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FBI Illegally Tapped Phone Phreaks In 1969
xmedar writes "In his talks about the history of Apple, Woz has often recounted how the 1971 Esquire article 'Secrets of the Little Blue Box' set him on the road to phone phreaking. Now someone has obtained the FBI file of one of the phreaks, Joe Engressia (who later changed his name to Joybubbles), via Freedom of Information requests. The file reveals that Engressia was illegally wiretapped by the FBI and the phone company back in 1969. J. Edgar Hoover considered the blind college student a national security risk and wrote a memo about him to John Ehrlichman."
What are you people going to say? He's like Bush? A crook that can't be trusted? Don't talk about President Nixon that way!
Claiming that illegal wiretapping must not be that bad if we've had it for 40 years without knowing.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Well I guess this proves it. Government's ideas of what is a "security risk" and illegal wiretapping happened before Bush.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The angels have the phone box.
The law works like this: If YOU break it, you BROKE it. If EVERYONE breaks it, it is BROKEN. If the GOVERNMENT breaks it, the government is BROKEN.
Just because the law has been broken for a long time does not mean it should be ignored now. Fix the government..
Start with voting against every single incumbent - except for the libertarian-leaning and third-party outsiders..
--- We need more Ron Paul!
The phreaks illegally tapped the FBI at the same time!
I am the penguin that codes in the night.
...an American tradition, going unpunished for __39__ years.
It's every bit as illegal to cheat the US Gov't of every single penny they owe the IRS.
You want the IRS tapping your phone to see if you are earning any income on the side that you don't report to the IRS on your tax forms?
You don't really have much of a leg to stand on.
That level of ignorance is dangerous. In short, two wrongs don't make a right. If he was breaking the law, there is a procedure in place to deal with it. Investigate, go to a judge and get a warrant, go to a grand jury and indict. It was wrong then, and it's wrong now.
As soon as they make "dangerous thoughts" illegal, some asshole will be saying the same thing about you when they are violating your rights.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
It's sad, this guy had an I.Q. of 170 and it sounds from the article like his extreme potential was completely ruined by sexual abuse.
To me, treating this guy like he's some hacker god is borderline mockery. He had a right to live his life unmolested, and he lost that. And instead of helping him, the government spied on him.
When I look at my old collection of hacker books, I can still feel much of the pain that I felt as a child (never as extreme as sexual abuse) and I feel disgusted that Hollywood tried to make me feel like a genius because I was different and quirky and creative. In fact, if anything, my emotional pain put me at risk of not being able to use my potential at all.
Security by obscurity, it does not work.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
I presume you're referring to the FBI.
Seems way out of line, this kid could dial phones by whistling up 2600Hz, and this rates memos from Hoover (head of FBI) to Laird (head of DoD) to Ehrlichmann (WH Chief of Staff), in the middle of the Vietnam War?? Imagine the files they must have on the phreaks who could only whistle up to 2540Hz or so.
Indeed, and he should keep an eye out
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
Well.. At least it's ironic when phone phreaks get their own phones tapped. Turnabout being "fair play" and all.
Although.. If you tap a beige-box-er, who've you really tapped, then?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Hopefully, yes.
The FBI has got to be one of the most disliked agencies in America right now.
But at least they have been consistent in violating American's privacy for the past half century.
My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my Father! Prepare to die!
Illegal phone tapping is the norm here.
when it commits illegal acts. so whats the big cerfukus all about
The current wiretapping scandal has to do with violating FISA which was not passed until 1978.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
Not to mention that flagrant law breaking by law enforcement agencies may allow the bad guys to walk free. There's a fascinating documentary about the Weather Underground wherein it is stated that many of the members got off simply with fines because the FBI routinely went way across the line in conducting their investigations. These were terrorists essentially, with a penchant for bombing public buildings.
Loose lips lose spit.
If it CAN be done, it WILL be done. Back then "being paranoid" was standard for Phreaks and considered a good thing. Honestly, I think that things are FAR WORSE now, then under Nixon. If they want to get your for something, they will. We've had enough examples of "the law be damned" over the past dozen years or so that it should be clear to all. The things that you have to fear are getting caught up in the "justice system" at all. You'll be facing incompetent, sometimes evil, always political and usually aggressive investigators, lawyers and judges. Anybody who's ever done work with or for an attorney knows that they are the most technophobic people you'll ever meet, and while this can work in your favor, most often it doesn't. This won't get fixed because they don't recognize a problem. Be very afraid!
As the link says, the group is the Weathermen. It's the documentary that's called The Weather Underground.
Illegally taped phones are pretty minor compared to some of the other things they did back then. Google cointelpro, mk-ultra.
Though I never met him personally, I know that he had perfect pitch. In other words his ears WERE a frequency counter! Rumor was that he could whistle MF tones-he didn't need the blue box that the rest of us used.
My BB was made with 555 timers in a calculator box and keypad bought from Poly Paks (anyone remember them?). I used a simple 1N914 diode matrix on the back of the keypad (with all its traces hacked away so it was just a bunch of SPST pushbuttons) to apply power to the different 555's configured as astables. For example, pushing the #1 powered on the 700 and 900 Hz oscillators, etc. The astables were all summed by a 741 opamp and then fed an old telco earpiece with the clipping diode across the back removed. Though everything was square waves, the switching equipment didn't seem to care at all and the box worked GREAT! I'd simply acoustically couple it to a handset mouthpiece and call anywhere I wanted.
The display on the unit lit up: 'FUCH BELL' when the CE keypad button was pressed. I couldn't make a K with an 8 segment display :)
I came very close to being busted-a NET security person came to my apt. about 3 months after I left school. Apparently they had a pen tracer on our dorm telephone there and heard my name mentioned. I called his bluff by confronting him ("How did you HEAR my name if all you had a court order to do was use a pen tracer?") and he went away. That day I stopped MFing.
I never met Woz-though we had some common friends. John Draper (AKA: Captain Crunch-called that because he discovered that a small whistle that came with in some Captain Crunch cereal boxes whistled 2600 hz-the main frequency that the entire tandem long distance system ran on) did come to visit me for a few days-he was ok but socially inept. If they illegally wiretapped Joe, then I'd be sure there's also an illegal file on John D. as well-he was HUGE in the phreaking scene at the time.
Ahh, the good old days-today it's too not worth phreaking because VOIP and other technologies make things so cheap that it's not worth the risk any more.
The difference is that under the USA PATRIOT act, this could have been done legally, despite still being immoral and pointless.
I'm sure our wonderful government assigned a 10-man crypto team from the NSA to decrypt the uncrackable messages hidden in JoyBubbles' "Stories and Stuff" recordings.
So I'm making it up, but I bet you that at least one point that idea was talked about in the meetings.
Personally I thought he was a great guy. He did what made him happy. Even if it only hid the pain that was burned into his memory. Dying satisfied with your life is a great thing. Especially for the "unenlightened" humanists like myself.
There's a fascinating documentary about the Weather Underground
No. There's a fascinating documentary about the Weathermen titled The Weather Underground.
13. Any legal action is absolutly excluded. (Pi World Ranking List rules)
Mustard: "Why is J. Edgar Hoover on your phone?"
Wadsworth: "I don't know. He's on everybody else's, so why shouldn't he be on mine!"
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I can't decide whether things are better or worse now. Back then, the FBI put wiretaps on whoever they damn well pleased without any legal justification. There was no public debate on whether warrantless wiretapping should be allowed. Law enforcement acted with impunity, but technological limitations kept the number of wiretaps small. Now, those technological limitations have evaporated. Wiretapping requires much less manpower. Law enforcement agencies would like to be able to wiretap anyone they want without a warrant, and they want to do it legally. If we pretend that no illegal wiretaps are placed, I wonder if its better to have a broad wiretapping program in public view or to have a small scale wiretapping operation with absolutely no public oversight.
Joybubbles was a frequent contributor to the Pioneer Press feature "Bulletin Board." His entries to this print-based forum were fun and insightful.
He lived the last 19 years of his life as a five year old. Crazy as that sounds, it seems like a nice way to live: free-spirited and fun loving.
I had no idea he was a phreaker. Small world, eh? Especially with Bruce Schneier living in the Twin Cities too!
He was! Are you sure that it wasn't intersil 8038's? I'm familiar with that design. What area did you live in at that time? We may know a lot of the same people. :)
Did anyone expect otherwise from the Nixon Administration? :)
Funny... "illegal wiretapping" of an illegal activity on the phone wires. There's an irony in here somewhere.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
It is a bad idea that government should be whittled down to almost nothing, so much so that it would cease to function. The idea that the democrat wants to turn the USA into a communist country is just plain propaganda. It is fear mongering.
The republican is just afraid that what they have might be taken away from them or be expected to play fair. And whatever tools are available are used to keep you in check. The republican is guilty of using the fear of socialism all the way to claiming it is a gods plan to push their agenda. It is ironic that many of the ideas that are spewed from these people end up being more socialist than what they accuse the other side of doing.
I agree the state should not be responsible for everyone's does and don'ts, but a measure of reason is in order. The state should be "not too much government and not too little either". The middle way.
How nice would be an American Revolution Part II, I mean, Like the French Revolution as actually America has great influence in the political world scene, I can say that Politics as we know it [The GW Bush Mod V2.0] get easily adopted outside American borders. If any third world leader is a narc, or a thug still White House tells the world that he's a God send gift for the democracy and popular interests and that the TW Country is doing fine when the true is that the county it's fucked up.
I know and hope that the next revolution will be there, I don't see it close as most of the people still numb, but when it happens, the conclusion will be that the political model will no longer be acceptable, I'll go for a multi representative government.. say 10 people that have the leadership 10 people with different backgrounds and insights. And special groups (Departments) of every socio economic aspect of the country administration: health, economy, education, kids etc..thats my 2cents
This is not a two wrongs thing - if they had a warrant or not - it would have been totally justified to spy on him. Complaining about the lack of a warrant is just a technicality. He was in the wrong hacking the phone system and selling free calls to his friends. If you want to turn your phone into a toaster, go ahead, but he was hacking the phone network. Those two wrongs are like apples and oranges.
Here's your chance to nudge. In the primaries, Barack Obama said he'd fight giving the telecoms retroactive immunity for their illegal wiretaps over the last eight years. Now that he's got the nomination sewn up he's losing some of his spine.
But the fasted growing group on his social networking site was specifically set up to nudge him in the right direction. All you have to do to add to the momentum is sign up and join the group.
Putting a little fear of the voter's wrath in a politician's heart is a patriotic duty.
--MarkusQ
> How nice would be an American Revolution Part II, I mean, Like the French Revolution as actually America has great influence in the political world scene, I can say that Politics as we know it [The GW Bush Mod V2.0] get easily adopted outside American borders. If any third world leader is a narc, or a thug still White House tells the world that he's a God send gift for the democracy and popular interests and that the TW Country is doing fine when the true is that the county it's fucked up.
???
> I know and hope that the next revolution will be there, I don't see it close as most of the people still numb, but when it happens, the conclusion will be that the political model will no longer be acceptable, I'll go for a multi representative government.. say 10 people that have the leadership 10 people with different backgrounds and insights. And special groups (Departments) of every socio economic aspect of the country administration: health, economy, education, kids etc..thats my 2cents
You DO realize that if we have a Civil War II, other countries that dont like us will try to take over too. It wont just be a civil war, but a WWIII setting, where our country is the main landmass. Yuck.
Also, what type of government would allow game theory to promulgate multiple parties? From my understanding, all game theory leads to 2 actors, let alone 10.
And lastly, we do not need a national "education" administration, nor do we need economy, nor kids offices. How does a federal office walled in a violent city represent the whole country? It shouldnt under any circumstances. There's a reason why our Constitution granted powers to the people and the states, rather than in federal. Do you think having hundreds of departments full of unelected workers is going to do any good? If you do, go drive to the BMV in your state and tell me quality of service is top notch!
Federal first needs a good housecleaning. As in, we need to dismantle every department and office. We need a complete turnover of Congress and Senate, remove every judge including supremes, and replace the president with one that will protect and defend the Constitution. Political figures of power (Judicial, Executive, Congressional) should be placed under watch for extreme violations of the Constitution, in which their life should be forfeit after due process. Elected officials should be banned from office if they signed or authored a bill which is nullified by the Supreme Court, but also puts term limits on Judges at 1 term of 10 years. None of that noise of lifetime appointments.
There's ways to make the Constitution better, but damn, its pretty good already. It pretty much works today as it would have 200 years ago. Too bad the politicians dont follow it.
Basicly if you ignore due process the judge really has no way to trust that you are not just going to break the rules about lying to the court so the case becomes a complete waste of time. It doesn't help if the organisation presenting the case is as overtly corrupt as Hoover's FBI (paticularly the protection money from illegal gambling). The corruption was apparently cleaned up but we still have the legacy from Hoover's day of pretending to have a mind reading machine.
Thats ok, in the post 9/11 world you just declare them enemy combatants and send them off to the Gitmo.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Weatherman, known colloquially as the Weathermen and later the Weather Underground Organization
Cite
This post brought to you by Citizens Who Can Be Arsed Following More Than One Link
This is where the serious fun begins.
And why do you think it was called The Weather Underground? (Hint: The Weathermen went by numerous names, including the Weather Underground)
Bah, kids these days. Can't remember the time before they were born.
This is where the serious fun begins.
Wow, those Weathermen were incredibly clever with their numerous names. I bet they also called themselves Meteorologists or somesuch, that'd throw off the cops.
I knew the FBI were essentially terrorists, I just didn't know they had such a penchant for bombing public buildings. I thought they pretty much stuck to blowing up private buildings of citizens.
Even further I didn't realize the FBI was so seriously against the weather underground. I mean really, they probably have better data than the weather channel.
Of course I didn't RTFA... why would I do that? You really are new here aren't you? Don't let my UID fool you.
What wrath? It's not like you can do anything to them once they're in office.
And before they get in, they promise you the sky to get your vote. After that, the sky is everything you may keep after they're done stripping you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's called "hate crimes" legislation.
In Canada, they have there an office of inquisition regarding hate crimes.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
run for local government. Get on the school board and make sure kids in your town are getting the right education. Go to town hall meetings and keep the same people from fouling up your immediate life with more stupid fees ordinances. Hold a voters forum in your town to educate the locals about the candidates in national elections. It's admirable to work hard for several years and get into state or national politics as a result, but we need changes to happen now.
You people are idiots. I hope they wiretap everybody. Stupid whiny americans.
"10's of thousands of wiretaps"
Given the way things are going, in a few years, its going to be 10's of millions of automated wiretaps, in every country regardless of political party. These wiretaps will then feed into automatic data formatting transcriptions of all data of whatever form (on phones and Internet) about anything that is said and done. Then the formatted transcriptions will feed into automatic profiling systems to work out overall types of views on subjects. Then anyone expressing any views of any political or other ideologically different opinions will be automatically placed on watch lists. Then anything the governments want to do, will be able to refer to the watch lists, to workout what sort of person they are dealing with.
So any dealings with government will be biased by the watch lists. For example, try to set up a business and it turns out you were critical of the current government, ah sorry, no business grant for you. Try to ask for a grant to help with your house or anything else, ah sorry, no grant for you. But then, if you have don't nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry away. But the problem is, who defines what is wrong?
People who seek power over others want the power to dictate the rules by how others live. That is power, but that underlying nature of power has always opposed democracy and freedom. (Power seekers don't want fairness, they after all, want to dictate the rules and have the power to dictate rules). But democracy cannot truly exist when the ones in power know the views of the voters. Its the principle of the secret vote, which prevents political manipulation of the voters to try to get them to vote in a certain ways. The more we move towards vast automated profiling, the more we undermined democracy, freedom and fairness.
So a time of 10's of thousands of wiretaps is nothing compared with where we are going, especially as the 10s of thousands were mostly targeted against criminal gangs, whereas the 10s of millions will be mostly innocent of any crime. Then again, expressing any view different from the ones in power, is considered a crime by some people who want others to follow what they tell them.
Researchers have already shown its possible to profile people from what they say. Its not long before we will have automated transcriptions of data into a form that's easy to profile. So give it a few years, almost everyone worldwide is going to be "wiretapped/watched" in everything they do. Where they drive, where they travel on buses, trains and planes. What they buy. What friends they have (phone and email records) and what views their friends have. What news papers they buy. What they say on the phone to everyone. What they say in emails. The news website articles they read. (Combined with the profiles of the people who write the news articles, which gives an automated measure of their views). They will also know what Internet streamed TV shows you watch, including any political documentaries, especially ones critical of the current government. They will know everything you like and dislike and it will be cataloged and listed and readily available of use in political campaigns.
But that's just the beginning. Once you can profile individuals, you can extend that to profile groups of people. For example, profile the kinds of people working for a company. Workout what sort of views they hold. Workout if a company, is the sort of company the current government wants to help or wants to hold back?. That in turn will put pressure on employers to refer to the profile watch lists, to avoid employing anyone who could give their company a bad image to the current government.
I don't see how democracy, freedom and fairness is going to survive in such a world?. But I suspect and fear the unfairness is going to build up to a point where it forces large numbers of people to stand up to their governments and we will be back to the bad old days of political revolutions, only this time, the watch lists will prevent anyone standing up to any government until things get really bad. So much for progress, democracy, freedom and fairness. All we seem to be doing, is repeating the mistakes of the past, but this time, automating the processes involved.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
Lee Harvey Oswald would disagree with you.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I know you're just kidding around, but for people who don't know, 2600 hz is pretty close to E7.
That's high-pitched but not too difficult to whistle if you're naturally good with pitches.
Just for a sense of scale- I can hear tones from about 10 hz to around 19 kHz.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
for your predicaments, you never get out of your predicaments
blame yourself, and you develop skills for dealing with your problems, and then you move on
but if you blame others, you are stuck in the rut of victimhood forever
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080612/ts_nm/guantanamo_court_dc_8
I guess you and whoever wasted a mod point on your post haven't been listening, but your "indefinite detention" screed is moot now.
At least in the USA.
What wrath? It's not like you can do anything to them once they're in office.
You can vote out the current members of the President's party.
That is realpolitik a President can understand.
If the President doesn't have his party members pushing through legislation for him to sign, he should be pretty much stuck signing executive orders and issuing vetos. That's what the Republicans did to Clinton and if the Democrats had any spine, they'd be doing the same to Bush.
Bush issued one veto during the first 6 and a half years in office.
He didn't veto anything for the next 10 months
Then he vetoed 7 laws in 7 months, shortly after the Democrats took control of both houses.
Only one other President (Warren Harding) has issued fewer vetoes than Bush in the last 150 years. And Harding's personal life & Administration was so riddled with scandals that it was seen as a relief to many when the man died of a heart attack 3 years into his term, in the face of an imminent impeachment.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Perhaps, but it's rather hard to feel that he was that hard done by when he didn't really have much of a concept of personal property rights.
"It applies more and more to the behaviour of Western Governments these days. "
This story is about something that happened in 1969.
I don't know what's worse, your post or the fools who modded it interesting when what they meant was "YEAH FUCK AMERICA! I'LL OBVIOUSLY MOD ANYTHING DENOUNCING THE "WEST" (a trollish euphemism for America) UP!"
"and I feel disgusted that Hollywood tried to make me feel like a genius
So do I, luckily you proved them wrong with that post.
Nice job.
I shouted down a fool who has no idea what the significance of the SDupreme's decision on habeas corpus is, pointing out, quite rightly, that his arguments were ridiculous and ignorant, and you modded it "troll".
If someone IS being stupid, then they deserve to be called on it, especially if they dismiss the importance of the recent Supreme Court decision on habeas corpus.
It makes me certain YOU also have no idea how important it is mod, there's simply no way you could make such an idiotic moderation if you did.
"What wrath? It's not like you can do anything to them once they're in office."
Lee Harvey Oswald would disagree with you.
a) Killing people is not an acceptable solution (for anything) unless as an extreme last resort.
b) And what a great job of punishing JFK Oswald did, turning him into the poor president who was cut down in his prime. I don't know about you, but if I want to hold someone accountable for their actions, I don't go about it by making them more popular.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I think it is you who is confused. The government of the United States of America has no respect for it's own laws, international laws, or trade agreements. It does what it wants and gets away with it.
Saying "these days" doesn't mean he thinks it's a new phenomenon, just that he recognizes it's going on currently. Also, calm the fuck down, geez.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
"However big the fool, there is always a bigger fool to admire him."
-- Nicholas Boileau
I agree, that two mods admired that fool enough to mod me down says a lot about how habeas corpus was lost in the first place.
When the only distinguishing characteristics between a so-called law enforcement agency and a criminal enterprise is a government seal of approval and non-profit status (sometimes not even that apparently), it's time to disband it.
The FBI has consistently demonstrated little regard for the law or the citizens it is charged with protecting. Much of that has been attributed to J.E. Hoover, but I can't imagine that he lead the organization so long without imprinting his casual disregard for the law and the Constitution on all levels of the organization. That would naturally include the promotion of agents who fit his mold.
After Hoover's death, there did not appear to be the sort of massive re-organization that would be required to purge itself of such criminals in the guise of law enforcement.
It's hardly surprising that decades later, the organization still demonstrates a casual disregard for the law more befitting organized crime.
Given the problems that have been discovered within the organization including a crime lab that thinks voting is an acceptable scientific procedure, were it not for the pass that our courts routinely give law enforcement, I would think the FBI's testimony should carry negative credibility by now.
While I'm aware that cops are people too and that we can't expect (nor would we necessarily want) Dudley Do-Right, I don't think respect for the law, the Constitution, and the citizens is too much to expect of law enforcement. A sense of proportion would be a good thing as well.
WOW you so proved me wrong, after a monumental Supreme Court decision that definitively outlines the rules regarding non-combatant prisoners and their rights, directly contradicting your assertion and proving you irrefutably wrong, your repeated "nu uh, the US is BAD!!" is certainly a powerful argument.
You've obviously mistaken me for Lee Harvey Oswald.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
"Saying "these days" doesn't mean he thinks it's a new phenomenon, just that he recognizes it's going on currently."
I never claimed he thought it was a new phenomenon, I pointed out that this story is about something that happened nearly forty years ago, and any attempt to transpose it to current political activity is kind of ridiculous.
"Also, calm the fuck down, geez."
Fuck you (in my calmest voice).
I'm saying nothing has happened yet. I have no doubt that they will simply stop calling them enemy combatants and come up with some other silly name so they can go on with the gulag.
The supreme court can rule all it wants, but meanwhile those people are still sitting in jail. Do you have any idea what it would be like to be imprisoned for 6 years, half way around the world from your home? You call me a fool? Do you have any idea why there is so much contempt for your country around the world?
The permanent campaign mentality has changed all that. Most politicians today are either running for re-election or trying to jump up to the next level the whole time they are in office. Those that aren't are busy trying to help those that are. Senator Obama isn't president yet. And we have the opportunity to use his aspirations for higher office to pressure him into doing his present job.
The ironic thing is, this is the same technique used against us by the lobbyists. Remember that story a few days back about the representatives who changed to vote against the public interest and for the telecoms getting more $$$? That was money for their next campaign, already in progress.
--MarkusQ
Now even weather forecast websites are considered terrorists ?!? Bush HAS got to be stopped !!! C;-)
Non-Linux Penguins ?
J Edgar Hoover came into his own during the Roosevelt Administration and ultimately formed such a powerful force that he became almost a branch of government in his own right. He was universally reviled by every administration over the years from Kennedy to Johnson although they ultimately allowed him to continue.
Now Nixon was mad enough to at least contemplate removing Hoover from FBI, but he ultimately let him stay on because he, as previous administrations though, that Hoover had the goods on him. As it turned out, this decision ultimately lead the number 2 at FBI to go Deep Throat and this ultimately did bring down the Hixon government.
So clearly, the FBI had become a national problem.
In the wake of watergate, a bunch of liberals stormed the national elections, and although they did a lot of stupid stuff, they did form an unusual coalition with libertarians and enacted a number of laws designed to prevent the likes of Hoover from happening again. It is these laws that were torn down during the foolish "we're tougher on terror than the other guy" legislative race between Democrats and Republicans and lead directly to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.
The most important point to make is, just because your party has absolute control of government, does not put that government in the right when it abuses civil rights. You can't let yourself be sullied into believing that the targets of immoral arrests and searches are in fact, anything more than political targets. If the police have the evidence, they can cough it up, and have a trial, for any citizen of the United States who is supposedly accused.
This is my sig.
get a group of people who regularly go through the laws and remove the crap.
Isn't that essentially the job of the Supreme Court?
The primary jobs of the Supreme Court of the United States are to 1. settle disputes of law among the judicial circuits, and 2. overturn statutes and regulations that violate the Constitution most flagrantly. The Supreme Court does not overturn a law merely for failing to achieve its stated aims. Eldred v. Ashcroft.
Hey, buddy, while I applaud your efforts, methinks that once you get there, you're going to be just like them. You know, what they say about money and power corrupting people... I myself think I would be untouched by money and power but then I heard they send in the interns... and all bets are off!
{ On another note, I'm getting tired of /. deleting my posts. Has anyone else had that problem lately? }
No, but invoking him as an example of what we can do to elected officials to punish them does make it sound like you agree with his methods.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
...this story is about something that happened nearly forty years ago, and any attempt to transpose it to current political activity is kind of ridiculous.
Is it? The same exact bullshit is going on today, I'd say that makes today's events a pretty relevant thing to discuss when talking about this revelation.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
How did Oswald actually resolve anything? Hell, the only reason we admire JFK today is because he got shot by Oswald. If you look at JFK's policies (instead of becoming entranced by his speeches), you'll see that he wasn't a very good president at all. Bay of Pigs, escalation of the Vietnam War, the Cuban Missile Crisis - all of these things were started by JFK.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Yeah, I already said that, dude. Oswald wasn't effective at all, he just turned JFK into some martyr.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
The second amendment was put in for a very good reason; to grant the citizens the power to overthrow a corrupt government. However, as with a number of things in the Constitution, culture and technology has outpaced the implementation of that reason. Guns cannot currently overthrow the government.
Rather, the government is propped up by two things; it's ability to arbitrarily hide information about what it's doing (severely weakening the idea of 'for, of and by the people'), and massive economic support of corporations who have insane control over people's lives, and who similarly have the power to hide what they're doing.
In the modern age, one or ideally both of these things need to change to protect the individual, and thus the People. The easiest to change is the governmental ability to hide stuff. Any law that reduces the amount of oversight or government transparency is something that works directly against the best interest of the people.
If I could have a single constitutional amendment, it would be forcing the government to have a balanced budget. If I could have a second, it would be 100% transparency, the torpedoes be damned. I don't care if the 'terrorists' know what we're doing, I think our country's better angels would prevail if we could see what was going on: simply because we could overthrow anything that worked against our interests - and that's the spirit of the 2nd anyway.
[Ego]out
I'll give you the first two, but #3 was a two person game, and the other player got the first move.
They used to light up on May 2, in memory of Hoover's death day. I think this has move a few days earlier to the April 20th, which has some connection to an anti-drug law (in CA?) called 420.
So, I've read a bunch of your posts from this thread, today, and the was interested enough to take a look at your user page. It looks to me like you are not particularly interested in 'winning' a talking point, and are deeply interested in giving abuse to those that disagree with you. You were modded 'troll' several subthread back, and complained about it. With respect, it is not your ideas that get you that mod, it is your style. I used my mod points yesterday. Had I any today, I would weigh seriously modding your comments in this thread, and if by some remarkable chance I get to metamoderate the 'troll' mod above, I will be rating it 'fair.'
I don't care. I'm still free. You can't take the sky from me!
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/us/20engressia.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Aren't Eisenhower and Kennedy responsible for putting nuclear missiles in Turkey?
Doesn't that make the starting move Eisnehower's then?
Wrong on so many levels.
We need people start start with the best intentions. We need more of them. And he even appeals for more to do so. That is "the right thing". He will have to compromise. But that's just how politics works.
Err, false. The Soviets moved their missiles into Cuba because we moved ours into Turkey. We had the first move there.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Don't dispute we put the missiles there. I did dispute that it was instituted on Kennedy's watch. Your move.
Ah. Fair point - it was Eisenhower who put the missiles in Turkey. My bad, I thought it was Kennedy.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Hans, is that you? *ducks*
I know full well that tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack
I wasn't talking about parties, let alone 10 parties, there should be no parties, there should be no politics.. there should be APOLITICAL Administrators: Highly trained and experienced. Each one for the subject of administration described, elected by popular vote and merits, not political machinery _ because political machinery and money support from private corps it's the first step to dump the national/peoples interest for the corporations interests. I apologize if didn't explain myself correctly. And I agree in your insights. Still I can't imagine the obviously coming "revolution" if it's not in US, generated by You or (economicaly) pushed from outside.
Nixon wasn't really in charge of anything here - this was Hoover and his boys, who predated Nixon, plus the Phone Company guys who were using apparently-illegal wiretaps to detect phone fraud rather than going through proper procedures. I'm not saying that Nixon was too moral to do illegal wiretapping (:-); just that this target wasn't interesting enough to his level of the Administration.
And I'm not saying that Nixon shouldn't have fired Hoover on his first day in office, either, because of course he should have, but probably Hoover knew things about Nixon that were more embarrassing or incriminating than anything Nixon had on Hoover (even the pictures of Hoover in that frilly little dress.) So Nixon's indirectly responsible, but it wasn't really his problem here.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks