>>There's also the issue that things just keep speeding up over time. For example, the Copenhagen's (failed) *goal* was to limit average global temperature rise to "only" 2 degrees celsius. Well, that'd mean "only" about 1 meter of sea level rise over the next hundred years.
Uh, no. In climate science, the general consensus is that we need to keep temperature gain below 2 degrees C. The IPCC estimates even with the high end (5 to 6 degree rise) still less than a.7m rise by 2100.
I'm not sure what source you're using for your 2 degrees -> 1 meter gain idea. Did the lack of temporal data in An Inconvenient Truth confuse you?
>>There is nothing in that article that suggests atheists were responsible for the destruction of the Church in France. You just pulled that out of thin air. In fact very few people considered themselves atheists at that time.
History fail. The French Revolution is actually considered the time in which atheism first became vogue in Europe.
>>Can I just point out that the "Full diplomatic immunity" you're so upset about (if it's true, which I'm not sure it really is), would be the same full diplomatic immunity given to Soviet officials at the height of the cold war, and to Iranian and Syrian officials today. If you can give it to your enemy, then you can give it to your friend.
Indeed. Except we didn't allow the Soviet Union to be part of our law enforcement efforts. That's what the issue is here.
Nobody cares that the International Trout Commission has diplomatic immunity, because they're not going to be part of anything that really matters.
You have been saying all they do is coordinate police agencies with each other. This is factually inaccurate, so I pointed it out.
My lord, I'm not saying they're part of some dark conspiracy. I just think that transparency is essential in all levels of law enforcement. If you disagree with me on that, fine.
There's different kinds of diplomatic immunity, and different categories of it. They have all the immunities of consulate officials, but not ambassadors. The only real difference with ambassadors is they can run over someone in a car, and be immune unless their country revokes the immunity. Since countries have done that in the past, there's no de facto difference.
>>But your not alone, most people from the extremes of politics have a hard time understanding the world because of similarly poor comprehension skills.
Right, because coordinating police activity and maintaining databases is entirely the same thing.:p
Hmm, I'm a political extremist, eh? I voted for Arnold for governor, Bob Barr for president, and a local Democrat for city mayor.
Ah well, I'm sure that unfounded supposition is working out great for you.
>>I felt it was pretty obvious that my point was that people should make up their own damn minds after reading multiple sources of information, including primary sources.
And my point was that if you're going to add in secondary sources, the editors should at least make sure they're not, you know, wrong.
>>After just a quick glance, that ABC article offers links to twelve primary sources. So I hate to break it to you, but that article wins the battle of primary sources.
Holy hell! 12! Obviously a hyperlink to the trout commission lets them win the battle.
I hate to break it to you, but the three references I gave you are the entire bit of law in question.
I mean, seriously. I admit when I'm wrong, unlike all the political hacks on here. The net statement was entirely correct that they now have all the diplomatic immunities.
>>So I guess it just boils down to Interpol not paying taxes that you're so pissed off about.
No, like I said, I'm concerned with transparency in law enforcement.
>>The courts, legislature, and president can still order seizure of files.
And no, they can't. That's the entire point of what was just ordered - their files are now inviolate.
If you're going to split hairs, you should damn well better make sure you're not wrong on your own points.
There's a difference between putting policeman A in contact with policeman B, and providing policeman A with data from a privately held database. That's my point, and the point that the other poster is apparently too dense to understand. They do more than just "coordination".
They hold international crime databases, among other things. If you'd actually read up on it, there's a whole list of things they do, including training, crisis response, secure international police communications, etc.
Why is this problematic? Let's say, for example, you're wrongly added to a list of international child molesters, and when you get to Thailand, they arrest you. You ask to see the database that holds your name. Right here, I'd imagine there would normally be no problem. But if they decide to pull a Bush (see - I'm nonpartisan) and say that everything is a secret, there is shit-all you can do, since the database is inviolate, and courts cannot compel a search or seizure, or even subpoena their staff members.
Also, the bit about secure communications is of interest to me, since it was a big part of what Sam Knott was all about later in his life. Again, transparency is a good thing here.
I was a friend of Sam Knott (http://www.10news.com/news/188963/detail.html) - he asked me to do the website for his foundation. So I think a little bit is fair.
Mainly, I'm more concerned about what government agencies, and law enforcements agencies in particular can do (and do more often) when they are shielded from scrutiny.
>>I'm saying that they cannot possibly have immunity from the provision of unreasonable search and seizure, because search and seizure is not one of their official capacities
Oh, I see why you're so confused. You have it exactly backwards.
INTERPOL is now immune from having their files searched. It has nothing to with INTERPOL gaining immunity from them searching other peoples' files.
The post wasn't actually supposed to be anti-Obama, and I apologize that it came off that way. I'm more concerned about the lack of transparency in law enforcement agencies.
It should have read that INTERPOL now has all the categories of diplomatic immunity, when they were previously still subject to search and seizure of files, and paying taxes.
Yeah, I always hate it when people add links that put things into context and provide more information. Why can't they just post the little snippets that I misinterpret to fit my preconceived notions? Everybody knows that trying to listen to both sides of an argument and decide for yourself is just stupid.
Yeah, how dare a person post primary sources to things?
It's much better to instead edit the summary and add an analysis of it that is completely at odds with reality, so that it makes the OP look like he's suffering from multiple personality disorder.
>>The only "office" they "have" in the US is those of the employees of the DOJ that have been charged with coordinating with Interpol. They do not belong to Interpol, they are employed by the DOJ, just like my accountant and his file cabinets do not belong to the tax administration even though he files my taxes.
First off, any INTERPOL employees have the immunity, which is separate from the issue of their offices in America.
Second, any files in a liaison office that "belong to" INTERPOL are now inviolate, and not subject to search. That's kind of the interesting thing going on here.
Using your analogy, your files don't belong to the IRS, but the IRS' copy of your taxes do. And now the "IRS" is shielded from scrutiny.
You say "They provide access to databases and expert advice, they assist communication between law enforcement agencies. They make information obtained by other organizations investigations available."
Which is contradicted by your first statement is "INTERPOL's official business in the U.S. is one of information coordinator between the police forces of various nations, NOT anything related to actual investigation or law enforcement."
So do they provide information to actual investigations or not?
I find it amusing you're so eager to split hairs on what "full" diplomatic immunity means when you can't even put together a non-contradictory statement about what they actually do.
>>So you're calling partial immunity in six categories full immunity.
They have the same immunities as a consulate official, so yeah. The only thing they can't do is get drunk and run over people late at night, but even diplomats have had their immunity revoked for that. So... yes.
They're immune to search, seizure, suit, legal proceedings, taxes, and the immunities extend to their family. That's pretty gold plated. If you'd like to tag some of that with "while doing official stuff", go right ahead. I'll still have hair left after you split them.
>>That is nothing like "full diplomatic immunity", which is immunity from all prosecution.
Diplomatic immunity is more than just immunity from prosecution. There's six categories that it covers, which INTERPOL employees now qualify for (at the same level of consulate employees). That's why I called it full diplomatic immunity - they didn't have all six categories before.
This is the law: "...[E]mployees of such organizations shall be immune from suit and legal process relating to acts performed by them in their official capacity and falling within their functions as such representatives, officers, or employees except insofar as such immunity may be waived by the foreign government or international organization concerned."
And: "Property and assets of international organizations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, unless such immunity be expressly waived, and from confiscation. The archives of international organizations shall be inviolable."
So they are immune for anything they do in their official capacity, and they are immune to search and seizure of their files to see if they did anything wrong.
Given the not so stellar record of other international police agencies, transparency is my ideal for any extra national law enforcement employees operating on our soil.
>>INTERPOL's official business in the U.S. is one of information coordinator between the police forces of various nations, NOT anything related to actual investigation or law enforcement. They do not arrest. They do not investigate.
Go to Interpol.int and read up a bit. They do more than coordinate agencies. My previous question was rhetorical - they actually do all of those things.
>>Can INTERPOL agents now violate due process or other Constitutional protections within the United States with impunity, is a big fucking NO because any such action would not be an official act and thus not protected.
You're confusing legal-under-American-law acts and acts-done-as-part-of-their-job acts, which may or may not be the same thing.
If you think about all the espionage that has gone on under the umbrella of diplomatic immunity, you'll see where your error lies.
>>If you want to tune it further, try changing your performance settings to "Optimize for best performance" or whatever the equivalent is in Windows 7. It'll look a bit worse, but it may improve performance a little.
Actually, you'll get a big gain in perceived performance. And perceived performance is performance, is it not? When you disable menus sliding in and out, which is one of the so-called optimizations "best performance" turns on, your menus will appear much quicker than before. If you really feel l33t, you edit the registry to reduce the menu appear delay, and your parents will be amazed at how much "faster" their computer is.
Aside from a clean install, disabling Aero and reducing to a minimum the number of things that happen at startup is about as optimized as a Windows machine gets. I think Trillian reduces my reboot time (Firefox closing to Google coming up) by almost 30s.
>>Either you don't understand the difference between "immune to prosecution" and "immune to prosecution for official acts"
There's three categories people can fall into: Immune to Prosecution Immune to Prosecution for Official Acts Not Immune
They have the middle category, just like consular officials.
>>Now if I were an employee of INTERPOL, I would be prosecutable under U.S. and local law. As in NOT full immunity.
By full immunity, I meant they have attained some form of immunity in all six categories of diplomatic immunity. They didn't have all of them before. If you'd like me to have said in the summary that they now have "the same kind of diplomatic immunity consular officials at embassies have", well, you're certainly justified in saying so.
>>And you know what INTERPOL's official business is in the U.S.? Handing information provided by other nations' police forces over to U.S. police forces. That's it.
Huh, I guess they don't maintained databases of criminals, child abusers, ensure secure communications between police agencies, help track down fugitives, assume crisis management of developing situations, or police training.
Do you even know what you're talking about, or do you just parrot what you read in other comments?
>>This summary is flat out WRONG. It's phrased to start a flamewar. Click the news link, and see what it says
I'm the submitter, and I'd recommend not clicking on the news link. Not only is it wrong, but the Slashdot editors added it in to my submission, which just had a link to the Executive Order and to the UN Parking Ticket Scandal.
>>FOIA might be affected, but they are not immune to crimes.
Incorrect. They are immune (technically, they were already immune - this extends their immunities further). ABCNews is further wrong when it says INTERPOL does not have full diplomatic immunity. If you look at all the categories of possible immunities here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_immunity#Diplomatic_immunity_in_the_United_States, INTERPOL agents (and their families to a certain extent) have them all now. There's more kinds of diplomatic immunity than the immunities diplomats have.
They're immune to search, seizure, suit, legal proceedings, taxes, and their families too. Just what I want from a law enforcement agency, eh?
Which they added to my submission. I just linked to the actual executive order, and to a story about UN parking tickets. The inclusion of the ABC News story was standard Slashdot editor brilliance. Especially since it's wrong.
>>"diplomatic agent shall enjoy immunity from the criminal jurisdiction of the receiving State." That is NOT what the International Organizations Immunities Act is.
In actuality, INTERPOL employees now have full diplomatic immunity when operating in an official capacity on American soil, and are immune to suit and legal proceedings for anything they do as part of their job.
Slashdot Mirror
>>There's also the issue that things just keep speeding up over time. For example, the Copenhagen's (failed) *goal* was to limit average global temperature rise to "only" 2 degrees celsius. Well, that'd mean "only" about 1 meter of sea level rise over the next hundred years.
Uh, no. In climate science, the general consensus is that we need to keep temperature gain below 2 degrees C. The IPCC estimates even with the high end (5 to 6 degree rise) still less than a .7m rise by 2100.
I'm not sure what source you're using for your 2 degrees -> 1 meter gain idea. Did the lack of temporal data in An Inconvenient Truth confuse you?
>>There is nothing in that article that suggests atheists were responsible for the destruction of the Church in France. You just pulled that out of thin air. In fact very few people considered themselves atheists at that time.
History fail. The French Revolution is actually considered the time in which atheism first became vogue in Europe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism#Early_modern_period
Will you admit you're wrong?
>>Can I just point out that the "Full diplomatic immunity" you're so upset about (if it's true, which I'm not sure it really is), would be the same full diplomatic immunity given to Soviet officials at the height of the cold war, and to Iranian and Syrian officials today. If you can give it to your enemy, then you can give it to your friend.
Indeed. Except we didn't allow the Soviet Union to be part of our law enforcement efforts. That's what the issue is here.
Nobody cares that the International Trout Commission has diplomatic immunity, because they're not going to be part of anything that really matters.
>>I mean you keep saying complete non-sequiturs.
You have been saying all they do is coordinate police agencies with each other. This is factually inaccurate, so I pointed it out.
My lord, I'm not saying they're part of some dark conspiracy. I just think that transparency is essential in all levels of law enforcement. If you disagree with me on that, fine.
There's different kinds of diplomatic immunity, and different categories of it. They have all the immunities of consulate officials, but not ambassadors. The only real difference with ambassadors is they can run over someone in a car, and be immune unless their country revokes the immunity. Since countries have done that in the past, there's no de facto difference.
>>But your not alone, most people from the extremes of politics have a hard time understanding the world because of similarly poor comprehension skills.
Right, because coordinating police activity and maintaining databases is entirely the same thing. :p
Hmm, I'm a political extremist, eh? I voted for Arnold for governor, Bob Barr for president, and a local Democrat for city mayor.
Ah well, I'm sure that unfounded supposition is working out great for you.
>>The inescapable conclusion is that yes, he's doing it on purpose. The whole submission is a finely crafted troll. Gotta hand it to him -- it worked.
This from a guy who thought that Interpol's immunity to search and seizure meant they could search and seize anything they wanted?
Funny.
>>I felt it was pretty obvious that my point was that people should make up their own damn minds after reading multiple sources of information, including primary sources.
And my point was that if you're going to add in secondary sources, the editors should at least make sure they're not, you know, wrong.
>>After just a quick glance, that ABC article offers links to twelve primary sources. So I hate to break it to you, but that article wins the battle of primary sources.
Holy hell! 12! Obviously a hyperlink to the trout commission lets them win the battle.
I hate to break it to you, but the three references I gave you are the entire bit of law in question.
>>Apology not accepted.
Well, then fuck off then.
I mean, seriously. I admit when I'm wrong, unlike all the political hacks on here. The net statement was entirely correct that they now have all the diplomatic immunities.
>>So I guess it just boils down to Interpol not paying taxes that you're so pissed off about.
No, like I said, I'm concerned with transparency in law enforcement.
>>The courts, legislature, and president can still order seizure of files.
And no, they can't. That's the entire point of what was just ordered - their files are now inviolate.
If you're going to split hairs, you should damn well better make sure you're not wrong on your own points.
There's a difference between putting policeman A in contact with policeman B, and providing policeman A with data from a privately held database. That's my point, and the point that the other poster is apparently too dense to understand. They do more than just "coordination".
You can read up on it at Interpol's web site, or read a brief here:
http://www.interpol.int/Public/ICPO/FactSheets/GI01.pdf
They hold international crime databases, among other things. If you'd actually read up on it, there's a whole list of things they do, including training, crisis response, secure international police communications, etc.
Why is this problematic? Let's say, for example, you're wrongly added to a list of international child molesters, and when you get to Thailand, they arrest you. You ask to see the database that holds your name. Right here, I'd imagine there would normally be no problem. But if they decide to pull a Bush (see - I'm nonpartisan) and say that everything is a secret, there is shit-all you can do, since the database is inviolate, and courts cannot compel a search or seizure, or even subpoena their staff members.
Also, the bit about secure communications is of interest to me, since it was a big part of what Sam Knott was all about later in his life. Again, transparency is a good thing here.
>>Paranoid much?
Not really, but a little bit is justified.
I was a friend of Sam Knott (http://www.10news.com/news/188963/detail.html) - he asked me to do the website for his foundation. So I think a little bit is fair.
Mainly, I'm more concerned about what government agencies, and law enforcements agencies in particular can do (and do more often) when they are shielded from scrutiny.
>>I'm saying that they cannot possibly have immunity from the provision of unreasonable search and seizure, because search and seizure is not one of their official capacities
Oh, I see why you're so confused. You have it exactly backwards.
INTERPOL is now immune from having their files searched. It has nothing to with INTERPOL gaining immunity from them searching other peoples' files.
The post wasn't actually supposed to be anti-Obama, and I apologize that it came off that way. I'm more concerned about the lack of transparency in law enforcement agencies.
It should have read that INTERPOL now has all the categories of diplomatic immunity, when they were previously still subject to search and seizure of files, and paying taxes.
Yeah, I always hate it when people add links that put things into context and provide more information. Why can't they just post the little snippets that I misinterpret to fit my preconceived notions? Everybody knows that trying to listen to both sides of an argument and decide for yourself is just stupid.
Yeah, how dare a person post primary sources to things?
It's much better to instead edit the summary and add an analysis of it that is completely at odds with reality, so that it makes the OP look like he's suffering from multiple personality disorder.
Yeah, there's a lot of amusement to be had in the situation. =)
>>The only "office" they "have" in the US is those of the employees of the DOJ that have been charged with coordinating with Interpol. They do not belong to Interpol, they are employed by the DOJ, just like my accountant and his file cabinets do not belong to the tax administration even though he files my taxes.
First off, any INTERPOL employees have the immunity, which is separate from the issue of their offices in America.
Second, any files in a liaison office that "belong to" INTERPOL are now inviolate, and not subject to search. That's kind of the interesting thing going on here.
Using your analogy, your files don't belong to the IRS, but the IRS' copy of your taxes do. And now the "IRS" is shielded from scrutiny.
You say "They provide access to databases and expert advice, they assist communication between law enforcement agencies. They make information obtained by other organizations investigations available."
Which is contradicted by your first statement is "INTERPOL's official business in the U.S. is one of information coordinator between the police forces of various nations, NOT anything related to actual investigation or law enforcement."
So do they provide information to actual investigations or not?
I find it amusing you're so eager to split hairs on what "full" diplomatic immunity means when you can't even put together a non-contradictory statement about what they actually do.
>>So you're calling partial immunity in six categories full immunity.
They have the same immunities as a consulate official, so yeah. The only thing they can't do is get drunk and run over people late at night, but even diplomats have had their immunity revoked for that. So... yes.
They're immune to search, seizure, suit, legal proceedings, taxes, and the immunities extend to their family. That's pretty gold plated. If you'd like to tag some of that with "while doing official stuff", go right ahead. I'll still have hair left after you split them.
>>That is nothing like "full diplomatic immunity", which is immunity from all prosecution.
Diplomatic immunity is more than just immunity from prosecution. There's six categories that it covers, which INTERPOL employees now qualify for (at the same level of consulate employees). That's why I called it full diplomatic immunity - they didn't have all six categories before.
This is the law: "...[E]mployees of such organizations shall be immune from suit and legal process relating to acts performed by them in their official capacity and falling within their functions as such representatives, officers, or employees except insofar as such immunity may be waived by the foreign government or international organization concerned."
And: "Property and assets of international organizations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, unless such immunity be expressly waived, and from confiscation. The archives of international organizations shall be inviolable."
So they are immune for anything they do in their official capacity, and they are immune to search and seizure of their files to see if they did anything wrong.
Given the not so stellar record of other international police agencies, transparency is my ideal for any extra national law enforcement employees operating on our soil.
>>INTERPOL's official business in the U.S. is one of information coordinator between the police forces of various nations, NOT anything related to actual investigation or law enforcement. They do not arrest. They do not investigate.
Go to Interpol.int and read up a bit. They do more than coordinate agencies. My previous question was rhetorical - they actually do all of those things.
>>Can INTERPOL agents now violate due process or other Constitutional protections within the United States with impunity, is a big fucking NO because any such action would not be an official act and thus not protected.
You're confusing legal-under-American-law acts and acts-done-as-part-of-their-job acts, which may or may not be the same thing.
If you think about all the espionage that has gone on under the umbrella of diplomatic immunity, you'll see where your error lies.
>>If you want to tune it further, try changing your performance settings to "Optimize for best performance" or whatever the equivalent is in Windows 7. It'll look a bit worse, but it may improve performance a little.
Actually, you'll get a big gain in perceived performance. And perceived performance is performance, is it not? When you disable menus sliding in and out, which is one of the so-called optimizations "best performance" turns on, your menus will appear much quicker than before. If you really feel l33t, you edit the registry to reduce the menu appear delay, and your parents will be amazed at how much "faster" their computer is.
Aside from a clean install, disabling Aero and reducing to a minimum the number of things that happen at startup is about as optimized as a Windows machine gets. I think Trillian reduces my reboot time (Firefox closing to Google coming up) by almost 30s.
>>Either you don't understand the difference between "immune to prosecution" and "immune to prosecution for official acts"
There's three categories people can fall into:
Immune to Prosecution
Immune to Prosecution for Official Acts
Not Immune
They have the middle category, just like consular officials.
>>Now if I were an employee of INTERPOL, I would be prosecutable under U.S. and local law. As in NOT full immunity.
By full immunity, I meant they have attained some form of immunity in all six categories of diplomatic immunity. They didn't have all of them before. If you'd like me to have said in the summary that they now have "the same kind of diplomatic immunity consular officials at embassies have", well, you're certainly justified in saying so.
>>And you know what INTERPOL's official business is in the U.S.? Handing information provided by other nations' police forces over to U.S. police forces. That's it.
Huh, I guess they don't maintained databases of criminals, child abusers, ensure secure communications between police agencies, help track down fugitives, assume crisis management of developing situations, or police training.
Do you even know what you're talking about, or do you just parrot what you read in other comments?
>>This summary is flat out WRONG. It's phrased to start a flamewar. Click the news link, and see what it says
I'm the submitter, and I'd recommend not clicking on the news link. Not only is it wrong, but the Slashdot editors added it in to my submission, which just had a link to the Executive Order and to the UN Parking Ticket Scandal.
>>FOIA might be affected, but they are not immune to crimes.
Incorrect. They are immune (technically, they were already immune - this extends their immunities further). ABCNews is further wrong when it says INTERPOL does not have full diplomatic immunity. If you look at all the categories of possible immunities here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_immunity#Diplomatic_immunity_in_the_United_States, INTERPOL agents (and their families to a certain extent) have them all now. There's more kinds of diplomatic immunity than the immunities diplomats have.
They're immune to search, seizure, suit, legal proceedings, taxes, and their families too. Just what I want from a law enforcement agency, eh?
If you don't believe me, read the law yourself. All the source is here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/executive-order-amending-executive-order-12425
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_12425
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/International_Organizations_Immunities_Act
>>The actual article says:
Which they added to my submission. I just linked to the actual executive order, and to a story about UN parking tickets. The inclusion of the ABC News story was standard Slashdot editor brilliance. Especially since it's wrong.
>>"diplomatic agent shall enjoy immunity from the criminal jurisdiction of the receiving State." That is NOT what the International Organizations Immunities Act is.
In actuality, INTERPOL employees now have full diplomatic immunity when operating in an official capacity on American soil, and are immune to suit and legal proceedings for anything they do as part of their job.
So ABCNews is wrong, not me.
Don't believe me? Read section 7:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/International_Organizations_Immunities_Act#Sec._7.