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National "Dragnet" Connecting at State, Local Level
Squirtle tips us to a Washington Post story about the progress and expansion of N-DEx - the National Data Exchange. Developed by Raytheon for a mere $85 million, N-DEx is hailed as a unified intelligence sharing system, which will allow agencies to share and analyze data from all levels of law enforcement. From the Post:
"Three decades ago, Congress imposed limits on domestic intelligence activity after revelations that the FBI, Army, local police and others had misused their authority for years to build troves of personal dossiers and monitor political activists and other law-abiding Americans. Since those reforms, police and federal authorities have observed a wall between law enforcement information-gathering, relating to crimes and prosecutions, and more open-ended intelligence that relates to national security and counterterrorism. That wall is fast eroding following the passage of laws expanding surveillance authorities, the push for information-sharing networks, and the expectation that local and state police will play larger roles as national security sentinels."
If we're lucky, in a few years Congress will impose limits on domestic intelligence activity after revelations that the FBI, Army, local police and others will have misused their authority for years to build troves of personal dossiers and monitor political activists and other law-abiding Americans.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
I have no criminal record. My only crime is to criticize the government's more egregious policies. And is the above document safe from access? Who has the key to it?
Now that the all the agencies are against the citizens, who will protect us from the government? and when will they realize they have gone too far? for sure, injustice will come before change
that's not how it works. Rarely does some evil poltiical overlord try and make some BS law as a false front to do something shady. That's just in the movies. What usually happens is the person has good intentions and then someone later abuses it. That or someone hacks their system and steals all the information. Rarely do we ever see a "the government collected embarrassing info on me and put it on their myspace page for the world to see" like all the paranoid people fear, but boy do we hear the stories about way overly detailed and unnecessary databases getting hacked and all the data stolen!
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
The problem is that a cop investigating an ordinary crime has to sift through a very small haystack before he starts seeing some needles. With "National Security" "surveillance" they are mostly trolling ordinary people. Once they get this information on "us", they not only tend to keep it, but the powers that be almost always end up using it for their own purposes. Nixon and Hoover weren't weird aberrations (Despite the fact both were individually weird aberrations.) in American history, they are everywhere, among those who seek power in Government jobs.
It's extremely difficult to take over a country where everything is decentralized and/or chaotic. You might inflict damage on one spot, but all the others just keep cooking along. US problems in Iraq are a good example of this.
Conversely, a society where every detail of every citizen's life is available in a centralized database (which is conveniently located in the same place as a strong central government) virtually begs to be taken over. You have only to take over the brain, and the rest of the body politic just keeps obliviously going about its business. The only difference is that there's a new boss raking in the profits.
And to all those jackasses who like to say, "If you have nothing to hide, what are you afraid of", I'd simply ask in return, "Are you really stupid enough to believe the information a government collects on you is always accurate?"
These dipshits can't locate 10 million illegal aliens, and they found out the Berlin Wall was coming down on the evening news. But you trust them to notice you're not the same guy as the one with a similar name and SIN who likes to rob banks half way across the country?
If somebody doesn't put some reins on these bastards right quick, we're going to find out there's worse things than losing a city or two to terrorist action.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Reality is even more insidious than that. They may not even be lying, but be completely honest and never use the law "that way" - but their successors eventually will.
It's just the same with agreements in a contract. Even if the original party will not abuse the terms, their successors will.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
The only thing worse than criminals are rogue agents of the state, acting under color of authority, to undermine the rights of their fellow citizens.
Thugs and goons are bad enough, but they're 10 times worse when given a badge.
A good friend of mine once said: Most cops are NOT pigs, but an awful lot of pigs pursue a career in law enforcement. The older I get, the more I understand just how right he was.
At the end of the day, the only thing that stands between us and the would-be tyrants of the world is our willingness to oppose them, with deadly force if need be. Liberty and power are two sides of the same coin, and in the real world political power comes from the barrel of a gun.
There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Whole new layers of self-important morons sticking their nose in your business in the name of national security.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
It depends on your definition of "swear words". To use a George Carlin line, "You have bad intentions, bad emotions, and words." (in reference to the words you can't say on TV).
Ummm...No! All that will happen is they will abuse a part you didn't specifically address. Happens all the time. There is no way you can possibly address every abuse of a law. Take the DMCA (or any law designed to protect some "right") and look at the abuses never contemplated by Congress. They wrote the law with the intention of making it easier for a copyright holder to stop infringing content. They knew the take-down provisions would be abused. To say that situation was never contemplated is false since that was one of the warnings Congress was given before its passage. Yet they passed it anyway.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
Whether or not they are wrong is irrelevant. The Supreme Court has held that the Bill of Rights applies to state laws, whether you like it or not. And the states can't have laws that the Supreme Court has found to be unconstitutional.
"Obscene" language is a class thing. People from working class backgrounds frequently use such language - and why shouldn't I talk the way my parents brought me up talking? Whilst people from middle class backgrounds perceive certain words to be inherently offensive. This perception is never stated to be, but originates from, the belief that such language is of the lower classes.
You ask why choice of words is necessarily part of freedom of speech, but the censorship of "obscene" language is merely the repression of the language of one part of society by another part of society. Your term of "civil speech" shows you come from or have adopted a particular cultural viewpoint but this is not necessarily universal. This linguistic division in society along class backgrounds is real and to demand that someone adopt a different subset of language in order to put forward their views is to demand that they renounce their own culture in favour of the one with more power (to some extent). It is not acceptable to proscribe words on behalf of others. I have every right to talk in the language I am familiar with, rather than adopt some other group's mode of expression.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
This /. article follows closely on the heels of the reports that the FBI has continued to abuse the National Security Letters, despite being caught the first time about 5 years ago. (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Senate-FBI.html?ex=1362373200&en=64cbc1e08db5f5bf&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss)
Consider that the national security letter abuse and data dragnet are concurrent with illegal government wiretaps and recent concerns about DNA profiling (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/health/24dna.html).
Observe, also, that Congress, no matter which party holds the majority there, is clearly uninterested in checking the excesses of the executive branch that oversees the FBI/CIA/NSA/Homeland Security. And it's not a partisan issue, since Bill Clinton began some of the steps that Bush has expanded on, and which either Hillary or McCain would continue.
I submit, fellow citizens, that we are quickly approaching a crisis in our democracy, when we each shall have to decide how important our freedom is to us, and what we're going to do about it.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Finally! Somebody mod parent up please. I know this is /. but the nerd-FUD is getting out of hand on this one!
Interesting that all the FUD comments come at 3am after this article was posted, and all the "voices of reason" come during daylight hours. Just saying...
You really think that even though "evil political overlords" can and did take power in Germany, Russia, China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Uganda, Rwanda, etc. etc, and delight in every kind of abuse possible in those places, that somehow those same "evil overlord" types are prevented from doing this in America?
What's really amazing is that the current rulers of the U.S. have publicly admitted torturing their victims and holding them without trial. They have also publicly admitted to mounting a massive campaign of unrestricted domestic surveillance, and entering into illegal partnerships with corporations to do it. Yet somehow you still think it "can't happen here" and even get modded "insightful" for it.
That attitude of "it can never happen here" is precisely why it is happening here.