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EFF Says Obama Warrantless Wiretap Defense Is Worse than Bush
SonicSpike writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation has just said that 'In the warrantless wiretapping case, Obama DOJ's new arguments are worse than Bush's.'"
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Without much more than a speculative sentence in the summary, what is slashdot going to talk about? We're not going to RTFA no matter how hard you try!!
*WE SHALL WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED!!*
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
It's gratifying to see this issue getting some exposure here. God knows this is not a story that the doting MSM would ever run on its own, without significant blogosphere activity forcing them to acknowledge it.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
If they don't tap the phones, how will they know that we're getting the "Change we can believe in"?
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Was one hell of a marketing slogan, don't you think?
The DOJ claims that the U.S. Government is completely immune from litigation for illegal spying -- that the Government can never be sued for surveillance that violates federal privacy statutes...No one -- not the White House, not the Justice Department, not any member of Congress, and not the Bush Administration -- has ever interpreted the law this way.
Wow, nothing like taking things to the next level, huh? I guess Obama brought his A-game.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
"The DOJ claims that the U.S. Government is completely immune from litigation for illegal spying â" that the Government can never be sued for surveillance that violates federal privacy statutes."
Sure, it's a bullshit argument, but the fact that they're actually trying it, reeks of the kind of tactics used to build up the NKVD's influence in post-revolutionary Russia. Putting even one fragment of the government "outside the law" is a very frightening precedent.
Hey, you asked for a government that would listen to the people...
Now that you've got one, you're all mad and stuff. Man, this democracy stuff is weird. There's just no pleasing you people!
This is kind of disturbing. I know politicians turn 180 at the drop of a hat but Obama's entire popularity -- and the benefits that come from it -- relies on being anti-Bush. This is a very hot issue. One of the most important ones in fact. For him to continue supporting it is almost political suicide. Yet he's doing it anyway. Which makes you think, what could possibly be so important to keep secret?
We know it has nothing to do with national defense. The crones in Washington have never had a problem with outing CIA agents in the field for political gain.
Do they have illegal records of Dick Cheney torturing kittens or something? Wait, that wouldn't surprise anyone.
Homer: Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
Are there any countries left that has citizens? I'm tired of being a subject.
Hurry, someone please shoot the messenger so we can place our craniums comfortably back into the sand.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
and the apologists will start defending him in 3...2...
One can only hope he's making bad arguments in a secret plot to get shot down by the courts while being able to look like he's "standing up against terrorism."
One can hope.
Sigh.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This isn't change we can believe in. This is change for the worse.
"State secrets" and "sovereign immunity" are two concepts that have no place in any democratic country.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
... is a continuation of Bush policy.
Depressing times.
god n. : the Supreme Being, indistinguishable from a good random number generator.
At this point, the people who railed at me for supporting Nader, for daring to call Obama an opportunist tool of the status quo, can now officially kiss my ass. Those who simply couldn't be bothered to check his Senate voting record but who insisted on wearing that Maoist "Hope" portrait at all times, I say to you today: I told you so.
And as for the EFF, please use well the money I just sent you, and keep up the good fight.
Well it is. Obama never said in which direction the change would be..
The Obama administration has roughly the same goals as the Bush administration, so it's no surprise that they're continuing to pursue them.
The change, and it is a change, is that they are pursuing them in a smarter way.
1) By making this extreme argument, they give judges wiggle-room to reject it and then accept the state secrets argument, while still allowing the judge to make token gestures in favor of the rule of law, even write a long, pious opinion dismissing the second argument while accepting the first. I can see that it would be very easy for any judge to delude himself into believing he was making a Solomonic compromise. Very smart on their part.
2) If the second argument *does* somehow fly, they have carte blanche to do what they want. I suspect that the Bush administration would've argued for the same thing, except that they weren't smart enough to come up with a line of argument that would've passed the laugh test (IANAL, maybe this one doesn't either.)
Begin broken record mode: The only way to get real improvement from Obama (or from Bush, for that matter,) is to mobilize the public to control the government. No elected leader is going to do this for us as a gift, we have to maintain the pressure constantly.
Personally, I'm much more disappointed with his ongoing embrace of "public-private partnerships" in education (crooked self-dealing and cronyism do not focus group so well, so they rebranded them as "public-private partnerships" in which the government partners with a private entity to give it money with minimal oversight and much righteous rhetoric.) My saintly mother blogs about it: http://chemtchr.dailykos.com/
And I'm sure Obama has not delivered from progressives on a dozen other fronts. Only way he will is *if we make him*. In the case of progressive causes that are popular with the public, this should be relatively easy, and ought to benefit the election prospects of the Democratic party anyway, so let's get going.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Read up on it if you don't understand it. Just like it took Nixon to go to China, it will take Obama to get this through. Those of you who voted for Obama and really believed that he stood for "hope and change" were every bit as big of morons as the people in the Republican Party who thought that McCain was some maverick conservative.
You're really arguing against warrants that may be too narrow and too specific. People don't act that much faster than they did when they had to spend a whole five seconds dialing a phone, they just communicate over more channels. You're really asking for a warrant against a person, not a phone number.
Obama voted yes for the telecom immunity bill. He supported the wiretapping program in the Senate, why do you think he'd stop supporting it when he was elected President?
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
the ability to abuse the priveledge of warrantless wiretapping is real
It's not a privilege: it's an unconstitutional power that the government seized.
A "state of emergency" has always been the tyrant's best friend. (Probably that's why we have so many of them.)
you must display some flexibility in your fight against government abuse. becaus eit hink with some of you, when you adhere to this fundamentalist notion of NO WARRANT NO TAP you are going to find the world has moved on
You can justify *any* sort of abuse with that lame argument. Maybe the Nazis at Nuremburg should have argued that not murdering people for their ethnicity or lifestyle was just an old-fashioned way of doing things.
I distinctly remember, way back when during the Reagan years, people were crowing about how we in the U.S. had it so much better than the Soviets. We didn't have to worry about providing papers to travel (Red October anyone?), we didn't have to worry about our neighbors spying on us and reporting "unpatriotic" deeds, we didn't have to worry about government agents bursting into our homes without a warrant and we especially didn't have to worry about the government listening in on our phone calls.
Now we have two different parts of the government trying to justify why they can, whenever, they feel like it, listen to our phone conversations all in the name of stopping "them" from causing us harm. The worst part about it, the same people who 25 years ago were crowing about how free we were compared to the Soviets are now the same people (assuming they're still alive) who are defending these blatant infringements on our freedoms, all in the name of securing our freedom.
Is that like, "It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it."?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Concepts like probable cause, innocent until proven guilty, checks and balances on government power, government for the people and by the people, restriction on governmental power --- are best described as "quaint"?
I wish the people who want to destroy America would take up arms and revolt -- that's easy enough to put down. Insidiously destructive notions such as yours that fundamental rights for individuals and limits on government power are "quaint", ensures that American principles of government will die out. America may keep the name, but that's it.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
So it's starting to sound like one of several things is going on here:
I'm not sure which of these possibilities would worse.
It would help, however, if Obama would be more forthcoming as to the reasons behind the continuation, though; surely some more substantial explanation than "it's all a state secret" can be given without damaging national security.
Given that the DOJ under both Bush and Obama are making very similar arguments, we should be willing to consider the possibility that these arguments have some merit. While I would like to agree with Al Gore that security and freedom are not only completely compatible but necessary for each other, I am starting to wonder if there is some mutual exclusivity between them.
Three of the worst terror attacks in our country's history occurred before the Patriot Act and the warrantless wiretapping: the first World Trade Center attack back in the early 90s, the Oklahoma City bombing and the events of 9/11/2001. If someone told me in the months after 9/11 that as of the beginning of April, 2009, there would not be another major terror attack on our country, I would not have believed them.
Per the ABC News report and others, certainly the NSA people are listening in on the harmless details of many people's private lives, but they may also be finding some of what they claim they are interested in finding.
Under the rules they already had, they can actually apply for a warrant up to (I think) 48 hours after they perform the wire tap. And the success rate in asking for a warrant is somewhere around 100%. Warrantless wiretapping is about being terrified of ever letting even a Federal judge know what's going on, even after the wiretap has been performed.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Anyone that thinks that because a particular party that is in office at any time can do whatever they want and there will be NO repercussions on the next administrations is stupid and deserves the Darwinian effect. Go to jail, do not pass go and hahaha, were all screwed.
Yeah, moderate me as a troll, but you all know I'm 100% right about this, anyone that doesn't is a complete imbecile!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
So Bush tried to hide behind state secrets, and now the Dems. They must be both in on whatever it is.
After Bush madness, it seems that the Dems could go on a witch-hunt. Perhaps they don't because they're better than the Rs (think back to clinton's sex life). It seems much more plausible, however, that political MAD (mutually assured destruction) is keeping everything in check. I'm suggesting that the state-secrets would be hideously embarrassing for both Dems and Rs.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Bush meant to invade Iraq, so I guess he invaded the correct country... now if he would've ended up in Turkey..
causes partial blindness. But, mmmm, delicious.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
It's quite simply one word: Hope.
I'll bet you also bought New Coke when it came out too for the "improved flavor".
Shame on America for not being more resistant to marketing spin. Shame on the press for overlooking prior actions of Obama vs. what he said he was going to do...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I agree there's legitimate arguments to be made pro and con about what the law should be regarding warrantless wiretaps. But people are responsible to follow what the law is now until it is changed. The thing that bothers me about the government position is the assertion that there are state "secrets" that would be exposed by lawsuits, and which can't be protected using the existing mechanisms.
A significant portion of the stuff that's classified as secret in the US doesn't actually need to be classified from an operational standpoint, but would be an embarrassment for incompetent bureaucrats if there were more visibility. Everyone knows about the "bridge to nowhere", but far fewer people know about the appalling waste and stupidity in classified programs.
That's not a direction I want to go in, and wind up like in China where people who expose government corruption are subject to being prosecuted for "spying".
Sorry man, but your argument flies in the face of what this country was built around: the US Constitution, including the Bill of Rights.
Violating our constitutionally guarenteed rights is unacceptable, period.
Here's a refresher for you. I've bolded the important bits: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
You might argue that the Constitution is outdated or wrong, but that's the beauty of it. If it's wrong, we can amend it. (Just like we did for prohibition). To ignore it because it doesn't currently fit in with our needs is a very dangerous road to be on, and not one that my fellow citizens should tolerate in any way.
Your claims that we should accept this and just move on are, frankly, unamerican. In America, we're subject first and foremost to the constitution. We believe that our government gets its power from us, as granted explicitly by the Constitution. Your proposal is utterly unacceptable.
Oh, and since you didn't rtfa, let me spell out the scariest bit of Obama's position on this issue: his adminsitration has taken the position that the federal government is immune from prosecution because of sovereign doctrine. Therefore, they're claiming that you can't sue the government. If that's not opaqueness, I'm not sure what is.
And I voted for Obama. Clearly I should've voted for Mickey Mouse.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
I'm a bit cynical about the Obama Administration willingly giving up powers it has been given in the long run. But I'm not ready to say this motion represents the will of the Administration yet.
The author of the piece, ACTING Assistant Attorney General Michael F. Hertz, is a leftover from the Bush administration and is due to be replaced once his successor is confirmed.
And bow down before the One you serve. You're going to get what you deserve.
Here's a valid alternative: Require warrants for wire taps, and stop acting like TEH TERRORISTS are going to destroy us if we can't tap every communication in the country on the whim of law enforcement.
Oh and about "warrants before every snoop" -- Yeah that ship has sailed because decades ago they passed FISA which created a court where you could apply for a warrant up to 72 hours after actually conducting the snoop.
So either the feds actually know who these "handful of suspects" are, and can track their communications no matter what form they take so long as they can justify doing so after the fact, or your saying they have no idea who they are or how to find them and the only way to get at them is to log everything and sift through that continent-sized haystack for a handful of needles. Which is a ridiculous fool's errand. The problem with 9/11 was not a lack of information, it was not a lack of extra-constitutional police powers.
Yet you and the morons in power who thought like you used 9/11 as an excuse for exactly such an extra-constitutional power grab, and as a back-handed justification for getting us into a retarded war that was the opposite of helping with the terrorist problem. I already know how much "help" your way of thinking is to the cause, and sorry we don't need that kind of help.
Now you think the only issue is transparency? No, fool, it's the 4th Amendment assurance of a right to privacy (that's what being free from unreasonable searches and seizures means, a reasonable right to be left alone). Spying on people without reasonable suspicion -- i.e. what is required to get a warrant for a tap -- IS an abuse.
So yes we absolutely need more transparency in the process, and the ability to stop abuses. But your claim that they must be allowed to conduct warrantless and thus meritless searches, so what you're really saying is that they should be allowed to abuse our rights, but this is okay as long as we know about it?! That's pure idiocy of the worst anti-freedom kind.
If you really think the Feds shouldn't need a warrant to listen in on private communication, then start arguing for an Amendment and join the ranks of those anti-gay marriage amendment retards in trying to actively remove freedoms from this country.
Because then and only then we'll be safe from TEH BOOGEYMAN? Sorry you're a little too late for that idiotic bullshit to come even close to flying.
The enemies of Democracy are
People said that if I voted for McCain, then our liberties would continue to be violated. And they were right!
Warrant-less wiretapping and the patriot act represent consolidation of power KGB style. Society can go pretty dark places when power is consolidated. This is a *huge* long-term threat to our society.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
of the 9/11s???!
The difference between Candidate Obama and President Obama is the difference between Black and White. Read it as you will, but he was much more hope inspiring when he was black. Now that he is doing this, he's white.
did you get that plexiotomy scheduled yet?
You better.
You're gonna need it to see since you have your head so far up your ass.......
No, it isn't. It is about being able to monitor all sigint traffic at once, looking for the "bad" ones.
I cannot figure out how this fits into his seemingly insatiable appetite for populism. Maybe that is the silver lining?
The cynic in me can draw a nasty conclusions from this stance, but even that is to Orwellian for me. I was not worried about this legislation under Bush because he implemented it the best of intentions, all-things-considered(Bush is not inherited evil, despite the efforts of many to prove that is so). The abuse of programs like this come from those who inherit the power after they are established and rarely by those who establish it.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
Most of the government's defense is based on the PATRIOT act. It is one of the worst of Bush's legacy. I thought it would be repelled quite earlier. I am willing to think that Guantanamo is a mess it created and that it can be useful at fixing this mess, but really, the next thing to put governmental efforts on, once Guantanamo is closed, it to repel this shameful pack of laws.
Then, the wiretapping will become indefensible.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
i agree governments abuse power, that we should fight that. but i suggest the time of warrants for wiretaps has passed due to technological change, and i get modded -1,000 troll, everyone declares me their foe, and a bunch outraged +500 insightfuls underline the party line for me
i know what the party line is: warrantless wiretaps are evil. got it. duh
they are also pretty much now the status quo, in the west, and the world
do you understand that?
so all i'm suggesting is keep up the good fight against government abuse, just shift the battlefront
but no, we're all going to sit here, cover our eyes, and insist on rigid interpretation of laws from 1950. even though NO ONE IS LISTENING TO ANY OF YOU AND THE WARRANTLESS WIRETAPS KEEP COMING
so: do you want to make a difference?
or live in high holy righteous empty indignation and denial?
we all understand why the riaa sucks balls: technology changes the landscape. we laugh at the riaa for trying to uphold a business model from the days of vinyl. but now everyone here wants to uphold laws from the days of rotary phones, and i'm the asshole for suggesting the law might be outdated
whatever
i await my -300 troll, and my 300 new foes
all i am arguing for is flexibility in the valid fight against government abuse, and i'm the enemy
got it?
now: go ahead. shoot the messenger
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Seriously, for real change in policy, give the man a few months in offic-- oh.
Still, I don't expect even the blogosphere to treat Obama like it treated Bush
Well, let's be a bit fair. You really can't piss off the left wing any more than by making up some stuff to invade a country stuffed with oil. Iraq runs the gamut of everything they hate in one little package. It smacks of imperialism, assumes American cultural superiority, has loads of killing. So, you know, with Bush, the left wing was going to be loud, because, well, Bush started a war! I'm not even sure what Obama could do that could piss of the right wing that much...
Still, rest assured, I'm working on a rather detailed Obama skewering web site now that I hope to launch before Earth Day... I'll send out links to all my right wing friends when its up..
This is my sig.
Obama has hardly been in office and amazingly I even ran into a moron who still thought bush was president.
Obama used the lack of info about him to his advantage and used the appearance of common sense reason (which didn't exist for 8 years.) This caused the public to apply their own reason to fill in the gaps; therefore making Obama the most appealing candidate possible to them. (That is, unless you hate your own positions.)
People should scream on this; but I'm not so clear on what is going on here. Obama is clever in how he times info dumps and intentional leaks (which controls the situation.) I find this info breaking at the WORST TIME and getting so much coverage to be uncharacteristic. I'm waiting to see what is afoot. If Obama personally wanted to push this he'd do the usual news dump on friday under the cover of some bigger news.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Ah.
Finally, Change we can all believe in.
Folks, this is what many of us voted for and this is the conclusion of the EFF;
Again, the gulf between Candidate Obama and President Obama is striking. As a candidate, Obama ran promising a new era of government transparency and accountability, an end to the Bush DOJ's radical theories of executive power, and reform of the PATRIOT Act. But, this week, Obama's own Department Of Justice has argued that, under the PATRIOT Act, the government shall be entirely unaccountable for surveilling Americans in violation of its own laws.
This isn't change we can believe in. This is change for the worse.
Tyranny we can believe in.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
We can still do that, right?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
This is yet another example of why the public are apathetic to politicians. They continue to use ever more elaborate marketing to sell a future to get the votes, yet turn out to be not much more than a name plate change in the hot seat office. The real power is in the lobby groups and spin doctors who will make sure nothing of substance changes. This is yet another example of why the system itself has to change, until that happens and the system works for the people, this cycle will keep repeating.
We have a choice, we either give in to apathy, knowing we can't do a damn thing about these cretins, or we organize to change the system.
Is to hurry up and start our secret societies before they have the manpower to actually spy on the majority of the population.
What's sad about all of this is the fact that the general public, or sheeple... are willing to take a few losses here and there to "protect" their freedoms. This war on the law abiding citizens is just like a game of chess. They're setting up all the "Pawns" (laws and regulations), so when they're ready to make the big moves and really bend us over they've got their bases covered and can force us into check-mate.
-Ryan
P.S. - Has someone started working on a "Good-bye World." newbie script? I really think Obama would appreciate it. It's a much needed "change".
From the article linked in the Slashdot story: "The DOJ claims that the U.S. Government is completely immune from litigation for illegal spying - that the Government can never be sued for surveillance that violates federal privacy statutes."
And: "This is a radical assertion that is utterly unprecedented. No one - not the White House, not the Justice Department, not any member of Congress, and not the Bush Administration - has ever interpreted the law this way." [emphasis added]
In recent years, the U.S. government has carried other corruption to levels never seen before: 1) A higher percentage of its people in prison than ever before in the history of the world. 2) More countries invaded or bombed than any other country in the history of the world. (24 since the end of the 2nd world war.) 3) More government debt than any other country in the history of the world. 4) More people killed during undeclared wars than any other country in the history of the world. (11,000,000 killed directly and indirectly in 24 countries.) 5) More money spent on secret surveillance than any country in the history of the world.
The book House of Bush, House of Saud, tells about how Bush and his friends and family took money to support the Saudis against the best interests of the United States.
One guess is that someone told the Obama administration a huge number of lies to get people to allow the corruption. That's what they did with the Bush administration.
The U.S. government is no longer under control of the people, it is a dictatorship of the corrupters. What does it matter if a majority vote for a change if there is no change?
A lot of the "Obama is teh suxxor" bullshit is a response to his popularity. People hate how well-liked he is, so they try to take him down with no tact whatsoever. Problem is that since most people like him, if someone says that he sucks most people will ignore them and anything else they have to say.
IMO a better angle would be what Red Flayer is talking about; attack the law or the idea, not the person. Gently remind the reader that Obama has said good and\or not said bad about this law or idea without actually saying "same old shit as Bush" every two seconds, which is just an annoying talking point now true or not.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
... they should have nominated and been able to vote for someone like Dennis Kucinich for President. Instead people marginalized him, probably exactly as his peers did in high school. Obama can't instigate real change because his basic skill is diplomacy - being a schmoozer, smooth talker, and compromizer - and not advanced problem-solving skills (unless you count avoiding confrontation as solving a problem).
What we needed - have always needed - in a president is someone willing to bite the hand that feeds him when necessary, willing to work toward a necessary thing even when it's poorly understood and unpopular; part of a president's job is education of the people why an unpopular thing might still be the Right Thing to do. Is Obama now going to "educate" the public why the government needs to be able to toss out the Bill of Rights whenever it seems expedient? Dennis Kucinich risked his political career and his ties to his own party trying to get the ball rolling on impeachment, for instance, knowing full well what it would likely cost him.
We need a president with balls, and Obama ain't got 'em. I don't regret the fact that I am now in the position of being able to tell all the Obama Disciples "I told you so." I just wish I could have educated people to see it for themselves before they made a poor choice, AGAIN.
that maybe somebody else would come in and use the powers already established. Everybody has said it since the beginning of elected governance - don't give yourself powers that you don't want 'the other guy to have', because he will.
I happened to support Obama, and still tenuously do, but I am greatly saddened by this, the RIAA appointments, and many other things. But even Obama is only extending, minimally, what the Bush administration gave him.
Even though I am very unhappy with this, it'll still be funny to see Fox News hop on this with their usual cognitive dissonance, forgetting that Bush started this mess.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
You mean people in government are supposed to give reasons for doing things!
I must have got confused somewhere along the line...
Because you always need a smart fox!
as if no one is aware of the issues at stake except you
the issue is prevent government abuse, right? that's what i am fighting for. that's what i care about. that's what i am trying to do MOST EFFECTIVELY HERE. rather than cling to a notion that has passed its sell-by date
so: transparency, independent review with authority to punish, any and all wiretapping efforts
got me?
"It isn't a ridiculously hard standard -- warrants are issued daily and routinely."
no, no, no
that's my whole point: technological change HAS made it ridiculously hard. your average al qaeda goon or timothy mcveigh is not calling up his #2 on the rotary phone. they are using skype, they are using a friend's computer one moment, getting an sms text on another friend's cell phone the next moment. do you see that?
the avenues of communication, the protocols, the endpoints: they are ridiculously huge in number, convoluted, and fluid. such that, yes: i am asserting that getting a wiretap first is an antiquated, quaint notion. that no reasonable person can expect anyone to be able to elucidate and enunciate all of the communication avenues of a suspect they ar einterested in beforehand
nevermind the stereotype of senator palpatine or agent smith out to take away all of your rights for the sake of some b-grade hollywood fantasy, i am talking about the well-meaning fbi agent on the trail of a genuine suspect: do you honestly expect him to be aware of all of the terminals of communication and avenues of communication being used by that suspect beforehand? do you really?
the era of the warrant to wiretap has been destroyed
destroyed NOT by some insidious ideology. destroyed by simple technological change
understand me yet? I AM FOR THE FIGHT AGAINST GOVERNMENT ABUSE
i aam simply asking you to recognize that this battle is lost
now mod me into obvlivion and declare me your eternal ideological foe, and completely and utterly miss my point
zzz
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
" . . .unless those who criticize warrantless wiretaps can enunciate a valid alternative . . ."
It's called the FISA court.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act
I can hardly believe we're actually talking about "warrantless wiretaps" and someone isn't already under arrest and facing charges. The original FISA law granted fairly broad powers to law enforcement for eavesdropping in matters related to national security, but it also makes it a CRIME to conduct "warrantless wiretapping" and also subjects the spies to civil liabilities.
I don't follow your "transparency" and "review" argument at all. The whole point of this law is that some investigations related to national security require secrecy, and therefore there is a need to bypass the traditional court system. As far as "review", what are we supposed to review if there is no legal procedure? Isn't "review" exactly what the executive branch is preventing us from doing by refusing to disclose the details?
It is not a "privilege" of the government to conduct warrantless eavesdropping, and our civil liberties are not subject to sacrifice based on technological advances. FISA already allows for "warrantless wiretapping" for an excessively long time period, so you argument about "getting a warrant before every snoop" doesn't hold water. You can argue the exact details, but the absolutely critical point of FISA is that at least someone has oversight of what the executive branch is doing.
I will absolutely maintain my "fundamentalist" position of No Warrant, No Tap.
I gave him the benefit of the doubt because the alternative really didn't leave me much choice.
The alternative was McCain, who at least had a track record of refusing to add earmarks and supporting tax decreases.
The person who has the federal government spend and gather less is the best one to vote for because the more money the government has, the more trouble it can get into. You can't wiretap as many people if you lack the funds...
It's a simple rule to follow and will always serve you well. Note that Bush for example was someone who also spent wildly.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Just as a reminder, now would be a good time to support the EFF with a donation so they can continue this case.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
The problem here is the PATRIOT act. That needs to be addressed specifically. Until that happens every administration will legally use it.
That said, this article is incorrect.
"Again, the gulf between Candidate Obama and President Obama is striking. As a candidate, Obama ran promising a new era of government transparency and accountability, an end to the Bush DOJ's radical theories of executive power, and reform of the PATRIOT Act. But, this week, Obama's own Department Of Justice has argued that, under the PATRIOT Act, the government shall be entirely unaccountable for surveilling Americans in violation of its own laws."
No, they argued that THIS particular surveillance is legal under the PATRIOT act; which it is.
Does that make it good? no, but we must be accurate. Throwing your critical eye to the wind becasue something confirms a bias is not good.
Look who is in the DOJ that pushed for this power, Hint: They have the word terrorism in their title.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
impeach obama!! impeach obama!! impeach obama!!
And ship them back to their homelands.
What's a little privacy between friends?
Nobody seemed to care for eight years ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Because this won't be the last of it.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Until Obama invades the wrong country, nothing Obama does is worse than everything Bush did.
True, it isn't like Obama has called for things like invasion of Pakistan... Oh wait.
The Gospel according to lolcat
:+1, Scary
Don't know why EFF didn't endorse Ron Paul.
Why doesn't someone ask *him* what is going on in *public*? EFF or otherwise.
I understand that he is responsible for his administration, but said administration is *huge*.
He hasn't replaced everyone yet, so there maybe officials working under old marching orders.
I recognise that I could just be being naive here, but asking him about what's going on would be my first action if I knew him personally.
we had the press to badger him. Even on most issues we could count on both the press and Democrats in Congress to scream the world is ending but now we don't have either. The press is just too much in the tank it is scary. My CNN buddy can't think of a bad thing to say about the guy - hell when you bring stuff up its like he doesn't even hear it.
AJC did a great job of burying it...
Someone bring back the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy please...
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I am no fan of Obama, and I still haven't seen the backlash of which you speak. I'd love to see some examples.
My user number is prime. Is yours?
Then get rid of things like presidency
I know, the "MSM" wouldn't dare criticize government policies that led to less profit for their advertisers...
Fox News contributor says comparing Obama to Adolf Hitler isn't out of bounds. (Which it isn't, but whatever.)
http://mediamatters.org/countyfair/200902200013
"Put away the "energy independence" conceit. This notion, a favorite of Tojo and Hitler, was debunked by Churchill, who reasoned that true energy security came from a diversity of suppliers, not the foolish pursuit of self-sufficiency."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123552068199964531.html
You could watch Fox News for a day and hear countless references complaining of the new administration being marxist, maoist, socialist, which represents evil in the eyes of neoconservatives. Every politician has a few things in common with Hitler and Stalin, but you think the comparison never happens to Obama only because someone told you so.
The comparison of Bush and Hitler happened for a good reason. They both created an atmosphere where questioning the government in regards to it's wartime policies wasn't tolerated. They're both ultra nationalist, believed in only military solutions, drove their respective economies into the ground with war spending and war itself, and used secrets courts, secret prisons, and torture to deny people their right to due process.
If you can come up with some better commonalities with Obama, I'd love to hear them.
Don't blame the news for pampering to the customers tastes. If the customer wants celebrity gossip to be on the front page, then the customer gets just that.
If you don't want the press to dance to their customers wishes, then make an independent press. How? No idea. Sooner or later everyone has to be paid and will listen to the one doing the paying. Only wives don't follow that golden rule.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I find it quite interesting that as Obama's policies and proposals in personal freedoms, taxes, and huge increases in the national debt (under the guise of stimulus spending) that there seem to be fewer and fewer people that admit to voting for the man.
You think like a ReThuglican Jew
First time I've seen a goatse comment and thought, "boy that's insightful."
I must be hanging out here too much.
greed@All_Evils:~#
What I find interesting is that Obama is being criticized worse than Bush ever was, for doing less than Bush did. (It's only been a few months; give him a chance to screw up!) We were called unpatriotic traitors and terrorist sympathizers when we criticized Bush; where is the same treatment for those who criticize Obama far more harshly? Don't you have "Obama Derangement Syndrome"? It's like the whole nation has finally awoken from some hypnotic slumber and realized that it's okay to complain about the Commander in Chief. This can only be a good thing.
Now combine this with the fact that Obama himself has been swamped in economic and foreign policy problems (which thankfully aren't being handled Bush-style) and things don't have quite the doom-and-gloom luster you're portraying. Yeah, things aren't perfect but we all knew that things wouldn't be perfect, right? This shouldn't be a surprise.
Based on the above post, The answer to Gothmolly is a resounding 'YES You Can!' You are most certainly allowed to continue blaming Bush...
i'm glad you understand the number of avenues of communication are too fluid to get a warrant for a single line beforehand
i'm glad you understand the number of avenues of communication are too fluid to get a warrant for a single individual beforehand
now you put forth the notion of getting a warrant for specific information beforehand
this is wonderful, i like this idea
but you do realize that since this information is always buried in a bunch of noise. that to get this information you are going to invariably catch a whole bunch of other unrelated information in the process, right? you sort of have to put out a drag net, and then pick nuggets out of the sea
but your observation does have validity in that in review, later, this "warrant for information" sets a benchmark against which common sense prudent drag net operations are properly judged, and the information distilled from those dragnets can be seen as germaine or not to the goal at hand
so yes, i agree with you: warrant for informations beforehand, in order to establish a benchmark against which later transparent review can establish good faith in subsequent actions
with the caveat that you understand that a lot of extra noise is captured along with the information being sought (and this of course is expected to be expunged)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
within the social circles that the poster of that comment moves around in, such as they are, his statement probably holds true. I can feel it in my own social circle as well. If Bush did something crappy, the challenge was keeping people within the bounds of realism in their critiques. Now Obama does things wrong and it seems no one wants to even hear it and people get very defensive. But that's an artifact of the particular social circle that you're stuck with. In a broader perspective, for most people criticising Obama is much safer.
What does anyone expect from a bloated government bureaucracy that seems to exist for no other reason to protect it's own power.
Conservatives and liberals are both happily sacrificing liberty for security, the only difference being their motivations for doing so. Conservatives generally have a fear of ambiguous foreign threats. Liberals want to be sheltered from the difficulties of life. Both lead to the same end result which is a massive state that regulates every aspect of our lives.
This is not to say there aren't legitimate concerns on both sides of the aisle, because each side is too quick to dismiss the concerns the other side has. Virtually every issue has been so utterly politicized that there's little room for rational discussion. Sometimes I wonder if it isn't intentional so that everyone is weakened by fighting amongst themselves and thus distracted from the real threat. Otherwise how is it that people keep re-electing the same old garbage into office over and over again?
"Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact."
Thanks for the contribution Judge Posner. I didn't know that you were a /. reader.
If your terminology imples that some of us would rather die than see our nation turn into a police state, then the U.S. Constitution IS a "suicide pact".
It is weird, but, while Bush was in office, people criticized him on a constant basis (IMHO, much of it deserved in the last years), but, you didn't risk the vitriol, public shunning and public crucifixion that you seem to get if you speak ill of the Obama administration today.
Say hello to the medias little friend, Mr. Biased.
laws are not computer programs that the slightest deviation from leads to an outright crash
there is plenty of cognitive dissonance between the laws on the books and actions in good faith which are implicitly allowed due to the realization of everyone involved that the law involves complex notions
this is true of any law, by the way, and i'm not speaking only about the subject at hand here
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That MUST be the change he promised us.
Wake up. There is no change.
"The Obama Deception HQ Full Version" now on youtube
educate yourself
Go Obama! Drop The Bomma.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
But if you let the opposing team define the rules of the game then you've already lost.
adhering to the spirit of the law, rather than their fundamentalist shrill interpretation of laws that only work in a previous technological era
arriving at a superior battlefront against government abuse in the here and now, rahter than becoming irrelevant to the fight against government abuse by adhering to a set of standards that aren't ideologically dead, just rendered obsolete due to simple neutral technological change
now if only we can get the 10,000 other blind slashbots out to mod this thread into oblivion to listen to some reason on this subject matter
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
First of all I'm glad to see fellow progressives criticizing the Obama administration. In my opinion there has been real thought and debate coming from progressives on these issues. Meanwhile, all I have heard from the right are things like "Obama is a socialist/nazi/muslim/coward/etc.". Real criticism of leadership is what the people need ... not more empty rhetoric.
Thankfully, the Constitution of the United States of America places the sole *duty* of dispatching a tyrant upon its people.
Unfortunately, said people are too scared to take arms and execute these tyrants out of fear of being labeled a murderer, or worse a traitorous assassin.
I feel the government should be the ones fearing us people, and that we are in current times living ass backwards from how our founding fathers intended.
He's just got that smile that makes you feel that it's ok.
Every time you call tech support, a little kitten dies.
In a press release today, the EFF asserted that today's EFF actions are worse than any previous EFF actions. EFF Spokesperson Ewan McTeagle said, "This is a radical assertion that is utterly unprecedented. It's especially disappointing argument to hear from the EFF."
my fear is that he is minimally extending Bush policies. He ran on a promise to dissolve those policies, so even a minor extension is a drastic difference from original expectations. Repeal the shit already.
It is interesting to me that stories like this are getting posted more and more to slashdot. I recall reading on here something about Obama's DOJ appointees being extremely biased in the filesharing controversies. I remember reading stuff on here about acts putting cyber security for both federal and private networks in the hands of the presidency. I remember reading quite a few of these types of stories here on slashdot, but have seen none of them published in newspapers, or discussed on news talk shows (comedy or serious) or anything else. In fact, it seems that these kinds of rights-suppressing stories are increasingly being pushed to the fringe news networks while the main stream media continues to bitch about an economy that we all know is cluster f***ed royally, an increasing rate of violent crimes, and occasional news about the middle east. Forgive me if I am being paranoid but it seems like there is a large effort being conducted to keep the news about us, American Citizens, and our rights off the air, while the airwaves are being increasingly polluted with the same depressing, mind-numbing dribble for the masses to feed upon.
Something seems very wrong with this country these days, and the world in general....
Forgive the doomsday tone, but I don't like the fact that the mass majority of people are completely unaware that their privacy and defense-against-the-government rights are being hacked and slashed like no tomorrow. At least when the Patriot Act was pushed through, we saw throngs of people bitching about it in the streets and media. Why the sudden happy complacency now?
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Pelosi says it is un-American to enforce our immigration laws. How does that grab you?
It "grabs me" that you're misrepresenting what she said. What she actually said was first that the values of immigrants who struggle to make it in America is in itself part of the American spirit:
"that optimism, that hope, that courage, that determination of immigrants of your families when you arrive here make America more American."
She then asked her audience:
"How then could America say it's okay to send parents of children away? What values system is that? I think it's un-American." Later she added "who in our country would not want to change a policy of kicking in doors in the middle of the night and sending a parent away from their families? It must be stopped."
She is clearly attacking as Un-American the value system that believes kicking in doors at night and separating families is good. If you want to generalize that to "Pelosi says it is un-American to enforce our immigration laws", that's your own business, but it's clearly not what she was saying.
I do take offense when Americans go off to France, for example, and criticize our President or our country. All they are doing is selfishly making themselves more important at the expense of the rest of us. Its a kick in the teeth to the brave soldiers risking their lives for our safety.
You must be pretty damn insecure about your country then. And totally missing what's great about America-- for criticism of America by its own citizens is what makes our country strong- because American can withstand that criticism and also change for the better when appropriate. This country's strength is that it's in a way an "open-source" country (at least when its at its best.) . The more eyeballs who can find flaws and suggest improvements means that its flaws are discovered, debated, and hopefully corrected. It is the national right (and duty) to be critical of this country and speak about how we can be a better people that is one of the many great strengths of America. Self-analysis and criticism of America by Americans anytime, anywhere should be encouraged and celebrated. It is, in fact, the essence of our country of, by, and for the people, and is what our soldiers are fighting for.
I can remember most of the Hollywood-hating folk telling outspoken actors to GTFO and go to Canada/Europe. Hell, do you really think the 2004 election went the way it did if not for the GOP implying that most Democrats were unpatriotic?
For those who don't follow, let me make this easy for you: The term 'flip-flop' existed because Rove & Co. were using it to nail anyone who wished to support the troops but also dissented from the President's edict for fighting terrorism without question. In other words, if you said "87 Billion with no known limit might be unreasonable," but then voted for it because it was the only available option given to you by a party that had no intention to negotiate, you were nailed to the fencepost by the conservative mouthpiece machine.
oh wait....
Place to be searched: teh intarwebs
Things to be seized: teh inph0z
Affirmation: "I hereby affirm that the bad guy is using teh intarwebs to trade teh inph0z and by obtaining teh inph0z by tapping teh intarwebs, we will be able to prevent bad things from happening."
Judge: "I'm interested in your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter."
Like I said; Don't know why EFF didn't endorse Ron Paul. This topic is something completely relevant to the EFF. Gay marrige?? What The States do is not the president's business anyway, but this is a digression.
Obama made it clear during the campaign that he would not prosecute Bush administration officials in the interest of "bringing the country back together" or whatever.
Nothing shows as clearly as this why that is a bad idea. In an effort to protect Bushies from prosecution, he is now in danger of making things far, far worse from the perspective of anyone interested in the rule of law. For f*ck's sake, are we going to throw the Magna Carta out the window along with the constitution?
This whole thing is becoming absurd. Obama needs to bite the bullet and figure out which of the Bushies were guilty and which ones were innocent. Protecting the Bushies is doing enormous damage to the rule of law, and has all kinds of unintended consequences like this one.
First, never assume evil before ignorance or stupidity. Obama just got here. Heck, they're still trying to find records on the Gitmo guys, which have been strewn all over the government.
I look at it like this: how would Obama look if he didn't fight it? Soft on Terrorism? Consorting with the spies? Remember how he tapped adversaries to be a part of his administration? This could be a setup case, where they have a chance to prove their point. And if they fail, things change. If not, well...Sovereign Immunity is perfectly plausible.
I think Obama is giving us the perfect opportunity to WAKE UP and pass laws that would fix the problem of unchecked surveillance.
And there is one other thing to consider: Obama, after being briefed by the former administration, found something absolutely frightening that was left over by the former administration. He might need to buy more time to figure out how to fix it. And I mean that in a good way. The time required to pass a repeal of the Patriot Act, or even a heavy MOD to that act, would take time.
That might be enough time to clean the mess left by the Bushies.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
If the courts rule in favor of Jewel against the NSA, what are the consequences? Who gets the punishment? Does the federal government just have to hand over a bunch of money? Will the federal government be required to fire people responsible? Will it increase the possibility that Bush/Cheney could be found guilty of a crime? Or is it just that the federal government won't be able to do warrent-less wiretaps in the future without a clear break of the law?
It seems to me that if the courts rule against the NSA and thus the federal government, it's Obama's administration that will pay when it is the Bush administration that committed the actions. I've also had a sense throughout Obama's campaign that he does not want to go after the Bush administration or the telcos because he simply doesn't want to rehash the past. Losing Jewel v. NSA would be just that, opening up past members of the federal government and the telcos to liabilities and potential criminal charges.
The downside is that in order to win Jewel v. NSA, Obama's DOJ has little choice but to use the Bush administration's stance on the issue. The DOJ is unable to use any written laws to defend the action because even the 2008 Intelligence Survellience law contained a provision "reaffirm[ing] that FISA, and that act's courts, gives the final say over government spying."
Has any Presidential administration allowed a witch hunt against the previous administration to occur? If a which hunt against the Bush administration was allowed to start, would it be unprecedented?
Not no, but hell no. Mickey Mouse is pure evil incarnate, and is quite possibly worse than any politician on the planet.
I love visiting Disney world, but the management of that company are pure evil as just about anyone who has worked for or with Disney for any period of time will tell you, and no I don't mean the guy in the Mickey costume.
As someone with an id as low as yours, I would expect you to at least not say something like that just based on the slashdot discussions related to their successful lobbying of longer copyright terms.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
So what? "Get a warrant" is still a drastically superior alternative. Let's look at your example where an agent can't realistically sit down with a judge and get all the warrants that agent doesn't want. What happens under the "Get a warrant" policy? Here's what happens: the domestic intercepts don't happen. Problem solved. But you're thinking: Ah, but the foreign intercepts don't happen either. But that's ok. Intercepts were never a crutch we could rely on; they were just convenient.
The government temporarily had an edge over the people, and then technologically lost that edge and had to resort to breaking the law. Follow the law, accept the edge is lost, and get back to dealing with problems the way you did before NSA existed.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
...once Obama was briefed about the true state of the world he had an "Oh shit Bush was right" moment.
Since it is secret it is impossible to say.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I dont like the gov't doing things like this, not because I distrust the guy implementing them in the first place, but what about the next guy, or the guy after that?
Let's just say for an instant that Bush really was on the "up and up" on these wiretaps, who is to say the next guy, or the guy after him won't use them for more nefarious deeds?
I feel this way about all laws and actions by the gov't... what may sound "good" now can easily be turned against us later.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
"Has any Presidential administration allowed a witch hunt against the previous administration to occur? If a which hunt against the Bush administration was allowed to start, would it be unprecedented?"
No and Yes. The real power that sits above any administration will not allow it, it works against continuity in governance, for the bigger picture, youtube- The Obama Deception HQ Full Version
The title is somewhat deceiving and infers a right wing hit job, to the contrary, its really not. Thank Me Later when your mind is freed
President Obama must have his reasons for continuing to ignore the Fourth Amendment. Just trust him and everything will work out.
carnivore?
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
That's the problem with "anti" people. They generally don't stand for anything, and when push comes to shove they crumble and fall towards that which they're most familiar with (their target).
What Obama is doing is not surprising at all. He has not done any sort of 180 in comparison to his overall track record, and any independent who drilled down to specifics of his platform during his campaign to see what was beyond the feel-good generalisms of "change" and "hope" is not surprised in his direction. Surprised at his voracity yes, but not direction.
So it's starting to sound like one of several things is going on here:
I'm not sure which of these possibilities would worse.
It would help, however, if Obama would be more forthcoming as to the reasons behind the continuation, though; surely some more substantial explanation than "it's all a state secret" can be given without damaging national security.
In short, leftists/progressives were and still are either
How's it feel to be gobsmacked by reality?
you didn't listen to a single thing i said
you're responding to some sort of preprogrammed mirage that exists inside your head that bears no relation to my words and my position. i will not respond to what you wrote, because you did not respond to what i wrote
what you just wrote is in reply to someone who doesn't exist anywhere in my words
stop
read
think
then reply
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There's an interesting book review in the New Yorker which discusses journalistic integrity/objectivity in the US (specifically in the newspaper business) and how it is a relatively recent thing (ie. the post-war decades).
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/04/13/090413crbo_books_lemann
The jist of things is that for most of the history of newspapers in the US, journalistic integrity was a laugh. Starting post-WW2 and arguably hitting it's peak in the 60s and 70s journalism was held to a higher standard, but prior to that in the days of Hearst and Pulitzer back to very beginnings of journalism in the US, newspapers were purely the tools of politicians (or political movements) and there was no such thing as unbiased sources of news. The rise of Murdoch and those like him is in a way a return to the kind of smarmy opinionated journalism that was the norm before Bernard Kilgore, Edward R Murrow, Walter Cronkite, etal.
I think the advent of televised news gave those that were initially involved in it a sense of the nobility of their work that was by and large lacking from previous eras of journalism, but those ideas didn't last more than a decade or two before the networks started to demand more profit generation from their news divisions. In the movie *Network (1976) televised news divisions are seen to be in decline already in the 70s.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/
*(this film is awesome BTW, and predicts in hillarious fashion "reality TV" decades beforehand)
It's kind of sad that things are sliding back towards what are apparently the old/normal ways of journalism, but sensationalist journalism is certainly nothing new.
Both parties want power over you! They simply disagree on the methods of instituting control.
Both parties have been in power long enough throughout the decades to get all the changes they have been "Campaigning" for. But they have not. It is excuse after excuse after excuse. Face it, the U.S. Government is NOT interested in fixing problems, they are however interested in using those problems as leverage to gain a stronger grip on power! And guess, what, most of the problems that they use to gain that grip and power were cause by their policies to begin with. And what's even better average Joe & Jill American is foolish enough keep voting for the same party that keep causing the problem. If you voted for either party last election then you cannot complain about anything.
Very similar to how the conservative movement was critical of the Bush administration running a very liberal fiscal policy, spending hundreds of billions on nation building and failing to veto a single spending bill.
Violating the Constitution is the same whether it's on domestic policy or foreign policy. Both should be tried for high crimes.
Libertas in infinitum
If you used to think the EFF was a bunch of liberals, but you think they have a good point now, you are a BushBot.
If you used the think the EFF was right-on in the past, but is now part of the right-wing conspiracy, you are an ObamaBot.
If you think the EFF was and still is right, congratulations, you value the Constitution, freedom, privacy and limited government powers regardless of political allegiance.
If you are in either of the two former categories, please refrain being involved in our political process since you are just a useful idiot for the respective party leaders.
I thought everything he was saying on this issue sounded too good to be true and expected him to possibly pull something like this, but given his numerous statements about Bush's use of these sort of tactics I think he should be made to suffer in the same manner as Bush sr. was made to suffer with his "no new taxes" statement.
The guy's actions are nothing like what comes out of his mouth - this does not portend freedom, limited excutive power, or any of the other stuff along those lines which he promised.
He needs a new logo. Instead of "Obama, change we can believe in," it should be "Obama, the Janus president."
HA! I didn't vote for him.
Bush was pretty bad. Ok, the Chief Party Turncoat and Control Freak when it came to domestic policy.
HOWEVER, after hearing Obama and his seemingly endless, droning, campaign of CHANGE and derision of Bush domestic policy, I have to ask:
WHAT FUCKING CHANGE?!
Where is the change in:
1. Classifying copyright laws as 'National Security"?
2. Supporting, continuing, and extending warrantless wiretaps?
3. Wasting money with bad stimulus packages? (AIG anyone?)
4. Denouncing lobbyists, and then appointing a Defense Industry lobbyist as Defense Secretary.
5. Denouncing terrorism, but wants to negotiate with the Taliban.
The list grows.....
Obama can take his change and shove it up his ass. He's just below Kwame Kilpatrick on the Corruption Scale.
A broken promise is a broken promise. You can put as much lipstick on a pig as you want, but it is still a pig. If Obama is as great a man as people are making him out to be, then he would admit to breaking the campaign promises he ran his campaign on.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
No political system currently in use is "open source." You can file bug reports, make suggestions, and nominate project members, but you have no chance of getting your code accepted unless you're on the project team. Sometimes you can't even see it (look at ACTA.c - Whoops! Access denied!). Also half the programmers are Mac zealots and the other half are Linux zealots, good luck getting anything done...and if things weren't bad enough already, commercial software makers constantly bribe the programmers to tweak the system to favor their applications. Black hats and crooked consultants exploit the gaping vulnerabilities for profit on a regular basis in plain view of everyone and nobody seems to care.
So you've got a bunch of crooked lowsy programmers, some code that's all botched to hell, and a long history of patching it with quick n' dirty hacks. If you want some *real* improvement you'll have to get rid of the current project team, wipe out the existing code base and start from scratch.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"Bring 'em on! I'd prefer a stand-up fight to all this sneaking around." -- Han Solo
It seems that these days, if you speak ill against Obama (the chosen one), you will be smitten down and piled up upon by anyone that was a fervent disciple during the election or of a democratic leaning.
Glenn Greenwald, Keith Olbermann, Crooks & Liars, DailyKos, and Huffington Post have all had something to say about this issue in the past week. Believe it or not, the progressives are entirely NOT happy about this turn of events and have not been gracious to the president about it.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Uhhh... you do realize that you just attempted to use the best argument against your position to defend your position, right?
I was raised on 'treat people the way you want to be treated', and I do.
Too bad whoever raised you didn't explain what that phrase is supposed to mean.
And if they treat me like shit, they must want to be treated the same way, so I do.
So everyone should treat everyone else in the manner of the worst person they have ever met? (That is the logical end result of your statement.)
the first time you lose someone to a terrorist act, you'll drop your high and mighty attitude pretty damn quick.
I really like the way you make assumptions not just about what I'd do in such a case, but that you also assume that it hasn't happened already.
Agreed. It's the end of Obama's political career, unless he wants to be a Republican neo-con violence-for-oil trash-the-country-for-money go-to-guy for corrupters.
This is linked at the bottom of the EFF brief, but seems more credible, as the Atlantic is not litigating, so I'm putting the link directly into the comments thread:
http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/04/shut_up_its_still_a_secret.php
--
Toro
The United States is not a democracy. It is a democratic republic.
He doesn't think the Federal govt can say anything on the matter & he KNOWS that the feds have NO say in State matters. You can't be president of the country & the states. They're different.
I want my change!
You know, back in the Reagen era, this would have been grounds for impeachment . . .
The United States not a democracy. It is a democratic republic.
The attorneys are merely presenting justification by present laws, i.e. Patriot Act. It's what they do. Solution is straightforward enough. Repeal the Patriot Act.
Nothing about the war in Iraq is beneficial to us. Just because the oil isn't flowing still doesn't mean it wasn't part of the original reason for going in. It's just one more failure on a long list of them.
In the long haul the war in Iraq will prove to be far, far more cost effective than the carbon tax.
This is my sig.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=223862&title=Baracknophobia---Obey
Actually you should've voted for Ron Paul ;-)
Libertas in infinitum