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US Official Urges Americans To Reconsider Privacy
Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, a deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people's private communications and financial information. "Protecting anonymity isn't a fight that can be won. Anyone that's typed in their name on Google understands that," said Kerr. Kurt Opsahl of the EFF said Kerr ignores the distinction between sacrificing protection from an intrusive government and voluntarily disclosing information in exchange for a service. "There is something fundamentally different from the government having information about you than private parties. We shouldn't have to give people the choice between taking advantage of modern communication tools and sacrificing their privacy." Kerr's comments come as Congress is taking a second look at the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act, requiring a court order for surveillance on U.S. soil. The White House argued that the law was obstructing intelligence gathering.
I, for one, welcome the impending removal of our old tyrannical police-state masters. www.ronpaul2008.com
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
If google cannot find anything about you then you have misspelt your name.
If nothing comes up then you were switched at birth and can find information by typing in your correct name.
I only found out about this when I discovered my real birth name is inanimate carbon rod.
liqbase
"There is something fundamentally different from the government having information about you than private parties."
The difference being that while I trust no one, I trust the government with the information even less, because they have the power to screw me over to such a greater degree.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
"Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information."
Yes, lets 'redfine' privacy to mean "we know what you do, we will just be responsible with the information"
if the US government--president, NSA, CIA, FBI--are willing to give up their secrecy.
What is intolerable, however, is for government officials to have a lot of information on private citizens, but for private citizens to have little information on the government.
"There is something fundamentally different from the government having information about you than private parties."
Definitely. For one, I can choose not to interact with certain private parties if they piss me off. But I probably can't choose to ignore the government and have to interact with it on some level.
Also, private parties can't demand I hand over certain private information -- sure, they might decide not to do business with me, but the government seems to think it's priviledged to anything and everything since the Patriot Act. Good luck turning them down.
Now it's no longer based on evidence that a crime was done -- we are welcomed to the pre-emptive society. Pre-emptive wars. Pre-emptive invasion of my privacy (without warrant) based on crimes that might happen. I'm just waiting to be pre-emptively thrown in jail.
I find it interesting that this government official is trying to sell us on the government safeguarding our information. HAH! What a joke.
Next Spring, almost every state will have political caucuses and conventions which will set the state parties' platforms.
Attend your local caucus or convention and try to get elected as a delegate to the state convention.
Introduce resolutions that value freedom and privacy. Lobby to get them passed.
Send a message to Washington: Privacy is important. Anonymity is an essential part of privacy.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The article notes that kids reveal much private information about themselves on myspace and facebook. Some fear that this information can damage a kids employment prospects. Heres an idea: People could post legal terms of service on their social networing pages declaring that employers and prospective employers are forbidden from looking at or copying from the pages. Such terms would be like No Trespassing signs on land. Some case law supports the notion that terms posted on a web site can restrict the right of visitors to gather information off the site. Arguably, if an employer grabs information off of a site in violation of posted terms, and that leads to termination of an employee, then the employee could sue the employer for violating the terms of the web site. Even if the terms are not legally binding on the employer, they could be ethically binding.
Benjamin Wright, Dallas, Texas, benjaminwright.us
I'll bet you don't know what specific "essential liberty" Franklin was referring to, do you?
That quote is Ben Franklin saying Quakers in Pennsylvania who "g[a]ve up [their] essential liberty" of BEARING ARMS paid for by the government against Indian and French raids during the French and Indian Wars (known in Europe, IIRC, as the "Seven Year War") deserved what they got: killed.
Your oh-so-fucking-precious quote is a small part of a diatribe against blind, stupid pacifism: those that give up their essential liberty of armed self-defense deserve what they get. You'd know that if you bothered to read the whole damn letter.
Quit taking it out of context.
The 4th ammendment says: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated [...]". I think the attempt is to narrowly define "secure", here. If someone can unreasonably search all your papers, effects, etc., *but* that does not give you reasonable cause to feel "insecure", is that a 4th ammendment violation? There's rhetorical ground to be muddied, somewhere between "privacy" and "security". Now, I myself consider it inherently unreasonable for a citizen to accept government guarentees of security at face value, but that seem to be the arguement that's being put forward here.
Also, about googling your own name; I just did that and although there were over 1.5 million results, none of them were about me as far as I could tell
I guess I should be relieved, although I'm kind of disappointed that I'm not important enough to have my privacy violated.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
A detailed search on google will reveal WAY too much info on people. Certainly more than you'd want released to just anyone.
... laws will not change this fact ... this sucks. If google can build databases of people le, why can't the US govt ? At least US govt has this freedom of info act. Google obeys only the laws they truly have to.
More than this
Outlawing google also seems like a stupid thing to do.
He just makes the point that we can't have it both ways. We can't have a searchable internet and the privacy standards of 1960. It just doesn't compute.
-- Donald Kerr
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
-- Barry Goldwater
"Anyone that's typed in their name on Google understands that," said Kerr."
Great! We should give Kerr a dose of his own medicine by posting about how "Donald Kerr likes having sex with a sheep", "Donald Kerr was arrested for soliciting sex in a public washroom", "Donald Kerr was indicted for embezzling $5 million dollars", "Donald Kerr was convicted of sexually assaulting an 82-year-old woman after tazering her", "Donald Kerr helped funnel funds to Al-Quaida", "Donald Kerr was found wandering naked in a local park, claiming to have been abducted by aliens, who then probed his body", "Donald Kerr is a vocal proponent of scientology", "Donald Kerr is president of the Washington Brittney Speares fan club", "Donald Kerr controls a bot-net of 250,000 PCs", "Donald Kerr accepted 'gifts' of $4.5m from Microsoft", "Donald Kerr wants to track people via bluetooth".
After all, Google is now a "good source" for Donald Kerr.
(Note to the humour-impaired - the above is fair comment satire directed at a public officials' political policy statements, and in no way is an endorsement of Mr. Kerr's positions on privacy OR sex with a sheep)
And the penalties for it.
The Bush administration has shit all over the Constitution and this country. They have committed treason.
Yes, there is something fundamentally different: After they take away your rights and screw you over, they can get themselves immunity. Private businesses generally cannot do that.
This guy is basically advertising a surveilance state, were everybody has to trust the government without reserve. Not a good idea. Historically that has always lead to a catastrophy. Unfortunately there will not be any allied armies to free the US population. I advise to stop this now with all possible legal means. A free society has to live with a real risk of terrorism. That is what makes it free: People have the freedom to go bad. If you remove that freedom, you cause much, much more damage that terrorists ever could do directly. All this "war on terror" is really a power-grap in disguise by power-hungry people without even a shred of ethics. You do not want to be ruled by this type of evil.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
On the New Hampshire auto license plates reads one of my favorite sayings: Live Free, or Die. This man would rather capitulate, and is therefore lost.
We will struggle, those that believe in liberty and freedom, against the tides that would try to drown us with rationalisms, excuses, and the madness of fealty to the corrupt and mindless sycophants of government.
There was a reason the founding fathers worded their documents they way that they did-- there was another King George that tried to shove fealty down our throats. This minor duke in his administration would have us believe that liberty and freedom != anonymity. He is wrong.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Really, I don't need to read beyond this. Does the US have a privacy problem with personal data held by corporations without regulation? Yes. Does the US have a privacy problem with novel government surveillance methods without (serious) oversight? Hell Yes. Can one be used to excuse the other in any way shape or form? Hell no!
This guy should not be the standard bearer for the dialog that the US needs to have over privacy in the age of information technology.
If I change my name to "John Doe"?
Bad terrorists kill thousands. Bad government kill millions. Their fear mongering and our cowardice are poisoning our nation's leadership.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
For those of you who want to protect their privacy, I've made a light Firefox add-on which generates randomly some queries on Google to make your search profile noisier and less exploitable. The queries keywords are extracted from RSS flows so you can personalize them. Moreover, the program simulates some clicks on Google search results (and ads).
For further information go on: http://sourceforge.net/projects/fuzzy-search/
It's a beta version and any comments are appreciated.
I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us - don't tell!
They'd waterboard us, you know.
Is Donald Kerr's house in Google StreetView? What's the link?
"so this kind of thing only works to screw with American citizens and accomplishes nothing of significance"
And this is news? America's biggest enemy is definitely within. It is lack of education and an easily terrified populace that can be manipulated with a few "support our troops" and "with us or agin' us" slogans.
I think Osama bin Laden hit the jackpot with his 9/11 attack. He spent some 19 lives and a few tens of thousands of dollars and in return, he, through the current moronic, paranoid, and opportunistic administration, has thoroughly destroyed what used to be the most powerful and respected Nation on earth.
What this guy Kerr and the rest of the Bush Regime and it's merry henchmen haven't figured out yet is that the real trick is to protect a free society without interfering with it's ability to function as one. This guy fits Mr. Justice Brandeis observation that the real encroachments on liberty come, "from men of zeal, but without understanding." This guy fits that cookie cutter perfectly-- his reach exceeds his grasp. And because that's common in government, they're fast becoming a bigger threat to the ordinary citizen than the often notional terrorists are.
If the government wants to change what privacy means to THEM, they need a constitutional amendment.
The "right of privacy" is a judicial construct. I'm not saying that it is a bad construct, but you'll never see the word "privacy" in the Constitution. In interpreting the 4th Amendment, the Supreme Court has constructed a Constitutional protection of privacy. Maybe the definition of "activist judges" depends on where you sit. Anyway, the courts have acknowledged that this is an implicit, rather than explicit right.
Legislative acts have also defined privacy in their own ways, but the term "privacy" is a difficult one to define with precision when we're dealing with electronic communications. If the limits of privacy are no longer defined by your physical presence, how far does your right to privacy extend? With so much of our lives being lived online, would excessive provisions for privacy actually extend the doctrine further than it was originally intended?
Another question: We place our trust in Google every time we use its services, but why do we place more trust in a profit-maximizing enterprise than in our own government? Ostensibly we can hold our government accountable through elections, but we have less influence on corporations. Sure, we have the power of the wallet, but when's the last time you saw an effective consumer boycott in the information economy?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
...the clamps start getting put in place. They turn the screws a thread at a time, make lots of fuzzy statements like "Protecting anonymity isn't a fight that can be won." The fight is lost. There is no fight. Submit. Submit.
If you believe you can have privacy, security and anonyminity you are wrong. You might get any two of those. Maybe.
Privacy and anonymity are essentially the same thing. A USSC ruling even stated this in the early 1800s. If a person couldn't reasonable expect to keep their privacy then freedom of political speech didn't mean anything. Without remaining anonymous people wouldn't be willing to talk openly about politics for fear what they say can be used against them. I think the appropriate third word is "cheap" though "fast" is good too.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Someone needs to inform these people that [their idea of] security is not the end all. They seem to act as if anything that is in the way of security has to be removed. Difficult to gather intelligence? Sorry. Tough shit. That's unfortunate but you'll have to work with it because we aren't giving up our liberties. I wish I could change everything that makes my job tough to suit my job first but that's not why I'm there.
I must add, that I think they're lying anyway. They will use that excuse to get greater control and a lot of feeble minds right now are bowing to the security threat bs. Grow a backbone already and tell these clowns to get stuffed.
Maybe we can invite a Brit to weigh in on whether or not it's irony, but what fascinates me is that many of the same people who cry the loudest about the Bush Administration's actions are also the ones going on about the need for social welfare programs and universal health care.
Look: either the government pervades your life, or it does not.
The debate is healthy, though. Perhaps it will lead to clearer rules of engagement on security and privacy. If you're tasked with ensuring security, you really want clear ROE, so that the next time Mr. Extremist makes history, you can say: "Well, that sucked, but that was the way the public wanted to manage the probabilities."
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Instead of "redefining" privacy to mean "we know your private data, but we'll be responsible with it", how about we re-institute actual privacy? Instead of giving our personal information to companies who lose it or sell it or share it, how about we the people guard our own data? Instead of keeping it on their computers, let's keep it on our own.
In my opinion, software as a service and registration based software are two of the biggest perpetrators of data and privacy violations. They take away your right to manage who knows what about you, forcing you to provide whatever data the "service provider" chooses or dictates that they "need".
1) Make it illegal to force consumers to turn over private information unless it's a functional requirement of the process (not just data mining or marketing enhancement)
2) Make it illegal for companies to sell or share ANY personally identifiable data they collect, even names, phone numbers, and addresses.
3) Dismantle companies that violate privacy laws, retain identifiable customer data, or insist on data that is not a necessity to do business.
It's pretty simple! You own YOUR OWN data. No one else has a right to it. No one can force you to turn it over to do business with them unless it's a functional necessity of doing business and not just a preference. Anyone that violates privacy laws is dismantled.
BUT! BUT! It won't happen, because we live in a fascist corporate pathocracy where companies and money rule politics, the individual citizen, nay citizens period, are not considered, asked, or involved in any decisions, and THE GOVERNMENT WANTS YOUR DATA ALSO. So they can spy on you. It's all to protect YOU from the "terrists" you know.
Nevermind the true terrorists are OUR OWN GOVERNMENT.
Vague "terrorist threats", data mining, advertising, marketing, and "revenue enhancement" ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE REASONS TO DISMANTLE PRIVACY. Money and fear are NEVER reasons to willingly accept oppression or subordination.
Fight for your rights, America. Our rights aren't what some company claims they will recognize, or what our government claims they will 'allow'. These are inherent to our existence, and they are for US to decide, not someone else. Fight for your rights! Wake up before it's too late.
Without anonymity the small voice with be Bitch SLAPPed into silence!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
What scares us is that you shitheads let them get away with it. You almost impeached a president for lying about a blowjob, but you don't take down an administration that is actively dismantling everything your ancestors fought and died for.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
This is affirmed by the 9th Amendment, although the right exists independently of it.
You're the sort of person for whom the Bill of Rights was added, because you simply don't understand the concept. The Constitution gives the Federal Government no power to intrude on privacy, therefore the right is retained by the people.
-Alexander Hamilton, Federalist, no. 84
Much US "case law," isn't law (in the exact same sense that our current money doesn't have value). It's not founded on any pure principles of ethics or logic, despite the claims of weasly lawyers and congresscritters, but upon convenience and authority through force. It's a history of progressive ursurpations of powers not granted by the people, and is illegitimate. The king has no clothes.
That some judge states "black is white" doesn't make it so, and simply weakens any legitimacy the law once had.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
There's no need to do that. The first page of hits for Donald Kerr already reveals that he played a call boy in a 1933 film called Forty Naughty Girls, and that he moonlights as a Scottish Nationalist councillor.
Why hello thar, Mr. Robert Cox.
The scariest part of all this is that according to google I died in an industrial accident a few years ago.
It was a shock when i discovered this, but thankfully measures have been put in place to ensure it never happens again.
liqbase
Government provisions for socialized health care do not inherently sacrifice privacy. What gives you that idea? As long as the hospitals (etc) abide to patient confidentiality, and the government pays for these hospitals (etc) to operate, there's no issue.
This is really far from an "all or nothing" debate. That's what the government wants you to believe: that in order to provide you with services, security and safety, we need to be able to get into every facet of your life. Don't let them convince you that's how it has to be.
There are choices to be made about everything. The government can provide health care without access to specific patient information. They can provide security without reading your email and listening to your phone calls. Do not for a second believe that one comes with the other. We have choices.
What?
Traditionally, tortious trespass is trespass, regardless of whether or not there is a sign. Now, it's not trespass if you're thrown on to the private property, or if you run there to take cover from an act of god. But if you are wandering around and merely don't know that it's someone else's property, then you are liable. Of course, tort law varies from state to state. But the general upshot is that a "no trespassing" sign doesn't do much.
Secondly, as mentioned previously, some consider that this might fall under "trespass to chattel." I can't remember the case offhand, but there was a case where IBM attempted to sue a disaffected employee who had been e-mailing current employees. They tried to sue for trespass to chattel, arguing that the e-mail was trespassing on their computers, this failed, however, since trespass to chattel generally requires damage to be done. There was no damage done to the computer from the e-mail, only to the workers' productivity. I imagine similar reasoning could be used to negate any such claims then.
To get back to the point, you are suggesting some sort of electronic shrink-wrap license that binds employers to not use information from a social networking site towards hiring practices. I'm not sure if there's some precedent that would endorse this idea, but my own gut feeling is that it would fail. There isn't an adequate public policy reason to disallow companies from using social network information (in fact, there may be incentive for companies TO do such a thing, to reduce their hiring of 'troublesome' workers). Secondly, since people are willingly volunteering this information to the public at large, it would be hard to argue that one special class of people is not allowed to view or use that information. It's kind of backwards compared to most other privacy issues, where people giving information to a specific class of people are trying to PREVENT the general public from viewing/using it.
And ethically, I, speaking personally now, see nothing wrong with denying someone a job based on information that they have willingly submitted to others. If they had broadcast something on tv that made them less 'hire-able,' the law certainly wouldn't protect it. Therefore, if it's your prerogative to post pictures of you drinking yourself into oblivion or complaining about your awkwardness at social functions, I think it's perfectly reasonable for an employer to deny you a position based on that information. Now, of course, if they deny it to you because of your race, creed, etc. then that would be unfair according to our laws. That, however, is already protected regardless of if you post it on the internet or not. So I am not seeing the reasoning behind not holding people accountable for their own actions here.
P.S. This is just my response to the points you have brought up. The main point of contention from Kerr, that of giving up anonymity in favor of having the government 'safeguard' and be 'responsible' for our private data, I find to be completely ridiculous. Our government should not play the part of some wizened patriarch. It is here to enhance our ability to organize (economically and militarily). It should be a moderator, not a bully.
"Look: either the government pervades your life, or it does not."
Here in grown-up land we call that a false dichotomy.
......to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects.......
I suppose it can be debated whether some ephemeral electronic impulses in some distant computer apply to the above. In the days this was written, any government agent who did want these, had to physically come to the subject persons house or office and take such persons or items with him/her.
It seems that in this day, the only way to keep anything truly secret, is to not tell anyone, anywhere, by any means and make sure it isn't recorded anywhere it is possible for another person to discover said secret(s). Sending a secret out by any electronic device is likely not much different than shouting it from your roof-top.
Maybe Jesus had this in mind what is recorded in Luke 12:3?
"For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, nor anything hidden that shall not be known. Therefore whatever you have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light. And that which you have spoken in the ear in secret rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops."
This was written long before mankind had our modern means of eavesdropping.
All theory is gray
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
So although the Ninth does get mentioned far more seldom than it should, its existence is critical and quite central to the current privacy debate. It has not been completely ignored.
If you're interested in reading a layman's introduction to the 'right to privacy' as it has developed through several major USSC cases, I might humbly suggest my own "Right to Privacy Primer" (text version) which I wrote a while back and recently updated.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
At the end of the day, you can't use somebody else's computer, and expect privacy. You can't use somebody else's network, and expect privacy. If I jack into your ethernet hub, you're going to have the possibility of reading my traffic unless I use HTTPS / SSH / GPG etc.
That's our real relationship with Comcast, with AT&T and so on. They're snoopy sysadmins on a gigantic scale, and we should treat them like snoopy sysadmins of any other kind: encrypt and tunnel all traffic, and push back technically as hard as we can. P2P has led the way on this, but it's really time we stopped dinking around and started defaulting to HTTPS even on sites like Slashdot.
On the broader level, I did some work on this (ironically, the first draft of the work was done for the USG.)
http://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php
It's a system - built on open source software for the most part (and the remaining stuff could be built) - which provides for a rock solid personal identity card which has three critical properties:
* all your personal data is encrypted, and only a court can decrypt it
* the card has no unique identifiers on it, and you have dozens of cards (that you leave with institutions like your bank to "anchor" your account)
* it's dirt cheap and secure enough to entrust with biometric data like DNA fingerprints.
Concerted effort to produce an open alternative which offers strong security *AND* strong privacy by carrying the debate to a higher technical level than schemes like RealID is long past due.
Phil Zimmerman settled the encryption issue for most of a generation with PGP. It's time for us to consider doing the same for general communications snooping, and then moving out into areas like the poor protection of identity in systems like the Social Security Number-based credit reporting system.
We can do better, and we must.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
NO! Bad! This is not about "feeling" secure, it's about BEING secure. There's a huge difference. If someone can unreasonably search all your papers, effects, etc. then you're not secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, are you? It has nothing to do with how you feel about it. I see people making this fallacy all the time, that it's about feeling secure rather than actually being secure. That's not how it works. There is no rhetorical ground to be muddied.
I just dug up that Kerr was the supervisor on the FBI's Carnivore program while he was Assistant FBI director.
See http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/09/06/carnivore.hearing/
I think being a plumber is a noble chore. When the toilet overflows you don't need Dostoevsky coming to your house.
It requires trusting the people who will be collecting the information. Experience proves that they are *NOT* trustworthy, and don't have your best interests at heart.
Even if you can't get total privacy, get what you can, and don't give up easily. Those who are trying to replace privacy with trusting large organizations are doing so because large organizations can be threatened by larger or more powerful (or even just more committed) organizations.
P.S.: Remember that "Do Not Call" list? That one shares your phone number with all telemarketers, so they'll know who not to call. It expires next year, and they've got your number.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The Right to Privacy, as put forth by the Constitution of the United States of America, never intended for any one to be anonymous. Anonymous people have no voice in the government because they are unkown and faceless. Only those who stand up to be counted, by their vote and their enumeration in a census, can be a part of the government.
You've got thing switched around. According to USSC rulings without anonymity the First Amendment's Freedom of Speech means nothing. As one USSC ruling said if a person can't reasonably expect to remain anonymous then they do not have freedom of speech. The Watchtower Bible And Tract Society of New York, Inc., et al.[pdf] case is one such case. In Watchtower Bible v. Stratton the USSC upholds "Anonymity, Free Speech." In another case a CATO brief argues "Anonymity and Associational Privacy Remain Important Guarantors of Free Political Speech."
FalconShould there be a Law?
It seems I've hit two of the most sensitive issues on Slashdot: Privacy and the Libertarian Impulse.
You can't question unbridled privacy rights on Slashdot, even as a rhetorical exercise.
You can't question the Libertarian Impulse on Slashdot, at least when referring to Google. Government wields force and is dangerous. Enormously wealthy and powerful public corporation driven solely by profit motive doesn't wield force and is therefore non-dangerous. Simple, binary logic, but it seems to work for many folks.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
And you wonder (maybe you don't) why the US consistently rebukes efforts to set up new bodies exercising international sovereignty, for example, the UN Law of the Sea Convention.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
If I could excuse myself from this "Social Security" situation, then I might agree with you.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
smitty, I think this is a straw argument, this idea that if the government can provide any services to us it absolutely must invade our privacy. This is one of those loopy Reason Magazine assertions that is devoid of meaning and whose only purpose is to make us thing government is a problem.
If we're going to get anywhere as a country, and as a world, we're going to have to stop swallowing this phony conventional wisdom. I've lived and worked in a few places where the residents enjoy a host of public services, far more than we have here in the US: free medicine, free education through University, government pensions, and guess what? They have far more privacy than we have in this country.
In fact, I've recently come back from a symposium in Finland with a side trip to Norway. It was an eye-opener to talk to people who live in a prosperous place, who are quite pleased with their system of publicly funded health care and education, and still believe they are, in fact, running their government instead of the other way around.
The USA is the wealthiest country in the world, one that prides itself on innovation. Well, if we're so goddamn clever, what say we figure out a way to keep families from losing their homes if one of their kids gets sick, and maybe, on this Veteran's Day weekend, figure out a way to keep so many of our returning veterans of our foreign military adventures from becoming homeless (one in four of US homeless are military veterans). While we're at it, maybe we can figure out a way to have elections with results that bear some resemblance to the votes actually cast. Why are so many countries in much worse shape than the US still able to hold elections in which the citizenry have some trust?
No, Smitty, don't get sucked into that Ronald Reagan BS that government is incapable of doing anything right. Just because Reagan's party has spent decades doing their level best to destroy government so his statement can be true doesn't mean there's anything about government that is inherently ineffective or negative.
The last time I had to renew my drivers' license, the DRV was run a lot better than my cable company.
You are welcome on my lawn.
There seems to be an increasingly accepted view in America that the 'founding words' of our esteemed Founders (women most certainly included) are some sort of 'ideal' to be striven for.
Nothing could be further from the truth -- the Declaration, Constitution, et. al. are practical recipes, written by experienced and reflective authors, a group of people that had personally suffered and/or witnessed the murders, intrusions, seizures, violations, wrongs, indignities and humiliations the Documents are meant prevent. This most certainly includes the right to keep private from the "state" communications between individuals.
(Just who the fuck does this current government think they are, anyway? They were too cowardly to go to the original site for their own first "inauguration" (thats another story) because of the protesters, and its been all downhill since that day. They haven't looked a protester in the eyes since, the gutless wonders, instead they spend mass quantities of cash avoiding them and locking them out of public forums. Heaven forbid that they actually tried to match wits with one.)
I also find the political (for lack of a better word) similarities between then and now ironic, to say the least. The American Revolution was pretty much entirely caused by years of increasing economic and physical depredation, abuse and exploitation by the dominant trans-national "entity" of the day, the British East India Company, an entity that at times employed its own military force, established its own governments, etc.
Sound anything like whats happening with the oil in Iraq?
But actually, my favorite part is that smugglers played such a large part in early American history. Dunno why, but that appeals to me sooooooo much. :)
Interesting, too, that lobbyists played a part in the run up to the American Revolution:
Isn't it great how with one little change of definition, "privacy" can now mean "we keep private everything we know about you, which is everything."
This guy really should be fired. Out of a cannon. At a wall.
The ______ Agenda
3 years ago 70% of the stuff on the first search page were me, not a single result is today.
I quit posting with any reference to my real name/email. And thanks to recent use in a movie, my pseudonymn is no-longer unique also.
Although you can't delete your online history, it will get diluted quickly.
Other "conspiracy nut" factoids:
-For the few weeks prior to the event workers at the WTC claim that they saw an increased number of goverment agents in the building, including a massive surge of security near the basement levels of the buildings.
-Forensic architects and demolitions experts found traces of thermite, attributing to how the steel lost its structural integrity. Thermite is not contained in planes, it is placed in demolition charges.
-The "official" story of how the buildings fell (plane impact, ignited jet fuel) cannot be recreated in a lab. However a thermite demolition can recreate how the buildings fell exactly.
-The head of security for the WTC was a relative of George Bush.
-Within 48 hours of the event a massive order for arms production and body bags was placed in companies owned by the Carlisle Group, a company in which the Bush family had substantial stakes in. The Bin Laden family were also investors.
Need we go on?
Tom,
You are flamebaiting troll of a Eurotrash snob and I have no idea how you were ever modded so high. But since I can't do anything about that, here are some things to remember:
1. Bush did not win the popular vote in 2000 -- and that was prior to 9/11.
2. There were minor protests before the war in Afghanistan and serious protests leading up to the war in Iraq and beyond.
3. Many of the worst allegations regarding domestic civil-liberties infringements involving most U.S. citizens (i.e., the ones who weren't Muslim) didn't come out until after the 2004 election. Before that, the press was focused on such lovely things as Abu-Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay (which I grant you are no picnic either).
4. Take a moment and look across the channel at the United Kingdom. They ain't exactly having a civil-liberties hoe-down in England these days.
5. Treating Americans as a unitary group is just as stupid as it would be for people of any other nationality.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool. -Richard Feynman
PopeRatzo, consider also that business is deeply intertwined with government in the USA. A sizeable chunk the people running policy at the appointed level, in the federal government, are fresh through the revolving door from the business side.
Are they in government to make policy that benefits the people, or the businesses? Look to where they go after stepping through the revolving door the second time to answer that question.
I believe that's what drives government to make statements and decisions that impact citizen privacy. Kerr, however, is a career spook. Spookland's interest in thwarting privacy is ostensibly about [preventing] terrorism, but when you consider the massive agglomerated databases of personal and financial history that government is buying/renting from private business, their objectives are not so clear. Let's see where Kerr ends up when his government tenure is over.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
I can't disagree there. Gothe once noted that if you fight a dragon for too long, you're doomed eventually to become one. Here in the US, we've become what we were trying to overcome. And the sad irony of the situation is that few see it.
If he were elected, I'm not sure how much of his own agenda he'd be able to accomplish since he can only propose new legislation & veto things he disagrees with, but he could make it VERY difficult for Congress to pass things that there wasn't unanimous agreement about, and he wouldn't be giving the protection of the President's Office to those agents of the executive branch who are blatantly violating the Constitution.
The veto is anyone who wants to be president most powerful weapon. I'd love to see a president that would veto most of the bills passed by congress. In 2004 that's what Michael Badnarik promised. Congress can override vetoes but it isn't homogeneous enough to do it now. That would be a good sight to see, the federal government screeching to a halt.
FalconShould there be a Law?