly what the governent doesn't want, given how the 9/11 Commission took the goverment to task for its ineptitude. The last thing they need is a government-appointed civil liberties watchdog actually doing his/her job and exposing the malfeasance going on behind the scenes.
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Ministry of Love = Department of Justice
Ministry of Truth = Department of Mind Control
Ministry of Peace = Department of War
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
a REAL Civil Liberties Protection person or just a good actor at it? You know much like Gonzales is supposed be an Attorney General.
Expecting a conservative to mod me down in 3...2....1...
The WSJ reports that the Bush administration has appointed a Civil Liberties Protection Officer in order to assuage the public's privacy concerns.
Under the Bush doctrine of Unitary Executive, this posting is a contradiction in terms and not just useless but completely meaningless. The "Officer" will be implicitely or explicitely prohibitied from taking any corrective action against anyone in the executive branch, along the same lines that the EPA cannot sure the Department of Defense to clean up depleted uranium dust because both are agents of the executive, and the president cannot sue himself. ridiculous, but that's what it is.
Now, who are the ones in government trampling the hardest on civil liberties?
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
And before any free-market religion convert jumps on this with "but free markets are most efficient thing ever!" meme, lets not kid ourselves, they are efficient only from the perspective of their search function and suffer a host of horrible inefficiencies elsewhere, very much as any other method of allocation of limited resources does, each being more efficient at some of its aspects when compared to others.
...that it said Alex Jones. Now THAT would have been a news headline.
Clear Skies Initiative: let factories pollute more.
No Child Left Behind: helped schools hide minority test scores.
Operation Iraqi Freedom: DUCK MOTHERFUCKER! has become Iraq's national motto.
The Bush administration has been living in Opposite Day for years.
So... A Civil Liberties officer is going to become the head of America's newest brownshirt organization and be highly effective.
Otherwise, why would they cite his hands-on experience dealing with totalitarian methods as if it were a selling point.
If they really wanted to convince us he was serious about civil liberties, he would appoint Larry Flynt or better yet have Hunter S. Thompson brought back from the dead.
The new civil liberties director would be a hard-living, foul-mouth, drug-addicted, woman-grabbing, ass-slapping, hyperactive pervert driving the biggest, meanest gas-guzzling straight-line Cadillac he could find from the car lot nearest to his last traffic accident.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
When Bush appoints someone to protect our rights, we know we are going to lose alot more.
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Anyone who has a glimmer of hope about this, forget it. Here's a little summary of a comparable establishment, the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I was astonished, but wikipedia is strangely neutral about their existence:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Indian_Aff
But here is some of the truth behind them. They were established to placate the Native population and to ensure that they are permanently marginalized.
They have stolen revenue from them,
http://www.earthportals.com/Portal_Messenger/bia.
they are incompetent and their existence is a keep-your-enemies-closer solution to future American-Native American relations. Just ask anyone who has contracted with them.
You know the what if Microsoft built cars joke? Here's the equivalent BIA joke:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0304/S00127.htm
Lastly, note that the name of the agency still reflects an old way of thinking - It ain't the Bureau of Native American Affiars, a symptom of what little regard is given to the North American Natives.
A Civil Liberties appointee will bear some painful resemblences and be used more for turning to the population and placating them about the administration rather than speaking on behalf of the population to the President.
This is business-as-usual.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
You know, I thought the whole oversight thing was why we had that other branch of government. You know that one with all the talking people that pass laws that the President ignores? Yeah those guys, they should probably look into this.
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I can't believe they didn't just call it The Ministry of Love.
Just like DMCA, the PATRIOT Act or the Range Safety Act just because it has a happy feel-good name does not make it happy or feel-good.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
Concerns me that we actually need a Civil Liberties Officer....
No, it's everyone's job. It's humanities nature to lie, cheat and steal,
murder, rape and mame... that does not mean it is only the government's
job to curtail this.
Were that I say, pancakes?
When I see stories like this, the first thing that occurs to me is that they're just trying to patch things up. There is overwhelming evidence that this position was created (or newly appointed) because the Bush Administration realizes that people continue to be concerned about this, and they simply want to seem like they care. If they actually cared, they wouldn't need to create this position. If they actually cared, they would get on with the actual work of securing and defending civil liberties and human rights, by doing things like: not torturing people; talk to the press; free information; not spying on people while hiding it and therefore lying about it; pressure China to stop threatening Taiwan and to stop taking over other countries and generally hegemonizing anything they can; have respect for the self-determination of the citizens of the world, and therefore not invade other countries; not putting the desire to control the oil of the Middle East over the rights of the citizens there, and the commitment to honesty with the American people; not thinking they know better what's good for the citizens of America than we can determine for ourselves; and, forcing your religion on the populous, and creating false and hateful issues like "the gay marriage debate" (which isn't a debate as much as it is a proclamation of manifest destiny), which takes advantage of and reinforces the intolerance of everyone involved, in order to divide people into warring factions so you can get votes.
For me to believe that the action of appointing this person to this post meant that the Bush Administration had changed its tune, I would have to believe that the Bush Administration had suddenly changed their whole mission to that of peace, discretion, prosperity, and well-being. And I don't believe that.
Time will tell if I'm right or wrong, but if yesterday's news of the resignation of the White House Press Secretary is part of this same plan to show America and the world that the Bush Administration is serious about being caring, then I'm inclined to be insulted -- because the job of Press Secretary is meaningless. All the Press Secretary has to do is tell the press what the rest of the Administration wants him or her to say. You could put anyone in that job. They aren't required to ab lib or create strategy, and I assume that if they did, they'd be fired.
... I want them to be addressed.
http://outcampaign.org/
Indeed; all government officials (and Citizens, for that matter) should be "Civil Liberties Officers!"
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The plan is not to nuke Iran, the plan is to use nuclear weapons against Iran, just as we used nuclear weapons aginst the USSR (and they used them against us) for decades. "Leaks" about plans to nuke Iran are just one way in which we use these weapons.
And, scary though MAD was, this continuing use of nuclear weapons has done a remarkable job of preventing shooting wars between major powers.
Actually detonating a nuclear weapon is the least poductive way in which we use it.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The fact is that there is very little that PATRIOT, etc. allow now that was not allowed before.
With very few exceptions there were no police powers added in the Patriot Act - the important change is that you can now call someone "a terrorist" instead of "a drug dealer" to bypass their rights. It's up to the courts now to reign this stuff in. As I say above, I'm OK with the intention, but there always needs to be some system of oversight (and from a different branch, not some apointee of the person being overseen!).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Well, give that we are now in an age when a single man--or a small group of men--can kill thousands of others and destroy billions of dollars easily, I can see why they'd want to track people. I'm not saying that they're necessarily right to do so, or that if right they've gone about it in the proper way--but the impetus for their actions is quite clear.
If by "impetus" you mean "plausible cover story", I agree completely.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!