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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."
I feel so much better now.
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.
Donald Rumsfeld moved to head new "Department of Peace".
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!
Will he have any juice to stop, sway, change direction, or do something in our best interest? Its easy to give someone a job but its quite another to give them the responsibility and the power to do it effectively.
-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.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
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!
I know that you were being sarcastic (At least I hope you were), but this won't change a thing.
k =1923742
Over a year ago, Bush created the "Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board". They haven't met a single time since the board was created.
The LA Times article that talked about it is now in their archives, and I believe is unavailable unless you pay for it.
Here is a posting that made Fark about it a while ago, although the linked to article is dead.
http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLin
June 2003: Nuala O'Connor Kelly, (former Chief "Privacy" Officer of Doubleclick) appointed to be Chief "Privacy" officer for HomeSec.
February 2005: D. Reed Freeman, (former Gator/Claria Chief "Privacy" Officer) sitting on HomeSec's Data "Privacy" and "Integrity" Advisory Committee.
Maybe we should be thankful. Based on precedent, the BSA guy should be put in charge of the Copyright office, or perhaps hired by NSA to... adjust its priorities when it comes to what sort of traffic is worthy of further investigation.
April 2006: Department of Commerce, undersecretary for technology: Robert Cresanti, former VP of public policy at the Business Software Alliance (BSA).
Now we have a guy who "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", and who says one of his best qualifications for the job includes "first-hand brushes with totalitarianism" in charge of Civil Liberties instead.
"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun."
- Ash, Army of Darkness (1993)
Anyways, freedom's overrated these days. You know what they do to people in those freedom camps? (Yeah, neither do I, and I'd like to keep it that way!)
There's still time to appoint Jeff Bezos to run USPTO! (I've got a $10 bet riding on it, so please, write your Congressmen today! :)
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.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022006R.shtml
Privacy Guardian Is Still a Paper Tiger
By Richard B. Schmitt
The Los Angeles Times
Monday 20 February 2006
A year after its creation, the White House civil liberties board has yet to do a single day of work.
Washington - For Americans troubled by the prospect of federal agents eavesdropping on their phone conversations or combing through their Internet records, there is good news: A little-known board exists in the White House whose purpose is to ensure that privacy and civil liberties are protected in the fight against terrorism.
Someday, it might actually meet.
Initially proposed by the bipartisan commission that investigated the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board was created by the intelligence overhaul that President Bush signed into law in December 2004.
More than a year later, it exists only on paper.
Foot-dragging, debate over its budget and powers, and concern over the qualifications of some of its members - one was treasurer of Bush's first campaign for Texas governor - has kept the board from doing a single day of work.
On Thursday, after months of delay, the Senate Judiciary Committee took a first step toward standing up the fledgling watchdog, approving the two lawyers Bush nominated to lead the panel. But it may take months before the board is up and running and doing much serious work.
Critics say the inaction shows the administration is just going through the motions when it comes to civil liberties.
"They have stalled in giving the board adequate funding. They have stalled in making appointments," said Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.). "It is apparent they are not taking this seriously."
The Sept. 11 commission also has expressed reservations about the commitment to the liberties panel.
"We felt it was absolutely vital," said Thomas H. Kean, the Republican former governor of New Jersey who led the commission. "We had certainly hoped it would have been up and running a long time ago."
The inaction is especially noteworthy in light of recent events. Some Republicans joined Democrats to delay renewal of the anti-terrorism Patriot Act because of civil liberties concerns. And the disclosure in December that Bush approved surveillance of certain US residents' international communications without a court order has caused bipartisan dismay in Congress.
"Obviously, civil liberties issues are critically important, and they have been to this president, especially after 9/11," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, adding that the White House had moved expeditiously to establish the board. "We do not formally nominate until we are through the background investigation and the full vetting. It takes time to present those nominations to the Senate. But now that they have been confirmed, that is a good thing."
The board chairwoman is Carol E. Dinkins, a Houston lawyer who was a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration. A longtime friend of the Bush family, she was the treasurer of George W. Bush's first campaign for governor of Texas, in 1994, and co-chair of Lawyers for Bush-Cheney, which recruited Republican lawyers to handle legal battles after the November 2004 election.
Dinkins, a longtime partner in the Houston law firm of Vinson & Elkins, where Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales once was a partner, has specialized in defending oil and gas companies in environmental lawsuits.
Foremost among her credentials, she told Senate Judiciary Committee members in a response to their questions, was the two years she spent as deputy attorney general in President Reagan's Justice Department. There, she said, she had to weigh civil liberties concerns while overseeing domestic surveillance and counter-intelligence cases.
The board vice chairman is Alan
When Bush appoints someone to protect our rights, we know we are going to lose alot more.
Fight Spammers!
So the fox appoints a cat to protect the hens from the fox...
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
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.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
"Dick, they're getting upset." ..." ... wouldn't that kinda hurt us?"
"Why?"
"Well, 'cause we pretty much snoop at them."
"So?"
"Well, ya know, the things 'bout land of free and
"We already eliminated home of the brave, and they kinda liked it. So?"
"Well, it ain't good, ok? They might finally find out that we're not really working in their favor."
"Hmm. I know. We'll appoint someone to take care of civil liberties and observe it all."
"But
"How so?"
"Well, if he's constantly telling us what we can't do?"
"Never said anything 'bout telling us what to do, did I? I said OBSERVE."
"And then?"
"No then. File a nice li'l report to be put into the big round storage under your desk."
"And what should that do?"
"Make them think that someone's taking care of liberty. While we take care of what's left of it."
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Any bests?"
Yesssss. The flithy bloggerssss gives uss the dirts. Filthy, fats bloggerssss....
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
These are problems because
Reading further into TFA, It seems to me that his job is partially going to involve enabling datamining in a more 'anonymous' fashion.Bush, Cheney & company seem to desperately want to track/datamine people. Even after the program was 'shut down', it turns out that it wasn't. It just got a name change & was shuffled around bureaucraticly. This looks to me like another attempt to legitimize that program.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Don't you mean "Donald Rumsfeld moved to head new ' Ministry of Peace'?" That's rather double double minus bad of you for misspelling the name of the ministry.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Well, I'm immediately sceptical of any Bush appointees motives.
You have...
The mining lobbyist as a number 2 in the Department of the Interior and a cattle rancher laywer as the chief counsel.
The pharmaceutical lawyer acting as lead counsel for the FDA.
The meat industry lobbyist running our meat labelling program.
The number 2 in the EPA was a Monsanto executive, and his pick for chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality represented GE in its fight against cleaning up its own toxic waste. The chief of staff left to go work for Southern Company (a major owner of coal plants) a week after clean air standard were relaxed.
Read more.
Essentially, Bush has packed every government enforcement agency with people who have spent their careers trying to help companies get out of complying with regulations meant to protect the people. Even his own Supreme Court nominees are strong advocates of executive power. His legacy has been to undermine every control meant to keep him and his supports from running out of control.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
... I want them to be addressed.
http://outcampaign.org/
It is one thing to be knowledgeable of the business. There are plenty of principled people who have worked in such businesses before. It's another thing entirely to be a shill for irresponsible behavior by such businesses.
I'll pick James Connaughton for my example. This man is a lawyer who has lobbied on behalf of coal, chemical, and utility companies to avoid having to pay to clean up Superfund sites that they created. One of these companies was GE, which has been responsible for creating the largest number of Superfund sites of any other company in the nation. They've also pumped a ton of money into lobbying against having to pick up the bill for toxic waste dumping and against the designation of sites as toxic waste dumps in the first place. A real good cause there, huh?
He also helped head up the ISO 14000 standard for environmental policy which has no real requirements beyond minimal compliance with the law and no external audit requirement. It's toothless and basically just a free sticker you can apply to your company to claim that you care about the environment without actually having to do so.
Once in office, he helped lead the charge to prevent the government from tightening standards on arsenic in the water supply. He has been a passionate advocate against any policy to reduce greenhouse gasses and has been implicated in censoring language in research studies that support the existence of global warming. He's been a supporter of the "Clean Skies" initiative which destroys a lot of the Clean Air Act's protective provisions. He likes to push for "volunatry standards" a.k.a. "not having to do anything about a problem."
He's just one example. His expertise has entirely been in helping business pursue profits at the expense of public health. His kind of industry experience the people can do without.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
You don't even have to call them a terrorist...there is a political corruption trial going on here in Las Vegas, where some local officials took bribes from stip club owners. The FBI just admitted a couple of weeks ago to using the PATRIOT act to get financial data on the accused, simply because it was faster than getting a warrant, and because, well, they could. No implied terrorism, but our leaders gave the justice system a useful tool and the right to use it, so they do.
(sorry, full article has been archived by the review-journal)
FBI confirms Patriot Act's use in corruption probe
By ADRIENNE PACKER REVIEW-JOURNAL. Federal authorities confirmed in court Wednesday that they used the Patriot Act to access bank records while investigating alleged political corruption involving former Clark County commissioners and strip club owner Michael Galardi.. The Patriot Act, enacted after Sept. 11, 2001, as a tool to fight terrorism, included provisions that allowed authorities to access personal financial records more easily.. During the federal trial against former county...
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