Slashdot Mirror
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."
Fascist America, in 10 easy steps
My history teacher pointed those out in 1997 and he wasn't thinking of the USA back then. I thought: come on, it can't be that easy! However, seeing what happens in the USA, I humbly have to retract that opinion.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
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.
The net effect of current trends is a lot of corruption in our government, plainly visible to the public, with a large collective yawn in response.
Sitting around shouting that people need to stand up and do something will not, in and of itself, create a trend of people standing up and doing something.
For that we will need something bigger. And more painful.
The exact function of lots of people using encryption (or buying things in cash, or using anonymizers, etc.) is that an attacker (in this case, the FBI) can extract no information from the fact that you're using encryption (or whatever). They don't need to spread themselves thin, but it's no longer a useful "hey, this person might be up to trouble" flag.
I agree that this is good.
Guns and homemade bombs worked pretty good against an army with tanks, snipers and airplanes in Algeria, Viet Nam, Afghanistan (twice), and in Iraq. So yeah, let's imagine a scenario where the Feds try to impose some sort of dictatorship... you'd have an army of 500,000 active duty soldiers trying to suppress an technologically sophisticated and armed citizenry with 80 million rifles and god knows what sort of homemade contraptions. Good luck. Government by the consent of the governed is a statement of fact, not an ideal.
This is my sig.
Well, soldiers wouldn't fire on innocent civilians, but I reason they have no problem with "terrorists". People carying guns don't look innocent and if they pick up their guns to fight, expect a big intel spin on it. They will do it, I have no doubt about that.
The average American soldier probably doesn't have a problem considering an Iraqi civilian a 'terrorist', and therefore firing on him, but he might have a more difficult time buying the idea that a mass uprising of averge, everyday white Americans is "Al-Qaida in America".
Some things will be just too big to spin.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Aren't those in the military trained to follow orders from the government no matter what?
I'd ask my nephew, but he's a Marine stationed in Iraq, however when I was in the army we were taught not to follow orders we thought were illegal or violated human rights. When sworn in, yes people are sworn in when they go into the military, people pledge to uphold the Constitution of the USA though.
Surely those who would refuse to raise arms against those they were ordered to kill would be few and far inbetween
I take it you've never been in the military but when I was in there were plenty of people who'd disobey any such order. Viet Nam had a number of examples of fragging where unpopular officers had fragmentation grenades, where the name comes from, tossed at them by those under their command.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I think a butchered quote from Orwell's 1984 says it best:
Whoever controls the present, controls the past. Whoever controls the past, controls the future.
The schoolchildren are the next generation. Whatever the students in school are being taught, that is what will be the policy of our government this next generation. What will our students learn if the past is corrupted?