Yes. And that was before MCA, which is what people say "suspended Habeas Corpus". That's part of reason MCA came into existence: to clarify this situation.
Such detention of a US citizen apprehended on US soil, regardless of designation, has subsequently been determined to be legally inappropriate, and also does not fall under MCA.
Please explain how anything I said in either of myposts in this thread is a "lie" (which is I assume what you mean by calling a spade a spade), or "shredding the Constitution".
I am serious, and I really would be gratified if you could do that.
For what it's worth, Doc Ruby didn't respond to anything at all in my post, and saying that I "opened with an insult" (when his posts contain far more "insults") is nothing more than an excuse to not have to respond to any of the points.
Yeah, yeah, I know, my "points" are all "lies", or invalid, so they're not worth responding to, right? Like, my opinion that the Constitution doesn't apply to everyone on earth and instead only applies to US citizens or persons with a legal status with the United States is a "lie", or "shredding the Constitution", right? Or my assertion that MCA doesn't suspend Habeas Corpus because it does not apply to US citizens, permanent residents, or persons with a legal US immigration status, groups which are by definition the only to which Habeas Corpus can even apply? Or that foreign signals intelligence collection on aliens outside of the United States, by nature, should not require a warrant or any court process (and hasn't in the history of our nation), and that, by extension, we should take every advantage when such information, incidentally or by design, travels through the United States?
Please, tell me how these are lies, or how people can't have differing fundamental or philosophical views on issues while still basing such views on facts and valid interpretations, as opposed to "lies"?
I'd highly recommend everyone actually read TFA (yeah, a possibly futile request), because his reasoned and sensible outlook would do many folks I know a lot of good.
...and don't automatically dismiss anything that disagrees with my own personal opinion or points of view as "lies".
But it's humorous that you seem to.
One is indeed whether the government can wiretap people.
Replace "people" with "American citizens, permanent residents, and/or persons with a legal status within the United States", because they're two very, very different things, and you seem to conflate the two.
There is a very clear law, that has been regularly updated to keep pace with both technology and threats, the FISA. It is already an exception to the Constitutional requirement for any wiretap to be allowed by a warrant after evaluation by a judge under Congress' laws, to ensure the Executive doesn't just wiretap whoever it wants. Any wiretap without a warrant is by definition not reasonable. The FISA makes an exception to the usual requirement that the evidence on which the warrant is based be subject to argument, making the court hearing it and the proceedings secret.Then it makes another exception, a really extraordinary one, that allows warrants to be obtained even after the wiretap, for 72 hours. In other words, legalizing warrantless wiretaps to accommodate emergencies, after which the wiretappers can get a warrant on evidence they already had, or, if they really took a gamble without evidence but on a "hunch" that proved correct, with the contents of the 72 hours of the tap. The Executive even gets to assign the secret members of the FISA court, and its chief judge.
The main purpose of FISA is to govern the collection of foreign intelligence within the United States, and explicitly restrict and control application of surveillance of US citizens within the United States.
Foreign intelligence collection where the target, and sometimes indeed both endpoints of a communication, are outside of the United States should not require a warrant.
Of course, there's a bigger issue: these rights are inalienable, not given by the Constitution or any other feature of being American (or just living here). So violating those rights abroad, for US citizens or foreigners, also violates the rights that are America's basic ideology. But we make the exception to protect ourselves more easily, quickly and cheaply, rationalized on the grounds that we create our government here to protect our rights; foreigners can create their own governments to protect their rights if they want. But of course the accumulated rights abuses abroad have made it that much easier for our enemies to recruit allies and attack us. The tradeoff is probably a losing one, when our greatest threats are terrorists, and we're alienating even our allies.
That's a philosophical and ideological issue. If you believe we need court oversight and a warrant process for foreign intelligence collection, that's fine. It just runs counter to the very purposes and functions of intelligence, and would put the United States at a distinct disadvantage with respect to how other nations, including adversaries, collect intelligence. Our Constitution and the beliefs within it applies, by definition, to our own citizens and by extension to other persons with a valid legal status within the United States. To argue that it should apply to everyone on earth flies in the face of the current state of affairs of the world and the very notion of nation-states.
The undeniable issue here is that Bush has ignored even the easy FISA court. So there's no oversight. Instead, there's lawbreaking by the Executive, as has been found even after due process in binding Federal court with proper jurisdiction. Violating the Constitution, and then breaking the FISA. Even the 4th Amendment that's being broken is itself an extra statement of what's already implicit in the Constitution, just like the rest of the Bill of Rights. That's how important our right to privacy is. And how likely is an abusive ruler to violate it.
Foreign signals intelligence collection should, fundamentally, never require a warra
The issue at hand, which is commonly misunderstood, is that:
- Monitoring for foreign communications does not require, should not require, and will never require, a warrant, which brings us to:
- Monitoring of foreign communications where both ends are outside of the United States, but where the passage of the traffic through equipment within the United States is incidental should not require a warrant;
- Monitoring of communications where the target of said monitoring is (reasonably* believed to be) outside of the United States should not require a warrant, regardless of where the other end of the communication is (even if within the United States);
- Monitoring of US citizens as targets within the United States requires a warrant, and always has.
These capabilities should absolutely exist under the next administration as well. The United States has always had the ability to collect foreign intelligence without a warrant, and that should always be so. Whether one end of the conversation is within the United States, or neither end is but the traffic incidentally travels through equipment physically within the United States, is - and should be - irrelevant.
That is not to say that the so-called Protect America Act of 2007, the six-month temporary legislation which allows this, is perfect, or isn't overly broad. But the capability to continue collecting foreign intelligence without being encumbered by FISA is crucial. Then you might ask, "Well, where are the checks and balances, then?!" Indeed, where are the checks and balances for any foreign signals intelligence collection? Should all foreign SIGINT now go through a court and warrant process, just to "make sure" it's "really" foreign SIGINT? If you believe so, you're woefully misguided.
For a very brief and overly simple overview of the issues this addresses, see this Newsweek article.
* "Reasonable" has a standard here - it's not just someone making an arbitrary assertion. Since in today's electronic world it is virtually impossible to guarantee beyond a shadow of any doubt that a particular target may be outside of the United States, it must be reasonable to believe that they are. I know people like to think that the attorney general can just "declare" someone as being outside of the US, and commence monitoring. No. They must, by all appearances, actually appear and be believed to be outside of the United States by any reasonable assessment. And again, let me guess: "But where are the checks and balances?" To repeat, where are any such "checks" any any other foreign intelligence gathering? The difference here is that sometimes, traffic may be increasingly traveling through the United States. Instead of choosing to be hamstrung in foreign SIGINT collection just because major communication trunks happen to pass through the US, I'd choose the option of using that to our advantage. It's flat out foolish not to.
Disclaimer: much of this is culled from a previous post of mine in a previous article, but this is precisely on-point. Foreign SIGINT should not require a warrant if the target of the monitoring is already outside the United States, and especially if both endpoints of the communication are outside of the United States, regardless of the path the traffic takes. I guess I can keep going in circles with the inevitable, "Yes, but how do we really know that the situation is as you described it without the oversight of a court?" How do we know that for ANY intelligence gathering? Should all intelligence gathering of all types now go through a warrant process? Ridiculous. And on top of all of this, if you just think that administration officials are going to lie and ignore any and all laws anyway, then what difference does any wording of any law really make?
Try to at least imagine the opposing viewpoint to your own.
1. Only on slashdot can an article about Communist China be somehow turned back on the US.
2. "Not to nitpick," but the act is routinely known and referred to by all manner of sources and media as "the Patriot Act", as is noted in the first sentence of the Wikipedia article you chose to link. Yes, it is officially "The USA PATRIOT Act". Also, all acts have positive names, some cutesy, some acronyms, so they'll, you know, have public appeal and do things like, you know, pass, which is presumably what the people who proposed them in the first place would kind of want them to do. See also: "Help America Vote Act", "Protect America Act", etc.
3. The vast, vast majority of the Patriot Act is sorely needed updates to old laws. Extremely little of the Patriot Act is, or has even been, controversial. The continuing ignorance on the Patriot Act, and the assumption that it is ALL bad and was secretly designed to turn the US into a police state when its content is completely public and was passed by nearly unprecedented majorities in both houses of Congress, is what is an "insult" to the "intelligence of the nation". There absolutely are controversial aspects of the Patriot Act. To get caught up in why it was given a positive-sounding name (duh) or to think that the entire thing is a travesty and should be thrown out (sounds like you're in that camp) is what represents the ignorance, here.
Yes. And that's regulated by the value of your "name" in the world economy. The exporters are taking our money for their products, and they're not obligated to. In any case, a trade imbalance such is this isn't healthy; I think on that point we both agree.
No. You're still wrong (if you're the same AC). That's not what a trade deficit is.
We're importing - and buying - that much more of their products than foreign nations (in this example, Asia) are of ours. We don't "owe" them anything.
Looks like you have no idea what a trade deficit is. Here's some help.
We don't "owe" anyone that money. That's the imbalance between what we export vs. what we import, i.e., we import that much more. A trade defecit - and some would argue any large trade imbalance - is unhealthy for the economy as a whole.
No, the issue, which is commonly misunderstood, is that:
- Monitoring for foreign communications does not require, should not require, and will never require, a warrant, which brings us to:
- Monitoring of foreign communications where both ends are outside of the United States, but where the passage of the traffic through equipment within the United States is incidental should not require a warrant;
- Monitoring of communications where the target of said monitoring is (reasonably* believed to be) outside of the United States should not require a warrant, regardless of where the other end of the communication is (even if within the United States);
- Monitoring of US citizens as targets within the United States requires a warrant, and always has.
And, to answer your question, I'm not a "Bush supporter" in the vein you're probably looking for, but yes, I believe that these capabilities should absolutely exist under the next administration as well. The United States has always had the ability to collect foreign intelligence without a warrant, and that should always be so. Whether one end of the conversation is within the United States, or neither end is but the traffic incidentally travels through equipment physically within the United States, is - and should be - irrelevant.
That is not to say that the so-called Protect America Act of 2007, the six-month temporary legislation which allows this, is perfect, or isn't overly broad. But the capability to continue collecting foreign intelligence without being encumbered by FISA is crucial. Then you might ask, "Well, where are the checks and balances, then?!" Indeed, where are the checks and balances for any foreign signals intelligence collection? Should all foreign SIGINT now go through a court and warrant process, just to "make sure" it's "really" foreign SIGINT? If you believe so, you're woefully misguided.
For a very brief and simple overview of the issues this addresses, see this Newsweek article.
* "Reasonable" has a standard here - it's not just someone making an arbitrary assertion. Since in today's electronic world it is virtually impossible to guarantee beyond a shadow of any doubt that a particular target may be outside of the United States, it must be reasonable to believe that they are. I know people like to think that the attorney general can just "declare" someone as being outside of the US, and commence monitoring. No. They must, by all appearances, actually appear and be believed to be outside of the United States by any reasonable assessment. And again, let me guess: "But where are the checks and balances?" To repeat, where are any such "checks" any any other foreign intelligence gathering? The difference here is that sometimes, traffic may be increasingly traveling through the United States. Instead of choosing to be hamstrung in foreign SIGINT collection just because major communication trunks happen to pass through the US, I'd choose the option of using that to our advantage. It's flat out foolish not to.
I know that airport security is a tough issue, and something that needs to be done right, but allowing an interpretation of a micro-expression to be used to select people for further investigation basically gives the airport staff the option of pulling over anyone, any time under this pretext.
They already have this option!
This is designed to make that option actually, you know, useful.
Even if you think it could be "abused", they can already effectively select anyone, for any reason, for secondary inspection. That's the whole point of trying to use some kind of behavioral cues, instead of just randomly doing it to anyone (or young blonde women), or only persons who appear to be of Middle Eastern descent.
"Apple's sync software" (iTunes) absolutely does back up an iPhone. To say that it doesn't is completely incorrect. All data you'd expect to sync does in fact sync as you'd expect it to, both on Mac OS and Windows. (How did this get modded up?)
Custom ringtone associations are lost because, well, the iPhone doesn't support custom ringtones (yet).
Backing up an iPhone completely is a necessity because:
1.) If an iPhone needs to be "Restored" (set back to factory defaults), there obviously needs to be a way to get the user data back onto it as it was.
2.) If an iPhone needs to be sent in for service, and you receive a loaner AppleCare iPhone in the meantime, you obviously want to sync it and have all of your data.
Funny that you'd just assume that "Apple's sync software doesn't properly back up an iPhone" when Apple has been one of the largest vendor doing such syncing reliably (with iPod and iTunes) for *years*, and your first reaction is that you'd need to run out and "tell" people who ask you if the iPhone is a "good buy".
That's more than an implication. That's as close as you get to saying "He did it!" without having to show evidence.
I must disagree.
Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaeda.
This doesn't say, implicitly or explicitly, that Saddam was responsible for 9/11, only that "Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaeda," which was an accurate and reasonable statement.
Before 11 September 2001, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained.
Again, this doesn't mean, at all, that Saddam was responsible for 9/11. It means that before 9/11, we had a different policy toward people like Saddam and Iraq's government. Not because Saddam was responsible for 9/11, but because after 9/11, we weren't willing to continue containment. People seem to think that if Iraq and 9/11 are mentioned in the same sentence, that somehow implies that Iraq was responsible for 9/11. No one ever said that, or even implied it. What they "implied" was that the environment and political landscape in the Mideast is incompatible with preventing future events like 9/11 if action isn't taken to change the face of the Mideast. Before 9/11, we had a policy of containment toward Iraq. After 9/11, we no longer did, again, not because Iraq was responsible for 9/11.
From a policy perspective, yes, Iraq and 9/11 were related, but not because Iraq executed 9/11. Also, the US found evidence that persons associated with Iraq may have aided persons associated with al Qaeda. This is extensively treated in the July 4, 2004 "Report on the US Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessment on Iraq" from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence:
I *strongly* recommend reading at least the above sections. The rest of the report also provides detailed reasoning for WMD justifications and so on, as does the WMD Report.
I almost can't believe I am responding to this, but in the interest of accuracy:
1. No one in the administration ever said or implied that "Saddam" had anything more than passing ties to anything related with 9/11. No one in the administration ever said Iraq (or Saddam) was responsible for 9/11. Yes, they looked for evidence immediately after 9/11. It appeared that Al-Qaeda *could* have had meetings with persons related with Saddam's government. Ultimately, the strategy after 9/11 was to institute political change in the Mideast, and Iraq was a nation-state for which the most expeditious case could be made. Centrally located, relatively secular, recent history with the American populace, and so on.
In short:
"When [Bush talks] about the fact that we can support emerging democracies in the Middle East, and that's the only way we can prevent future 9/11's, you're getting to the heart of why this administration is fighting that war in Iraq."
That's why 9/11 and Iraq were intermingled. Not because Saddam was responsible for 9/11. But because changing the face of the Mideast, starting with places like Iraq, was seen as the way to PREVENT future 9/11's, over a long period of time. The fact that X% of Americans believed Saddam was involved in 9/11 only speaks to their ignorance, because it was blindingly clear and repeated thousands of times in the days, weeks, and months following the attacks that the perpetrator was a Saudi, and 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi.
Second: Since quite a large amount (in the hundreds of tons) of the WMD Iraq was known to be in possession of was still not accounted for in any way, shape, or form, in 1998, it was reasonable to believe Iraq to still be in possession of WMD. Saddam himself believed Iraq to have a nascent nuclear weapons program at the time of the invasion.
Third: Iraq was in material breach of several binding Chapter VII UN Security Council resolutions. (I note Chapter VII because someone will always say, "What about all the resolutions Israel violated?" Sorry, those are General Assembly resolutions, which do not carry the weight of force, as do Chapter VII Security Council Resolutions.)
Also, all of this is a hell of a lot more complicated than you seem to think it is. There are armies - literally and figuratively - of analysts and experts in all manner of fields responsible for formulating and executing this strategy. The WMD situation was not at all clear cut, and before 2003, the only thing that was clear cut was that Iraq still had hundreds of tons of WMD it couldn't account for. The fact that inspectors (with whom Iraq never fully cooperated at any point in the prior twelve years) couldn't immediately uncover anything didn't mean weapons that were known to exist at some point and which had no final, provable disposition suddenly ceased to exist.
WMD may have only been the putative reason for initiating the Iraq action; the actual strategy was much more broad and far-reaching. But that still didn't change the fact that WMD was a valid emergent reason to use at the time. Indeed, many planners were dumbfounded that we didn't actually find the caches of WMD that were expected.
The billions of dollars are trackable, accountable, and attributable.
The millions of votes are supposed to be secret, anonymous, and unique.
Tell me you don't see a difference with a straight face.
(And hey: if you want to believe that every electronic election is rigged, no matter how eventually open source, now matter how eventualy trackable by paper-trail, etc., be my guest. Keep in mind that most of the electronic voting solutions were the result of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which was supposed to address the alleged and/or real problems and unfairness of 2000...)
"Two plus two equals four" and "To me, two plus two equals for" are equivalent statements.
Only because "two plus two equals four" is a provably correct factual statement.
What constitutes responsible disclosure, in the context in which I was speaking, is a matter of opinion.
Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable that someone might say "To me, means," and to at the same time not believe that the statement universally applies or is accepted by everyone. Quite the opposite, actually.
The word "responsible" refers ENTIRELY to the researcher, not to the vendor. Any definition of full disclosure which depends on whether or not a vendor choses to act is therefore an invalid definition.
The word "responsible" may apply to the "researcher" (I put "researcher" in quotes because sometimes they're more like "publicity stunt artists"), but the process usually involves some kind of give-and-take and cooperative work with the vendor. Not simply the, "Here's a vulnerability, and you have one month to fix it before I let loose everything I know." To some that's what it means, yes, but that's not what it means to many, myself included.
In your own cursory examination of articles and blogs, what term did you find the industry uses for disclosures in which the researcher gave a company advance notice of a publication, but not as much lead time as some would prefer?
Um, that's the debate, isn't it?
Some would say that a given period of time in a particular scenario isn't responsible.
Some would say that it is.
Who's right?
You? The researcher? The vendor? The pundit?
Clearly there has been plenty of room for disagreement and debate.
If the term "responsible disclosure" does not fit, which term does fit?
Believe it or not, it doesn't have to be black and white. As my subject originally said (and still says), "I agree with you for the most part."
But what if the discoverer doesn't even give the vendor a timeline? Does ANY advance notification and subsequent release constitute "responsible disclosure"? If so, why? If not, what is an acceptable amount of time that can elapse? One hour? One day? Ten days? A month? Two months? How/when/why can you draw the line? If you pretend that it isn't an important distinction, you're ignoring the most important part of the debate.
If you want to get down to what I really think, it's this: if there is no reason to believe that a particular vulnerability yet is known on any meaningful scale, why not let the vendor continue to work on it? As soon as any vulnerability starts getting used in the wild, it is already almost certainly widely known, even if only in specific circles. Why set arbitrary timelines? Because the "researcher" is "doing the vendor's work for free"? Why does the sense of accomplishment need to be accompanied with a sense of "sticking it" to someone who didn't conform to an arbitrary timeline?
Obviously we can think of examples where a vulnerability is widely known, and publicizing that it affects a vendor's product, and even creating a working exploit suitable for mass-use, has been the catalyst for fixing the problem. Better for all, right?
The bottom line is that while we can all come up with examples of how a vendor has taken "too long", there are just as many examples where a vendor was perhaps informed, but then the disclosure was a complete surprise, or a ridiculously short (or arbitrary) deadline was given. Note I am not saying any of this was or wasn't the case in this particular scenario, just pointing out that "responsible disclosure", as I have repeatedly said, isn't as clear cut as you make it.
This is a contradiction. The phrase "to me" prepended to a factual predicate does not change the meaning of the statement.
No, it is not. It means that is what is implied by "responsible disclosure" to me, which is exactly what I said. That isn't what it necessarily means to anyone, or that I think that's what it should mean to anyone, and I understand that.
That is what responsible disclosure means to me, and that is a valid viewpoint; it most certainly is a matter of opinion.
Tied to that, obviously, is the notion that the timeframe to wait cannot be unlimited. Some would err on the side of allowing the vendor more time to patch before disclosing. Some wouldn't. Exactly what this amount of time should be is what is up in the air, and very likely should be variable depending on the nature, scope, and impact of the problem, the complexity of the solution, the product, and so on.
The nature and notion of responsible disclosure isn't as clear cut as you make it out to be. A cursory examination of thoughts on responsible disclosure in articles, blogs, and elsewhere on the web would quickly confirm that.
No. Wrong. It's not a matter of opinion. With responsible disclosure, a security researcher notifies a vendor before publishing his research. It absolutely DOES NOT imply that a patch is made available before the researcher publishes his findings. A vendor is still free to shoot itself in the foot under responsible disclosure.
I didn't say it implied that; I said, "To me, "responsible disclosure" implies that a patch is made available BEFORE the detailed disclosure of the vulnerability happens". And it is a matter of opinion; it is NOT simply any notification of the vendor before full release of vulnerability details.
To this end, the length of time between vendor notification and disclosure becomes critical. Just as "vendor is still free to shoot itself in the foot under responsible disclosure", the discoverer/reporter is "free" to work with the vendor a little bit longer by waiting before disclosure. Two weeks? Two months? I'd say some could reasonably be longer. Some shouldn't be longer than 10 days. But it's often a lot more than just a purely technical fix: who gets to decide?
So, as I said, it all comes back to the time limit. I don't mean to say "responsible disclosure" ALWAYS requires a patch be made available by the vendor first; just that IDEALLY it does. If there is a 48 hour period between vendor notification and disclosure (assuming no patch), is that "responsible"? I'd say it's not. Two weeks? Maybe, depending on the nature of the issue. Two months? Almost absolutely. Six months or longer (as some have been)? Absolutely.
But it's not a clear cut issue, and it most certainly is a matter of opinion. "The only gray area", as you note, is actually a huge gray area and that's often the critical difference between a patch being available before disclosure and not: someone chooses to disclose in a timeframe that is still within zero to two months: is that acceptable? That's my point.
- the timeline for full disclosure being given to the vendor (I don't know whether that did or didn't happen in this case), and
- reaching some mutual or community agreement on what a "reasonable amount of time to fix the problem" is for the problem in question.
That said, I definitely agree this wasn't "full disclosure", since the vendor was informed, but it wasn't necessarily responsible disclosure, either. To me, "responsible disclosure" implies that a patch is made available BEFORE the detailed disclosure of the vulnerability happens, and the discoverer/reporter and the vendor work in concert on the disclosure.
Then, the debate becomes: What if the vendor doesn't fix the problem in a reasonable amount of time? What is a "reasonable amount of time"? Is that amount of time necessarily the same for every issue in every product? (Arguably, no.) And so on.
I'm aware of how classified data works, and when and how the terms are used. You said that the term top secret "reserved for government classification schemes (in the US) and is clearly outlined by US laws". If you were simply speaking from a US-centric standpoint, and not to mean that the term wasn't used elsewhere, my apologies; my point was that the term "top secret" is used by several other nations, including the UK. Your statement about how this was codified in the US was confusing since the company in question was a UK company.
And I do agree that sometimes the term "top secret" is misused for sensationalism, or incorrectly applied. But it's also wrong to say that data generated by a contractor cannot be top secret in the legal and statutory sense of the term. It absolutely can be. In this case, I agree that it's not clear if the data that is related to, e.g., terrorism investigations is actually "top secret" or just sensitive.
Many nations have equivalent parallel classification schemes, including using the terminology "top secret". Long-standing agreements between various nations allow sharing of information in the same categories.
If FTS is a contractor on terrorism investigations, it could very well be handling "top secret" data. The article refers to it as "top secret", but you're correct: it's not clear if "top secret" is merely being inappropriately applied here, or whether the information really could be technically "top secret".
Citations of reliable, public sources documenting the actual numbers of "those" people that you refer to would be a lot more impressive.
Is 36% enough?
"A Scripps-Howard poll of 1,010 adults last month found that 36% of Americans consider it "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that government officials either allowed the attacks to be carried out or carried out the attacks themselves. Thirty-six percent adds up to a lot of people. This is not a fringe phenomenon. It is a mainstream political reality."
Good point, I wasn't thinking of other interal threats that the U.S. had produced for itself.
There have been greater external threats as well. I hope - I really hope - we don't have to enumerate them.
If we do, that implies that the US is the likely only nation to never have any external threats, and to only be a threat to itself, which is ridiculous.
I hope against hope you're not one of those people who genuinely believes that.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. And that was before MCA, which is what people say "suspended Habeas Corpus". That's part of reason MCA came into existence: to clarify this situation.
Such detention of a US citizen apprehended on US soil, regardless of designation, has subsequently been determined to be legally inappropriate, and also does not fall under MCA.
Please explain how anything I said in either of my posts in this thread is a "lie" (which is I assume what you mean by calling a spade a spade), or "shredding the Constitution".
I am serious, and I really would be gratified if you could do that.
For what it's worth, Doc Ruby didn't respond to anything at all in my post, and saying that I "opened with an insult" (when his posts contain far more "insults") is nothing more than an excuse to not have to respond to any of the points.
Yeah, yeah, I know, my "points" are all "lies", or invalid, so they're not worth responding to, right? Like, my opinion that the Constitution doesn't apply to everyone on earth and instead only applies to US citizens or persons with a legal status with the United States is a "lie", or "shredding the Constitution", right? Or my assertion that MCA doesn't suspend Habeas Corpus because it does not apply to US citizens, permanent residents, or persons with a legal US immigration status, groups which are by definition the only to which Habeas Corpus can even apply? Or that foreign signals intelligence collection on aliens outside of the United States, by nature, should not require a warrant or any court process (and hasn't in the history of our nation), and that, by extension, we should take every advantage when such information, incidentally or by design, travels through the United States?
Please, tell me how these are lies, or how people can't have differing fundamental or philosophical views on issues while still basing such views on facts and valid interpretations, as opposed to "lies"?
I'd highly recommend everyone actually read TFA (yeah, a possibly futile request), because his reasoned and sensible outlook would do many folks I know a lot of good.
...and don't automatically dismiss anything that disagrees with my own personal opinion or points of view as "lies".
But it's humorous that you seem to.
One is indeed whether the government can wiretap people.
Replace "people" with "American citizens, permanent residents, and/or persons with a legal status within the United States", because they're two very, very different things, and you seem to conflate the two.
There is a very clear law, that has been regularly updated to keep pace with both technology and threats, the FISA. It is already an exception to the Constitutional requirement for any wiretap to be allowed by a warrant after evaluation by a judge under Congress' laws, to ensure the Executive doesn't just wiretap whoever it wants. Any wiretap without a warrant is by definition not reasonable. The FISA makes an exception to the usual requirement that the evidence on which the warrant is based be subject to argument, making the court hearing it and the proceedings secret.Then it makes another exception, a really extraordinary one, that allows warrants to be obtained even after the wiretap, for 72 hours. In other words, legalizing warrantless wiretaps to accommodate emergencies, after which the wiretappers can get a warrant on evidence they already had, or, if they really took a gamble without evidence but on a "hunch" that proved correct, with the contents of the 72 hours of the tap. The Executive even gets to assign the secret members of the FISA court, and its chief judge.
The main purpose of FISA is to govern the collection of foreign intelligence within the United States, and explicitly restrict and control application of surveillance of US citizens within the United States.
Foreign intelligence collection where the target, and sometimes indeed both endpoints of a communication, are outside of the United States should not require a warrant.
Of course, there's a bigger issue: these rights are inalienable, not given by the Constitution or any other feature of being American (or just living here). So violating those rights abroad, for US citizens or foreigners, also violates the rights that are America's basic ideology. But we make the exception to protect ourselves more easily, quickly and cheaply, rationalized on the grounds that we create our government here to protect our rights; foreigners can create their own governments to protect their rights if they want. But of course the accumulated rights abuses abroad have made it that much easier for our enemies to recruit allies and attack us. The tradeoff is probably a losing one, when our greatest threats are terrorists, and we're alienating even our allies.
That's a philosophical and ideological issue. If you believe we need court oversight and a warrant process for foreign intelligence collection, that's fine. It just runs counter to the very purposes and functions of intelligence, and would put the United States at a distinct disadvantage with respect to how other nations, including adversaries, collect intelligence. Our Constitution and the beliefs within it applies, by definition, to our own citizens and by extension to other persons with a valid legal status within the United States. To argue that it should apply to everyone on earth flies in the face of the current state of affairs of the world and the very notion of nation-states.
The undeniable issue here is that Bush has ignored even the easy FISA court. So there's no oversight. Instead, there's lawbreaking by the Executive, as has been found even after due process in binding Federal court with proper jurisdiction. Violating the Constitution, and then breaking the FISA. Even the 4th Amendment that's being broken is itself an extra statement of what's already implicit in the Constitution, just like the rest of the Bill of Rights. That's how important our right to privacy is. And how likely is an abusive ruler to violate it.
Foreign signals intelligence collection should, fundamentally, never require a warra
...but:
The issue at hand, which is commonly misunderstood, is that:
- Monitoring for foreign communications does not require, should not require, and will never require, a warrant, which brings us to:
- Monitoring of foreign communications where both ends are outside of the United States, but where the passage of the traffic through equipment within the United States is incidental should not require a warrant;
- Monitoring of communications where the target of said monitoring is (reasonably* believed to be) outside of the United States should not require a warrant, regardless of where the other end of the communication is (even if within the United States);
- Monitoring of US citizens as targets within the United States requires a warrant, and always has.
These capabilities should absolutely exist under the next administration as well. The United States has always had the ability to collect foreign intelligence without a warrant, and that should always be so. Whether one end of the conversation is within the United States, or neither end is but the traffic incidentally travels through equipment physically within the United States, is - and should be - irrelevant.
That is not to say that the so-called Protect America Act of 2007, the six-month temporary legislation which allows this, is perfect, or isn't overly broad. But the capability to continue collecting foreign intelligence without being encumbered by FISA is crucial. Then you might ask, "Well, where are the checks and balances, then?!" Indeed, where are the checks and balances for any foreign signals intelligence collection? Should all foreign SIGINT now go through a court and warrant process, just to "make sure" it's "really" foreign SIGINT? If you believe so, you're woefully misguided.
For a very brief and overly simple overview of the issues this addresses, see this Newsweek article.
* "Reasonable" has a standard here - it's not just someone making an arbitrary assertion. Since in today's electronic world it is virtually impossible to guarantee beyond a shadow of any doubt that a particular target may be outside of the United States, it must be reasonable to believe that they are. I know people like to think that the attorney general can just "declare" someone as being outside of the US, and commence monitoring. No. They must, by all appearances, actually appear and be believed to be outside of the United States by any reasonable assessment. And again, let me guess: "But where are the checks and balances?" To repeat, where are any such "checks" any any other foreign intelligence gathering? The difference here is that sometimes, traffic may be increasingly traveling through the United States. Instead of choosing to be hamstrung in foreign SIGINT collection just because major communication trunks happen to pass through the US, I'd choose the option of using that to our advantage. It's flat out foolish not to.
Disclaimer: much of this is culled from a previous post of mine in a previous article, but this is precisely on-point. Foreign SIGINT should not require a warrant if the target of the monitoring is already outside the United States, and especially if both endpoints of the communication are outside of the United States, regardless of the path the traffic takes. I guess I can keep going in circles with the inevitable, "Yes, but how do we really know that the situation is as you described it without the oversight of a court?" How do we know that for ANY intelligence gathering? Should all intelligence gathering of all types now go through a warrant process? Ridiculous. And on top of all of this, if you just think that administration officials are going to lie and ignore any and all laws anyway, then what difference does any wording of any law really make?
Try to at least imagine the opposing viewpoint to your own.
1. Only on slashdot can an article about Communist China be somehow turned back on the US.
2. "Not to nitpick," but the act is routinely known and referred to by all manner of sources and media as "the Patriot Act", as is noted in the first sentence of the Wikipedia article you chose to link. Yes, it is officially "The USA PATRIOT Act". Also, all acts have positive names, some cutesy, some acronyms, so they'll, you know, have public appeal and do things like, you know, pass, which is presumably what the people who proposed them in the first place would kind of want them to do. See also: "Help America Vote Act", "Protect America Act", etc.
3. The vast, vast majority of the Patriot Act is sorely needed updates to old laws. Extremely little of the Patriot Act is, or has even been, controversial. The continuing ignorance on the Patriot Act, and the assumption that it is ALL bad and was secretly designed to turn the US into a police state when its content is completely public and was passed by nearly unprecedented majorities in both houses of Congress, is what is an "insult" to the "intelligence of the nation". There absolutely are controversial aspects of the Patriot Act. To get caught up in why it was given a positive-sounding name (duh) or to think that the entire thing is a travesty and should be thrown out (sounds like you're in that camp) is what represents the ignorance, here.
Yes. And that's regulated by the value of your "name" in the world economy. The exporters are taking our money for their products, and they're not obligated to. In any case, a trade imbalance such is this isn't healthy; I think on that point we both agree.
No. You're still wrong (if you're the same AC). That's not what a trade deficit is.
We're importing - and buying - that much more of their products than foreign nations (in this example, Asia) are of ours. We don't "owe" them anything.
Looks like you have no idea what a trade deficit is. Here's some help.
We don't "owe" anyone that money. That's the imbalance between what we export vs. what we import, i.e., we import that much more. A trade defecit - and some would argue any large trade imbalance - is unhealthy for the economy as a whole.
No, the issue, which is commonly misunderstood, is that:
- Monitoring for foreign communications does not require, should not require, and will never require, a warrant, which brings us to:
- Monitoring of foreign communications where both ends are outside of the United States, but where the passage of the traffic through equipment within the United States is incidental should not require a warrant;
- Monitoring of communications where the target of said monitoring is (reasonably* believed to be) outside of the United States should not require a warrant, regardless of where the other end of the communication is (even if within the United States);
- Monitoring of US citizens as targets within the United States requires a warrant, and always has.
And, to answer your question, I'm not a "Bush supporter" in the vein you're probably looking for, but yes, I believe that these capabilities should absolutely exist under the next administration as well. The United States has always had the ability to collect foreign intelligence without a warrant, and that should always be so. Whether one end of the conversation is within the United States, or neither end is but the traffic incidentally travels through equipment physically within the United States, is - and should be - irrelevant.
That is not to say that the so-called Protect America Act of 2007, the six-month temporary legislation which allows this, is perfect, or isn't overly broad. But the capability to continue collecting foreign intelligence without being encumbered by FISA is crucial. Then you might ask, "Well, where are the checks and balances, then?!" Indeed, where are the checks and balances for any foreign signals intelligence collection? Should all foreign SIGINT now go through a court and warrant process, just to "make sure" it's "really" foreign SIGINT? If you believe so, you're woefully misguided.
For a very brief and simple overview of the issues this addresses, see this Newsweek article.
* "Reasonable" has a standard here - it's not just someone making an arbitrary assertion. Since in today's electronic world it is virtually impossible to guarantee beyond a shadow of any doubt that a particular target may be outside of the United States, it must be reasonable to believe that they are. I know people like to think that the attorney general can just "declare" someone as being outside of the US, and commence monitoring. No. They must, by all appearances, actually appear and be believed to be outside of the United States by any reasonable assessment. And again, let me guess: "But where are the checks and balances?" To repeat, where are any such "checks" any any other foreign intelligence gathering? The difference here is that sometimes, traffic may be increasingly traveling through the United States. Instead of choosing to be hamstrung in foreign SIGINT collection just because major communication trunks happen to pass through the US, I'd choose the option of using that to our advantage. It's flat out foolish not to.
I know that airport security is a tough issue, and something that needs to be done right, but allowing an interpretation of a micro-expression to be used to select people for further investigation basically gives the airport staff the option of pulling over anyone, any time under this pretext.
They already have this option!
This is designed to make that option actually, you know, useful.
Even if you think it could be "abused", they can already effectively select anyone, for any reason, for secondary inspection. That's the whole point of trying to use some kind of behavioral cues, instead of just randomly doing it to anyone (or young blonde women), or only persons who appear to be of Middle Eastern descent.
Yes, as you say, it needs to be done right. But please read Schneier's article and the New York Times story on the topic.
"Apple's sync software" (iTunes) absolutely does back up an iPhone. To say that it doesn't is completely incorrect. All data you'd expect to sync does in fact sync as you'd expect it to, both on Mac OS and Windows. (How did this get modded up?)
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Custom ringtone associations are lost because, well, the iPhone doesn't support custom ringtones (yet).
Backing up an iPhone completely is a necessity because:
1.) If an iPhone needs to be "Restored" (set back to factory defaults), there obviously needs to be a way to get the user data back onto it as it was.
2.) If an iPhone needs to be sent in for service, and you receive a loaner AppleCare iPhone in the meantime, you obviously want to sync it and have all of your data.
Funny that you'd just assume that "Apple's sync software doesn't properly back up an iPhone" when Apple has been one of the largest vendor doing such syncing reliably (with iPod and iTunes) for *years*, and your first reaction is that you'd need to run out and "tell" people who ask you if the iPhone is a "good buy".
See:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/questionsandanswers.h
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=30
That's more than an implication. That's as close as you get to saying "He did it!" without having to show evidence.
I must disagree.
Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaeda.
This doesn't say, implicitly or explicitly, that Saddam was responsible for 9/11, only that "Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaeda," which was an accurate and reasonable statement.
Before 11 September 2001, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained.
Again, this doesn't mean, at all, that Saddam was responsible for 9/11. It means that before 9/11, we had a different policy toward people like Saddam and Iraq's government. Not because Saddam was responsible for 9/11, but because after 9/11, we weren't willing to continue containment. People seem to think that if Iraq and 9/11 are mentioned in the same sentence, that somehow implies that Iraq was responsible for 9/11. No one ever said that, or even implied it. What they "implied" was that the environment and political landscape in the Mideast is incompatible with preventing future events like 9/11 if action isn't taken to change the face of the Mideast. Before 9/11, we had a policy of containment toward Iraq. After 9/11, we no longer did, again, not because Iraq was responsible for 9/11.
From a policy perspective, yes, Iraq and 9/11 were related, but not because Iraq executed 9/11. Also, the US found evidence that persons associated with Iraq may have aided persons associated with al Qaeda. This is extensively treated in the July 4, 2004 "Report on the US Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessment on Iraq" from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence:
XII. Iraq's Links to Terrorism
XIII. Intelligence Community Collection Activities Against Iraq's Links to Terrorism
XIV. Pressure on Intelligence Community Analysts Regarding Iraq's Links to Terrorism
I *strongly* recommend reading at least the above sections. The rest of the report also provides detailed reasoning for WMD justifications and so on, as does the WMD Report.
http://iphone.macworld.com/2007/08/the_iphone_hack ing_kit_step_by.php
I almost can't believe I am responding to this, but in the interest of accuracy:
1. No one in the administration ever said or implied that "Saddam" had anything more than passing ties to anything related with 9/11. No one in the administration ever said Iraq (or Saddam) was responsible for 9/11. Yes, they looked for evidence immediately after 9/11. It appeared that Al-Qaeda *could* have had meetings with persons related with Saddam's government. Ultimately, the strategy after 9/11 was to institute political change in the Mideast, and Iraq was a nation-state for which the most expeditious case could be made. Centrally located, relatively secular, recent history with the American populace, and so on.
In short:
"When [Bush talks] about the fact that we can support emerging democracies in the Middle East, and that's the only way we can prevent future 9/11's, you're getting to the heart of why this administration is fighting that war in Iraq."
That's why 9/11 and Iraq were intermingled. Not because Saddam was responsible for 9/11. But because changing the face of the Mideast, starting with places like Iraq, was seen as the way to PREVENT future 9/11's, over a long period of time. The fact that X% of Americans believed Saddam was involved in 9/11 only speaks to their ignorance, because it was blindingly clear and repeated thousands of times in the days, weeks, and months following the attacks that the perpetrator was a Saudi, and 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi.
2. WMDs.
First: UN Security Council Resolution 1441. Read it carefully.
Second: Since quite a large amount (in the hundreds of tons) of the WMD Iraq was known to be in possession of was still not accounted for in any way, shape, or form, in 1998, it was reasonable to believe Iraq to still be in possession of WMD. Saddam himself believed Iraq to have a nascent nuclear weapons program at the time of the invasion.
Third: Iraq was in material breach of several binding Chapter VII UN Security Council resolutions. (I note Chapter VII because someone will always say, "What about all the resolutions Israel violated?" Sorry, those are General Assembly resolutions, which do not carry the weight of force, as do Chapter VII Security Council Resolutions.)
Fourth: Just for fun: What did the Democrats say about Iraq's WMD?
Also, all of this is a hell of a lot more complicated than you seem to think it is. There are armies - literally and figuratively - of analysts and experts in all manner of fields responsible for formulating and executing this strategy. The WMD situation was not at all clear cut, and before 2003, the only thing that was clear cut was that Iraq still had hundreds of tons of WMD it couldn't account for. The fact that inspectors (with whom Iraq never fully cooperated at any point in the prior twelve years) couldn't immediately uncover anything didn't mean weapons that were known to exist at some point and which had no final, provable disposition suddenly ceased to exist.
WMD may have only been the putative reason for initiating the Iraq action; the actual strategy was much more broad and far-reaching. But that still didn't change the fact that WMD was a valid emergent reason to use at the time. Indeed, many planners were dumbfounded that we didn't actually find the caches of WMD that were expected.
The billions of dollars are trackable, accountable, and attributable.
The millions of votes are supposed to be secret, anonymous, and unique.
Tell me you don't see a difference with a straight face.
(And hey: if you want to believe that every electronic election is rigged, no matter how eventually open source, now matter how eventualy trackable by paper-trail, etc., be my guest. Keep in mind that most of the electronic voting solutions were the result of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which was supposed to address the alleged and/or real problems and unfairness of 2000...)
"Two plus two equals four" and "To me, two plus two equals for" are equivalent statements.
," and to at the same time not believe that the statement universally applies or is accepted by everyone. Quite the opposite, actually.
Only because "two plus two equals four" is a provably correct factual statement.
What constitutes responsible disclosure, in the context in which I was speaking, is a matter of opinion.
Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable that someone might say "To me, means
The word "responsible" refers ENTIRELY to the researcher, not to the vendor. Any definition of full disclosure which depends on whether or not a vendor choses to act is therefore an invalid definition.
The word "responsible" may apply to the "researcher" (I put "researcher" in quotes because sometimes they're more like "publicity stunt artists"), but the process usually involves some kind of give-and-take and cooperative work with the vendor. Not simply the, "Here's a vulnerability, and you have one month to fix it before I let loose everything I know." To some that's what it means, yes, but that's not what it means to many, myself included.
In your own cursory examination of articles and blogs, what term did you find the industry uses for disclosures in which the researcher gave a company advance notice of a publication, but not as much lead time as some would prefer?
Um, that's the debate, isn't it?
Some would say that a given period of time in a particular scenario isn't responsible.
Some would say that it is.
Who's right?
You? The researcher? The vendor? The pundit?
Clearly there has been plenty of room for disagreement and debate.
If the term "responsible disclosure" does not fit, which term does fit?
Believe it or not, it doesn't have to be black and white. As my subject originally said (and still says), "I agree with you for the most part."
But what if the discoverer doesn't even give the vendor a timeline? Does ANY advance notification and subsequent release constitute "responsible disclosure"? If so, why? If not, what is an acceptable amount of time that can elapse? One hour? One day? Ten days? A month? Two months? How/when/why can you draw the line? If you pretend that it isn't an important distinction, you're ignoring the most important part of the debate.
If you want to get down to what I really think, it's this: if there is no reason to believe that a particular vulnerability yet is known on any meaningful scale, why not let the vendor continue to work on it? As soon as any vulnerability starts getting used in the wild, it is already almost certainly widely known, even if only in specific circles. Why set arbitrary timelines? Because the "researcher" is "doing the vendor's work for free"? Why does the sense of accomplishment need to be accompanied with a sense of "sticking it" to someone who didn't conform to an arbitrary timeline?
Obviously we can think of examples where a vulnerability is widely known, and publicizing that it affects a vendor's product, and even creating a working exploit suitable for mass-use, has been the catalyst for fixing the problem. Better for all, right?
The bottom line is that while we can all come up with examples of how a vendor has taken "too long", there are just as many examples where a vendor was perhaps informed, but then the disclosure was a complete surprise, or a ridiculously short (or arbitrary) deadline was given. Note I am not saying any of this was or wasn't the case in this particular scenario, just pointing out that "responsible disclosure", as I have repeatedly said, isn't as clear cut as you make it.
This is a contradiction. The phrase "to me" prepended to a factual predicate does not change the meaning of the statement.
No, it is not. It means that is what is implied by "responsible disclosure" to me, which is exactly what I said. That isn't what it necessarily means to anyone, or that I think that's what it should mean to anyone, and I understand that.
That is what responsible disclosure means to me, and that is a valid viewpoint; it most certainly is a matter of opinion.
Tied to that, obviously, is the notion that the timeframe to wait cannot be unlimited. Some would err on the side of allowing the vendor more time to patch before disclosing. Some wouldn't. Exactly what this amount of time should be is what is up in the air, and very likely should be variable depending on the nature, scope, and impact of the problem, the complexity of the solution, the product, and so on.
The nature and notion of responsible disclosure isn't as clear cut as you make it out to be. A cursory examination of thoughts on responsible disclosure in articles, blogs, and elsewhere on the web would quickly confirm that.
No. Wrong. It's not a matter of opinion. With responsible disclosure, a security researcher notifies a vendor before publishing his research. It absolutely DOES NOT imply that a patch is made available before the researcher publishes his findings. A vendor is still free to shoot itself in the foot under responsible disclosure.
I didn't say it implied that; I said, "To me, "responsible disclosure" implies that a patch is made available BEFORE the detailed disclosure of the vulnerability happens". And it is a matter of opinion; it is NOT simply any notification of the vendor before full release of vulnerability details.
To this end, the length of time between vendor notification and disclosure becomes critical. Just as "vendor is still free to shoot itself in the foot under responsible disclosure", the discoverer/reporter is "free" to work with the vendor a little bit longer by waiting before disclosure. Two weeks? Two months? I'd say some could reasonably be longer. Some shouldn't be longer than 10 days. But it's often a lot more than just a purely technical fix: who gets to decide?
So, as I said, it all comes back to the time limit. I don't mean to say "responsible disclosure" ALWAYS requires a patch be made available by the vendor first; just that IDEALLY it does. If there is a 48 hour period between vendor notification and disclosure (assuming no patch), is that "responsible"? I'd say it's not. Two weeks? Maybe, depending on the nature of the issue. Two months? Almost absolutely. Six months or longer (as some have been)? Absolutely.
But it's not a clear cut issue, and it most certainly is a matter of opinion. "The only gray area", as you note, is actually a huge gray area and that's often the critical difference between a patch being available before disclosure and not: someone chooses to disclose in a timeframe that is still within zero to two months: is that acceptable? That's my point.
...responsible disclosure would also include:
- the timeline for full disclosure being given to the vendor (I don't know whether that did or didn't happen in this case), and
- reaching some mutual or community agreement on what a "reasonable amount of time to fix the problem" is for the problem in question.
That said, I definitely agree this wasn't "full disclosure", since the vendor was informed, but it wasn't necessarily responsible disclosure, either. To me, "responsible disclosure" implies that a patch is made available BEFORE the detailed disclosure of the vulnerability happens, and the discoverer/reporter and the vendor work in concert on the disclosure.
Then, the debate becomes: What if the vendor doesn't fix the problem in a reasonable amount of time? What is a "reasonable amount of time"? Is that amount of time necessarily the same for every issue in every product? (Arguably, no.) And so on.
I'm aware of how classified data works, and when and how the terms are used. You said that the term top secret "reserved for government classification schemes (in the US) and is clearly outlined by US laws". If you were simply speaking from a US-centric standpoint, and not to mean that the term wasn't used elsewhere, my apologies; my point was that the term "top secret" is used by several other nations, including the UK. Your statement about how this was codified in the US was confusing since the company in question was a UK company.
And I do agree that sometimes the term "top secret" is misused for sensationalism, or incorrectly applied. But it's also wrong to say that data generated by a contractor cannot be top secret in the legal and statutory sense of the term. It absolutely can be. In this case, I agree that it's not clear if the data that is related to, e.g., terrorism investigations is actually "top secret" or just sensitive.
Actually, that's incorrect.
Many nations have equivalent parallel classification schemes, including using the terminology "top secret". Long-standing agreements between various nations allow sharing of information in the same categories.
See here and here for details.
If FTS is a contractor on terrorism investigations, it could very well be handling "top secret" data. The article refers to it as "top secret", but you're correct: it's not clear if "top secret" is merely being inappropriately applied here, or whether the information really could be technically "top secret".
It is (PowerPoint) quite routine for contractors to handle classified information in the US and UK.
...Forensic Telecommunications Services is a UK company, not a US company, so please keep that in mind when crafting your comments.
(And yes, this is fairly plainly obvious to anyone who takes a moment to look.)
Citations of reliable, public sources documenting the actual numbers of "those" people that you refer to would be a lot more impressive.
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Is 36% enough?
"A Scripps-Howard poll of 1,010 adults last month found that 36% of Americans consider it "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that government officials either allowed the attacks to be carried out or carried out the attacks themselves. Thirty-six percent adds up to a lot of people. This is not a fringe phenomenon. It is a mainstream political reality."
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/279827_con
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,
http://www.scrippsnews.com/911poll
That is extremely, extremely saddening to me.
So, what's your response to that?
Good point, I wasn't thinking of other interal threats that the U.S. had produced for itself.
There have been greater external threats as well. I hope - I really hope - we don't have to enumerate them.
If we do, that implies that the US is the likely only nation to never have any external threats, and to only be a threat to itself, which is ridiculous.
I hope against hope you're not one of those people who genuinely believes that.