What keeps people from buying a truckload of them in, say, St. Louis and trucking them down to the affected area after the storm?
Sounds like a great opportunity to help some people and make some good money. But you'd get put in jail if you made enough money for it to be worthwhile. So no one does this.
But the government didn't tell them to. The government didn't buy them the plane ticket or the gas or drive the bus.
You seem to forget that socialism makes everyone, no matter how old, into children and the government is their Mom. George Bush wasn't a very good Mom to the poor people of New Orleans. Bill Clinton made a much better Mom.
That sounds better than all the hype and hysteria and noise we've all been hearing for such a long time. I'd think it would be at least a little embarrassing to be on the same side as the Code Pink people and all the rest of the wackos. But that's just an aside.
Your questions:
1) What evidence do we have that oversight makes the executive branch significantly less likely to prevent a terrorist attack? I haven't really seen any.
There is testimony to that effect before the congressional committee. Is there anyone who has offered any first-hand testimony to the contrary? Why don't the FISA judges have to testify?
2) What is the definition of "significantly" and is it really meaningful to the population at large? Our leaders are more than happy to repeal environmental regulations that save dozens to hundreds of people per year or cut back on enforcement of workspace safety regulations with comparable records if it greases the wheels of the economy. There's clearly an emotional reaction to children being blown up that's not there for children being poisoned or children dying of disease or children losing their daddies in wood chippers, even if the probabilities and are similar.
This makes the same mistake that everyone makes over and over. An accident with a woodchipper is not the same as an attack. See my other post for an illustration of why.
There's also a huge freedom question with all the regulations you seem to want. Not "wiretapping somehow indirectly impacts my freedom" but more along the lines of "do what we tell you immediately or we'll put you in jail". You seem to want to enable the latter to prevent accidents while guarding against the former which might protect against attacks. I'm not sure I understand the ethic.
3) What is the likelihood that this power will be abused? Given our history (which is relatively good, and there's no reason to assume that we'll always be above average in that respect), I tend to weight this more heavily than you appear to.
There's a very real chance of it being abused. There's a very real chance of a terrorist attack. The consequence of abuse is some loss of privacy and perhaps some blackmail or something. The consequence of terrorism is death, possibly in large numbers, and mass terror and disruption. (And terrorist success stories will encourage more terrorists to attack.)
4) Is there a way of reforming the oversight to make it more efficient rather than simply throwing it out and granting a few people carte blanche? Again, I'm unconvinced that FISA was somehow an irreparably broken system.
Probably. There are probably lots of ways to improve oversight to prevent abuse and allow efficient, effective wiretapping. That would be great. I'm 100% in favor.
I haven't heard anyone on the Democrat side or in the media or on Slashdot advocate that though. And people who do advocate that tend to be called fascists or worse.
Is that what you advocate? Are you ready to be called names by the haters?
Someone could stock up on these at $385 each. Buy 1000 of them. Then go and sell them for, say $500 when the next major disaster hits.
People would get safe water that way.
But it would be price gouging, so it's illegal. Better people die from drinking polluted water than someone make a few dollars helping them. That's the rule of price-gouging laws.
It's not hard to get a FISA warrant to tap someone you have a hunch is involved in terrorism.
This is just not true. You can have a hunch someone is involved in terrorism based on the fact that a terrorist associate is calling them. But you can't get a warrant on an unidentifiable person. You can't get a warrant on "whoever answers the phone when terrorist associate X calls". You can only get warrants on specific individuals.
And the only people who would want to avoid judicial oversight are the ones who want to abuse the power.
Your comment is a lot more serious and thoughtful than most of what we hear on the anti-tapping side of the debate. That's good. We need more serious thought and less stupid sloganeering.
That's why FISA warrants have always been practically a rubber stamp, and that's why a lot of us are concerned that our leaders seem to think that they're too much of an inconvenience.
This actually seems to not be true. It's easy to conclude this from the number of rejected warrants, but if you actually listen to what people say who try to get these warrants, they'll tell you that the rules prevent them from doing a lot of things. And it's not "I tried to abuse my power and was prevented", it's more like "we needed to listen to this conversation because we thought it might help us prevent an attack, but we couldn't get what we needed for a warrant".
Disbelieve them if you want, but if you do, it would be good to know why.
We're weighing the possibility of terrorist attacks succeeding against giving a single branch of government unchecked power to tap phones and gather dirt on people--a power that they'll almost certainly abuse.
You're assuming the worst case, but you don't give the basis for that assumption. Why not assume a more reasonable case? Why not weigh the possibility of a terrorist attack against the possibility of a reasonable alternative?
That's why I ask what people would choose if they had to be accountable. Someone who had to answer for their decisions might want to rethink whatever biases they have that would lead them to assume the worst case (or the best case, or any other case based on un-reality). There's actually room for reason, judgment, thoughtfulness, and the ability to make distinctions.
That's what has been missing in this debate, especially on the anti-tapping side.
You're making it sound like the two options are "wiretap anyone we want to without any oversight" and "don't wiretap at all". That is blatantly wrong, and you're being irresponsible putting forth such an untruth.
No I'm not. I never said that. I think this is the key to the misunderstanding. It's a reality problem.
To you, being overheard is the same as being locked up for 3 years. Someone says "once in a while we decide to listen to a conversation when we can't get a warrant -- we did it today" and you hear the words "we just detained someone for 3 years".
I'm not sure that this level of communication leads to any sort of shared understanding.
--
I haven't seen in any of your arguments why the requirement to "obtain a warrant within a few days of the tap" causes such undue trouble for honest wiretappers.
I'm not sure what use you think that has. You can't get a warrant later when you don't have the evidence to get one now. The requirements to get a warrant don't change, only the timing. And if you need to get a warrant, you can't roll the dice and hope you get one later.
Example:
You catch a terrorist. You get his phone. You get the phone numbers of the people who called him. You can probably get wiretap warrants for the terrorist's associates because you know their phone numbers. You listen. But who are they talking to on the other end? You have no idea. You can't listen to those people they're talking to because you don't know who they are or anything about them. There's no basis to listen to them and you haven't gathered enough evidence for a warrant.
So conversations once removed from a terrorist can't be listened to in any kind of real time. A few days later, if you find out a little more, then maybe you have enough information to get a warrant.
I hope the terrorists don't succeed in that time.
Also, they hadn't heard you caught their associate a few days ago. Now you can finally listen, they're not saying anything. Maybe they've disappeared. Instead of catching them and preventing their attack, they're still out there planning it for sometime in the future.
Still, you can get them next time. It's not the end of the world. Except if they succeed it can be -- for the victims.
--
In reality, the middle ground, where most people come from, is that yes, police should have the ability...
See, that's just it. It's not about "the police". The police can go arrest some people for speeding or smoking or whatever. I'm 100% on the side for limiting wiretaps by "the police".
Terrorism is a national security issue. It's not about arresting people and enforcing laws. It's about preventing attacks on the country and our people.
It doesn't matter whether the wiretap tapes are admissible in court. Let's just agree they aren't. But terrorist attacks have to fail. The national defense has a responsibility to protect the citizens of the nation from attack.
--
Stop pulling this "but puppies and babies will most certainly die if you don't agree with me, how can you live with that?" crap, it's getting old.
That's what the story was about. Wiretaps caught terrorists, preventing them from killing people. I'm not sure about the babies and puppies.
And it's not about agreeing with me. One side of this debate is responsible folks who have a duty to protect. And the other side is lots of academic arguments, talking points, Bush hatred, and hype.
I was responding to it. And all I'm asking is what a serious, responsible person would do. Maybe listening to a few conversations without a warrant isn't the end of the world if it means preventing an attack. Maybe the non-tangible harm (though it is harm) of being overheard could be weighed against the tangible harm of a successful terrorist attack.
Clearly, all the talk about a police state and fascism and all the rest of the noise is not representative of reality. There's this whole adult world out there where things matter and decisions have to be made. And even if the folks on Slashdot won't help, they could at least recognize the seriousness of things and stay out of the way.
Ah, but listening leads to locking up... You are trying to discredit any reasonable argument by going to an extreme....
No I'm not. It's actually a question, not an attempt to discredit an argument. Folks should be try to be serious for a change. Terrorism is serious. It's not a little melodramatic story they can use to score political points. Not to the victims, anyway.
The choice to wiretap or not actually is a life-or-death choice for some people. The political posturing misses the point completely.
And listening doesn't "lead to" locking up. It really is possible to listen to someone without locking them up afterwards. They're not the same thing. They're different things.
You must be a joy to live with... What do you tell the family who lost someone in a plane crash because where we could have saved them by spending an extra $10M on every airplane giving people escape pods... It's the same argument as you are making...
No it isn't. An accident is not an attack.
Here's the difference:
You have two neighbors. There was a terrible accident one day when neighbor A hit your daughter with a car. He is sorry. She was badly injured. She'll be in the hospital for a while, but she'll eventually be OK.
Neighbor B viciously, violently attacked your other daughter. He said he was justified. She was badly injured. She'll be in the hospital for a while, but she'll eventually be OK.
Which neighbor is a bigger problem? Why?
--
A plane accident is an accident. The people who design planes and own planes also fly on them. They put their families on them. They don't demand any extra precautions that everyone else doesn't get.
They'd tell the victims families that. They did everything they could -- everything they thought they should. They were serious and responsible when they made their choices. They stand behind their decisions.
Let me add something. Apparently you'd tell the family of the dead terrorist victims:
We could have prevented this by listening to a few more conversations. But we didn't because we can't tell the difference between listening to conversations and locking people up in prison. They are exactly the same to us.
It's too bad your family died. I guess you would have been better off with someone who would exercise judgment and do what he could rather than just following a rigid procedure and going through the motions.
-
Would you seriously be willing to actually be accountable for that choice and actually tell the families that? Wouldn't a serious person have to think about it a little more and maybe see if he could divine the difference between locking someone up and overhearing a conversation?
What [if] these hyperthetical [sic] terrorists were overlooked because there was... so much "noise" that the "signal" was lost. Whereas if there had been oversight the people doing the wire-tapping would have been kept more "on task".
Then the people who were trying to catch the terrorists could say they did their best, but didn't succeed. They would tell the families of the dead that.
But judges aren't there to make the process of data collection more efficient. That's not even in question.
I'm arguing for people to be serious and responsible. This is a life and death situation, not a bumper-sticker slogan contest. Any policy choice is going to lead to some danger or potential danger, and the responsibilities and risks on both sides should be weighed seriously in light of the actual realities.
If things go wrong, are you willing to tell people you made the right choice?
I've made my choice. If someone's innocent phone conversation is overheard I'd be willing to tell the person we were sorry but we seriously thought we were doing the right thing. We tried really hard to avoid listening to any innocent people on the phone. We got a warrant almost every time, but a few times we didn't have the information to justify a warrant and we chose to listen to those conversations anyway. And if terrorists succeed despite our efforts, we think we did the right thing trying to stop them. We did what we could. I'd be willing to stand behind that policy because it's a serious, responsible policy.
I think it beats:
Our hands were tied. Your family died. We didn't do everything we could. We didn't put much serious thought into it. We followed the rules. Don't blame us, we didn't write the rules. And privacy is important too. I know your children were killed in the bombing, but what if someone's innocent phone call was overheard?
I'm not making up the rules. It is called the Constitution.
Which part prohibits the monitoring of enemy communications that cross the US borders during war or war-like conditions?
Just because you say "Constitution" doesn't mean you can write your own little pet rules in there. There's a whole process with courts and lawmakers and stuff.
Proper checks include simple things like getting a court order to run the wire-taps.
And if that led to terrorists succeeding and killing some people, you'd say it was worthwhile. Right? And you'd tell the families that it was worthwhile, right?
I would explain to them that their loved ones gave their lives in the war against facisim, communism, whatever that the american people are fighting.
I'm not sure the families of the dead are going to want to hear wacky rants about fascism or whatever the socially acceptable cause of the week is. They'd be more interested if you were actually a serious person who made a serious choice and were willing to stand up in the face of the consequences.
The purpose of things like a Constitution in a constitutional republic is to protect the rights of the minority, since the majority very seldom has problems getting it's will reflected in policies and laws and enforcing them on the minority.
No, it's more-or-less to protect everyone.
The king wasn't a majority when the US was a British colony. He had power that folks wanted to be protected from though.
I'm a little bit suspicious as to the TIMING of this announcement, too.
Yeah, it's a conspiracy. See, the terrorists conspired to attack somewhere for the 9/11 anniversary. They were caught last week, before they carried out their attack. And now, after the weekend when no one reads the newspapers, we're hearing more about the story.
What a coincidence!
(We're through the looking glass here people. This makes the Kennedy assassination look like a middle school April fools prank. I'm sure Karl Rove is targeting us with his killer Haliburton satellites right now. Must hit submit before he gets m
Preventing terrorism isn't "law enforcement". It is national defense.
Criminal prosecutions are not the objective. Preventing the enemy from forcing their will on our society is the objective. Thwarting their plans to kill is the objective.
I am against the gov't doing this without a proper check to their power.
What's "proper"?
Are you, or is the person who is assigned to "check" their power, going to stand up and take responsibility if the "check" allows terrorists to succeed -- you know, go on TV, meet the families of the dead and say it was all worthwhile? Shouldn't you/they?
It's really easy to make legalistic rules and recite talking points when you're not accountable for the results.
Also, it broke up a GERMAN attack... How does dropping in on AMERICAN communication help?
By monitoring the conversation, they found out about the planned terrorist attacks.
Communications and people sometimes move between countries. So it's hardly impossible that a conversation about attacks in Germany occurred involving people or wires that were in the US at some point.
I think you've just proven that any legal case, no matter how absurd, can be argued on either side. It's good to illustrate how extremely useless such legalistic thinking is in understanding and solving problems justly. You have done everyone a service.
Really. Well construction on that church started in 1215. Since copyrights only last 50 years, it's safe to say that any copyright that may have existed is expired.
You're right until you say: that means that Sony was using private property.
Since when is making a drawing of something "using" it? Can I picture it in my mind? How much money do I owe for that? Can I describe it to others? Can I write a story where I describe it to people and then sell the story?
I don't think that's what he was saying. Because the game was fun. It's almost unanimously considered fun. So it's unlikely he was saying "it sucks" when he said "it's a pretty good one".
That was a good scene in Resistance. The cathedral and the hospital beds were a good counterpoint to the alien attackers. And the layout really worked to focus the action.
I'm not sure why anyone needs permission to copy something like that in a game or a movie. It's been there for a while now, so the design can't be copyrighted any more. The Church of England seemed to just want money.
Some people might have been "offended" by a shooting game in the church, but people who are "offended" need to be told their choice to take offense is theirs alone. If you start empowering people based on their choices to take offense or not, then they'll eventually have 100% total power over you.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like you're using your judgment too.
What keeps people from buying a truckload of them in, say, St. Louis and trucking them down to the affected area after the storm?
Sounds like a great opportunity to help some people and make some good money. But you'd get put in jail if you made enough money for it to be worthwhile. So no one does this.
I use my judgment to filter my water. It works pretty good. And my immune system takes care of anything that gets through.
But the government didn't tell them to. The government didn't buy them the plane ticket or the gas or drive the bus.
You seem to forget that socialism makes everyone, no matter how old, into children and the government is their Mom. George Bush wasn't a very good Mom to the poor people of New Orleans. Bill Clinton made a much better Mom.
That sounds better than all the hype and hysteria and noise we've all been hearing for such a long time. I'd think it would be at least a little embarrassing to be on the same side as the Code Pink people and all the rest of the wackos. But that's just an aside.
Your questions:
1) What evidence do we have that oversight makes the executive branch significantly less likely to prevent a terrorist attack? I haven't really seen any.
There is testimony to that effect before the congressional committee. Is there anyone who has offered any first-hand testimony to the contrary? Why don't the FISA judges have to testify?
2) What is the definition of "significantly" and is it really meaningful to the population at large? Our leaders are more than happy to repeal environmental regulations that save dozens to hundreds of people per year or cut back on enforcement of workspace safety regulations with comparable records if it greases the wheels of the economy. There's clearly an emotional reaction to children being blown up that's not there for children being poisoned or children dying of disease or children losing their daddies in wood chippers, even if the probabilities and are similar.
This makes the same mistake that everyone makes over and over. An accident with a woodchipper is not the same as an attack. See my other post for an illustration of why.
There's also a huge freedom question with all the regulations you seem to want. Not "wiretapping somehow indirectly impacts my freedom" but more along the lines of "do what we tell you immediately or we'll put you in jail". You seem to want to enable the latter to prevent accidents while guarding against the former which might protect against attacks. I'm not sure I understand the ethic.
3) What is the likelihood that this power will be abused? Given our history (which is relatively good, and there's no reason to assume that we'll always be above average in that respect), I tend to weight this more heavily than you appear to.
There's a very real chance of it being abused. There's a very real chance of a terrorist attack. The consequence of abuse is some loss of privacy and perhaps some blackmail or something. The consequence of terrorism is death, possibly in large numbers, and mass terror and disruption. (And terrorist success stories will encourage more terrorists to attack.)
4) Is there a way of reforming the oversight to make it more efficient rather than simply throwing it out and granting a few people carte blanche? Again, I'm unconvinced that FISA was somehow an irreparably broken system.
Probably. There are probably lots of ways to improve oversight to prevent abuse and allow efficient, effective wiretapping. That would be great. I'm 100% in favor.
I haven't heard anyone on the Democrat side or in the media or on Slashdot advocate that though. And people who do advocate that tend to be called fascists or worse.
Is that what you advocate? Are you ready to be called names by the haters?
Someone could stock up on these at $385 each. Buy 1000 of them. Then go and sell them for, say $500 when the next major disaster hits.
People would get safe water that way.
But it would be price gouging, so it's illegal. Better people die from drinking polluted water than someone make a few dollars helping them. That's the rule of price-gouging laws.
It's not hard to get a FISA warrant to tap someone you have a hunch is involved in terrorism.
This is just not true. You can have a hunch someone is involved in terrorism based on the fact that a terrorist associate is calling them. But you can't get a warrant on an unidentifiable person. You can't get a warrant on "whoever answers the phone when terrorist associate X calls". You can only get warrants on specific individuals.
And the only people who would want to avoid judicial oversight are the ones who want to abuse the power.
This is a conclusion based on false information.
Your comment is a lot more serious and thoughtful than most of what we hear on the anti-tapping side of the debate. That's good. We need more serious thought and less stupid sloganeering.
That's why FISA warrants have always been practically a rubber stamp, and that's why a lot of us are concerned that our leaders seem to think that they're too much of an inconvenience.
This actually seems to not be true. It's easy to conclude this from the number of rejected warrants, but if you actually listen to what people say who try to get these warrants, they'll tell you that the rules prevent them from doing a lot of things. And it's not "I tried to abuse my power and was prevented", it's more like "we needed to listen to this conversation because we thought it might help us prevent an attack, but we couldn't get what we needed for a warrant".
Disbelieve them if you want, but if you do, it would be good to know why.
We're weighing the possibility of terrorist attacks succeeding against giving a single branch of government unchecked power to tap phones and gather dirt on people--a power that they'll almost certainly abuse.
You're assuming the worst case, but you don't give the basis for that assumption. Why not assume a more reasonable case? Why not weigh the possibility of a terrorist attack against the possibility of a reasonable alternative?
That's why I ask what people would choose if they had to be accountable. Someone who had to answer for their decisions might want to rethink whatever biases they have that would lead them to assume the worst case (or the best case, or any other case based on un-reality). There's actually room for reason, judgment, thoughtfulness, and the ability to make distinctions.
That's what has been missing in this debate, especially on the anti-tapping side.
This got long.
You're making it sound like the two options are "wiretap anyone we want to without any oversight" and "don't wiretap at all". That is blatantly wrong, and you're being irresponsible putting forth such an untruth.
No I'm not. I never said that. I think this is the key to the misunderstanding. It's a reality problem.
To you, being overheard is the same as being locked up for 3 years. Someone says "once in a while we decide to listen to a conversation when we can't get a warrant -- we did it today" and you hear the words "we just detained someone for 3 years".
I'm not sure that this level of communication leads to any sort of shared understanding.
--
I haven't seen in any of your arguments why the requirement to "obtain a warrant within a few days of the tap" causes such undue trouble for honest wiretappers.
I'm not sure what use you think that has. You can't get a warrant later when you don't have the evidence to get one now. The requirements to get a warrant don't change, only the timing. And if you need to get a warrant, you can't roll the dice and hope you get one later.
Example:
You catch a terrorist. You get his phone. You get the phone numbers of the people who called him. You can probably get wiretap warrants for the terrorist's associates because you know their phone numbers. You listen. But who are they talking to on the other end? You have no idea. You can't listen to those people they're talking to because you don't know who they are or anything about them. There's no basis to listen to them and you haven't gathered enough evidence for a warrant.
So conversations once removed from a terrorist can't be listened to in any kind of real time. A few days later, if you find out a little more, then maybe you have enough information to get a warrant.
I hope the terrorists don't succeed in that time.
Also, they hadn't heard you caught their associate a few days ago. Now you can finally listen, they're not saying anything. Maybe they've disappeared. Instead of catching them and preventing their attack, they're still out there planning it for sometime in the future.
Still, you can get them next time. It's not the end of the world. Except if they succeed it can be -- for the victims.
--
In reality, the middle ground, where most people come from, is that yes, police should have the ability...
See, that's just it. It's not about "the police". The police can go arrest some people for speeding or smoking or whatever. I'm 100% on the side for limiting wiretaps by "the police".
Terrorism is a national security issue. It's not about arresting people and enforcing laws. It's about preventing attacks on the country and our people.
It doesn't matter whether the wiretap tapes are admissible in court. Let's just agree they aren't. But terrorist attacks have to fail. The national defense has a responsibility to protect the citizens of the nation from attack.
--
Stop pulling this "but puppies and babies will most certainly die if you don't agree with me, how can you live with that?" crap, it's getting old.
That's what the story was about. Wiretaps caught terrorists, preventing them from killing people. I'm not sure about the babies and puppies.
And it's not about agreeing with me. One side of this debate is responsible folks who have a duty to protect. And the other side is lots of academic arguments, talking points, Bush hatred, and hype.
I was responding to it. And all I'm asking is what a serious, responsible person would do. Maybe listening to a few conversations without a warrant isn't the end of the world if it means preventing an attack. Maybe the non-tangible harm (though it is harm) of being overheard could be weighed against the tangible harm of a successful terrorist attack.
Clearly, all the talk about a police state and fascism and all the rest of the noise is not representative of reality. There's this whole adult world out there where things matter and decisions have to be made. And even if the folks on Slashdot won't help, they could at least recognize the seriousness of things and stay out of the way.
Ah, but listening leads to locking up... You are trying to discredit any reasonable argument by going to an extreme....
No I'm not. It's actually a question, not an attempt to discredit an argument. Folks should be try to be serious for a change. Terrorism is serious. It's not a little melodramatic story they can use to score political points. Not to the victims, anyway.
The choice to wiretap or not actually is a life-or-death choice for some people. The political posturing misses the point completely.
And listening doesn't "lead to" locking up. It really is possible to listen to someone without locking them up afterwards. They're not the same thing. They're different things.
You must be a joy to live with... What do you tell the family who lost someone in a plane crash because where we could have saved them by spending an extra $10M on every airplane giving people escape pods... It's the same argument as you are making...
No it isn't. An accident is not an attack.
Here's the difference:
You have two neighbors. There was a terrible accident one day when neighbor A hit your daughter with a car. He is sorry. She was badly injured. She'll be in the hospital for a while, but she'll eventually be OK.
Neighbor B viciously, violently attacked your other daughter. He said he was justified. She was badly injured. She'll be in the hospital for a while, but she'll eventually be OK.
Which neighbor is a bigger problem? Why?
--
A plane accident is an accident. The people who design planes and own planes also fly on them. They put their families on them. They don't demand any extra precautions that everyone else doesn't get.
They'd tell the victims families that. They did everything they could -- everything they thought they should. They were serious and responsible when they made their choices. They stand behind their decisions.
Let me add something. Apparently you'd tell the family of the dead terrorist victims:
We could have prevented this by listening to a few more conversations. But we didn't because we can't tell the difference between listening to conversations and locking people up in prison. They are exactly the same to us.
It's too bad your family died. I guess you would have been better off with someone who would exercise judgment and do what he could rather than just following a rigid procedure and going through the motions.
-
Would you seriously be willing to actually be accountable for that choice and actually tell the families that? Wouldn't a serious person have to think about it a little more and maybe see if he could divine the difference between locking someone up and overhearing a conversation?
Listening isn't detaining. Hearing an innocent phone call doesn't cost anyone 3 years. Overheard words are not the same thing as being locked up.
We're not talking about what you seem to be talking about. This is actually a serious discussion. Try to pay attention if you want to participate.
What [if] these hyperthetical [sic] terrorists were overlooked because there was ... so much "noise" that the "signal" was lost.
Whereas if there had been oversight the people doing the wire-tapping would have been kept more "on task".
Then the people who were trying to catch the terrorists could say they did their best, but didn't succeed. They would tell the families of the dead that.
But judges aren't there to make the process of data collection more efficient. That's not even in question.
I'm arguing for people to be serious and responsible. This is a life and death situation, not a bumper-sticker slogan contest. Any policy choice is going to lead to some danger or potential danger, and the responsibilities and risks on both sides should be weighed seriously in light of the actual realities.
If things go wrong, are you willing to tell people you made the right choice?
I've made my choice. If someone's innocent phone conversation is overheard I'd be willing to tell the person we were sorry but we seriously thought we were doing the right thing. We tried really hard to avoid listening to any innocent people on the phone. We got a warrant almost every time, but a few times we didn't have the information to justify a warrant and we chose to listen to those conversations anyway. And if terrorists succeed despite our efforts, we think we did the right thing trying to stop them. We did what we could. I'd be willing to stand behind that policy because it's a serious, responsible policy.
I think it beats:
Our hands were tied. Your family died. We didn't do everything we could. We didn't put much serious thought into it. We followed the rules. Don't blame us, we didn't write the rules. And privacy is important too. I know your children were killed in the bombing, but what if someone's innocent phone call was overheard?
I'm not making up the rules. It is called the Constitution.
Which part prohibits the monitoring of enemy communications that cross the US borders during war or war-like conditions?
Just because you say "Constitution" doesn't mean you can write your own little pet rules in there. There's a whole process with courts and lawmakers and stuff.
Proper checks include simple things like getting a court order to run the wire-taps.
And if that led to terrorists succeeding and killing some people, you'd say it was worthwhile. Right? And you'd tell the families that it was worthwhile, right?
I would explain to them that their loved ones gave their lives in the war against facisim, communism, whatever that the american people are fighting.
I'm not sure the families of the dead are going to want to hear wacky rants about fascism or whatever the socially acceptable cause of the week is. They'd be more interested if you were actually a serious person who made a serious choice and were willing to stand up in the face of the consequences.
The purpose of things like a Constitution in a constitutional republic is to protect the rights of the minority, since the majority very seldom has problems getting it's will reflected in policies and laws and enforcing them on the minority.
No, it's more-or-less to protect everyone.
The king wasn't a majority when the US was a British colony. He had power that folks wanted to be protected from though.
I'm a little bit suspicious as to the TIMING of this announcement, too.
Yeah, it's a conspiracy. See, the terrorists conspired to attack somewhere for the 9/11 anniversary. They were caught last week, before they carried out their attack. And now, after the weekend when no one reads the newspapers, we're hearing more about the story.
What a coincidence!
(We're through the looking glass here people. This makes the Kennedy assassination look like a middle school April fools prank. I'm sure Karl Rove is targeting us with his killer Haliburton satellites right now. Must hit submit before he gets m
Yes, violating privacy can help law enforcement.
Preventing terrorism isn't "law enforcement". It is national defense.
Criminal prosecutions are not the objective. Preventing the enemy from forcing their will on our society is the objective. Thwarting their plans to kill is the objective.
I am against the gov't doing this without a proper check to their power.
What's "proper"?
Are you, or is the person who is assigned to "check" their power, going to stand up and take responsibility if the "check" allows terrorists to succeed -- you know, go on TV, meet the families of the dead and say it was all worthwhile? Shouldn't you/they?
It's really easy to make legalistic rules and recite talking points when you're not accountable for the results.
Also, it broke up a GERMAN attack... How does dropping in on AMERICAN communication help?
By monitoring the conversation, they found out about the planned terrorist attacks.
Communications and people sometimes move between countries. So it's hardly impossible that a conversation about attacks in Germany occurred involving people or wires that were in the US at some point.
What is the misunderstanding here?
I think you've just proven that any legal case, no matter how absurd, can be argued on either side. It's good to illustrate how extremely useless such legalistic thinking is in understanding and solving problems justly. You have done everyone a service.
Since 1790, or since 1978 at the latest.
Really. Well construction on that church started in 1215. Since copyrights only last 50 years, it's safe to say that any copyright that may have existed is expired.
You're right until you say: that means that Sony was using private property.
Since when is making a drawing of something "using" it? Can I picture it in my mind? How much money do I owe for that? Can I describe it to others? Can I write a story where I describe it to people and then sell the story?
What law are you talking about anyway?
I don't think that's what he was saying. Because the game was fun. It's almost unanimously considered fun. So it's unlikely he was saying "it sucks" when he said "it's a pretty good one".
That was a good scene in Resistance. The cathedral and the hospital beds were a good counterpoint to the alien attackers. And the layout really worked to focus the action.
I'm not sure why anyone needs permission to copy something like that in a game or a movie. It's been there for a while now, so the design can't be copyrighted any more. The Church of England seemed to just want money.
Some people might have been "offended" by a shooting game in the church, but people who are "offended" need to be told their choice to take offense is theirs alone. If you start empowering people based on their choices to take offense or not, then they'll eventually have 100% total power over you.