I still don't know about a no-fly list. Your numerous links don't describe one. They describe a list of names which trigger special scrutiny.
And that is a very different thing. The demonstrators weren't prevented from flying to their demonstration. They were subject to extra scrutiny, and sine they obviously cut their time before departure too short, some missed the flight.
This just breaks my heart. I mean really, I'm sobbing as I type this. You see, I'm on the same list. And I understand perhaps a bit about why one is needed. And if the government had access to *more* information, the list could be shorter and more accurate.
A few weeks ago I checked into a flight, was not allowed to use curbside check-in (I'm getting used to that), and the airline agent had to call a special number, ask a few questions and relay them, in order to get clearance to give me a boarding pass. Now if you are a protestor, and you arrive late for a flight (remember the 2 hour rule), and your name happens to be on the list, you are now doubt going to scream that you are being singled out to be oppressed.
Guess what! That's an inconvenience, and you have provided no evidence that they were singled out. It's one I'm willing to pay in order to have a safer flight, even though this list is not very well done. A
We are at war. Too many people are unwilling to even pay this slight cost (delays getting onto flights) to help in that war. And the reason is they are clueless about the war, and they are literally paranoid about the government (not that I think the government is not capable of nastiness, but the privacy paranoia is way, way over the top).
As one who volunteered for and went to war (Vietnam), I really have no sympathy for folks whining about this sort of thing.
You have shown NO evidence that peace demonstrators are being singled out for special treatment. From what I have seen of modern demonstrators, though, I wouldn't be surprised if some have contacts with terrorist supporters (without knowing that these people support terrorism). I haven't seen a lot of sanity or deep analysis in many of today's demonstrators. At last year's inauguration, I spoke with a bunch of them as they sat in the street near the procession. Not impressive at all. But a responsible counter-intelligence operation would indeed consider people who are short a brick or too of a full load and associated, however innocently, with possible terrorist sympathizers, to be worthy of special scrutiny.
Remember the lady who was given a bomb by her boy friend before she tried to get on an El Al flight. Get the picture?
So why don't YOU get your facts right, eh?
As for the "abuses" by the patriot act, I don't consider it an abuse to use a federal law, correctly, to apprehend a criminal, when warrants are approved by a court. Don't forget that an ordinary criminal has strong rights, in court, to challenge evidence if it is obtained illegally. The Patriot Act does not remove or modify those rights, since they are *constitutional* rights.
There may be some provisions of the Patriot Act that should be limited to counter-intelligence actions only, which is fine with me. So go argue to limit them. The government isn't perfect or always acting with good intent, and it needs *responsible* citizens who will take action, not whiners and absolutists.
HOWEVER, some provisions should remain in Federal Law, even if not in the act. For example, would you like to debate whether Feds (or other police) should be allowed to use roving wiretaps, with secret court approved warrants? I would STRONGLY support that ability, for ordinary crimes. I can easily defend that position. If you think about it for a while, you will understand why.
You have yet to show a single case where the Patriot Act was used to suppress dissent, persecute innocent people, or gain political power. And *that* is the what should be considered abuse. You have provided a lot of links to hypotheticals. I can provide a whole lot of hypothe
When fighting any war, and especially one so dependent on intelligence and counter-intelligence, nothing is absolute; nothing is guaranteed; and government will always make enormous screw-ups (you should read about the incredible messes in World War II). We can't prevent all attacks (unless, perhaps, we reincarnate Pol Pot and let him run things). However, it is absolutist to oppose sensible measures, even though they will have some percentage of abuse and some percentage of failure.
In other words, you can no doubt come up with examples, and any security system needs to constantly use tiger teams to try and reduce them, recognizing that no system will be perfect. Act yes, government is largely incompetent. However, it' all we have, unless you want vigilantes protecting us from terrorism.
Regarding American terrorists vs Islamic... a single attack by Islamic extremists killed more Americans than all previous terrorist attacks in history. That should give you a clue: the old days of terrorism are gone. The world has changed. It is now possible for a few people, aided by advanced technology (whether a 767, a nuclear explosive device, or a bioengineered virus) can kill a whole lot of us. At the same time, terrorists have changed from limited goals to seeking much, much greater death and destruction. Those two changes - modern deadly technology and terrorist cults with limitless goals (Islamofascists are the largest, although Aum Shinrikyo's incompetence is the only thing that kept their use of a WMD from killing thousands) together change the terrorism issue in a qualitative manner. This is a very unfortunate fact, and if we don't do our best to combat it, we deserve what happens to us.
We are truly at war in an existential sense. We didn't choose it and are not responsible for it. A suicidal cult - the Islamofascists - want to destroy or convert the entire non-Muslim society on earth and are willing to kill vast numbers of people to do so. Al Qaeda claims publicly to have dispensation from Allah to kill up to 4,000,000 innocents to achieve their goal. I'm sure they will find ways to justify ten or a hundred times that number. Furthermore, there are at least tens of millions of Muslims who support Al Qaeda, and of that number, some significant percentage are willing to participate and die to kill you and me. That is an enormous threat.
It is hard to put this threat into perspective, because the only thing close to it for the US is global thermonuclear war with Russia.
The problem with privacy fundamentalists is that you are doomed to lose, and you would be better off trying to set reasonable balances by helping the government do the best it can to check this threat. Unfortunately, privacy advocates ultimately lose at the expense of hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of the rest of us. You lose when the next big attack occurs, and the populace stops listening to theorists and demands a fix, and to hell with the details.
If you want to read a different take on this threat, check out what Mark Steyn has discovered.
Finally, for the sensitive. I did not say that *all* Muslims are part of this terrorist cult, or that there were no Muslims who oppose it.
You are right that the war may not end. In that case, our current lifestyle and freedoms are, well, your choice: suicidal or going to change. However, history shows that the West, if pushed far enough, will defeat any threat, no matter what level of sacrifice and brutality is needed. In World War II, we firebombed Dresden and Tokyo, and intentionally targetted civilian populations (as did our enemy). If our enemy in this war kills hundreds of thousands or millions of our citizens, what do you think we are going to do, here, and abroad. This war can in fact end - the enemy can, if faced with near extinction, undergo a sudden attitude adjustment. Just ask the Japanese, who 60 years ago thought they were prepared to fight to the last school child.
But in any case...
As with any government program (say, environmental remediation), the poorly named "War on Terror" is going to provide goodies for some, and will have corruption. Duh. If the alternative the destruction, I'm willing to pay the inevitable price of government inefficiencies and corruption.
But you seriously underestimate the cost of loosing a major city (and you seem to not mind losing the citizens of that city along with it, which did NOT happen with Katrina). If we lose a major city, Americans NOT IN GOVERNMENT are going to realize that unless they live out in the countryside, their family has good chance getting nuked too. And they are simply not going to put up with that. Our leaders (who are not nearly as cynical or disregarding of the value of life as you appear to be) will be forced to either greatly increase surveillance and other police powers, or be thrown out of office (or impeached). And, they will be forced, BY OUR POPULATION, THROUGH DEMOCRATIC MEANS, to take actions overseas that make the treatment of Japan and Germany look mild.
Now the consequences are A FACT (at least for the US. Europe may have become to decrepit survive) . I dare you to disprove them. Are you willing to increase the odds of these consequences in order to protect the fiction that you have some privacy - in order to keep part of your life hidden from the government but available to any company you do business with you?
I challenge you to deal with the nuke in a city scenario. You don't deny it will happen. But you seem to not care aboutthe consequences.
As to your totalitarian reference ("the party book"...)... which is more likely to lead to that scenario? Citizens who are so uncaring about their fellows that you just sit back and wait - until the whole country is scared to death and willing to follow any demogogue who promises them safety, or citizens engaged enough to consider the reality of the war and support rational but imperfect and sometimes unfair measures?
Guess what!
The Catholc Church did have some pedos, and in too many cases tried to "treat" offenders (and cover up for them) rather than hand them over to government authorities. But the vast majority of cases of "pedophilia" were actually cases of homosexual (most of them) or heterosexual statutory rape or "ordinary" sexual abuse. Pedophilla is a sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children, but few of the victims were children. This is also true of the Boy Scouts and other organizations which work with children and youth.
As an example, there was a priest at my daughter's school who ran a ranch for wayward youth (teenagers). As it turned out, he was a homosexual and abused those juvenile males. As soon as he was discovered, he was handed over to authorities and is now in jail.
I would guess that the press rarely mentions this aspect of the "pedophilia" scandal because they don't want to be demogogued as "homophobes* - but if it is the truth and relevant, it isn't phobia, it just *is*.
The Catholic Church rarely intended to "enable" their perpetrators. But they believed in healing and therapy (in other words, the psychology of the '70s and '80s plus Christianity) and thus too often failed to take the correct action (bringing in the police). Furthermore, some responsible officials were too interested in CYA when they should not have been.
Okay, I'm counting for the last 60 years - long enough for you?
Number of Americans killed in the last 50 years by *the federal government* for expressing the wrong views: 0. This leads me to wonder who in your family you are referring to.
Number of Americans killed by government for expressing the wrong views:0 Number of Americans killed by government accidently during protests 4 that I know of, at Kent State.
Number of Americans by or on behalf of Joe McCarthy: 0 (but Joe McCarthy was certainly a person who injured people by abusing his office)
Number of Americans killed by right wing terrorists: about 200 (Oklahoma city, a few at abortion clinics, one at Atlanta Olypics)
Number of Americans killed by left wing and eco-terrorists: a few (Ted Kazynski, a few during the Vietnam war years. an acquaintance of mine was permanently injured, for the sin of being a university computer operator, by a left-wing bombing).
Number of Americans killed by Islamofascist terrorists: approximately 3000, most on 9-11; a few at the same WTC in 1993; a few in aircraft or cruise ship hijackings.
In other words, if one deconstructs your examples, they are best described as nonsense. The bad guys killed a whole lot more than the government. The *abuse* of government power was even less . If you look closely at the events leading up to 9-11, it was privacy rights absolutism that, in at least two events, prevented the attack from being stopped (there is a very good chance it would have been without that extremism).
If you studied World War II history, you would know that during THAT war, privacy rights and some other civil rights vanished. After the war they came back and became stronger than at any time in the nation's history. We are in a war in which counterintelligence is more important than any other we have fought, with the possible exception of the civil war (in which not only privacy rights disappeared, but so did habeas corpus). War requires sacrifice, and one of the things we have to do is wisely and carefully sacrifice some of our privacy rights.
The treatment of the Japanese, while certainly scooping up a lot of innocent people and detaining them, had nothing to do with privacy rights. If you want to see it repeated, just continue to advocate pro-terrorist policies such as privacy fundamentalism, and see what Americans due to Muslims and "Muslim-looking" people after a nuke goes off in one of our cities, which was my point. We already had a Sikh killed here in Arizona, just after 9-11, by a citizen not the much feared government, because they *thought* he was a Muslim. Don't you think that maybe the government would use some acquired personal information to prevent 9-11's in the future, if possible, thus reducing the likelihood of such attacks, and the probability of a generally agreed upon set of measures that make the Patriot Act look utterly trivial?
Finally, let's apply a little reason to government. If you are a libertarian and not cocmpletely looney, you know that the most important reason to have any government at all is to protect us against other citizens and foreign powers (in this case, stateless or state-backed terrorists). That is the FIRST purpose of government. We do this knowing that placing any power in the hands of government is a risk.
So the rational person tries to weigh the risks. I see that rarely in internet debate; rather, what appears is knee-jerk civil liberties absolutists.
Now, please tell me of *actual* cases where the government abused you, a familhy member, or someone you know. Note that abuse does NOT mean accidently detained or surveilled, but does mean intentionally used its powers for purposes of gaining power or money undemocratically.
So you really think that our government, with *its current set of laws and activities* is more of a threat to your privacy than the terrorists? That the government is the gorilla and the terrorists are the ants?
That's exactly the problem I was referring to.
Just wait. When the terrorists do something *really* bad - something that a large number of Americans can see happening to themselves if the government doesn't stop it.
Then you'll perhaps see the ant grow to the size of, perhaps, a watchdog, and perhaps another gorilla. When a terrorist kills you with a nuke, you have no rights. When a terrorist kills you r kid by attacking her school, your very strong privacy rights are not going to make you feel better. Do you doubt that there are tens of thousands of trained Islamofascist terrorists, and tens of millions who support them?
If so, you need to read more and better.
Meanwhile, excessive paranoia about privacy simply makes that time likely to happen much sooner and to be much worse.
I await your evidence that any of what you describe is true. It sounds like pure paranoia to me!
Which hippies were *prevented* from flying (which, by the way, has NOTHING to do with the Patriot Act, or for that matter, privacy invasions other than right at entry to the airport)?
I have yet to read of even one abuse of the Patriot Act. I have yet to read of any action taken by the Federal Government against innocents based on any of the expanded war powers, other than random searches (which included catching a Medal of Honor winner here, and the classic "grandmother in a wheelchair" scenario) - neither of which are abuses, but rather annoyances.
I do agree that using the Patriot Act for non-terrorist related purposes is inappropriate (except in cases where it is an obvious necessary extension of existing powers - such as extending *warranted* wiretaps to include roving ones).
By the way, I am on the TSA list, and am a Bush supporter. I hardly think that got me on the list, but the fact that I have an extremely common name was the cause.
Oh, and please tell me what "no fly" list you are talking about, or any Bush administration action "to prevent hippies [et al] from attending protests."
------------------
On another subject... Troll moderation?
Be serious. I tried to write a funny post, not a troll. In the past, I have written unfunny posts with the same meaning, and never gotten a troll reading. FUrthermore, I would defy the moderators to prove that my "troll" post is incorrect.
Naturally, this has immediately turned into a discussion on government surveillance... so...
Let's see if I understand this...
A bunch of people in America, all from a peace loving and gentle religious background, flew airplanes into skyscrapers, attempting to kill tens of thousands of people and succeeding in murdering more than the Japanese killed in Pearl Harbor. This was 8 years after another group, from the same peace loving and gentle religious background, used a large bomb in an attempt to achieve the same result. Since then, more of these folks have made (loving and gentle) efforts to kill more of us, and some of those efforts were thwarted by wiretaps and data mining. They succeeded in Spain and England and a few other spots.
These gentle people carry out the desires of 10s of millions of their co-religionists, and are funded by huge amounts of money from these supporters and rogue states. In the near future, these gentlemen are going to have portable nuclear weapons, and the clear intent of setting them off in American cities.... Slashdotters should realize that this will, at the minimum, mess up the internet for a while and perhaps destroy some of their favorite porn sites. It will also kill a bunch of their fellow Slashdotters, who made the poor choice of living in the target areas. It will certainly lead to extreme reductions in personal privacy, which will be demanded by most surviving Americans. Oh, and it will destroy the economy, leaving most Slashdot readers with no toy budget (except for those who are drafted).
BUT... most Slashdot readers are more scared of what the FBI might know about them... an organization that doesn't have the time to even keep track of more than a few of the literally tens of thousands of trained terrorists who wish to do worse than 9-11, was shown to be decades behind in computer technology, and hasn't the slightest interest in your reading habits unless you plan to blow someone up.
AND... few of the readers and commenters are aware of the history of civil liberties during times of war in America, the fact that they were seriously limited but with few abuses, and that the end of the war led to an increase of civil liberties beyond the pre-war conditions.
SO Slashdotters will go to bed at night, hiding under their blankets, in fear that the G-men monsters will soon slip from their closets and pop out from under their beds.
SIGH!
When there is a gigantic gorilla in the room, worrying obsessively about the faint possibility that an ant might get in is beyond reason!
Now, I will pause for the next 500 comments obsessing over the abuses this capability *might* be used for against, I guess, innocent Slashdot readers, and of course little old ladies using libraries, and attacking me for being blind to such an enormous threat to my privacy... To which I ask.... so frigging what if the FBI knows what I read? They investigated me for security violations when I was 6 years old (true story), and that didn't hurt at all.
Errr... isn't this sort of silly?
Meanwhile, considering what spammers might do with this information would be more interesting, since the misuse might actually actually bother some of us.
As someone who was invited to join PJM but declined because I had reduced my blogging, I can tell you that is utter balderdash. I don't know that many of the members, but one of the primary founders, Roger L Simon, is a professional - he has written mystery novels and movies, and works as a professional screen writer. His blog is generally "neocon." Another blogger, Marc Cooper, is also a professional writer - a left wing reporter, LA Times columnist, writer for The New Republic, and Annenberg lecturer and fellow. His blog is hard left.
There is another business venture consisting of associated blogs - Pajamas Media - which should be mentioned in this context. Its business model is based on creating a multi-blog advertising system. As far as I know, pajamas uses serious political blogs rather than "daily diary" sorts of things.
Perhaps we need a different term for serious blogs about whatever subject. Also a term for the commenter community that grows up around each one. Here's your chance to get famous, although Bill Quick, who invented the term "blogosphere," doesn't seem to have gathered enough fame from that.
The reason for the concern about Tamiflu resistance (as opposed to resistance to Relenza) is that Tamiflu can prevent infection by non-resistant influenza. Hence public health officials were hoping to use it to stop the spread of an epidemic of human-to-human mutated bird flu by giving it to those who might have been exposed or would soon be exposed, thus isolating the mutated flu and letting it die out. This is similar to the approach of "ring vaccination" used to stop smallpox (except that here there is no adequate vaccine).
It is also obvious, upon reflection, but needs to be born in mind that if an instance of mutation into human transmissible disease occurs, it initally only infects one person. If that infection can be contained, that instance of the mutation might be snuffed out. The success of that strategy also, of course, depends on whether the mutation has made its way into the animal - specifically migratory bird - population.
Finally, I suspect that the existence of resistant H5N1 means that some poultry growers in Asia, probablhy Vietnam, have been giving Tamiflu to their birds.
It is my (possibly flawed) understanding that the H5N1 virus kills by overstimulating the immune system, resulting in a cytokine storm which (in this case) destroys lung tissue. Hence (like the 1918 flu), those with the strongest immune system (young adults) are most at risk.
If this is true, building up your immune system (if that is really possible) would seem counterproductive.
Obligatory disclaimer: I believe that ID is both non-scientific, and almost certainly, also wrong (note that the two are not equivalent).
I think the reason that this topic always brings out so many comments is that the US is currently in the middle of a culture war, started a few decades ago by the anti-religionists, and now in full force as the more radical religionists fight back.
Hence it has become a "big-news" divisive issue. The fact that most of the MSM is anti-Christian (or at the least, very much anti-evangelical or fundamentalist Christian) contributes to the divide and to the constant attention to the issue.
Kansas does something stupid with regard to ID, and it gets as many headlines as a major success (the elections) in Iraq. Somewhere a judge rules pro or con on a peri-religious display and again, big headlines.
Also, there are many people who have a reflexive, almost juvenile "anti-parent" reaction to the appearance of religion. This increases the sensitivity - especially on a nerd blog.
So to answer your question:
Yes, it's a hot spot.
Yes, it is even more so for many nerds/geeks. Y
Yes, many geeks are religious - especially in the United States.
As has been pointed out by another commenter, many people far more brilliant that perhaps anyone who posts here (famous scientists) were also deeply religious.
I would suggest you read up on the North Atlantic Oscillation (and for that matter, the Pacific Decadal Osciallation). Then I would suggest you look at the long term cycles of hurricane activity and strength (hint - the strongest hurricanes were in the 1930s). Then I would suggest that you don't get your scientific information from the New York Times or equivalent sources.
Those of us who have been involved with Hurricane disaster relief have long known that the end of the multi-decadal quiet period was coming and that much nastier hurricane seasons were due. And sure enough, they have arrived.
What amazes me is the naivette of those who imagine that we can do something about global warming, even if the primary effect is anthropogenic (which is dubious - mankind's contribution of CO2 probably has SOME effect, but it doesn't explain why the icecaps of Mars are melting).
Go back 100 years. Horse droppings were a major problem and increasing. The world was ruled by Europe and the US. Furthermore, although horse poop fuel was renewable, it required about 25% of US farmland (itself taken away form mother nature and reformed dramatically) to produce the fuel that resulted in the horse poop.
If at that time we all decided to create a global treaty to reduce horse poop, what would have been the result?
Note that any of the following factors would have been enough to destroy the treaty:
1) World War I (100 years ago, it was felt that war would no longer happen)
2) The rise of international communism, which (as anyone who has been to a former communist country can testify) had no interest in either obeying treaties or improving the environment.
3) The rise of Fascism, with the same result.
4) World War II
And, of course, the invention of the gasoline powered automobile would have rendered the treaty moot.
In other words, we can posture all we want, and we can take feel-good actions (such as Kyoto or buying little cars), and it won't make a measurable difference.
Kyoto, in 100 years, has no measurable effect, and its predicted effect, based on unproven climate models, only sets back the warming curve by six years. This is based on the UNCC models used by those advocating Kyoto. Hence to really make a difference (by those same UNCC models), draconian measures would be required (such as 40% energy use reductions). And yet, India and China are increasing their energy needs and their mobility at a dramatic rate, and neither is likely to agree to any draconian measures. I suppose we could just nuke them so we could meet CO2 reduction goals...
Furthermore, we cannot predict or control the global political scene just a few years out. Who thought, a mere 5 years ago, that New York would have suffered a catastrophic attack and that the US would have conquered two middle eastern countries?
Of course, we don't know what technological innovations will come along that might:
-reduce CO2 emissions at a much lower cost
-reduce the world's population to a few hundred million survivors of a bio-terror attack
-make new kinds of warfare (and treaty breaking) possible
So go ahead and posture. Tell us what wonderful things you are going to do to solve the problem. Tell us the restrictions you are going to place on the rest of us in the name of reducing CO2 emissions. Then explain the future, in detail.
Of course, if one is really serious about reducing global warming, take political action to increase the fraction of power generated by nuclear power (renewable sources are interesting but numerically cannot come close to doing the job, and nuclear still faces the problem of getting the power into moving automobiles where a lot of it is needed).
Personally, I would like to see more research money dumped into the following problems:
1) How to remediate the effects of global warming 2) Better research on climate change, including especially better paleoclimatology 3) Electric car or fuel cell car technology, with the focus on low cost and good features. This last one faces the problem of energy storage - gasoline does a great job of this, but releasing the energy produces CO2. Batteries so far are not even close to a reasonable energy density, life cycle cost requirement. 4) Energy transport and storage from nuclear sources, or other non-CO2 producting sources *if* they can produce enough power to be noticeable in the mix (they don't now and are unlikely to ever do so). Note that hydrogen is hard to transport and store (did you know that it embrittles steel?), the hydrogen f
I don't support every single piece of the Patriot Act. If people are so exercised about library records, then let the FISA courts be required. HOWEVER, the ability to restrict the release of information by the libraries to their users about an incident of request of records should be preserved in appropriate circumstances (per FISA). I honestly don't remember, at this point, exactly what circumstances allow access to what records without a FISA court approval. Obviously there needs to be an ability to deal with exigent circumstances WITHOUT a warrant, but there also needs to be a way to control thta. The existing Patriot Act has extensive requirements for reporting to congress (which is almost never mentioned in this debate), which provides a strong check on excessive actions. It also has all sorts of internal constraints and mostly requires the FISA courts to do things. Go ahead and read it and I think you'll be surprised at how much of the total Act consists of clauses protecting civil liberties.
Information sharing is needed, but so is the raw intelligence itself. The last time I read the Patriot Act (a while ago) it didn't "broadly expand wiretapping." It did provide for roving wiretaps, which are clearly a simple modernization of wiretapping - if you have the court-provided right to tap someone's phone, it is illogical that you can only tap one number, or only numbers provided ahead of time. If a terrorist has a bag of pre-paid phones, and uses each one only once, the counter-intelligence folks need to have the ability to tap all of them by user, not by phone number. This is a modernization that is needed not just in counter-terrorism but law enforcement in general (and remember, law enforcement can wiretap with warrants, can get library records, etc).
I think it important to debate what exact provisions of the Patriot Act are seens as unnecessarily odious, rather than the whole thing as if it were a single black box.
Utter nonsense from someone who doesn't know history.
Up until the last few decades, the government didn't need a Patriot Act to do what it wanted to do, because it did them anyway. Only recently have civil liberties *been expanded* to severely limit government powers in wiretapping and related areas.
During previous wars (and if you don't think we are at war with a dangerous enemy, I suggest you pay a little more attention) much greater restrictions took place. In WW-II Japanese nationals on the west coast were herded into concentration camps. The FBI needed no warrants at all for wiretaps and searches.
During the civil war, Abraham Lincoln suspended an absolutely cleary constitutional right (as opposed to the derived and arguable rights regarding wiretaps) - the right of habeus corpus.
The writers of the Constitution themselves supported censorship, just like John McCain in his so-called reform.
When people wake up someday (probably to a nuclear blast or a dirty bomb) and realize that our unimaginable fussiness about such obviously necessary things as roving wiretaps), those opposing the Patriot Act are going to look, in history, as utter idiots.
There are a few warts on the Patriot Act (such as its being used for non-terrorist offensives), but in general (at least to those of us who read it, and who are not civil liberties uber alles sorts) in is well drafted with a large number of provisions to protect civil liberties - provisions its opponents never even mention.
I doubt that anyone here can make a coherent argument against the extension of existing wiretap authorization to roving wiretaps.
Finally, someone claimed it was bureaucracy that falied to stop 9-11, but they are wrong. There were two groups that had information that oculd have stopped 9-11 - the FBI team that captured Zacharias Moussoui (sp), and Able Danger who identified Atta. In both cases, lawyers, fearing civil liberties laws and witchhunts, suppressed the transfer of this information to those who could have done something about 9-11.
No, the BSA was denied the use of PRIVATE funds collected by a city from its employees (VOLUNTARY United Way contributions).
Okay, enough. You are clearly so radicalized against Christians as to be unable to recognize discrimination or unjust attacks if they bit you in the ass.
The ACLU is busy trying to drive Christianity from all walks of public life, in a bizarre perversion of the intent of the 1st amendment.
The Boy Scouts (a monotheistic organization) is being persecuted widely (here in the Phoenix area, one town refused to allow its charity funds to go there).
The Catholic Church has been frequently desecrated by Homosexual activists, while its practices and beliefs are widely attacked,including in Hollywood fictional series (I enjoy watching the "Law and Order" series but some of their attacks on the Church have been highly offensive).
Fundamentalists are laughed at by all "sophisticates" and generally treated as hicks. While I don't agree with all of their views, they are mocked and misportrayed in a way that would be a very big no-no if done to Muslims or fundamentalist Jews.
If one adopts even the slightest sensitivity towards mainstream Christian views (and sensitivity is hard to find in the "sensitive" mainstream left or academia), one can see the attacks in the KulturKampf happening very frequently and widely. Without that sensitivity, perhaps you have just not noticed it.
More dangerous are those who deliberately (or unknowlingly) slant the coverage of contentious subjects in one direction. My own experience was with Wiki editors (or whatever they are called) whose standard of proof for one side was dramatically higher than their standard of proof for another side.
That's called bias, and Wikipedia, at least in some areas, reflects certain biases rather badly.
However, as someone else pointed out, it shouldn't be anyone's final source of truth, but rather a starting point. It has good references (although in the changes I submitted, not only were they thrown out but so was my reference - as non-existent - even though a second's Google would have proved the existence of the reference as it was on sale at Amazon).
Wikipedia is a great experiment and a great resource. It's biggest danger is that people take it as the final answer. But then, far too many people take the main stream media as the final answer also, which is why they have so much power.
As far as I know, triangulation isn't normally used for E911. For a given system, either the phones have built in GPS which they transmit to the system, or the system uses TDOA (Time Difference of Arrival) location finding, which is much more accurate than fixed-antenna direction finding.
Presumably one can defeat the GPS-based systems. Defeating the TDOA system would be much harder, and would involve going to locations where signal bounce (or multipath) gave erroneous TDOA readings.
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I still don't know about a no-fly list. Your numerous links don't describe one. They describe a list of names which trigger special scrutiny.
And that is a very different thing. The demonstrators weren't prevented from flying to their demonstration. They were subject to extra scrutiny, and sine they obviously cut their time before departure too short, some missed the flight.
This just breaks my heart. I mean really, I'm sobbing as I type this. You see, I'm on the same list. And I understand perhaps a bit about why one is needed. And if the government had access to *more* information, the list could be shorter and more accurate.
A few weeks ago I checked into a flight, was not allowed to use curbside check-in (I'm getting used to that), and the airline agent had to call a special number, ask a few questions and relay them, in order to get clearance to give me a boarding pass. Now if you are a protestor, and you arrive late for a flight (remember the 2 hour rule), and your name happens to be on the list, you are now doubt going to scream that you are being singled out to be oppressed.
Guess what! That's an inconvenience, and you have provided no evidence that they were singled out. It's one I'm willing to pay in order to have a safer flight, even though this list is not very well done. A
We are at war. Too many people are unwilling to even pay this slight cost (delays getting onto flights) to help in that war. And the reason is they are clueless about the war, and they are literally paranoid about the government (not that I think the government is not capable of nastiness, but the privacy paranoia is way, way over the top).
As one who volunteered for and went to war (Vietnam), I really have no sympathy for folks whining about this sort of thing.
You have shown NO evidence that peace demonstrators are being singled out for special treatment. From what I have seen of modern demonstrators, though, I wouldn't be surprised if some have contacts with terrorist supporters (without knowing that these people support terrorism). I haven't seen a lot of sanity or deep analysis in many of today's demonstrators. At last year's inauguration, I spoke with a bunch of them as they sat in the street near the procession. Not impressive at all. But a responsible counter-intelligence operation would indeed consider people who are short a brick or too of a full load and associated, however innocently, with possible terrorist sympathizers, to be worthy of special scrutiny.
Remember the lady who was given a bomb by her boy friend before she tried to get on an El Al flight. Get the picture?
So why don't YOU get your facts right, eh?
As for the "abuses" by the patriot act, I don't consider it an abuse to use a federal law, correctly, to apprehend a criminal, when warrants are approved by a court. Don't forget that an ordinary criminal has strong rights, in court, to challenge evidence if it is obtained illegally. The Patriot Act does not remove or modify those rights, since they are *constitutional* rights.
There may be some provisions of the Patriot Act that should be limited to counter-intelligence actions only, which is fine with me. So go argue to limit them. The government isn't perfect or always acting with good intent, and it needs *responsible* citizens who will take action, not whiners and absolutists.
HOWEVER, some provisions should remain in Federal Law, even if not in the act. For example, would you like to debate whether Feds (or other police) should be allowed to use roving wiretaps, with secret court approved warrants? I would STRONGLY support that ability, for ordinary crimes. I can easily defend that position. If you think about it for a while, you will understand why.
You have yet to show a single case where the Patriot Act was used to suppress dissent, persecute innocent people, or gain political power. And *that* is the what should be considered abuse. You have provided a lot of links to hypotheticals. I can provide a whole lot of hypothe
In other words, you can no doubt come up with examples, and any security system needs to constantly use tiger teams to try and reduce them, recognizing that no system will be perfect. Act yes, government is largely incompetent. However, it' all we have, unless you want vigilantes protecting us from terrorism.
Regarding American terrorists vs Islamic... a single attack by Islamic extremists killed more Americans than all previous terrorist attacks in history. That should give you a clue: the old days of terrorism are gone. The world has changed. It is now possible for a few people, aided by advanced technology (whether a 767, a nuclear explosive device, or a bioengineered virus) can kill a whole lot of us. At the same time, terrorists have changed from limited goals to seeking much, much greater death and destruction. Those two changes - modern deadly technology and terrorist cults with limitless goals (Islamofascists are the largest, although Aum Shinrikyo's incompetence is the only thing that kept their use of a WMD from killing thousands) together change the terrorism issue in a qualitative manner. This is a very unfortunate fact, and if we don't do our best to combat it, we deserve what happens to us.
We are truly at war in an existential sense. We didn't choose it and are not responsible for it. A suicidal cult - the Islamofascists - want to destroy or convert the entire non-Muslim society on earth and are willing to kill vast numbers of people to do so. Al Qaeda claims publicly to have dispensation from Allah to kill up to 4,000,000 innocents to achieve their goal. I'm sure they will find ways to justify ten or a hundred times that number. Furthermore, there are at least tens of millions of Muslims who support Al Qaeda, and of that number, some significant percentage are willing to participate and die to kill you and me. That is an enormous threat.
It is hard to put this threat into perspective, because the only thing close to it for the US is global thermonuclear war with Russia.
The problem with privacy fundamentalists is that you are doomed to lose, and you would be better off trying to set reasonable balances by helping the government do the best it can to check this threat. Unfortunately, privacy advocates ultimately lose at the expense of hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of the rest of us. You lose when the next big attack occurs, and the populace stops listening to theorists and demands a fix, and to hell with the details.
If you want to read a different take on this threat, check out what Mark Steyn has discovered.
Finally, for the sensitive. I did not say that *all* Muslims are part of this terrorist cult, or that there were no Muslims who oppose it.
You are right that the war may not end. In that case, our current lifestyle and freedoms are, well, your choice: suicidal or going to change. However, history shows that the West, if pushed far enough, will defeat any threat, no matter what level of sacrifice and brutality is needed. In World War II, we firebombed Dresden and Tokyo, and intentionally targetted civilian populations (as did our enemy). If our enemy in this war kills hundreds of thousands or millions of our citizens, what do you think we are going to do, here, and abroad. This war can in fact end - the enemy can, if faced with near extinction, undergo a sudden attitude adjustment. Just ask the Japanese, who 60 years ago thought they were prepared to fight to the last school child.
But in any case...
As with any government program (say, environmental remediation), the poorly named "War on Terror" is going to provide goodies for some, and will have corruption. Duh. If the alternative the destruction, I'm willing to pay the inevitable price of government inefficiencies and corruption.
But you seriously underestimate the cost of loosing a major city (and you seem to not mind losing the citizens of that city along with it, which did NOT happen with Katrina). If we lose a major city, Americans NOT IN GOVERNMENT are going to realize that unless they live out in the countryside, their family has good chance getting nuked too. And they are simply not going to put up with that. Our leaders (who are not nearly as cynical or disregarding of the value of life as you appear to be) will be forced to either greatly increase surveillance and other police powers, or be thrown out of office (or impeached). And, they will be forced, BY OUR POPULATION, THROUGH DEMOCRATIC MEANS, to take actions overseas that make the treatment of Japan and Germany look mild.
Now the consequences are A FACT (at least for the US. Europe may have become to decrepit survive) . I dare you to disprove them. Are you willing to increase the odds of these consequences in order to protect the fiction that you have some privacy - in order to keep part of your life hidden from the government but available to any company you do business with you?
I challenge you to deal with the nuke in a city scenario. You don't deny it will happen. But you seem to not care aboutthe consequences.
As to your totalitarian reference ("the party book"...)... which is more likely to lead to that scenario? Citizens who are so uncaring about their fellows that you just sit back and wait - until the whole country is scared to death and willing to follow any demogogue who promises them safety, or citizens engaged enough to consider the reality of the war and support rational but imperfect and sometimes unfair measures?
As an example, there was a priest at my daughter's school who ran a ranch for wayward youth (teenagers). As it turned out, he was a homosexual and abused those juvenile males. As soon as he was discovered, he was handed over to authorities and is now in jail. I would guess that the press rarely mentions this aspect of the "pedophilia" scandal because they don't want to be demogogued as "homophobes* - but if it is the truth and relevant, it isn't phobia, it just *is*.
The Catholic Church rarely intended to "enable" their perpetrators. But they believed in healing and therapy (in other words, the psychology of the '70s and '80s plus Christianity) and thus too often failed to take the correct action (bringing in the police). Furthermore, some responsible officials were too interested in CYA when they should not have been.
Okay, I'm counting for the last 60 years - long enough for you?
Number of Americans killed in the last 50 years by *the federal government* for expressing the wrong views: 0. This leads me to wonder who in your family you are referring to.
Number of Americans killed by government for expressing the wrong views:0
Number of Americans killed by government accidently during protests 4 that I know of, at Kent State.
Number of Americans by or on behalf of Joe McCarthy: 0 (but Joe McCarthy was certainly a person who injured people by abusing his office)
Number of Americans killed by right wing terrorists: about 200 (Oklahoma city, a few at abortion clinics, one at Atlanta Olypics)
Number of Americans killed by left wing and eco-terrorists: a few (Ted Kazynski, a few during the Vietnam war years. an acquaintance of mine was permanently injured, for the sin of being a university computer operator, by a left-wing bombing).
Number of Americans killed by Islamofascist terrorists: approximately 3000, most on 9-11; a few at the same WTC in 1993; a few in aircraft or cruise ship hijackings.
In other words, if one deconstructs your examples, they are best described as nonsense. The bad guys killed a whole lot more than the government. The *abuse* of government power was even less . If you look closely at the events leading up to 9-11, it was privacy rights absolutism that, in at least two events, prevented the attack from being stopped (there is a very good chance it would have been without that extremism).
If you studied World War II history, you would know that during THAT war, privacy rights and some other civil rights vanished. After the war they came back and became stronger than at any time in the nation's history. We are in a war in which counterintelligence is more important than any other we have fought, with the possible exception of the civil war (in which not only privacy rights disappeared, but so did habeas corpus). War requires sacrifice, and one of the things we have to do is wisely and carefully sacrifice some of our privacy rights.
The treatment of the Japanese, while certainly scooping up a lot of innocent people and detaining them, had nothing to do with privacy rights. If you want to see it repeated, just continue to advocate pro-terrorist policies such as privacy fundamentalism, and see what Americans due to Muslims and "Muslim-looking" people after a nuke goes off in one of our cities, which was my point. We already had a Sikh killed here in Arizona, just after 9-11, by a citizen not the much feared government, because they *thought* he was a Muslim. Don't you think that maybe the government would use some acquired personal information to prevent 9-11's in the future, if possible, thus reducing the likelihood of such attacks, and the probability of a generally agreed upon set of measures that make the Patriot Act look utterly trivial?
Finally, let's apply a little reason to government. If you are a libertarian and not cocmpletely looney, you know that the most important reason to have any government at all is to protect us against other citizens and foreign powers (in this case, stateless or state-backed terrorists). That is the FIRST purpose of government. We do this knowing that placing any power in the hands of government is a risk.
So the rational person tries to weigh the risks. I see that rarely in internet debate; rather, what appears is knee-jerk civil liberties absolutists.
Now, please tell me of *actual* cases where the government abused you, a familhy member, or someone you know. Note that abuse does NOT mean accidently detained or surveilled, but does mean intentionally used its powers for purposes of gaining power or money undemocratically.
So you really think that our government, with *its current set of laws and activities* is more of a threat to your privacy than the terrorists? That the government is the gorilla and the terrorists are the ants?
That's exactly the problem I was referring to.
Just wait. When the terrorists do something *really* bad - something that a large number of Americans can see happening to themselves if the government doesn't stop it.
Then you'll perhaps see the ant grow to the size of, perhaps, a watchdog, and perhaps another gorilla. When a terrorist kills you with a nuke, you have no rights. When a terrorist kills you r kid by attacking her school, your very strong privacy rights are not going to make you feel better. Do you doubt that there are tens of thousands of trained Islamofascist terrorists, and tens of millions who support them?
If so, you need to read more and better.
Meanwhile, excessive paranoia about privacy simply makes that time likely to happen much sooner and to be much worse.
I await your evidence that any of what you describe is true. It sounds like pure paranoia to me!
Which hippies were *prevented* from flying (which, by the way, has NOTHING to do with the Patriot Act, or for that matter, privacy invasions other than right at entry to the airport)?
I have yet to read of even one abuse of the Patriot Act. I have yet to read of any action taken by the Federal Government against innocents based on any of the expanded war powers, other than random searches (which included catching a Medal of Honor winner here, and the classic "grandmother in a wheelchair" scenario) - neither of which are abuses, but rather annoyances.
I do agree that using the Patriot Act for non-terrorist related purposes is inappropriate (except in cases where it is an obvious necessary extension of existing powers - such as extending *warranted* wiretaps to include roving ones).
By the way, I am on the TSA list, and am a Bush supporter. I hardly think that got me on the list, but the fact that I have an extremely common name was the cause.
Oh, and please tell me what "no fly" list you are talking about, or any Bush administration action "to prevent hippies [et al] from attending protests."
------------------
On another subject... Troll moderation?
Be serious. I tried to write a funny post, not a troll. In the past, I have written unfunny posts with the same meaning, and never gotten a troll reading. FUrthermore, I would defy the moderators to prove that my "troll" post is incorrect.
Sheesh.
Naturally, this has immediately turned into a discussion on government surveillance... so...
Let's see if I understand this...
A bunch of people in America, all from a peace loving and gentle religious background, flew airplanes into skyscrapers, attempting to kill tens of thousands of people and succeeding in murdering more than the Japanese killed in Pearl Harbor. This was 8 years after another group, from the same peace loving and gentle religious background, used a large bomb in an attempt to achieve the same result. Since then, more of these folks have made (loving and gentle) efforts to kill more of us, and some of those efforts were thwarted by wiretaps and data mining. They succeeded in Spain and England and a few other spots.
These gentle people carry out the desires of 10s of millions of their co-religionists, and are funded by huge amounts of money from these supporters and rogue states. In the near future, these gentlemen are going to have portable nuclear weapons, and the clear intent of setting them off in American cities.... Slashdotters should realize that this will, at the minimum, mess up the internet for a while and perhaps destroy some of their favorite porn sites. It will also kill a bunch of their fellow Slashdotters, who made the poor choice of living in the target areas. It will certainly lead to extreme reductions in personal privacy, which will be demanded by most surviving Americans. Oh, and it will destroy the economy, leaving most Slashdot readers with no toy budget (except for those who are drafted).
BUT... most Slashdot readers are more scared of what the FBI might know about them... an organization that doesn't have the time to even keep track of more than a few of the literally tens of thousands of trained terrorists who wish to do worse than 9-11, was shown to be decades behind in computer technology, and hasn't the slightest interest in your reading habits unless you plan to blow someone up.
AND... few of the readers and commenters are aware of the history of civil liberties during times of war in America, the fact that they were seriously limited but with few abuses, and that the end of the war led to an increase of civil liberties beyond the pre-war conditions.
SO Slashdotters will go to bed at night, hiding under their blankets, in fear that the G-men monsters will soon slip from their closets and pop out from under their beds.
SIGH!
When there is a gigantic gorilla in the room, worrying obsessively about the faint possibility that an ant might get in is beyond reason!
Now, I will pause for the next 500 comments obsessing over the abuses this capability *might* be used for against, I guess, innocent Slashdot readers, and of course little old ladies using libraries, and attacking me for being blind to such an enormous threat to my privacy... To which I ask.... so frigging what if the FBI knows what I read? They investigated me for security violations when I was 6 years old (true story), and that didn't hurt at all.
Errr... isn't this sort of silly?
Meanwhile, considering what spammers might do with this information would be more interesting, since the misuse might actually actually bother some of us.
I doubt anything would convince you otherwise. Good grief - if you won't accept Marc as hard left, I wonder who you would?
As for Marc and Roger's writing, they could write circles around you.
As for checking my references, I know these guys, which is why I chose them as examples. Maybe you should check yours.
If you think that is an accurate characterization of NJM, why don't you check out member Marc Cooper's blog.
As someone who was invited to join PJM but declined because I had reduced my blogging, I can tell you that is utter balderdash. I don't know that many of the members, but one of the primary founders, Roger L Simon, is a professional - he has written mystery novels and movies, and works as a professional screen writer. His blog is generally "neocon." Another blogger, Marc Cooper, is also a professional writer - a left wing reporter, LA Times columnist, writer for The New Republic, and Annenberg lecturer and fellow. His blog is hard left.
Perhaps you should check your facts.
Anyone who uses the overused phrase "needs hanging" needs hanging.
There is another business venture consisting of associated blogs - Pajamas Media - which should be mentioned in this context. Its business model is based on creating a multi-blog advertising system. As far as I know, pajamas uses serious political blogs rather than "daily diary" sorts of things.
Perhaps we need a different term for serious blogs about whatever subject. Also a term for the commenter community that grows up around each one. Here's your chance to get famous, although Bill Quick, who invented the term "blogosphere," doesn't seem to have gathered enough fame from that.
The reason for the concern about Tamiflu resistance (as opposed to resistance to Relenza) is that Tamiflu can prevent infection by non-resistant influenza. Hence public health officials were hoping to use it to stop the spread of an epidemic of human-to-human mutated bird flu by giving it to those who might have been exposed or would soon be exposed, thus isolating the mutated flu and letting it die out. This is similar to the approach of "ring vaccination" used to stop smallpox (except that here there is no adequate vaccine).
It is also obvious, upon reflection, but needs to be born in mind that if an instance of mutation into human transmissible disease occurs, it initally only infects one person. If that infection can be contained, that instance of the mutation might be snuffed out. The success of that strategy also, of course, depends on whether the mutation has made its way into the animal - specifically migratory bird - population.
Finally, I suspect that the existence of resistant H5N1 means that some poultry growers in Asia, probablhy Vietnam, have been giving Tamiflu to their birds.
Resistance was *measured* in two of the people who died after taking Tamiflu. Others who died after taking it did not have resistant virus.
It is my (possibly flawed) understanding that the H5N1 virus kills by overstimulating the immune system, resulting in a cytokine storm which (in this case) destroys lung tissue. Hence (like the 1918 flu), those with the strongest immune system (young adults) are most at risk.
If this is true, building up your immune system (if that is really possible) would seem counterproductive.
Obligatory disclaimer: I believe that ID is both non-scientific, and almost certainly, also wrong (note that the two are not equivalent).
I think the reason that this topic always brings out so many comments is that the US is currently in the middle of a culture war, started a few decades ago by the anti-religionists, and now in full force as the more radical religionists fight back.
Hence it has become a "big-news" divisive issue. The fact that most of the MSM is anti-Christian (or at the least, very much anti-evangelical or fundamentalist Christian) contributes to the divide and to the constant attention to the issue.
Kansas does something stupid with regard to ID, and it gets as many headlines as a major success (the elections) in Iraq. Somewhere a judge rules pro or con on a peri-religious display and again, big headlines.
Also, there are many people who have a reflexive, almost juvenile "anti-parent" reaction to the appearance of religion. This increases the sensitivity - especially on a nerd blog.
So to answer your question:
Yes, it's a hot spot.
Yes, it is even more so for many nerds/geeks. Y
Yes, many geeks are religious - especially in the United States.
As has been pointed out by another commenter, many people far more brilliant that perhaps anyone who posts here (famous scientists) were also deeply religious.
I would suggest you read up on the North Atlantic Oscillation (and for that matter, the Pacific Decadal Osciallation). Then I would suggest you look at the long term cycles of hurricane activity and strength (hint - the strongest hurricanes were in the 1930s). Then I would suggest that you don't get your scientific information from the New York Times or equivalent sources.
Those of us who have been involved with Hurricane disaster relief have long known that the end of the multi-decadal quiet period was coming and that much nastier hurricane seasons were due. And sure enough, they have arrived.
What amazes me is the naivette of those who imagine that we can do something about global warming, even if the primary effect is anthropogenic (which is dubious - mankind's contribution of CO2 probably has SOME effect, but it doesn't explain why the icecaps of Mars are melting).
Go back 100 years. Horse droppings were a major problem and increasing. The world was ruled by Europe and the US. Furthermore, although horse poop fuel was renewable, it required about 25% of US farmland (itself taken away form mother nature and reformed dramatically) to produce the fuel that resulted in the horse poop.
If at that time we all decided to create a global treaty to reduce horse poop, what would have been the result?
Note that any of the following factors would have been enough to destroy the treaty:
1) World War I (100 years ago, it was felt that war would no longer happen)
2) The rise of international communism, which (as anyone who has been to a former communist country can testify) had no interest in either obeying treaties or improving the environment.
3) The rise of Fascism, with the same result.
4) World War II
And, of course, the invention of the gasoline powered automobile would have rendered the treaty moot.
In other words, we can posture all we want, and we can take feel-good actions (such as Kyoto or buying little cars), and it won't make a measurable difference.
Kyoto, in 100 years, has no measurable effect, and its predicted effect, based on unproven climate models, only sets back the warming curve by six years. This is based on the UNCC models used by those advocating Kyoto. Hence to really make a difference (by those same UNCC models), draconian measures would be required (such as 40% energy use reductions). And yet, India and China are increasing their energy needs and their mobility at a dramatic rate, and neither is likely to agree to any draconian measures. I suppose we could just nuke them so we could meet CO2 reduction goals...
Furthermore, we cannot predict or control the global political scene just a few years out. Who thought, a mere 5 years ago, that New York would have suffered a catastrophic attack and that the US would have conquered two middle eastern countries?
Of course, we don't know what technological innovations will come along that might:
-reduce CO2 emissions at a much lower cost
-reduce the world's population to a few hundred million survivors of a bio-terror attack
-make new kinds of warfare (and treaty breaking) possible
So go ahead and posture. Tell us what wonderful things you are going to do to solve the problem. Tell us the restrictions you are going to place on the rest of us in the name of reducing CO2 emissions. Then explain the future, in detail.
Of course, if one is really serious about reducing global warming, take political action to increase the fraction of power generated by nuclear power (renewable sources are interesting but numerically cannot come close to doing the job, and nuclear still faces the problem of getting the power into moving automobiles where a lot of it is needed).
Personally, I would like to see more research money dumped into the following problems:
1) How to remediate the effects of global warming
2) Better research on climate change, including especially better paleoclimatology
3) Electric car or fuel cell car technology, with the focus on low cost and good features. This last one faces the problem of energy storage - gasoline does a great job of this, but releasing the energy produces CO2. Batteries so far are not even close to a reasonable energy density, life cycle cost requirement.
4) Energy transport and storage from nuclear sources, or other non-CO2 producting sources *if* they can produce enough power to be noticeable in the mix (they don't now and are unlikely to ever do so). Note that hydrogen is hard to transport and store (did you know that it embrittles steel?), the hydrogen f
I don't support every single piece of the Patriot Act. If people are so exercised about library records, then let the FISA courts be required. HOWEVER, the ability to restrict the release of information by the libraries to their users about an incident of request of records should be preserved in appropriate circumstances (per FISA). I honestly don't remember, at this point, exactly what circumstances allow access to what records without a FISA court approval. Obviously there needs to be an ability to deal with exigent circumstances WITHOUT a warrant, but there also needs to be a way to control thta. The existing Patriot Act has extensive requirements for reporting to congress (which is almost never mentioned in this debate), which provides a strong check on excessive actions. It also has all sorts of internal constraints and mostly requires the FISA courts to do things. Go ahead and read it and I think you'll be surprised at how much of the total Act consists of clauses protecting civil liberties.
Information sharing is needed, but so is the raw intelligence itself. The last time I read the Patriot Act (a while ago) it didn't "broadly expand wiretapping." It did provide for roving wiretaps, which are clearly a simple modernization of wiretapping - if you have the court-provided right to tap someone's phone, it is illogical that you can only tap one number, or only numbers provided ahead of time. If a terrorist has a bag of pre-paid phones, and uses each one only once, the counter-intelligence folks need to have the ability to tap all of them by user, not by phone number. This is a modernization that is needed not just in counter-terrorism but law enforcement in general (and remember, law enforcement can wiretap with warrants, can get library records, etc).
I think it important to debate what exact provisions of the Patriot Act are seens as unnecessarily odious, rather than the whole thing as if it were a single black box.
Utter nonsense from someone who doesn't know history.
Up until the last few decades, the government didn't need a Patriot Act to do what it wanted to do, because it did them anyway. Only recently have civil liberties *been expanded* to severely limit government powers in wiretapping and related areas.
During previous wars (and if you don't think we are at war with a dangerous enemy, I suggest you pay a little more attention) much greater restrictions took place. In WW-II Japanese nationals on the west coast were herded into concentration camps. The FBI needed no warrants at all for wiretaps and searches.
During the civil war, Abraham Lincoln suspended an absolutely cleary constitutional right (as opposed to the derived and arguable rights regarding wiretaps) - the right of habeus corpus.
The writers of the Constitution themselves supported censorship, just like John McCain in his so-called reform.
When people wake up someday (probably to a nuclear blast or a dirty bomb) and realize that our unimaginable fussiness about such obviously necessary things as roving wiretaps), those opposing the Patriot Act are going to look, in history, as utter idiots.
There are a few warts on the Patriot Act (such as its being used for non-terrorist offensives), but in general (at least to those of us who read it, and who are not civil liberties uber alles sorts) in is well drafted with a large number of provisions to protect civil liberties - provisions its opponents never even mention.
I doubt that anyone here can make a coherent argument against the extension of existing wiretap authorization to roving wiretaps.
Finally, someone claimed it was bureaucracy that falied to stop 9-11, but they are wrong. There were two groups that had information that oculd have stopped 9-11 - the FBI team that captured Zacharias Moussoui (sp), and Able Danger who identified Atta. In both cases, lawyers, fearing civil liberties laws and witchhunts, suppressed the transfer of this information to those who could have done something about 9-11.
No, the BSA was denied the use of PRIVATE funds collected by a city from its employees (VOLUNTARY United Way contributions).
Okay, enough. You are clearly so radicalized against Christians as to be unable to recognize discrimination or unjust attacks if they bit you in the ass.
bye bye, Mr. fine example of what I am saying.
Nice try, but utter BS.
The ACLU is busy trying to drive Christianity from all walks of public life, in a bizarre perversion of the intent of the 1st amendment.
The Boy Scouts (a monotheistic organization) is being persecuted widely (here in the Phoenix area, one town refused to allow its charity funds to go there).
The Catholic Church has been frequently desecrated by Homosexual activists, while its practices and beliefs are widely attacked,including in Hollywood fictional series (I enjoy watching the "Law and Order" series but some of their attacks on the Church have been highly offensive).
Fundamentalists are laughed at by all "sophisticates" and generally treated as hicks. While I don't agree with all of their views, they are mocked and misportrayed in a way that would be a very big no-no if done to Muslims or fundamentalist Jews.
If one adopts even the slightest sensitivity towards mainstream Christian views (and sensitivity is hard to find in the "sensitive" mainstream left or academia), one can see the attacks in the KulturKampf happening very frequently and widely. Without that sensitivity, perhaps you have just not noticed it.
More dangerous are those who deliberately (or unknowlingly) slant the coverage of contentious subjects in one direction. My own experience was with Wiki editors (or whatever they are called) whose standard of proof for one side was dramatically higher than their standard of proof for another side.
That's called bias, and Wikipedia, at least in some areas, reflects certain biases rather badly.
However, as someone else pointed out, it shouldn't be anyone's final source of truth, but rather a starting point. It has good references (although in the changes I submitted, not only were they thrown out but so was my reference - as non-existent - even though a second's Google would have proved the existence of the reference as it was on sale at Amazon).
Wikipedia is a great experiment and a great resource. It's biggest danger is that people take it as the final answer. But then, far too many people take the main stream media as the final answer also, which is why they have so much power.
As far as I know, triangulation isn't normally used for E911. For a given system, either the phones have built in GPS which they transmit to the system, or the system uses TDOA (Time Difference of Arrival) location finding, which is much more accurate than fixed-antenna direction finding.
Presumably one can defeat the GPS-based systems. Defeating the TDOA system would be much harder, and would involve going to locations where signal bounce (or multipath) gave erroneous TDOA readings.