Slashdot Mirror
McCain Supports Warrantless Domestic Surveillance
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "While there have been shifting reports about McCain's view on warrantless wiretapping, nothing could be clearer than the latest comment by McCain adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin, who said, 'We do not know what lies ahead in our nation's fight against radical Islamic extremists, but John McCain will do everything he can to protect Americans from such threats, including asking the telecoms for appropriate assistance to collect intelligence against foreign threats to the United States as authorized by Article II of the Constitution.' Article II, of course, is what Bush has argued gives the President virtually unlimited power during war, and McCain has already voted in favor of Telecom Immunity, though he sometimes mentions, to those asking for accountability, wanting to hold hearings about what the telecoms did."
This is very conclusory. McCain says he is going to be consistent with the Constitution, so that means he supports warrantless surveillance? That's quite the logical leap. This statement is completely unclear. He may easily interpret Article II differently than Bush (and there are many indications that he does) and this statement shows nothing different from that.
Good old Slashdot political smearing.
If you want to read it from his site, there's a pdf that explains: Revise the PATRIOT Act: Barack Obama believes that we must provide law enforcement the tools it needs to investigate, disrupt, and capture terrorists, but he also believes we need real oversight to avoid jeopardizing the rights and ideals of all Americans. There is no reason we cannot fight terrorism while maintaining our civil liberties. Unfortunately, the current administration has abused the powers given to it by the USA PATRIOT Act. A March 2007 Justice Department audit found the FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the PATRIOT Act to secretly obtain personal information about American citizens. As president, Barack Obama would revisit the PATRIOT Act to ensure that there is real and robust oversight of tools like National Security Letters, sneak-and-peek searches, and the use of the material witness provision.
Strengthen Warrantless Wiretap Approval Process: Barack Obama opposed the Bush Administrationâ(TM)s initial policy on warrantless wiretaps because it crossed the line between protecting our national security and eroding the civil liberties of American citizens. As president, Obama would update the Foreign Intelligence Paid for by Obama for America Surveillance Act to provide greater oversight and accountability to the congressional Intelligence Committees to prevent future threats to the rule of law. And another that goes on to say: Eliminate Warrantless Wiretaps. Barack Obama opposed the Bush Administrationâ(TM)s initial policy on warrantless wiretaps because it crossed the line between protecting our national security and eroding the civil liberties of American citizens. As president, Obama would update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to provide greater oversight and accountability to the congressional intelligence committees to prevent future threats to the rule of law. I'd say (even from a few of his voting records) that he is against it for the most part. Or at the very least, revising it severely.
Doesn't really matter in a two party system though, does it? Take what you can get over the crap I read about in this article from McCain's campaign.
My work here is dung.
They were the best boogie-man ever. The Islamists may, eventually, someday, get nukes. The USSR had enough nukes to sterilize the planet. And a huge conventional army. And chemical and biological weapons galore. As far as keeping the populace pissing itself in fear and doing whatever the authorities tell them to, Islamists just don't hold a candle to our dear former enemies, the Soviets. Well, I suppose they'll have to do until the authorities can cook up something scarier.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
So, by remaining continuously at war, the President has unlimited power?
Brilliant!
What defines a war? Does it have to be against another country? Can it be...
a war on terror?
a war on drugs?
a war on cancer?
a war on poverty?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
You know what has always pissed me off about McCain and his cohorts (and many others too) when talking about terrorism? Calling it "Islamic terrorism"
There's no fricking practical need in the world to throw that "Islamic" adjective on there. It sounds great because there's some implied racism associated with Muslims and Islam but it really rubs me the wrong way.
How about we focus on terrorism in general? How about we make it hard for ANYONE to perpetrate terror attacks on our country?
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
warrantless is meaningless if you have judges in your pocket to give you warrents no?
I'm often positively impressed when politicians change their minds, assuming they did it because they learned more about the issue. I'm not impressed with McCain's descent into the bowels of extreme right wing Bushism because he's done it to appease extremist voters to his own benefit.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
AT&T has given him lots of money just for this.
If bribing a judge is an extra impediment, I welcome it.
The Constitution doesn't let the president tap mail or wire internally; but if it's entering/leaving the country, he can. It's the edge dilemma: at the edge point, you can tap inside or outside. Outside, there's no rules, and you're tapping a foreign national with no constitutional rights.
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Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
The subversion of the Constitution and what civil rights we have is happening at an astounding rate and is facilitated by both major parties. I would not blame 'the Republicans' for something that is being methodically enacted with the intent and consent of both parties. It is hard for a person to see the whole when their eyes are closed; please let go of your partisan bias and look at the whole. The whole is simple: The Federal Government is expanding and promoting more power for itself, as facilitated by the politicians who are members of that Government. It is in THEIR best interest to continue to diminish your individual rights so that they can grow. If this 'war' is not apparent yet, you need only to do a brief history review of the lineage of the US Federal Government, noting key points where it has expanded or enacted Federal controls over US Citizens or the States of the Union. Remember, the United States was formed under a concept similar to the EU, a UNION of STATES, with the intent of the States to find self-governance, with little UNION(Federal) interference. ***What we have now is very little states rights and NO transparency, the Federal Government IS the law now, they ARE the rule. Do you see that now? It wasn't always so, and the beginnings of our country show us the America we were supposed to be living in.
Guess what, Russia still has enough nukes to sterilize the planet, chemical, biological and more recently space weapons and a huge conventional army. And it doesn't do what the US tells it to do anymore. A little bit of a propaganda campaign on TV and the populace will be just about as rabid about it as it was back then.
Responding to my own post.
Yes, I can imagine plenty of situations where a president might commit an act that, while technically illegal, prevents more harm than it causes. By the same token, I cannot imagine any such situation that could not be horribly abused.
Warrantless wiretaps could catch criminals, but it is precisely the penchant for abusing authority that we, as human beings, have that led to laws requiring a court order for warrants. Bush has abused that authority, and in doing so has broken the law.
Warrantless wiretaps may be useful for preventing crimes and terrorism ... but only in the hands of a saint. Bush is no saint, and neither is McCain.
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
I can't remember where I heard it... but one of the things that makes a good leader is that they have "strong opinions which are weakly held".
They are clear in what they believe and in what to do, but they will change their mind if they find something that makes them think that they are wrong.
I don't understand how the original poster claims that 'nothing could be clearer'.
The title of the article is "McCain: I'd Spy on Americans Secretly, Too"
And the article includes this gem:
"The Globe's Charlie Savage pushed further, asking , "So is that a no, in other words, federal statute trumps inherent power in that case, warrantless surveillance?" To which McCain answered, "I don't think the president has the right to disobey any law."
McCain's embrace of extrajudicial domestic wiretapping is effectively a bounce-back from Fish's comments, made at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in Connecticut last month."
This is clearly written by someone who already doesn't like McCain. I'm a huge supporter of Obama, but the article is just pure anti-McCain propaganda, and not worth the read.
Article II exists, and no one can change it. I suppose what everything hinges on is your definition of 'wartime', hopefully McCain's isn't as broad as Bush's. If occupation = war then we're going to be at war forever under that definition.
Dear Senator McCain,
Please obtain a new copy of the Constitution, and continue reading it all the way through Amendment XXVII.
Thank you,
The American People
Yes exit nodes are a problem. I think this is one area where we need to concentrate. This is why we need security and unix gurus!
Erm no, this is why you need to stop pretending that TOR is a valid cryptographic solution "providing everyone plays fair".
The only reason for warrantless is so you can hide what you're doing from the other branches of government.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
The real value of FISA warrants is more reactive than proactive. FISA judges show pretty broad discretion in what they will approve, but they do so with the understanding that the warrant creates a paper trail of justification and accountability. Without that paper trail, it's almost impossible to conduct a real investigation and hold people responsible for any abuses.
Personally, I consider the original FISA requirements to be reasonable in the context of an intelligence collection mission (not traditional law enforcement). However, what Bush did to FISA is an abuse of Executive power specifically because it removes not only the weaker proactive checks, but also the stronger retroactive balances of an investigative trail.
I'm sorry, but we'll ALWAYS piss someone off just by existing. It's not an excuse for terrorism.
You make it sound like their grievances are rational.
and I'll say it again:
The extent to which those who watch over us are unwilling to be watched by us is the precise extent to which we are not a free and just society.
This has nothing to do with war, or terrorism. It is simply a matter of accountability. The people have a right to know what our elected officials do in the name of ensuring our safety, regardless of whether they actually live up to that goal or not. That we are not able to do so is the true barometer of our freedom, despite whatever a centuries-old piece of paper might proclaim.
That's really one of the most disturbing things about Bush's view of presidential power. Why don't they do things according to the law, especially when Congress has made it so easy? They seem to pick and choose which laws apply to them.
It's not surprising that McCain will follow suit. McCain lost my respect when he started flip-flopping like a fish out of water. Now it seems every day brings another reason not to trust him.
How about if we don't turn the whole nation upside down over terrorism in the first place? Isn't that the goal of terrorists, to get you to pee your pants? I'd rather not have a government full of power hungry drones watching my every move. I'll take the extremely unlikely risk that some poor slob on the other side of the earth will come after me. Judging from my drive to work every day I'd say my fellow drivers pose a far greater risk to my life than terrorists.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Are you daft? I'm your typical liberal, left-wing tree hugging nut ... but is it not a fact that the majority of terrorism is perpetrated by Muslims, and devout religious Muslims at that? It is a fact that the extreme elements of Islam are responsible for the majority of terrorism in the world. It's like shying away from the fact that the nearly all of American creationists are Christian. If it's fact, fuck being PC.
DISCLAIMER: this is purely speculation, although I consider it in character for the current US administration.
I don't think you grok it. There is terrorism throughout the world, most of which we in the U.S. are unaffected by. It is very specifically Islamic terrorism that does concern us and there's nothing wrong with making that distinction.
As a libertarian conservative, I hope McCain goes down in raging flames. I fucking hate neo-cons and am looking forward to destruction of the republican party.
My loathing of social conservative, do-gooder, busybodies is beyond my dislike of the socialist tendencies of Obama.
McCain is such an obvious fear-mongering asshole. Such a condescending prick. How the fuck are republicans impressed by that shitbag?
It helps to put a very precise face on it.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
oh please.
If you butcher people's families you can bloody well expect them to come and try to kill you right back.
1. McCain will not be 4 more years of Bush. He is more liberal than Bush ever was.
2. Obama will be 4 more years of Jimmy Carter, and we all know how well that went...
Exactly. Right now both sides are saying whatever they can to get votes. Republican are looking to sway the frightened christian right that are sure there is a terrorist waiting in every bush (pun intended)
while the Dems are fighting to gather everyone that hates bush (no pun intended)
When it's all said and done, whoever is elected will be self serving and further their and their party's agenda and the working american people will be screwed outright no matter what.
This is a fact, it happened under nixon, ford, carter, regan, bush, clinton, and then bush II turned it up a notch. Anyone expecting anything different this time needs to read the definition of insane.
They install their buddies into the important offices that bake a difference, tell the rest of the world to F themselves with a statue of liberty replica and continue to bully everyone else.
Yes I am an american and I believe the FIRST thing any real leader needs to do is publicly apologize to the rest of the world for the USA's actions and ask that a forum be convened to find out how we can be better global citizens as a country.
But I am sure that Hitler will be reborn as the new pope before that happens.
You are not pissing them off by existing.
You are pissing them off by killing and torturing them.
The point of FISA is not so much to maintain oversight itself as it is to keep records so if Congress ever came up with a single functional cojone, it could subpoena the records.
This is the contempt that Bush shows for the rule of law. And it's what he got away with, and thanks to that, what future presidents will get away with.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Who knows what might happen when he gets in office, though.
That's a stupid objection that could be applied anywhere to anyone. Why bother with what the candidates say or have done at all, in that case? "Vote Hitler! I know he *said* he'd kill all the Jews, but who knows what might happen when he gets in office?"
You show me where the Constitution says that the Executive can fail to enforce a law passed by Congress. All the stunts you mention are prohibited by Article II, Section 3:
Now show me where that explicit and unambiguous instruction is contradicted in the Constitution.
--
make install -not war
The Taliban may be the the ONLY target we can justify over there, and a) we quit going after them, and b) we gave them all their money and weapons in the 70s (I think the 70s?)
If we got invaded by some nation bent on wiping out "radical christianity," you don't think a bunch of heavily armed down-home rednecks with a hand-bound copy of the Anarchist's Cookbook wouldn't be equipping their children so they could get that much closer to the invaders? Insurgents, indeed.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Citations, please?
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
We need terrorism. Without it, we have no plausible reason to maintain a military presence near valuable US business interests in the middle east.
The real reason all of these stupid decisions are being made is because we have no representation in government. Power is concentrated in the media, which is a for-profit enterprise, the military, which the biggest part of our for-profit economy, and the executive branch, where we have no voting authority over the cabinet that infests it, who also through strange coincidence go on to or come from large corporations who participate in huge government contracts.
Our involvement in the middle east has been a disaster for ONE HUNDRED fucking years. The only thing that's changed in the last twenty or thirty is that they are finally fighting back effectively. As the most powerful and morally hypocritical force in history, we're finding that we have no palate for our own medicine.
I'm starting to think that the commentators who call a McCain presidency a "3rd Term For Bush" are more accurate then people give them credit for. Sounds like more of the same.
Mod parent up. Shagg is right on the money, although I would throw in the extra possibility of "or if you want to hide what you're doing from the populace."
While it is very, very unlikely that the FISA court would leak a request for a wiretap, if the request were groundless/abusive enough, I suppose it is a possibility.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
The only thing that can really throw the federal bench out of whack is if you had a president and justice department who was pressuring federal judges and prosecutors to bring (or not bring) cases based upon a political agenda. Somehow, the system had been pretty good about that until Bush and the Gonzalez Justice Department came along. Even Ashcroft, who I disagree with totally, was an honest justice who put the Constitution before political gain. But not 'Berto Gonzalez, who is probably the most crooked Attorney General since the late 1800s. The funny thing is that these guys got elected pushing the notion that the judiciary was crooked and "activist" and then turned around and made it crooked and activist.
Even though the reign of these little shits is coming to an end, it's going to take a committed leader to chase the rats out of all the little nooks and crannies of our judicial system. It can be done, however. Now that the Dem nomination is settled, I think we'll see some of the prosecutors in Congress (Leahy, Conyers) start to dig into the meat of the criminal activity of the last eight years, and I think the filthy way they prosecuted the Alabama governor will be the starting place. It's going to be an interesting five months.
I hope Senator McCain really pushes the warrantless eavesdropping thing hard. It's the kind of thing that goes against most Americans' deeply held beliefs and it will show just what McCain is made of. "War on Terror" my pink hairy ass.
You are welcome on my lawn.
No, conservatives stand for small government; Republicans stand for getting Republicans elected.
At no point in my 36 years have Republicans been any more conservative than Democrats.
There's no fricking practical need in the world to throw that "Islamic" adjective on there.
You mean other than that most of the terrorists they refer to actually happen to be Muslim?
It sounds great because there's some implied racism associated with Muslims and Islam but it really rubs me the wrong way.
There's no "implied racism" there: it's a fact that a large fraction of the people who have been perpetrating terrorism against the US have been Muslim.
You know what has always pissed me off about McCain and his cohorts (and many others too) when talking about terrorism? Calling it "Islamic terrorism"
They're calling it "Islamic terrorism" because, say, Catholic terrorism, Buddhist terrorism, or atheist terrorism simply aren't problems for the US right now.
Who knows what might happen when he gets in office, though.
That's a stupid objection that could be applied anywhere to anyone. Why bother with what the candidates say or have done at all, in that case? "Vote Hitler! I know he *said* he'd kill all the Jews, but who knows what might happen when he gets in office?"
Not true. The OP describes a *skeptical* approach to politicians' promises, which is healthy, whereas your facetious example is *naive*.
Big difference!
http://clightnirish.wordpress.com/
Why not divide up the middle east? Because it doesn't belong to us, and we lack the cultural understanding to effectively govern it. They have merely proved that the US isn't perfect. That should come as no surprise if you look at US history. Look at how the US behaved relative to Mexico or the Phillipines. The US has always thrown its weight around and taken what it wanted. That's what American voters want their government to do. And why not? Are you a hedonist or a Nazi? I can't really tell. No, it is actually a better place than it was a century ago or even half a century ago. There is less racism, less torture, less unjustified military intervention, less empire building. Less racism because of civil leaders and people like Martin Luther King who the FBI considered "the most dangerous Negro leader in America." I'm not sure if that was before or after they assassinated some of his colleagues.
The Japanese, Germans, and other prisoners of war were not tortured, as far as I'm aware, in WWI or WWII. Torture in the War on Terror is officially approved as long as you don't call it torture.
There's been no decline in military spending since WWII. We have hundreds of more military installations around the world, and we're building many permanent installations right now in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have not left any significant amount of the bases we established nearly seventy years ago.
Every single improvement in American life since WWII has been the result of popular movement, and the government has been dragged with it kicking, screaming, and killing it's own citizenry in the process. Throughout its history, the US has primarily looked out for its own interests and improved lives for its own citizens. True until recently. The current government does not care about it's citizenry. That's why it's acceptable not to pay attention to polls or popular votes (presidential or involving medicinal marijuana). Occasionally it has tried to do a little bit for other nations when it was convenient to do so. Example? That may not be much, but it is still a whole lot more than you can say for most other nations. Except every other developed western nation since WWII (which I consider a definitive paradigm shift worldwide.) The whole of Europe have learned their lesson. For some reason we don't seem to get it.
There's something similar...
Recently a bunch of students were arrested for either participating in a riot, or inciting one. The arresting officers filled out much of the paperwork identically. The arrests were thrown out because the police had done blanket arrests.
It's a similar thing. Having blanket warrants is too easy to abuse. Not saying the local arrests were not justified, but we need to checks and balances to prevent falling into some fascist state.
in america, "liberty" should be EVERYONE's agenda.
Um, because then he would have to support wiretaps and investigations of anti-abortion groups that hav e used or approved of terror tactics against abortion clinics and doctors. That would piss off his right-wing religious extremists.
You see he wants to make clear that it will only be used against the "bad" terrorists, and not the "good" terrorists.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Second, it's sad that you don't believe in the same Republic that the founding fathers did. First of all, the Europe you see today was largely constructed by the US; if it had been up to the French, British, and Russians, they would have repeated the mistakes of WWI and we'd have had WWIII by now. Funded, not constructed. The US did do a good job of stabilizing the world in the wake of that disaster, but it was through diplomacy and economic incentive, not inane foreign policy and secret police.
I'm proud of most of our post-war work, if not some of the terrorism we committed during the war. It was our inability to control the machine that we created that has led to our current situation, just as Dwight Eisenhower predicted. Furthermore, you really have no clue about the attitudes or motivations behind European politics. Because? Well, I can tell that you are an uneducated lout. I'll be sure to look that word up on my new guide to education: Wikipedia.
Wikipedia! Providing accurate histories of both sides of Western thought since 2001!
Terrorists/extremists of any ilk are so convinced of their moral "superiority" that they feel compelled to rearrange the world to suit them and their beliefs
Puts a whole different spin on invading and occupying a country that poses no articulable strategic or tactical threat on the basis of "spreading democracy"...
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
That is what the 72 hour after the fact warrant request is for. If the authorities must act right now they can, but that doesn't excuse them from judicial oversight. Nothing should ever exclude law enforcement from judicial oversight, ever. Not gag orders, not the need for expediency, not national security letters, not "sorry it's classified". Law enforcement without oversight and transparency is Fascism.
We are all just people.
Even if you assume that all the candidates are lying, it is still useful to see who they are trying to pander to.
Are they trying to pander to some particular interest group, some noisy part of their
parties political base, or are trying to pander to more general concerns?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
No, the Constitution that he swears to uphold says that when he upholds it, he must faithfully execute Congress' laws.
The president is not the judge of whether a law is un-constitutional. The Supreme Court is the only judge of that. So if a president thinks a law is un-Constitutional, the Constitution says he has to ask the Court, and they decide. Which is what in fact happens all the time, when the president is not violating the Constitution.
Which Bush has indeed done every time he's written a Constitutional "signing statement" that says "I will disobey this law". Which Bush has done hundreds of times.
So you just take your un-Constitutional signing statements and shove them up your traitorous ass. We've had enough of you Republican traitors destroying the country and lying about the Constitution.
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make install -not war
When citizens make it hard for Big Brother to see what's going on, it called "Obstruction Of Justice".
When Big Brother makes it hard for citizens to see what's going on, it's called "Privacy".
Ever notice how pissy and elitist congress gets when citizens what to snoop throught their business to see what they have their hands in? Yet, they have no problem going through our business, especially when there are far, FAR fewer of us actual working folk doing shady things.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
That's right! They hate our freedom to invade, steal from them, install puppet governemts, tear up the puppet governments and install new ones, blame them for terrorism while remaining really friendly with countries that actuall y produce the terrorists - in fact giving them VIP rights to fly when no one else in the US is allowed to.
Yep, they hate it that anyone has that kind of freedom.
I don't therefore I'm not.
There is a progression in effect with these evil-doers; these holdovers from the Nixon years, (half of them are the same people, for goodness sake.)
Here's an example of that progression. This disturbing article is current; it's happening right now
This new program starts in D.C. next week. . .
Now, here's an article from 2002, New York. The original link is dead, but the Internet Archive had it on file. . . Notice the difference in intensity? The new version of this program doesn't include guys mowing your lawn. What will be the next step in the process?
... or you're doing it on such a large scale, getting court approval is not practical.
...or wht you are doing is so far out of bounds that even the FISA court wouldn't go along with it."Article II, of course, is what Bush has argued gives the President virtually unlimited power during war" There is a problem with that thinking. We're not at war and haven't been for decades. It's pathetic that our leaders don't know dick about our Constitution. Congress alone has the authority to declare war. No declaration, no war, no war powers. Before some tard trots out the oxymoronic term "undeclared war": If a man and woman live together, fuck, share income and responsibilities, are they married? Not unless they are *married*. They are either married, or they are not. They married if and only if they went through the procedure to become married. Calling them married does not make them married. A couple is married if they are married. A couple could be married and live a thousand miles apart, never fuck and never speak to each other. Is a bar fight a war? It has all the symptoms of a war, but it is not a war because it ISN'T. We're not at war because Congress hasn't said we are. With that fact in mind, we should be able to tell BushCo that unless he gets a declaration of war he doesn't get war powers.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!