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As of October, FBI To Allow Warrantless Investigations
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Attorney General Michael Mukasey has agreed to allow Congressional hearings, but not to delay, the implementation of new FBI regulations that would allow them to spy on American citizens who are not suspected of any crime. As an editorial in the New York Times points out, this is a power that has a history of abuse. In times past, it was used to wiretap Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and to spy on other civil rights and anti-war protesters."
As Dekortage points out, "Several senators have formally complained that citizens could be investigated 'without any basis for suspicion,' which the Justice Department denies."
That sucks D:
We should start encrypting all our data, no matter how "unsuspicious" or "ordinary" it may be. Everything from conversations between family and friends to financial records (though you should be already encrypting the latter anyway.)
Nothing.
That's right, nothing.
No one will do a single thing about it as long as they can watch their TV shows.
People need to stand up and defend their rights, but unless it derails their daily lives, nothing will change. ....I hate being so negative...But you know it's true. :-/
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
The FBI can decide whatever they want as far as their regulations are concerned, but if it gets to court, any evidence they gather illegally is useless.
It's not that hard to get a warrant, and if they're too fucking lazy to call up a judge and explain why they think a warrant is needed, they're endangering the public.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I think if you told Thomas Jefferson that the United States would be up to this sort of thing, someone would have gotten a musket ball to the chest.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
How is this any different from how they're operating now? What does it matter that they're no longer going to breaking a law they never paid any attention to in the first place? Karl Rove tells Congress to take their subpoena, shine it up real nice, turn it sideways and shove it right up their collective asses. Consequences? So far, none. Will there ever be? Doubtful. Will it be any different for the FBI? Doubtful.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
You can partially thank Obama's FISA vote for this. While this is not - specifically - a function of FISA, the loosening of surveillance regulations it implied.
And they said, "We don't spy on Americans."
Right.
This is how it's supposed to work:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Looks like we won't get that back without a bit of organized political action. I still recommend General Strikes. Shut the economy down and let the elites twist. Talk about a class war. Yeah, and they fucking won.
Who says they need to take anything before a judge? Look at what they did with COINTELPRO. Infiltration, psychological warfare, legal harassment, and extralegal violence were all considered acceptable tactics.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Attorney General Michael Mukasey has agreed to allow Congressional hearings
That's big of him. He'll "allow" Congress to hold hearings? Who wears the pants in this family, anyways?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
It will be interesting to see how this holds up at trial - just because the FBI does it doesn't make it legal. If anything, this may hinder prosecution if the "evidence" found in these activities is found to be inadmissible.
On the other hand, if the courts turn a blind eye to that whole "due process" bit it may well be time to move to a country that makes to pretense of "freedom".
Of course, I have nothing to hide (well, except the full bookshelf of banned Paladin Press books, a few chemicals, some explosives and a few other odds and ends).
From the last link about senators complaining:
Among their fears: Americans could be targeted in part based on their race, ethnicity or religion
and
Citing remarks earlier by Mukasey about the new rules, the spokesman said an investigation would not be opened based solely on a person's race, ethnicity or religion.
That isn't the problem. I'm glad that they are attempting to slow it down and stop it, but why does it have to boil down to racism for them to stop it? Why can't they just say "this is completely against what the founders of our country intended"...?
All of these new police powers never seem to come with more accountability or independent oversight.
They want to sit in a black vehicle for hours at a time on a sunny street in August? Just so they can decrypt my midget porn? Joke's on them.
Raise your hands, everyone who is surprised by this...
yeah, that's what I thought.
We need the old USSR back. As odd as this seems, there was actually a sense of competition going on back then -- competition for goodness. I remember mocking the USSR for having secret courts, secret laws, secret prisons. Now WE have those things. I think that at least in part it's because we no longer have competition to compare and contrast our government's behavior to, so people are less apt to associate this kind of totalitarian behavior with The Evil Empire. As a result, we become The Evil Empire.
I'm not cheering for Russia as it stomps around in Georgia, mind you, but an odd side-effect of it might be that we start acting like the USA, rather than Trashcanistan.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Seriously, there is no good way for an armed revolt to be pulled off right now. It took over 100 years for the Civil War to be recovered from, and those guys thought 100 / minute was pretty sweet. We've got van mounted miniguns that can shoot thousands of bullets per minute and are completely mobile. Terrorist actions could win the fight in theory, but in reality it's much harder to fight as a terrorist because the collateral damage turns the population against you. I just don't see any way an armed revolt could work given the realities of today's military.
... any of you that get the chance ask Obama/McCain what they intend to do about this if elected.
Have gnu, will travel.
...Yanks describe yourselves as being from "The land of the free and the home of the brave" ever again, I will kill you. Seriously, I'm not joking.
Worrying about what other people are doing about it will only go so far. What are you doing about it? Posting on Slashdot - or preaching to the choir - doesn't count as an affirmative action.
[Ego]out
Yes, the democrats have certainly done all they can to reverse the trend in the last two years, from Nancy Pelosi's "impeachment is off the table" all the way through congress "considering" a ban on lead in toys (what's to consider, guys?). I'm voting a straight "none of the above" ticket this time around, thanks.
The FBI is a law enforcement agency, not an foreign or even a domestic intelligence gathering agency. What is the point of gathering information in an unconstitutional manner when it will ultimately be of ZERO use in securing a conviction? If the defense attorney can show that warrantless spying or other unconstitutional methods generated the initial leads then everything else which follows from that, even if gathered legitimately, can be thrown out of court on the basis that none of it would have ever been obtained if not for the initial unconstitutional leads. With no evidence of any wrongdoing (because everything was thrown out) there is no case against the defendant.
History is not made by individuals. History is made by trends. Specific individuals who are surfing at the leading edge of a trend may get the spotlight, and hence the credit, but really it was the trend that made the change, not the person.
A trend is only an idea. It cannot think, act, or change anything. It has neither will, nor power.
Individuals
make
history.
Regulations like this do not pass because of an invisible hand guiding human affairs. They pass b/c somebody works toward that end. The same can be done, to the opposite effect. Sure, sitting around and shouting may not do much, but marching and shouting sometimes do the trick.
When was the last time a TSA officer killed someone and got paid leave while they had an "internal investigation" and found the officer not guilty?
When was the last time that a TSA officer beat someone up in handcuffs and didn't get any consequences?
When was the last time TSA smashed someones door down and shot all of the dogs in the house, again without repercussions?
Hell, when was the last time a police officer got sent to jail?
(Not saying that TSA is bad, just saying that Police Officers are indeed a thug caste, who are all immune from prosecution on just about every law, and are assumed to be in the right when their word differs from anyone else)
I really, really wish this post would be worth of a "-1 Troll" moderation, but all you can say is "give more citations".
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
I knew this country would end up down this road eventually but I didn't think it would happen in my lifetime. Lets see what was it we hated about communist Russia, oh ya KGB. Seems the FBI thinks some of that power wasn't such a bad idea.
Decide to fly up and see grandma, Show me your papers (real id) oh you are on the watch list (terrorist watch list) to jail you go (nice little place in cuba) must watch your family now (warrantless investigation) guess I'll see you soon grandma (in cuba that is)
The terrorists have won.
oh, wait. :(
Does anyone else feel like there is no solution to the growing problem of American apathy?
If I use peaceful means, no one cares.
If I use violent means, people become martyrs and I am vilified.
Sometimes I feel like there is no solution to the current government's problem short of a revolution which will occur far down the road, long after I am gone, and that is rather frustrating.
Don't count on the ammo box too, guns are useless against an army with tanks, snipers and airplanes.
Tell that to the Chinese. At the Tiananmen Square protests the 38th Army, responsible for security in Beijing, and other local units refused to fire on demonstrators. So the People's Army had to send in the 27th Army, based outside of Beijing. Chinese officials were afraid the army would split into warring factions because of this. It would be even worse in the US military. I don't know about you but I served in the US Army and just as happened in Viet Nam when soldiers fragged officers and others when they gave bad orders, plenty of people in the US military would do the same if they were ordered to fire on people in the US.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Formatting your hard drive doesn't erase or make the data unreadable. There are a nmuber of programs that can unformat a disk and recover the data. Googling unformat recovery results in more than half a million results. The first result, Deleted NTFS Partition Recovery 1.0, recovers "ntfs data from deleted, formatted and damaged NTFS and NTFS5 file systems of windows operating systems." There are a number of other programs that do the same. Actually I have to use such a program to recover data on a hard disk on my Linux PC. It's motherboard failed and because it was under warranty I took it into the shop where I got it to have it repaired. I specifically told the tech not to erase or format that drive, it was the second hdd in the PC and used to store user data, but when reinstalling Linux he put it on automatic which did reformat the drive.
I wished I had an external hdd for backups, because the hdd holding the user files was 750GB and had more than 500GB on it using DVDs it would have taken more than 90 disks. Now I have a 500GB and a 750GB external hdd. I use the 500GB drive but haven't used the 750GB drive yet.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
So much for the Democratic majority putting a stop to government abuses as they promised. I'm sure the DailyKos crowd will denounce Bush for this. He deserves lots of blame, but the Democrats deserve contempt. They have the numbers to push through almost anything they want. From where I'm sitting, however, nothing has changed. The government is still violating the Constitution, my Rights no longer matter, the people in power are still enjoying their pork (pork spending has, in fact, increased with the Democratic majority).
Fuck the Democrats. Fuck the Republicans. The government needs an enema.
-- Will program for bandwidth
ooops, they just created an *entire* separate legal system to handle those cases...
Uh, excuse me, but when did POW's or unlawful combatants ever get access to civilian courts? Seems to me the history and legal precedent (Civil War, WWII) was to use military tribunals. Your post suggests that Bush made up some new legal approach. If anything, the current paradigm gives more rights (district court review of habeas corpus; DC Circuit and SCOTUS appellate review) to those less deserving (unlawful combatants not complying with any aspect of Geneva) than any enemy combatant in American military history. But suddenly, because it is Bush prosecuting this war, the enemy deserve to be Miranda'd and Mark Geragos defending the in a civilian court?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
The people who used the terrorists to their advantage have won.
I know you're trolling, but you're invoking a common right-wing argument that simply needs to be shot down, so I'm going to reply anyway.
Here's the thing: You, as non-Muslims, cannot stop radical Islam. That is not a threat, it is a statement of fact. You cannot stop radical Islam because one of the major arguments, if not _the_ major argument, that terrorist leaders use to recruit people into their organizations is how the West is evil and is out to destroy Islam. The old argument that every survivor of a US bomb attack in Iraq becomes a terrorist or a sympathiser has been surpassed, and now every Muslim who sees his people being shot, bombed and invaded every night by the US is going to become more and more open to the few loudmouth idiots that will tell him they're doing it because they hate Islam, because they want to wipe Islam off the planet. Every time the US kills one radical Muslim, it is likely to create maybe five more, and the number of them will grow as long as you keep feeding the arguments of the loudmouth idiots that recruit them.
Now, on the other hand, you _can_ stop your government being stupid. At least, with far less bloodshed. So vote out the bad apples, write long letters to the good ones, and if all else fails, yes, you may have to rise up against your government. You rose up against us and cast off an oppressive leadership, and I respect you immensely for it. You can vote them out, if you got off your arses and did something about it every now and then. You could gun them out if it came to it, with your massively armed citizenry and an army that I would hope still believes in the reasons the country was founded, and would side with the people. Do it. Now I'm not saying that looking down my nose because I'm British, and we've backed ourselves into a corner on this as well, but you're the country that broke away from us to 'gain their freedom' - the whole point of your country's existence is based on a dream of liberty and justice. Act like it.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
I write code for a living. I send nothing across a wire I haven't encrypted (AES). Nothing I store in a data base is human readable. If my program needs a parameter file, I convert each entry even to something as simple as ROT13, then for fun maybe I'll swap the first and last bytes. It doesn't have to be fancy just enough that scanners won't pick it up.
The only way the Government is going to be able to mass search everything is if they don't have to work for it. And as programmers we've been feeding them nothing but plain text. No wonder they're so twittered about reading everybody's stuff. They can!
The next time you write code and create a file convert it to something non-readable. The next time you design a system that connects over a wire use secure sockets. We're the solution. Quit handing your data over on a silver platter. I don't.
-[d]-