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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.
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.
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.
"State secrets" and "sovereign immunity" are two concepts that have no place in any democratic country.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
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.
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
It is Clinton all over again. Hang on to your wallets!
Because... the economy did so badly under Clinton?
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.
The economy was cruising on the downslope after the internet bubble burst in mid-2000. That happened on Clinton's watch.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
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
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
He just put off the bad economy by using short term loans.
Actually, I am talking about the lib philosophy "do whatever feels good at the moment and screw any consequences later". Or, the politician's philosophy of "do whatever works to better my position and screw the rest of the country".
We need to take Shakespeare's idea one step further "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers and politicians"!
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
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.
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???!
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"
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.
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
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
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
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
Ok on many other points, but, I just cannot even come close to believing this was the motivation. I mean, we certainly aren't benefiting in any manner from Iraqi oil.
It isn't shipped to us for free, nor used really to repay any war costs, etc.
If the war was for oil, and US imperialism to take over that country for oil, I'd have thought we'd at least have seen the oil benefits by now.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Don't know why EFF didn't endorse Ron Paul.
You can ship out the neocons just as soon as your buddies who said they would leave the country if Bush got (re)elected actually leave the country and renounce their citizenship.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
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.
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?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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.
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.