In the early days (first 30 years) of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover made heavy use of his "special investigators" to gather dirt on members of congress, the President, and probably parts of the judiciary. This blackmail material was carefully saved for use to protect both himself and advance his power. He also used this against other such noteable figures as Martin Luther King whom he blackmailed with secretly recorded audio of his marital infidelity. Ironically some people regard this as King's fault not Hoover's. It also set the precedent for branches of the government spying on one-another.
The simple fact of the matter is that once you give someone the ability to spy on you they will use it, for themselves. This story and the one two posts down about the NSA make perfect sense. The best way to keep yourself and your party on top is to have all the information, all the secrets that you can about your opponents. That way anyone who might challenge your power could be cowed by threats to expose their, or their childrens' embarrassing secrets.
Quite some time ago Gonzales announced that the Justice Department would begin extensive investigations into the world of Pornography, legal pornography. He candidly admitted that they were not breaking the law nor did he expect to find that Playboy was in violation of some statute. He only said that he wanted to keep track of 'them'.
Forget finding criminals, the Mafia isn't real. It's all always about power. You think Bin Laden and Mullah Muhammed Omar are dumb enough to be googling "Bomb" no they're using trusted couriers and decentralized structures that don't rely on the use of easily traced e-mails. It's all of us and our elected representatives who are the target here.
Is it really NASA as a whole. Keep in mind that until a year or so ago a single Bush-appointed kid was responsible for censoring all of NASA's press releases about basic science. The kid in question had no college degree, no background in science, and his sole qualification appeared to be having been head of the Texas young republicans at his school. This despite opposition from most of NASA.
Not to sound like some NASA apologist or something but in my experience with large institutions many of the things done "by NASA" or some other group are often the work of one or a few key individuals and many times may run counter to the very goals of the institution and most people involved in it. It wouldn't surprise me if the political appointee that replaced the kid is doing this.
So the claim will probably be something along the lines of this:
License fees per radio station are assessed on a per-listener basis.
Listener counts are assessed based on the number of radios and the assumption of one listener per radio.
OMFG! Sound travels and unless you use those headphone things other people could hear it ergo all assumptions are off.
Note that the basic logic is not entirely off. In that, snarkiness aside, each premise does follow from the others. The hard part for them to claim is that this magic property of sound to travel from speakers to more than one pair of ears is novel and, in some way, something that they were not previously aware of.
"The team suggests that such a camera mounted on an aircraft could provide images of a large city by itself. This would even allow individual vehicles to be monitored without any danger of losing them as they move from one ground level CCTV system to another.'"
True it seems that this, if successful could be used that way and, if it all works as they promise would allow for that kind of monitoring (barring tunnels bridges, garages, etc. What I find interesting is that none of them are asking if the should do this or whether we would be better off if they do. Absent from any sort of new surveillance tech reporting is the question of whether such tech is needed or will help if it is used. You know, the kind of questions that reporters should be asking.
But then again this article reads like a standard press job where a press release is sent by a vendor to the press, they (sometimes) call up the contact name, and then print the release in full with no backgound or other assessment. It is a basic way of filling a publication without ever leaving the office or reporing hard stuff. It is also, all too common these days, especially in the print media.
"Ultimately I think what this software might be able to do is simply recognize suspicious behavior and alert our operations people and, at times, our crime detections specialists as to what it sees."
And:
The software could recognize a package that had been left in a public park or a car parked where no car is supposed to be, Smith said.
So at present it probably does nothing at all. But with questions being raised in other places about the usefulness of CCTV. They have to do something to protect this decision of theirs.
The same thing has been occurring with electronic voting machines. Once the politicians sank money into them they cannot admit that they are anything but perfect because they own the decision. They feel that an admission of bad judgment on the part of any member of their party let alone themselves will be disastrous. Ergo they'll push millions into untested additions to because the vendors promise that it will pull their asses out of the fire.
You aren't the first one to make that comment. Bill Mauldin the World War II cartoonist commented about the "efficient dime-store salesmen" who sold all the crap to the army that the grunts were supposed to lug around, crap that the grunts often shed as they walked simply because there was too much to carry and walk let alone fight.
One of his cartoons depicts two grunts walking down a road littered with discarded gas masks with one saying to the other "I see that C company got the new type gas masks."
He noted that the Brits were much leaner in part because they issued less and in part because they punished company CO's for "waste".
It's always been easy to agree to an extra 6 ounces of gear while sitting at a desk eating lunch. Carrying it and the other 50 6 ounces, now that's a bitch.
Can anyone not in the field explain what these are to the general public.
So as the author notes details are everything. And, at the same time, details such as assumptions mean the difference between science and bunk. I think that a good, scientifically trained, journalist could point these out if they were looking for them but whether that is what their bosses will let them do is another thing.
I have interacted with a number of journalists and have noted that, for many of them, there are two things that they need to do a good story: time to do research and an absence of biased assumptions. Ironically these are the same basic requirements to do good science. Even more ironically both are often denied them under pressure of tight deadlines and preexisting editorial biases. Not "liberal" or "conservative" biases but more the, if the elected officials say it it must be true or "there must be two equaly sides to every story" which trips up those comparing science to pseudoscience. Such gaps negatively affect reporting on all issues from science to war.
In many ways I think the question is really, can journalists do good journalism, and that is something I used to believe was true. Now, I'm not so sure.
Do you think they would admit if they didn't need it. No. When one of the tools they like works they flog it. In the cases where it isn't used they don't mention it at all because it isn't good PR for their worldview.
A rational assessment of the impact of this kind of law is not based upon headlines which are largely spin but a real accounting of the number of times such data has been requested and the number of times it has been instrumental in convictions.
Keep in mind that they claimed success in breaking up a huge terrorist plot to plant dirty bombs which "proved the need for the PATRIOT act" with Jose Padija and a few years later ultimately convicted him of conspracy to hel Al Queda overseas (no dirty bomb involved).
Most of the "War on Terrer" has been conducted and discussed without a rational accounting of the data. For example Bush and Cheney repeatedly insisted that Guantanamo Bay, the Secret Prisons, and the NSA Wiretapping were all instrumental in securing the nation. As proof they cited the lack of attacks. Opponents (including those in the CIA) cited the risks of such strategies and their illegality. In all three cases the actual relevant details (e.g. number of prisoners caught, interrorgated, number of phones tapped, amount of data identified, arrests made, oversight process (none) etc.) have all been kept secret from everyone else panopticon-style.
As such the argument quickly devolves to "Trust us if you knew what we knew you'd endorse it too but we can't tell you." and "We can;'t review it or check it for acceptability so we cannot accept it."
Personally, as a lover of Democracy I support the latter.
With this case, I'll wait until there's some convictions and some hard data before swallowing this argument. Mike McConnell saying his favorite toy was useful doesn't count.
This is essentially how most if not all censorship or group filtration has been accomplished. Noteably the National Legion of Decency used this method to review and filter movies for their participants with a selected subset of their members (usually the priests) viewing films and then delivering a content rating to their remaining members via the pulpit often along the lines of "You'll go to hell if you see Mae West!" This became the basis of the existing MPAA ratings which use a selected set of individuals to rate a film for others and in some cases (e.g. X ratings) censor it from widespread public view.
This is also how other churches have censored things for years, how school boards go about banning books, how large political organizations censor materials, etc.
Basically Microsoft is trying to patent censorship as it has been practiced for centuries.
How exactly do you cite the Spanish Inquisition as prior art?
By "shutting it down" do they mean that they will simply stop adding new data to it? Or stop using it? Or will they locate every copy of every bit related to them and erase them? This would include all bits stored in backup tapes, offsite, etc.
In any case what happens to the data? Will this be magically "forgotten" Will all records that came from the database and got copied to other departments (e.g. FBI files) be deleted as well?
That's the trouble with data collection. Once it is collected it may never disappear.
Actually this administration has said that the Judicial branch as a whole is an obstacle. They have sought to circumvent every level of the court system and complained about them publicly. Keep in mind that Federal Judges rotate through the FISA court on fixed terms there are no judges who are "just FISA". What this suggests is that many federal judges are pissed at being called at best irrelevant or at worst Anti-American. One would hope that Congress also discovers a spine at some point.
The quote from the scientists in the article are along the lines of:
"TrES-4 appears to be something of a theoretical problem," said study team member Edward Dunham, also of the Lowell Observatory. "Problems are good, though, since we learn new things by solving them."
While the title is "Scientists Puzzled" and emphasizes the lack of knowledge.
Why is it that the obsession is with confusion rather than learning. At a time when many people are turning to stupidities like Intelligent Design because it claims to have "answers" perhaps some of the blame can be put on horrible reporting which seems unable to distinguish between finding new info and being "confused" "lost" or "puzzled".
This is one of those "boiling frog" issues that isn't very sexy or photogenic, one of the issues that many people will ignore but that sets a very very dangerous precedent. Yes the plates are state issued and yes they are intended to be viewable but the practice of indefinitely logging the plates of innocent people, just because, is wrong and must be stopped now. If allowed to run the precedent will be set for tracking credit card purchase federally, tagging and logging your presence in all public places and more.
Yes they caught 111 felons but that could be done without logging the innocent people.
I see this as another instance of IT vendors riding over the rights of citizens in their endless goal to make a buck.
While I agree with your feelings on the oversimplified summary I question whether the Casino's loss of $500,000 matters. As a rule the systems are setup in gambling so that the Casino has an expected payoff. That is, the balance is deliberately tilted towards the operators. When the Casino loses money due to their own negligence (installing broken systems is negligent) then I find it immaterial whether they lost more or less money. I also find the idea that they should be deserving of sympathy immaterial.
Think about it this way. In a bookstore or grocery the company is negligent if they put the wrong price on something and then let it be sold as such. However obtaining items under such situations do not result in criminal prosecutions. All that a Casino gives is the chance to win more than you pay, albeit a carefully rigged chance that is not in your favor. In this case they screwed up and gave too much of a chance. The fault here should lie with the Casino not the players. It was internal negligence not external. Proving a crime on the players' part seems a little odd of an interpretation to me.
Except that this isn't a law. This is an Executive order granting powers to a set of executive offices. In a recent decision the Supreme Court argued that the public cannot challenge internal executive actions (such as this one claims to be) through the courts, effectively nullifying any judicial oversight. The case in question dealt with meetings being held with religious figures but the reasoning was similar and likely the same arguments would be advanced again.
But, ironically what this order attacks is the very foundation for such a lawsuit. If, in the executive's opinion your Constitutional rights are ineffective and therefore unnecessary on what grounds do you sue? If the grounds are violations of your rights then you have to ask Bush's Supreme Court to counter his own executive order. Such an action would be interesting to say the least, and unlikely to go forward.
Moreover such an action would likely have to occur after the fact, i.e. after said property was seized. But lacking all property it would be difficult to mount a challenge, especially if said seizure was kept as secret as other similar actions (i.e. library records seizures) have been. As such the damage, or some of it, may already be done.
As with Congress, well again this isn't a law (The president can't make that) but supposedly an internal executive thing. Yet it is being treated by them as if it is a law and a vehicle by which the President can make laws. Congress, however has other means to affect the departments involved and so can put pressure on the executive. They can also strip the departments in question of funding for such activities. They could also grow a spine and reassert their role as overseers and guardians of the Constitution.
The catch is that, as I said this is an Executive Order, but an Executive order that carries the force of law and declares some laws (i.e. The Constitution) to be invalid or "ineffective" and therefore unnecessary. Constitutionally the President cannot make laws. However it seems through Executive Orders he is seeking to do so practically and what he is going after is the very basis of that, the Constitution itself and the limits that is places on his, and the Federal Government's behavior.
The bottom line is that this is policy, bad policy, and the way in which you stop bad policy before damage is done is via public pressure. Congress, the Newspapers, others are in a position to apply said pressure along with the public. Better to stop it now before bad things happen than, like the PATRIOT act, let it get in place and wake up to find out where we are.
While it may be nice to sit back and feel self-satisfied that you didn't vote for him and don't like him (how nice for you that your vote matches your mood) those of us who inhabit the real world know that, even in a democracy, decisions get made between elections and the pressure must be brought to bear on those decisions at all times, not just the five seconds you may have spent in the booth searching for a clue.
Moreover the very basis of our government rests on the foundation of the Constitution. It enshrines not just our rights but our very legal processes, including elections. The President is sworn to "uphold and defend" the constitution and, under law cannot simply ignore it as he sees fit.
If, however he is allowed to "turn off" parts of the Constitution that get in the way of his actions being "effective" then everything goes, everything. If for example he decides that the section dealing with presidential elections (the one mandating that his term of office actually expire) gets in the way of "effectively combating terrorism" then he could just blow it off. Ditto for Judicial and Congressional oversight of any sort. Ditto for the Freedoms of speech, Religion, and the right to keep and bear arms. In short, this precedent would be the first step down a slippery slope to dictatorship.
And on the subject of your innocence. If you are a U.S. Citizen then it isn't enough to sit back and say "I didn't vote for him". Lest we forget we still pay him, we still pay for him and for his policies. We still back them with our dollars and our lives. That means we must pay attention. This self-satisfied laziness of yours isn't democratic, its pathetic.
Below is a sample letter to your House Rep and Senators. Feel free to take it, rewrite it as desired and to send it in. Also try to keep it concise. They like short letters. When sending it the best way is to actually fax it to their D.C. offices (you will need to call for the fax number probably) or so mail it to one of the local regional offices for forwarding. Mail sent directly to D.C. is first sent out to Maryland to be irradiated and usually arrives several weeks late.
Sample Letter: Dear (Congressman|Senator) X.
I am writing to you today regarding A recent Executive Order signed on the 17th by President Bush. Said order entitled: "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq" represents a blatant violation of the rule of law. And an assault on our Constitution.
Section 5 of the order states:
Sec. 5. For those persons whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order who might have a constitutional presence in the United States, I find that, because of the ability to transfer funds or other assets instantaneously, prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render these measures ineffectual. I therefore determine that for these measures to be effective in addressing the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, there need be no prior notice of a listing or determination made pursuant to section 1(a) of this order.
That is, in the President's determination alone it would be too hard or too slow to actually follow due process. Therefore he has determined that it is unnecessary to follow constitutional law.
This is a very very dangerous precedent. If accepted it would allow any President to simply turn off or ignore selected portions of the Constitution if, in their opinion alone, it is necessary. No oversight from Congress, No Judicial review, nothing. In this case the President himself declared a state of emergency and now is selectively eliminating portions of the Constitution because of that Emergency. Congress you'll note, was not consulted, neither was the Judiciary. Most importantly, neither were the American People.
While the President states that this is only intended for Terrorists, that is not a long-term guarantee. We have already seen PATRIOT act powers used in Tax cases that have nothing to do with terrorism and this order, if accepted would pave the way for many more of its kind. If, for example the IRS found seizure of property too difficult via the courts then they could argue, along the lines of this order that in order for them to be 'effective' they need to proactively seize the belongings of accused violators.
This Order cannot be allowed to stand. It violates the basic structures set forth in the Constitution, a document that both you and the President are sworn to uphold and defend. I refuse to sacrifice our own rule of law, our own basic structures for the sake of "effectiveness".
We cannot allow the Constitution of the United States to simply be declared "Ineffective" and tossed out with the trash.
Sec. 5. For those persons whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order who might have a constitutional presence in the United States, I find that, because of the ability to transfer funds or other assets
instantaneously, prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render these measures ineffectual. I therefore determine that for these measures to be effective in addressing the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, there need be no prior notice of a listing or determination made pursuant to section 1(a) of this order.
In this section the President specifically states that he is aware that the U.S. Citizens affected by this may have Constitutional rights that this order violates. However, because of the ongoing (6+ years now) "National Emergency" said rights are nullified in the interests of efficiency.
So basically what he's doing is selectivly removing consitutional rights by executive order because the present circumstances, in his opinion alone, demand it.
He's explicitly and clearly attacking our rights because he says that he feels its necessary, no oversight, no checks, no balances, nothing.
If this is accepted it means that any president at any time can strip legal rights from U.S. Citizens, even if those rights are literally embedded in the Constitution just because he wants to. This means that the rule of law, the rule of the Constitution, is null and void.
And in this part:
Sec. 6. The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, is hereby authorized to take such actions, including the promulgation of rules and regulations, and to employ all powers granted to the President by IEEPA as may be necessary to carry out the purposes of this order. The Secretary of the Treasury may redelegate any of these functions to other officers and agencies of the United States Government, consistent with applicable law. All agencies of the United States Government are hereby directed to take all appropriate measures within their authority to carry out the provisions of this order and, where appropriate, to advise the Secretary of the Treasury in a timely manner of the measures taken.
They explicitly grant themselves the right to expand this power to anyone else they wish to. That is, the proactive seizure could be handed over to the DEA, the IRS, the ATF, etc if they feel necessary. No future executive order, no public record, will be necessary. Anyone up for proactive seizure of property because you may have cheated on your taxes? Keep in mind that the no fly list includes a large number of people who have committed the crime of having the same or similar sounding names as 'bad' people and no mechanism exists to get them removed from the list. How'd you like to have your house and money taken because you look kind of like a bad person only to have no means of picking back up because that's someone else's department?
Send it to your local radio station, especially any drive-time station.
And forward this to your local TV station, and national stations.
Write clear and concise e-mails about how bad this is to your friends and family urging them to do the same.
In all cases make it clear why you oppose this and why it is fundamentally wrong. It isn't a guarantee that they will rethink it but unless this stuff is exposed, discussed, and ultimately attacked then nothing will happen. And it won't be unless we spread this off/..
Think the feds are THAT stupid? Even if, do you think their lobbyists will allow them to?
Yes. Lest we forget the Clipper Chip proposal had a good run and was close, very close to passing. With high-level bipartisan support and institutional (read FBI) backing. Despite all claims of having "learned their lesson" you see rules of this type being continually proposed (check earlier drafts of PATRIOT like legislation) and you see people like Gonzales and before him, Ashcroft still talking about it.
As long as the first question CNN and Fox news can think to ask the inventor of PGP is "Do you feel guilty about enabling terrorists?" then this kind of stuff will be around, and all it may take is another Patriot-like fear-run to bring it in.
Look, encrypted or not the RFID chips simply send out a unique signal. A signal that, once trapped, can be recoreded and reused. For the true "contactless" payment systems this contact is the only one. Unless the number changes in response to some handshake (something that isn't being done in the present generation of Contactless systems) then possession of the key is the only security and, in absence of a signature or indefinitely stored security cameras, the only record of the card's use.
Lacking the independent verification this is begging for an attack.
Technology isn't about what is useful, it's about what is cool. So warning that the offce burnt down is pointless. A reminder of Fire Extinguisher Day, that's hip.
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In the early days (first 30 years) of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover made heavy use of his "special investigators" to gather dirt on members of congress, the President, and probably parts of the judiciary. This blackmail material was carefully saved for use to protect both himself and advance his power. He also used this against other such noteable figures as Martin Luther King whom he blackmailed with secretly recorded audio of his marital infidelity. Ironically some people regard this as King's fault not Hoover's. It also set the precedent for branches of the government spying on one-another.
The simple fact of the matter is that once you give someone the ability to spy on you they will use it, for themselves. This story and the one two posts down about the NSA make perfect sense. The best way to keep yourself and your party on top is to have all the information, all the secrets that you can about your opponents. That way anyone who might challenge your power could be cowed by threats to expose their, or their childrens' embarrassing secrets.
Quite some time ago Gonzales announced that the Justice Department would begin extensive investigations into the world of Pornography, legal pornography. He candidly admitted that they were not breaking the law nor did he expect to find that Playboy was in violation of some statute. He only said that he wanted to keep track of 'them'.
Forget finding criminals, the Mafia isn't real. It's all always about power. You think Bin Laden and Mullah Muhammed Omar are dumb enough to be googling "Bomb" no they're using trusted couriers and decentralized structures that don't rely on the use of easily traced e-mails. It's all of us and our elected representatives who are the target here.
George Deutch is his name, here is a brief comment on his resignation.
Is it really NASA as a whole. Keep in mind that until a year or so ago a single Bush-appointed kid was responsible for censoring all of NASA's press releases about basic science. The kid in question had no college degree, no background in science, and his sole qualification appeared to be having been head of the Texas young republicans at his school. This despite opposition from most of NASA.
Not to sound like some NASA apologist or something but in my experience with large institutions many of the things done "by NASA" or some other group are often the work of one or a few key individuals and many times may run counter to the very goals of the institution and most people involved in it. It wouldn't surprise me if the political appointee that replaced the kid is doing this.
Why why would registering with any party or voting for someone who claims an interest in freedom but favors social controls matter?
That's where listener data gathered through focus groups and radio surveys comes in.
Note that the basic logic is not entirely off. In that, snarkiness aside, each premise does follow from the others. The hard part for them to claim is that this magic property of sound to travel from speakers to more than one pair of ears is novel and, in some way, something that they were not previously aware of.
True it seems that this, if successful could be used that way and, if it all works as they promise would allow for that kind of monitoring (barring tunnels bridges, garages, etc. What I find interesting is that none of them are asking if the should do this or whether we would be better off if they do. Absent from any sort of new surveillance tech reporting is the question of whether such tech is needed or will help if it is used. You know, the kind of questions that reporters should be asking.
But then again this article reads like a standard press job where a press release is sent by a vendor to the press, they (sometimes) call up the contact name, and then print the release in full with no backgound or other assessment. It is a basic way of filling a publication without ever leaving the office or reporing hard stuff. It is also, all too common these days, especially in the print media.
Oh Upton Sinclair, where have you gone?
And:
So at present it probably does nothing at all. But with questions being raised in other places about the usefulness of CCTV. They have to do something to protect this decision of theirs.
The same thing has been occurring with electronic voting machines. Once the politicians sank money into them they cannot admit that they are anything but perfect because they own the decision. They feel that an admission of bad judgment on the part of any member of their party let alone themselves will be disastrous. Ergo they'll push millions into untested additions to because the vendors promise that it will pull their asses out of the fire.
This camera thing is no different.
You aren't the first one to make that comment. Bill Mauldin the World War II cartoonist commented about the "efficient dime-store salesmen" who sold all the crap to the army that the grunts were supposed to lug around, crap that the grunts often shed as they walked simply because there was too much to carry and walk let alone fight.
One of his cartoons depicts two grunts walking down a road littered with discarded gas masks with one saying to the other "I see that C company got the new type gas masks."
He noted that the Brits were much leaner in part because they issued less and in part because they punished company CO's for "waste".
It's always been easy to agree to an extra 6 ounces of gear while sitting at a desk eating lunch. Carrying it and the other 50 6 ounces, now that's a bitch.
Can anyone not in the field explain what these are to the general public.
So as the author notes details are everything. And, at the same time, details such as assumptions mean the difference between science and bunk. I think that a good, scientifically trained, journalist could point these out if they were looking for them but whether that is what their bosses will let them do is another thing.
I have interacted with a number of journalists and have noted that, for many of them, there are two things that they need to do a good story: time to do research and an absence of biased assumptions. Ironically these are the same basic requirements to do good science. Even more ironically both are often denied them under pressure of tight deadlines and preexisting editorial biases. Not "liberal" or "conservative" biases but more the, if the elected officials say it it must be true or "there must be two equaly sides to every story" which trips up those comparing science to pseudoscience. Such gaps negatively affect reporting on all issues from science to war.
In many ways I think the question is really, can journalists do good journalism, and that is something I used to believe was true. Now, I'm not so sure.
Amen.
Do you think they would admit if they didn't need it. No. When one of the tools they like works they flog it. In the cases where it isn't used they don't mention it at all because it isn't good PR for their worldview.
A rational assessment of the impact of this kind of law is not based upon headlines which are largely spin but a real accounting of the number of times such data has been requested and the number of times it has been instrumental in convictions.
Keep in mind that they claimed success in breaking up a huge terrorist plot to plant dirty bombs which "proved the need for the PATRIOT act" with Jose Padija and a few years later ultimately convicted him of conspracy to hel Al Queda overseas (no dirty bomb involved).
Most of the "War on Terrer" has been conducted and discussed without a rational accounting of the data. For example Bush and Cheney repeatedly insisted that Guantanamo Bay, the Secret Prisons, and the NSA Wiretapping were all instrumental in securing the nation. As proof they cited the lack of attacks. Opponents (including those in the CIA) cited the risks of such strategies and their illegality. In all three cases the actual relevant details (e.g. number of prisoners caught, interrorgated, number of phones tapped, amount of data identified, arrests made, oversight process (none) etc.) have all been kept secret from everyone else panopticon-style.
As such the argument quickly devolves to "Trust us if you knew what we knew you'd endorse it too but we can't tell you." and "We can;'t review it or check it for acceptability so we cannot accept it."
Personally, as a lover of Democracy I support the latter.
With this case, I'll wait until there's some convictions and some hard data before swallowing this argument. Mike McConnell saying his favorite toy was useful doesn't count.
This is essentially how most if not all censorship or group filtration has been accomplished. Noteably the National Legion of Decency used this method to review and filter movies for their participants with a selected subset of their members (usually the priests) viewing films and then delivering a content rating to their remaining members via the pulpit often along the lines of "You'll go to hell if you see Mae West!" This became the basis of the existing MPAA ratings which use a selected set of individuals to rate a film for others and in some cases (e.g. X ratings) censor it from widespread public view.
This is also how other churches have censored things for years, how school boards go about banning books, how large political organizations censor materials, etc.
Basically Microsoft is trying to patent censorship as it has been practiced for centuries.
How exactly do you cite the Spanish Inquisition as prior art?
By "shutting it down" do they mean that they will simply stop adding new data to it? Or stop using it? Or will they locate every copy of every bit related to them and erase them? This would include all bits stored in backup tapes, offsite, etc.
In any case what happens to the data? Will this be magically "forgotten" Will all records that came from the database and got copied to other departments (e.g. FBI files) be deleted as well?
That's the trouble with data collection. Once it is collected it may never disappear.
Actually this administration has said that the Judicial branch as a whole is an obstacle. They have sought to circumvent every level of the court system and complained about them publicly. Keep in mind that Federal Judges rotate through the FISA court on fixed terms there are no judges who are "just FISA". What this suggests is that many federal judges are pissed at being called at best irrelevant or at worst Anti-American. One would hope that Congress also discovers a spine at some point.
While the title is "Scientists Puzzled" and emphasizes the lack of knowledge.
Why is it that the obsession is with confusion rather than learning. At a time when many people are turning to stupidities like Intelligent Design because it claims to have "answers" perhaps some of the blame can be put on horrible reporting which seems unable to distinguish between finding new info and being "confused" "lost" or "puzzled".
This is one of those "boiling frog" issues that isn't very sexy or photogenic, one of the issues that many people will ignore but that sets a very very dangerous precedent. Yes the plates are state issued and yes they are intended to be viewable but the practice of indefinitely logging the plates of innocent people, just because, is wrong and must be stopped now. If allowed to run the precedent will be set for tracking credit card purchase federally, tagging and logging your presence in all public places and more.
Yes they caught 111 felons but that could be done without logging the innocent people.
I see this as another instance of IT vendors riding over the rights of citizens in their endless goal to make a buck.
While I agree with your feelings on the oversimplified summary I question whether the Casino's loss of $500,000 matters. As a rule the systems are setup in gambling so that the Casino has an expected payoff. That is, the balance is deliberately tilted towards the operators. When the Casino loses money due to their own negligence (installing broken systems is negligent) then I find it immaterial whether they lost more or less money. I also find the idea that they should be deserving of sympathy immaterial.
Think about it this way. In a bookstore or grocery the company is negligent if they put the wrong price on something and then let it be sold as such. However obtaining items under such situations do not result in criminal prosecutions. All that a Casino gives is the chance to win more than you pay, albeit a carefully rigged chance that is not in your favor. In this case they screwed up and gave too much of a chance. The fault here should lie with the Casino not the players. It was internal negligence not external. Proving a crime on the players' part seems a little odd of an interpretation to me.
Except that this isn't a law. This is an Executive order granting powers to a set of executive offices. In a recent decision the Supreme Court argued that the public cannot challenge internal executive actions (such as this one claims to be) through the courts, effectively nullifying any judicial oversight. The case in question dealt with meetings being held with religious figures but the reasoning was similar and likely the same arguments would be advanced again.
But, ironically what this order attacks is the very foundation for such a lawsuit. If, in the executive's opinion your Constitutional rights are ineffective and therefore unnecessary on what grounds do you sue? If the grounds are violations of your rights then you have to ask Bush's Supreme Court to counter his own executive order. Such an action would be interesting to say the least, and unlikely to go forward.
Moreover such an action would likely have to occur after the fact, i.e. after said property was seized. But lacking all property it would be difficult to mount a challenge, especially if said seizure was kept as secret as other similar actions (i.e. library records seizures) have been. As such the damage, or some of it, may already be done.
As with Congress, well again this isn't a law (The president can't make that) but supposedly an internal executive thing. Yet it is being treated by them as if it is a law and a vehicle by which the President can make laws. Congress, however has other means to affect the departments involved and so can put pressure on the executive. They can also strip the departments in question of funding for such activities. They could also grow a spine and reassert their role as overseers and guardians of the Constitution.
The catch is that, as I said this is an Executive Order, but an Executive order that carries the force of law and declares some laws (i.e. The Constitution) to be invalid or "ineffective" and therefore unnecessary. Constitutionally the President cannot make laws. However it seems through Executive Orders he is seeking to do so practically and what he is going after is the very basis of that, the Constitution itself and the limits that is places on his, and the Federal Government's behavior.
The bottom line is that this is policy, bad policy, and the way in which you stop bad policy before damage is done is via public pressure. Congress, the Newspapers, others are in a position to apply said pressure along with the public. Better to stop it now before bad things happen than, like the PATRIOT act, let it get in place and wake up to find out where we are.
While it may be nice to sit back and feel self-satisfied that you didn't vote for him and don't like him (how nice for you that your vote matches your mood) those of us who inhabit the real world know that, even in a democracy, decisions get made between elections and the pressure must be brought to bear on those decisions at all times, not just the five seconds you may have spent in the booth searching for a clue.
Moreover the very basis of our government rests on the foundation of the Constitution. It enshrines not just our rights but our very legal processes, including elections. The President is sworn to "uphold and defend" the constitution and, under law cannot simply ignore it as he sees fit.
If, however he is allowed to "turn off" parts of the Constitution that get in the way of his actions being "effective" then everything goes, everything. If for example he decides that the section dealing with presidential elections (the one mandating that his term of office actually expire) gets in the way of "effectively combating terrorism" then he could just blow it off. Ditto for Judicial and Congressional oversight of any sort. Ditto for the Freedoms of speech, Religion, and the right to keep and bear arms. In short, this precedent would be the first step down a slippery slope to dictatorship.
And on the subject of your innocence. If you are a U.S. Citizen then it isn't enough to sit back and say "I didn't vote for him". Lest we forget we still pay him, we still pay for him and for his policies. We still back them with our dollars and our lives. That means we must pay attention. This self-satisfied laziness of yours isn't democratic, its pathetic.
Sample Letter:
Dear (Congressman|Senator) X.
I am writing to you today regarding A recent Executive Order signed on the 17th by President Bush. Said order entitled: "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq" represents a blatant violation of the rule of law. And an assault on our Constitution.
Section 5 of the order states:
That is, in the President's determination alone it would be too hard or too slow to actually follow due process. Therefore he has determined that it is unnecessary to follow constitutional law.
This is a very very dangerous precedent. If accepted it would allow any President to simply turn off or ignore selected portions of the Constitution if, in their opinion alone, it is necessary. No oversight from Congress, No Judicial review, nothing. In this case the President himself declared a state of emergency and now is selectively eliminating portions of the Constitution because of that Emergency. Congress you'll note, was not consulted, neither was the Judiciary. Most importantly, neither were the American People.
While the President states that this is only intended for Terrorists, that is not a long-term guarantee. We have already seen PATRIOT act powers used in Tax cases that have nothing to do with terrorism and this order, if accepted would pave the way for many more of its kind. If, for example the IRS found seizure of property too difficult via the courts then they could argue, along the lines of this order that in order for them to be 'effective' they need to proactively seize the belongings of accused violators.
This Order cannot be allowed to stand. It violates the basic structures set forth in the Constitution, a document that both you and the President are sworn to uphold and defend. I refuse to sacrifice our own rule of law, our own basic structures for the sake of "effectiveness".
We cannot allow the Constitution of the United States to simply be declared "Ineffective" and tossed out with the trash.
Sincerely,
In this section the President specifically states that he is aware that the U.S. Citizens affected by this may have Constitutional rights that this order violates. However, because of the ongoing (6+ years now) "National Emergency" said rights are nullified in the interests of efficiency.
So basically what he's doing is selectivly removing consitutional rights by executive order because the present circumstances, in his opinion alone, demand it.
He's explicitly and clearly attacking our rights because he says that he feels its necessary, no oversight, no checks, no balances, nothing.
If this is accepted it means that any president at any time can strip legal rights from U.S. Citizens, even if those rights are literally embedded in the Constitution just because he wants to. This means that the rule of law, the rule of the Constitution, is null and void.
And in this part:
They explicitly grant themselves the right to expand this power to anyone else they wish to. That is, the proactive seizure could be handed over to the DEA, the IRS, the ATF, etc if they feel necessary. No future executive order, no public record, will be necessary. Anyone up for proactive seizure of property because you may have cheated on your taxes? Keep in mind that the no fly list includes a large number of people who have committed the crime of having the same or similar sounding names as 'bad' people and no mechanism exists to get them removed from the list. How'd you like to have your house and money taken because you look kind of like a bad person only to have no means of picking back up because that's someone else's department?
What to do:
In all cases make it clear why you oppose this and why it is fundamentally wrong. It isn't a guarantee that they will rethink it but unless this stuff is exposed, discussed, and ultimately attacked then nothing will happen. And it won't be unless we spread this off
Democracy dies when noone is looking.
Yes. Lest we forget the Clipper Chip proposal had a good run and was close, very close to passing. With high-level bipartisan support and institutional (read FBI) backing. Despite all claims of having "learned their lesson" you see rules of this type being continually proposed (check earlier drafts of PATRIOT like legislation) and you see people like Gonzales and before him, Ashcroft still talking about it.
As long as the first question CNN and Fox news can think to ask the inventor of PGP is "Do you feel guilty about enabling terrorists?" then this kind of stuff will be around, and all it may take is another Patriot-like fear-run to bring it in.
Look, encrypted or not the RFID chips simply send out a unique signal. A signal that, once trapped, can be recoreded and reused. For the true "contactless" payment systems this contact is the only one. Unless the number changes in response to some handshake (something that isn't being done in the present generation of Contactless systems) then possession of the key is the only security and, in absence of a signature or indefinitely stored security cameras, the only record of the card's use.
Lacking the independent verification this is begging for an attack.
Technology isn't about what is useful, it's about what is cool. So warning that the offce burnt down is pointless. A reminder of Fire Extinguisher Day, that's hip.