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FBI Files a "Secret Justification" For Gag Order
An anonymous reader notes a story up at Ars on the FBI's continuing penchant for secrecy. "Clearly, the FBI isn't ready to give up its Bush-era secrecy addition just yet. ...in the case of Doe v. Holder, the FBI is carrying out a secret investigation using secret guidelines on what is and is not constitutional, and as part of that investigation they've compelled the secrecy of a service provider and are using a secret justification to argue that nobody's First Amendment rights are being violated."
If a right is violated, and no one can talk about it, then it must not have happened.
Indeed, and it's scary how that seems to be the point. Also from the fine summary:
If that provider had any sort of decency or respect for this country, they would hold a press conference or equivalent and make sure everybody knew all about this shady deal. That kind of courage and good priorities are unfortunately quite rare. There's a lot of cheap talk about "patriotism" but that is what a real patriot would do. Of course I use that definition (that I wish I could attribute right now) which goes "a patriot supports his country all of the time, and his government only when it deserves it." These days, that would mean refusing to support the government most (or all) of the time.
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Makes me wonder how many cases the FBI handles that have nothing to do with an activitiy which crosses state lines or otherwise could not be handled on the local and state level
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
The FBI is institutionally one of the least efficient and bureaucratic law enforcement agencies in the country.
While simultaneously being one of the best law enforcement agencies in the world. Seriously - who would you compare to them?
They're pumping billions into "modernization" efforts, but they still file their cases largely in paper format, use fax machines instead of e-mail, and "IT" is what they say happens in the men's room after 5pm.
No doubt you thought that was a cute quote and copy-pasted it. But alas, it's completely wrong. The recent Sentinel problems were an upgrade/modernization of the existing electronic case files. The Bureau is computerized. Not as sleekly or as efficiently as they'd like (which is why there's a big government contract working on it), but you make it sound like they're still thumbing through index cards. And yes, they use email.
In the 60s, the FBI was busy snapping pictures of protesters... and at the same time devoting forensic resources to finding out who (or rather, what) crapped on J. Edgar Hoover's front porch. You might have heard of him--he had a real temper, hated communists, and had a garter belt and fishnet fetish.
Please provide some proof that Hoover was a cross-dresser other than Anthony Summers' discredited book. That's the only source for this accusation.
As to hating communists - God bless the man.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act/The Patriot Act was supported 98-1 in it's senate vote at the time it was passed. The only senator who voted against it was Russ Feingold - D (Wis). It was vastly inferior to what the Bush administration had asked for, and this pissed Bush off. As I keep saying to all the people blasting Obama for making the economy worse (and trust me I did not vote for him)the president signs the bills into law, but the 535 members of congress draft them, ratify them, and present them for signature. If you are so upset with it, I'd suggest that you blame them.
788652 = 2 x 2 x 3 x 3 x 19 x 1153
the 535 members of congress draft them, ratify them, and present them for signature. If you are so upset with it, I'd suggest that you blame them.
Congress has an approval rating that sometimes dips into the single digits, and never gets far above them. Congress as an incumbent return rate of well over 80% and never drops significantly below it.
Any student of economics who was looking at a product with a 10% approval rating and 80+% customer loyalty would immediately suspect some kind of serious market interference. Can you imagine a car that almost everyone hated but that everyone still kept on buying, year after year, model after model?
"Yeah, I bought a 2008 Republican and it totally sucked. Unresponsive handling, fuel hog, huge maintenance costs and the financing just about killed me."
"So, you gonna buy something else this year?"
"Naw, I figure since the 2008 is so bad the 2010 is bound to be even worse, so I'm going to get it and see."
What is wrong with this picture? Political choices are made in a market-like context, and almost everyone hates almost everything on offer in that market, yet no one is able to crack the barriers to entry.
As with many problems in modern democracies, this appears to be a largely American problem. In Canada we generate new political parties every few decades (they start off regional, usually in the West, like the Social Credit, CCF and Reform, and then go national, sometimes forming governments--our current federal government is the Reform Party under a false name.) Britain manages to turn over the established parties once a century of so, having killed the Liberals in favour of Labour in the first half of the 20th century, and now the LibDems are up-and-coming today. In Europe the democracies are so young it's hard to draw comparisons, but the American one-Party, two-wings system is so strongly entrenched that despite almost universal dissatisfaction with the product, everyone keeps buying it.
Gerrymandering is an important feature in this system, by which state parties set electoral boundaries, and incumbents can be substantially protected by the two wings of the Party in this way. That means they don't have to worry much about voters. Likewise, the role of the Party in voter registration is probably a significant barrier to a second party forming and becoming competitive.
The US needs an arms-length electoral body like Elections Canada to take the Party out of the electoral process. Unfortunately, that would require the Party leadership to approve of it, which isn't about to happen.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.