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AT&T Says Spying Is Too Secret For Courts
The Wired blog 26B Stroke 6 reports on the arguments AT&T and the US government made to an appeals court hearing motions in the case the EFF brought against the phone giant for their presumed part in the government's program(s) to spy on Americans. In essence AT&T seems to have argued that the case against the telecom for allegedly helping the government spy on Americans is too secret for any court, despite the Administration's admission it did spy on Americans without warrants.
Ssssh! This is to secret to report on! Ohhhh great! Now the terrorists have won! Thanks alot Slashdot!
So let me get this straight. AT&T says it can't defend itself because it would endanger national security (basically, AT&T is guilty), and because of this, the case should be throw out (a win for AT&T)?
But I guess logic like that is adequate for government work.
You either have the rule of law, or you have "national security." They are mutually exclusive. Anything too secret to be brought before the law is too secret to be judged by it. Therefore it is outside the law, making the government a law unto itself, unaccountable to the public.
Funny how that works. It's pretty much always the case that, paraphrasing parts of the Bible here, when men give up obedience to law and order, good rules and the ethic of accountability, that moral decline in the population begins. What? Bush's supporters didn't realize that the rule of law is just about the keystone of public morality?
It's mind boggling how just about anything that the Federal Government Agencies don't want the public to see, hide behind this excuse and usually get their way..
The ability to call upon such protection should be regulated and restricted, but when's the last time Congress did anything positive for us citizens?
"Spying is such a harsh word...
We like to call it passive call attendance.
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"We are scared like hell for our butts"
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Get it right: the blog name is "27B Stroke 6" which is a beautiful reference to the out-of-control bureaucracy in Terry Gilliam's movie "Brazil".
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Well, I've never heard of a court ordering someone to provide evidence that they're not guilty, but it's unbelievable to me that there are state secrets that can be trusted to AT&T that can't be trusted to a federal judge. Surely they could have a closed trial before one of the FISA Court judges? Oh wait, I forgot... the whole reason they're under investigation is that the FISA court judges' security clearances weren't good enough to let them oversee this perfectly legal but so supersecret we can't tell the judges about it program. Clearly the FISA judges aren't vetted well enough for us to be absolutely sure they're not working for al Qaeda.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
I think the west has gotten to lax, not enough people remember anymore what freedom and democracy are REALLY about. This will change, it has before and it will again. Dictatorship just don't work, it ain't the natural state of affairs.
BUT neither is freedom. The result is that you have a constant seesaw motion between the two extremes, the best you can hope for is that you happen to live during one of the quiet moments BUT you will only be able to do so thanks to the efforts of people who have come before.
The sad fact is the seventies generation has done shit for freedom, they shouted a lot but haven't actually acomplished a single thing. It was the WW2 generation that has formed what we like to think of as our free society. They had to, WW2 forced change. Equality of the sexes and races is a direct result of the allied efforts to turn the tide of war.
But whatever they achieved the natural state of affairs is to take back every hard won liberty for the practical day to day running of the world. Just as WW2 saw the injust internment of the japanese this war two has its miscarriages of justice.
but it ain't gone over the edge, the proof? We can still report on it, the story of this and other mistakes is getting out and is getting attention. If the dictators had won, you wouldn't even know about it until you were taken off the street and never heard from again.
As much as these stories may shock you they fact that they come out are proof that the system is still working.Not well, but then we get the system we voted for and Bush was re-elected.
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You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Let me get this straight. The President declares himself above the law. Government agencies routinely violate the constitution in the name of national security. Habeus Corpus is effectively suspended (just by saying "he's a terrorist"). AT&T won't resists testifying in spy cases because its info is too secret for courts. Our citizens and treasure are squandered in an unprovoked war of adventurism. And the thing that really gets your panties in a bunch is that some guy calls for a jury revolt? Think of the children!!!!1!
I am not a crackpot.
Well, that link is busted, but I did as you said and found some polls, and here's the thing: you left out a very important point: the muslims polled were asked if THEY would wish to operate under Sharia law. They were NOT asked if they wanted to force Sharia law on others.
That is a BIG FUCKING DIFFERENCE, and I fail to see how you can in good conscience leave that part out unless you really are trying to whip up hatred of Muslims.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
That's basically what was said back when the Roman Republic fell. The Roman Imperial rule lasted for about 400-500 years. Though there were brief thoughts and talk of returning to the Republic, it never happed.
Those who forget History are doomed to repeat it.
While you might argue that "We're different now", I would also point out that we're really not. We've been passing laws to strip away rights for decades, and the Supreme Court has been upholding them. Take, for example, the Japanese internment during WWII. Although there was lip service paid to how wrong it was much later, the Supreme Court upheld the decision. More importantly, Congress has never put in place new laws to prevent it from happening again.
You can expect this to take place in the future when we've had yet another panic attack. The laws are all set up for this. Only now it can be done in secret. Indeed, there are Prisons being built in the mid-west right now which have this as their optional charter.
I'd like to share your optimism. But I see nothing which supports it except some political lipservice.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
Having spent much of my youth among Fundamentalists in the Deep South, I have never, ever heard a call among them for instituting e.g. the public stoning of homosexuals or taking the lash to adultresses, punishments which are extremely common in the most theocratic parts of the Muslim world. The things that American conservative Christians are vocal about, say, allowing a prayer before a high school football game or tweaking a biology textbook, as odious as they may be to many desiring complete separation of church and state, are in no way comparable to the gory brutality of Muslim theocracies that exist as we speak.
See the Guardian for the numbers in a poll done in the UK. Among 16 to 24 year old muslims living in the UK, 37% said they would prefer to live under Sharia law, as opposed to 60% who wanted to live under UK law. I would suggest 60/40 does not constitute a vast majority. "Nearly a third of 16 to 24-year-olds believed that those converting to another religion should be executed". WTF???? The numbers do go down quite a bit for the older people polled, but double digit percentages still would prefer Sharia law even at 55 years old.
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.