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Archive.org Defeats FBI's Demand For User Information
eldavojohn writes "Although we don't know what they were after due to the settlement, a gag order was just released that kept Internet Archive member Brewster Kahle quiet. The FBI had issued a national security letter to them under the Patriot Act. Kahle fought it. Hard. The EFF came to the aid of his lawyers and what resulted was one of the only three times an NSL has been challenged: all three have been rescinded. The FBI agreed to open some of the court files now for it to be public. The ACLU added, 'That makes you wonder about the the hundreds of thousands of NSLs that haven't been challenged.'"
A five year prison term might be preferable to experiences like this, especially when ratting out the FBI can save hundreds of thousands of innocent people from further constitutional abuse. I can not demand heroic action by others but I wish there had were more than three in the hundreds of thousands of abused citizens so far. Innocent people going to jail for protecting privacy of other innocent people would shut this monster program down fast.
Vote for anyone but Republicans in 2008 and vote out everyone who had anything to do with the poorly named Patriot act.
That would be everyone in government of that time, except for Russ Feingold.
Vote for anyone but Republicans in 2008 and vote out everyone who had anything to do with the poorly named Patriot act.
Personally, the voting record is more important to me than whether they have an R or D beside their name. If that means that I'm voting in Republicans then so be it. I'd rather have a Republican who refused to vote for the Patriot Act than a Democrat who dropped to his knees and pucked up to the Bush administration. Not that there are many Republicans who fit that description...
Boy, I'm sure the telcos are hating this. This story shows once and for all that "the government told me to" is not a valid excuse for violating civil rights.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
Resist the temptation to make this partisan. Democrats were perfectly willing to vote for the PATRIOT Act and then try to excuse their complicity after the fact. That is not a commendable act.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Can someone send him a letter telling him to shut up?
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Or giving Bush a blank check to wage war for that matter. Not that I think that the Democrats are worse than the Republicans, on whole. I think the Republicans, as an organization, are definitely more corrupt. But the Democrats failed to take a solid stand when it mattered, and I'm not going to forget that, even if I vote Democrat out of necessity.
A five year prison term might be preferable to experiences like this, especially when ratting out the FBI can save hundreds of thousands of innocent people from further constitutional abuse. I can not demand heroic action by others but I wish there had were more than three in the hundreds of thousands of abused citizens so far. Innocent people going to jail for protecting privacy of other innocent people would shut this monster program down fast.
Vote for anyone but Republicans in 2008 and vote out everyone who had anything to do with the poorly named Patriot act.
You had me right up until "Vote for anyone but Republicans...Us against them. Good over evil. With or against us. Sheep think in those terms.
The emotional rhetoric from politicians never ends and their simple minded constituents emulate that behavior instead of engaging in critical thinking.
You do realize that there were PLENTY of Democrats that had voted for the Patriot Act. Hell, IIRC 99% of Congress didn't even read the God damn thing!
Allowing small group of people that benefit disproportionably to the many, to create an indentured servitude is not patriotic, fighting it is. The maintaining of the separation of powers, protecting the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution as well as defending them is the is the ultimate Patriotic Act.
It is time for transfer of power from the few to the many, the wise (conservative) and those that value freedom (liberal), and those that value both, (party free independents for collective control).
Laws of changed such that we have become cattle simply to be herded and this is most unpatriotic.
"an infinite player that has lost his finite mind" ~Infinite Play the Movie (it blends with reality)
Actually, except for the biblical references it seemed pretty much like your standard basement-dweller's +4 Insightful rant. I think if he got a user account, dropped the religious stuff, and started bashing on the President more directly, he'd have the makings of a top Slashdot political commentator.
Klingon programs don't timeshare, they battle for supremacy.
At this point in my life, I wouldn't mind going to prison for five years for violating an NSL gag order, as long as I was able to tell the public what the hell the FBI wanted. I don't have kids or family to support, and only student loans debt.
I agree with you that heroic stands need to be made in the face of abuses of constitutional rights; in fact, I wholeheartedly agree with the entire first paragraph. However, even though this will get modded down into oblivion, your final sentence ruins the entire spirit of the post, turning it from an insightful, inspriational comment into a partisan insult. (Disclaimer: I am not affiliated or registered with any major party, though I did vote for Bush in 2000) Abuses of personal privacy by the FBI/CIA are nothing new, and cannot be blamed on either the national Republican party or those Congress-critters who voted for the Patriot Act while the rubble of the WTC was still being cleared from the ashes.
I agree that major sections of the Patriot Act brush up against the grayest of gray areas in the realm of constitutional law, and that they should be revisited and even repealed. Given time, any reactionary measure should be reviewed and revised. Emotions and political actions do not observe Newton's laws of motion. If anything, each action is met with an underwhelming lack of reaction (Katrina and the Gulf Coast) or an overzealous attempt to keep anything bad from happening again, ever, at any cost (America: Sept. 12, 2001-present). There is precious little middle ground when an appropriate response is ever made.
See the Patriot Act for what it was in historical terms: a reactionary measure passed and supported by representatives of a hurting, angry nation. Considering the national mood at the time, it was the "right" thing to do: Americans were more than happy to give up essential liberties for Bush's promise of temporary security. His approval ratings set new historical record highs in the weeks immediately following the 9/11 attacks and the start of the Afghan war.
These metrics cannot be blamed on the whole of the Republican party or on the Congress seated in 2001-2002. Instead blame the current administration for continuing to act as though we are attacked on our soil on a daily basis, more than 6 years after those attacks. The Dubya Bush administration is like a paranoid meth addict, convinced that there is someone right there hiding who might "endangerfy our American way of life". While legitimate threats exist both inside and outside our borders, a bombing, the destruction of a major landmark or building, even a massive attack that cripples or destroys a city will not change our way of life. America will go on; hopefully, continuing to uphold and honor our constitutional rights.
Perhaps the saddest part of 9/11 is that the attacks themselves did not change America's way of life. America's panicky reaction and an adminstration that used this panic to grant itself unsupervised and unconstitutional executive powers changed our American way of life. Such results can not be blamed on the current Republican national party, nor on Al Qaeda, nor on the Reps or the Dems who supported the original Patriot Act. Full responsibility should rest squarely on the man in the White House. George W. Bush has preyed on the fears of the population in every speech and policy for years, reaping the benefits of governing a nation of sheeple. He has made his legacy from this, and it will not be remembered fondly in years to come.
khasim (12/9/06): In a blind taste test, more people preferred Coke over the Pepsi that I had previously pissed in.
It's been repeated to death, but that was an obvious prompting: "A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither" Thomas Jefferson, American 3rd US President (1801-09). Author of the Declaration of Independence. 1762-1826
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I'm not saying that sometimes it helps to actually RTFA, but anyway:
Though FBI guidelines on using NSLs warned of overusing them, two Congressionally ordered audits revealed that the FBI had issued hundreds of illegal requests for student health records, telephone records and credit reports. The reports also found that the FBI had issued hundreds of thousands of NSLs since 2001, but failed to track their use. In a letter to Congress last week, the FBI admitted it can only estimate how many NSLs it has issued.Unconstitutional or not, the whole NSL / PATRIOT stuff screams "abuse me" at 130dB.
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
cumulatively, 19/12 out of the last 28 years.
*thinks a moment* So... 44 1/3rd years? Hehe, jk.
They also dramatically expand the power of the government to monitor the citizenry in ways that the Constitution never intended to allow and, indeed, which could not reasonably have been foreseen by the funding fathers at all.
They didn't have to, any more than they had to foresee telephone or e-mail tapping, because the wording of the 4th Amendment is technology agnostic. That's the way it should be. That's why when a case of warrantless e-mail reading came before the court, the judge ruled that this was illegal. Without having to have a whole Constitutional amendment just for email (and one for text messaging, and one for IM, etc etc etc).
We don't need any change to the Constitution whatsoever to stop these abuses. We just need for the Constitution as written to be enforced. That is the problem, and making it easier to modify the Constitution would not make it more likely to be enforced. We already have an amendment that covers these situations; if you think the problem is stacked courts, why do you think they would enforce some new amendment that covers the exact same thing?
The only thing it would make more likely is that when another "ZOMG teh terrists are attacking! I can has ur liberties?" moment occurs, the people will not only allow it, they will enshrine it in the highest law of our land. At least USAPATRIOT expires, and parts of it have already had rulings against it as constitutional. You can't rule an amendment unconstitutional; and amendment is constitutional by definition.
Our system isn't perfect, but our Constitution is damn good and one of its strengths is that it can't be changed easily.
The enemies of Democracy are
The Dubya Bush administration is like a paranoid meth addict
Yes. But not because of the attacks anymore, they fear you, their people. And it's not an isolated phenomenon. You can see it all over the "western" world, with more and more paranoid surveillance laws coming into existance. Most of them targeting the internet, which is a perfect tool to assemble and organize people of the same interests. Interests that may and often do go diametrally against the goals of our governments.
The advantage governments have over their subjects is that they are organized. No, don't laugh, I know how bureaucracy weighs it down, but they have the advantage of having trained specialists in every field necessary. Something you don't have. You are not a lawyer, bureaucrat, IT professional, PR guru and fundraiser all rolled into one. That's what gives your government an edge over you (in case one wants to stand up against the government). With the internet, people can organize and gain access to the same specialists the government has.
The same holds true for corporations, btw.
Now, the internet also allows organisation of partisan groups who won't just fight with legal means but also illegal ones. And that's what they're really afraid of. Since they already managed to bleed the "lower incomes" completely dry, not only siphoning away the little rest of their savings but also pushing them so deeply into debt that they can't spend anymore, the meager rest of the middle class is the next target. The divide between rich and poor opens wider, the number of poor people growing, and it's a matter of time until the mob reaches critical mass again. Their attempt with the increased surveillance is to make sure it's easy to identify the "heads" of such movements and decapitate them before they can gain momentum.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Don't Tread on Me".
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
That's why you vote for Obama. Clinton supported the PATRIOT act. Clinton supported the war. Obama was against both of those. I was honestly planning on voting Libertarian, because I can't bring myself to vote for anyone who supports the PATRIOT act and all this other crap...but Obama fits that quite well.
I recognize the fact that there are times in which the violation of privacy and the suspension of certain rights are necessary for security reasons. However, I have never heard a valid reason as to how judicial oversight and transparency interferes with this. In what way does due process hinder investigations? Is it a time efficiency thing? No problem, lets streamline the process and allocate more resources to quicken it. Will it clue in those being investigated? No problem, we could have clauses which delay but never prevent full disclosure. Why does does this kind of request NEED to be secret? The only conclusion I can draw is that it must be secret because it is illegal.
So vote for anyone except Republicans and Democrats. Actually... don't vote. It's a scam.
Why does this remind me of the "lettre de cachet"? -a fill-in-the-blank warrant the rent a thug is sent out with where he fills it in as he needs. France got rid of them in 1790, our Constitution has provisions against this. Now all it takes is a Lawer with a power tie and a BIC Pen to ruin your life.
Welcome to the Land of the Free.....Have you any rights to declare?
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
that sort of says it all, no?
The three that challenged it broke the "law" by so much as telling their lawyer that they had received The Letter. I'm sure that if The Letters permitted people to discuss them, more than three people would have spoken to their lawyers and done something about it.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I guess there is one candidate for President that didn't vote for USAPATRIOT or the Iraq war...
But that's an exercise for the reader.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Republicans are well known for holding the line and sticking to their talking points. They've worked hard to earn this reputation, and there's no reason to forget that they've repeatedly unified behind awful ideas.
Obama voted against the AUMF and filibustered the permanent reauthorization of the PATRIOT act. Additionally, he wont be tempted to hold the Republican line, seeing as how he is a Democrat.
The same logic applies to other good Democrats. It works against the Republicans - we need look no farther than Ron Paul to see what happens to Republicans who respect the constitution and the rule of law.
Posting anonymous because I moderated in this thread.
When 9/11 happened, I was as shocked and angry as anyone could be, and wanted to get the person/people involved. This Osama Bin Laden character came out quickly as the chief suspect.
9/15 or so (eh - few days later. Whatever.) I was standing in line at Sam's Club, and the guy behind me strikes up a conversation with me for the sole purpose of telling me that if HE ever sees one of Those Towelheads, he'll "run 'em over with his truck". As badly as I felt because of 9/11, I remember being shocked that someone would advocate the random vigilante killing of another person who likely had nothing to do with it. At the time I just smiled and said "Yeah? Huh." and tried to avoid eye contact.
There aren't many people in that frame of mind anymore, as far as I can tell. I think that guy was just running his mouth, and probably never would have done it in reality, but the fact that random homicide was something to be bragged about to strangers at that time really says a lot about the emotions that were running through the country. Worse, because the guy saying it was probably a decent guy overall, but had gotten all caught up in the spirit of shock, anger, and later patriotism and desire for vengeance.
That wave of emotion was what drove through the Patriot Act without its even being read, and it's what will always keep cooler heads from prevailing. I, personally, have learned from the experience just how dangerous those emotions can be, and to always be on guard when a politician invokes them. Unfortunately, the guy at Sam's Club is probably none the wiser, and has probably totally forgotten I ever existed.
So I think you're right. No one party or president can be blamed for what has happened. We the people not only accepted it, we asked for it. We cried for blood when ours was taken -- and who can blame us? That our politicians took advantage of the situation and created inappropriate responses makes it no less our fault.
-CrazedWalrus
A narrow majority and the president's veto authority.
Of course, a principled conservative might oppose the patriot act in support of smaller government, but conservatives are on the whole unprincipled.
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
If you don't vote, you have no right to complain about the government in power. You had your chance, and you chose to waste it.
>You'd think that, but you'd be forgetting that the courts have been packed by Republicans for the last 7 1/2 years,
You know it's possible to be a Republican and actually support the constitution, right?
Make no mistake - the teachers unions have nothing to do with it. The students are more than capable of fucking it up all on their own, and tend to take pleasure in doing so.
[BTW, nope, I'm not a teacher, so this rant is not self serving at all; I'm just a product of and a witness to the system, and to me the educations that kids receive these days matches quite well what society considers to be "just right" - a generation of retard parents gives rise to a generation of retard kids, and anyone smarter than that average level of retardation has to really fight the system]
Too bad you ended with this gem. It's obvious you were just itching to get your partisan line in, probably in total ignorance as to who voted for the Patriot Act.
This is not a republican or democratic problem. If you can't see the malaise that is affecting our country regardless of who you vote for, then you are beyond help and nothing more than a partisan hack. Those are a dime a dozen these days, if you haven't noticed.
Sigh. Another ill-informed but impressive-looking rant gets modded up so that it shows in the default page view (which is how I found it). And so it goes, as usual.
I think there's also a large number of democrats who supported the Patriot Act, but now say they don't because of it's lack of popularity.
Just like they wanted to go to war, but now they claim they never wanted to go.
When you start to call parties out, instead of individuals, you are only adding to the problem.
Too late for that, they're already trampling us and our rights with their boots.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You can almost forgive them for that. Most of them voted to authorize the Commander in Chief to do whatever is necessary to keep the US safe when they voted to support the troop build up and that permission to use them if needed. Very few assumed the Office of the President would use it's power in a knowingly needless way, which it appears is exactly what the President did.
The entire pretense for the invasion was a lie, we know it was a lie because up until Sept 11, 2001 when reporters asked anyone in the current administration about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the universal answer was "they aren't a risk and they don't have them". We can now summize that 9/11 was used as a politically expediant way to enact the vision of the New American Century, whose members rose to being in the Presidents office.
Those who voted to authorize the President to do what was needed and later recanted once they realized what happened were honestly trying to do what's right. No one seriously considered that the President would be so reckless that he would actually make the country more unsafe to live in and more vulnerable to terrorists. Seriously, why would any President do that, even ones you didn't like at the time? They made the same mistake the rest of America did, trust a bunch of self confessed Neo Conservatives to not invade random countries as a demonstration of power and instead focus on actually stopping more attacks on US and Allied soil from killing more people. Just ask Spain and Great Britian how much of an impact invading Iraq had on stopping terrorism and if that money would have been better spent.
Burn Hollywood Burn