So a potential employer shouldn't be able to find out that this person is a sicko who wants to dominate, and probably would use company computers for his sexual pleasure and wife swapping and what not, but the guy who reveals them should never be hired again, because.... ???? because his moral views are ignorant? Does that have anything to do with job performance? Maybe he'll fight with the domination guru in the office. I think less of someone who wants to slap a collar around some screwed up woman than some infantile guy with nothing better to do with his time than this.... actually, guys with nothing to do with their time make pretty good system administrators. Hah!
It appears you've associated yourself with the domination crowd. I don't get you people sometimes. You're always sticking up for the trash with the privacy argument. Another post on slashdot right now about some anonymous transfer network being overwhelmingly used for trading child pornography, and you all are defending the pedo's. What gives? When are you going to come to grips with reality?
The guy will get sued and will declare bankruptcy. I'm sure at least one of these people he screwed has an army of lawyers in one hand, and that's what he deserves, in all honesty.
I think control over the internet is more powerful than anything, nuclear weapons, space access. And what do we do with it? Hardly anything, well we stole.gov and.mil before any other countries could get them, but that's all. We don't even combat spam or piracy, which is really annoying I think. I'd have the spammers heads chopped off, personally.
And China.... I see a peaceful outcome with China, the internet will revolutionize their society like the cold war did east europe. I'd be more worried about a country like North Korea.
I think Walt Disney had the right idea with epcot center. Cities are going to need to take advantage of underground development for power, transportation, they already do for sewage only because it stinks so bad... but it makes sense to build underground tunnels. Sure high initial investment but it pays off. Underground, high speed switched personal transit, i.e. you own your own electric rail car, put the power transmission lines on top or bottom of the tunnel to provide power to homes. You can't really put a price on the lives that would be saved by a completely automated transportation system.
I think the grid is going to become less important as renewable energy (local power generation) begins to become mainstream, but an investment in transportation is seriously needed.
I have my power lines buried out here in Utah, but there are still central distribution lines around my house on 100 foot towers. They certainly are ugly... I walk my dog under them sometimes and I feel like I'm being microwaved, just the sound of them that is. They waste a lot of perfectly good property because nobody wants to live within a few hundred feet of them, when they could be installed under the roads.
That is a clever way of looking at it, but the resources would have otherwise been used for something equally, if not more worthless, like popcorn at a movie, or a trip to Europe. If there was only as much production necessary to support mankind there would hardly be any need to work at all. A mega-yacht is an enterprise in itself... you've got the pilot and deck hands, and the thing is still there after it's useful life, it can be used for other things, the least of which is a hunk of metal. I can't think of any larger purchases that vaporize resources like smaller purchases do. I throw all my empty coke cans in the trash because it isn't even worth it to recycle them anymore:P
I highly doubt that the private school is DRAINING resources from the public system. I've heard the two-tier argument before, and it is valid, but to say that the private system is DRAINING resources is extreme. As long as people are paying the same taxes then we have to deal with the two-tier system, becauses there is no OUTLAWING private education. Going completely private is unrealistic, but I can see plenty of opportunities for private involvement in the school system, like paid speakers or commercial e-learning software. The writers at the SF Weekly probably just have a tendency to hate anything businessy. The legislation you mention couldn't be any good either.
I just watched this documentary of space ship one on the science channel. Just incredible. Where'd we be without mega-yacht owners like Paul G. Allen? Bigger and better ICBM's, perhaps.
This will probably only work against particular instances of an image. Change the resolution or compression rate even slightly will look like a whole new image.
Look upfourier transforms, FFT, anything along those lines. It's pretty easy to reduce an image into it's basic components. It's some truly ingenious math also.
JPEG compression is based on FFT, so theoretically, a program could come up with the least common factor.
...never seem to have an unkind word to say about somebody getting billions for the "hard work" of having the right parents.
I think if you leave it up to the people, the money will be consumed or distributed. Some people build a fortune and go on to build rocket ships (something the government would do anyways), some go on to start charities (something the government would do anwyays) and they do a very good job at managing the efforts, for they are the truly gifted ones. Sometimes you have a situation like the Walton family, where the capitalist mind dies unexpectedly and leaves billions to his clueless children, but those children are just as likely to put the money in a good place, even if it means spending it all on mega-yachts and private jets (or rocket ships, for that matter).
Also, I've noticed the super-rich have a tendency to NOT have kids. Have you ever heard of a billionaire with 10 kids? (plenty of families that size living in poverty, go figure!) Take Larry Ellison for example. The guy has no kids, lives the bachelor lifestyle, and people will still hate him for amassing such a fortune. Try not to let jelousy cloud your vision.
I grew up around millionaires, had wealthy parents. I'll tell you one thing, every millionaire I ever knew of was a WORKAHOLIC. They spent all their free time scheming to make more money. That may give you an idea of how their mind works, and where their attitude toward labor comes from. To some people, a 12 hour work day is normal.
You people saying we need more union action here in America are totally ignorant. Your European economies are tanking for one reason, and I would attribute the recent failures by Airbus to the same reason, lazy workers.
Come over here to America and see how we roll. Might change your attitude.
I turn into an asshole at the slightest sensation that I may be due for some free shit. I got 3 months free (a $300 value) and 2 free phones by being an asshole. I feel sorry for men who are incapable of it because they are at a serious disadvantage. You should have picked up Asshology in high school, otherwise people will walk all over you, especially when it comes to earning a buck (sales rep initially lied to me, that's why I went for the freebies).
What I've always found especially curious is the mismatch of the American higher-education system with the open and blatant anti-education attitude of much of the American public.
I don't see what you're talking about here. Where is the blatant anti-education attitude you talk about? The people I speak with are certainly pro education. Pretty much everyone I know wouldn't settle for anything less than a masters degree these days, a BS doesn't mean as much as it used to. Political campaigns based on education improvements are always winning in my state.
The only sense I can make of this statement is you're saying that businesses aren't as interested in hiring educated employees? That may be true...
How many printers do you know that ship today or will be out within a year allow you to send a raw PDF file to it and have it print as is without any kind of client spooling and image degradation? XPS lets you do that.
I know of one. It's sitting next to me. Lexmark something or other. You can upload files to it via FTP and it prints them.
I was trying out office 2007 preview yesterday, the native word files all save as xps (I think), I know it's not doc and it has an X in it. They had been including doc files with their products for a long time, now they are using this new file format, that's all.
Also, it's not unfair for them to do that. You still have to BUY office. You still have to download acrobat reader in order to view PDFs. I don't see it hurting competition at all.
I was worried that Adobe's aquisition of Macromedia was unfair. Now Microsoft is going to be the lone source of competition in the graphics software industry.
I'm sure in this case the DirecTV employed visitors cleared it with their attorneys first.
Courts are much more useful to corporations than they are to individuals. Have you ever tried to get money from a person in court, for example, because of an auto accident? There is no way to get what you want, OJ Simpson still hasn't paid up, and HE butchered two people. Sue a corporation and they'll pay ya before the end of the fiscal year!
I don't think having the power to supercede civil rights is very important to the United States. Then why are you arguing in favor of the government doing it without any legal right?
Am I repeating myself here? The illusion of privacy has little to do with civil rights. When I say civil rights I am being very specific. You keep referring to instances where the government has "taken" your civil rights, but you have no right to privacy. You have the right to property, with protection from unreasonable search and seizure.
Why? It does no good...
Why do you keep saying it does no good? You think all the terrorists are so smart and we'll never catch them? We've caught hundreds with simple wiretaps. It has been THE MOST effective weapon against Al Qaeda. I think you may be crazy. You haven't a clue what you're talking about.
and spreads fear and causes numerous economic and psychological costs.
You're the one spreading fear man, saying the government is going to ruin everybody's life this is just the first step? Psychological costs? You're paranoid and delusional, are you sure you're the right person to be talking about psychological costs?
And people can still bring bombs and guns and knives onto planes, provided they are slightly intelligent and willing to break the law.
They always have, and they always will... one thing they can't do these days is bash the cockpit door in.
Guess what, the terrorists won't hesitate to bring weapons onboard because it is breaking the law. All this does is insure the passengers are helpless and annoyed.
Hey you sound like a second amendemt advocate. GOOD FOR YOU.
They fucking confiscated one of our aged WWII hero's congressional medal of honor, because it was pointy, but can't stop bombs. How does this help anyone again?
What was he doing wearing his medal of honor around? Was he carrying his bayonette also? By "they" do you mean all the pigs in washington, all law enforcement officials, or just airport security?
Please read a book on the US government. The judicial branch judges what is being done. The legislative branch decides what to do. The executive branch acts.
My god, that's genius! Judges Judge, Legislators legislate, and executives execute! I applaud your keen observations.
It has been in the courts for years now and they have ordered the executive branch to stop doing many things, some of which they have and others of which they have unconstitutionally ignored.
Sources, young grasshopper. Remember your sources. I can't trust your memory. Some of your less interesting points I can take for granted, but something like this requires sources. Often times the ACLU or other legal watchdog organizations will initiate a lawsuit simply to stir up public controversy and intimidate legislators, knowing full well that the lawsuit is un-winnable. So when you say "they have ordered" you may be referring to ACLU attorneys, not judges, for if the supreme court says it, it must be done.
You're an idiot.
Oh, you MUST be a teenager.
I'm arguing for the rights of everyone in the US, not some tiny subset. Letting the Executive branch do whatever it wants while if fights a "war"supposedly against a basic human emotion is moronic. You might as well shred the constitution now.
Now you're not making any sense at all. We're fighting a war against an emotion? Does that have anything to do with "hugs not drugs"?
Perhaps you mean the right to bear arms? What does this have to do with anything. We're talking the US government here, not the ACLU. Who even mentio
I can see instances where restriction of civil rights might be necessary. Like in a real war, against a nation of similar power. That is not the case here.
I don't think having the power to supercede civil rights is very important to the United States. Maybe to communist war machines. We are a market economy, if they paid me enough, I'd go join the Army, I have no objection to it besides the pay, somewhere in the range of $90,000/yr would be suitable to me. Right now they're paying about twice as much to recruits as they were when I graduated from high school 7 years ago. I think what we're dealing with here is certainly just cause to revoke some priviledges we've all enjoyed thus far, like what you can bring on an airplane. It's an inconvenience for me to pack my pocket knife in luggage, but oh well, I can deal with that, easy.
There is no real benefit to all of the surveillance and absolutely, positively no benefit at all to surveillance without judicial oversight. You're repeatedly failed to address this point. You've said that you don't care if someone looks over your shoulder since you're not doing anything wrong. What then is the executive branch's objection to the judicial and legislative branches looking over their shoulder? The answer is the same one it has been repeatedly in our history. They are doing something wrong.
You keep saying there is no benefit to surveillance. I would say that you know damn well there is a significant benefit, but I'm starting to think you really don't know. I hope I've added to your understanding by mentioning the hundreds upon hundreds of networked terrorists discovered through electronic surveillance, primarily through cooperation with middle eastern law enforcement. It is orders of magnitude more effective, dollar for dollar, than scanning incoming cargo containers for WMD's. Terrorists are more likely to manufacture nerve gas in a basement in Nebraska. There is no objection to the legislative branch looking over the shoulder of certain civilians who interact with suspected terrorists. The legislators were made aware of it in a closed council. They are not breaking any laws, which is the legislators duty to enact and the judicial branch's duty to enforce. If it were illegal, the courts would certainly have something to say about it. You want to get the courts involved in war fighting, decision making, which is a waste of resources, and it invites another 9/11. Remember we had Bin Laden during the Clinton administration, but it wasn't possible to prosecute him because there were no provisions in the US legal system to capture a foreign enemy of the state. The legislative branch wouldn't get in the way of this, at least not in the foreseeable future. That's the end of this story. It has always been in our best interest to assign responsibility for the military to one, single elected official; the president. If we were to divy out warfighting responsibility, no war would ever be won. That was a problem we solved way back while our country was in it's infancy, all the safeguards put in place to protect the citizens from government made it nearly impossible to prosecute a war. In each and every war the president has come under attack by political extremists. If you could, for a second, take a step back and look at what it is you're argueing for; the rights of our enemies to communicate and hide within our borders without fear of being uncovered, you may notice how silly you look. You may as well argue for the right to carry firearms on airplanes. You know the ACLU has nothing to say about firearms, even though the right to bare arms couldn't be more clearly spelled out. When they ban 50 caliber rifles in California, the ACLU says nothing about your lost liberties. So if you want to hold the ACLU up as some champion of people's rights, you'd be mistaken. The ACLU is the champion of leftist ideals.
Allow me to provide some analogous statements:
* I'm a mute so we might as well ignore the 1st amendment.
* I'm a complete pacifist so we might as well ignore the the 2nd amendment.
* I'm homeless so we might as well ignore the 3rd amendment.
Those aren't proper analogies to begin with, but when you add the fourth item, "I'm a criminal so we may as well ignore my civil rights." it becomes pretty obvious, doesn't it? How about a better analogy, some hoodlums are shooting out your windows with a BB gun on a regular basis, so you invite a police to patrol outside your house at night. The hoodlums don't like the police outside your house, the neighbors may not even like it much, but what other options are there? Video cameras? Same dilemma.
You make me sick.
That explains a lot about you. I actually pity you.
So they use a stolen/cloned cell phone
Exactly what the terrorists hiding in Saudi Arabia were doing. It actually made them easier to find. They dont look up their address, they triangulate the signal. If you are using a fraudulent identity, you are more easy to identify and it certainly warrants investigation.
or a pay phone
Another red flag. There are stickers on the payphones at the train station near my house that say "phone is tapped". Do you think any law abiding citizen cares as much as the druggies and criminals do? That's the funny thing about this argument.
They put an add in the personals
With a phone call from Afghanistan?
This stops nothing.
Thank you Matlock.
Is the ability to wiretap without doing this worth risking fundamental principals of our government?
Once again, the right to privacy is a facade. Freedom is not the same thing as privacy. There are many things you can't do in this country without being scrutinized first. You can't purchase any chemical you want. You can't travel outside the country without notifying the government. You can't buy a firearm without a background check. You can't practice medicine, even in the privacy of your own home, without being certified.
You need to first realize just how effective electronic surveillance is before having this argument with me. Argueing about your idealistic vision is one thing, but you can't even recognize the benefits here, you're like a one sided scale.
See you can't stick with one topic, you're all over the place and your argument is incoherent.
But that's the point. This isn't wiretapping "suspected terrorists." This is wiretapping everyone, and then looking through the info gathered, supposedly to see if people are terrorists and with all oversight removed. Will this data which has been gathered be misused because their is no oversight? It has been every time we're aware of this same situation happening in the past.
We're not wiretapping everyone. I assume in your most recent post you're talking about the gathering of phone call records, which wouldn't use much bandwidth. I was referring to the bandwidth and storage costs of "wiretapping everyone". You're shifting the topic around to suit your point (as vague as it is). Johnson and Nixon were both ratted out by the people doing the wire taps. It's much harder to find who placed a bugging device than it is to trace these centralized wire taps, you are obviously wrong on that point.
I work at a company that builds devices that do broad scale monitoring of internet traffic for major ISPs...... I know how easy it would be to add a list of congress person's and political rivals' phone numbers to the "listen to list" for spot checking by the NSA
What the fuck does one have to do with the other? You're a computer guy AND a fucking NSA expert? This is wearing away at your credibility...
Now let me ask you. What valid reason is there for keeping this monitoring unobserved?
When you say it is unobserved, you are making a blanket statement. What you really wanted to say was "why don't we get the courts involved?". All that is needed is a set of guidelines, no judicial review. Why don't we have civil rights attourneys follow around police officers to prevent the occasional white officers beating black guy down? It's a complicated answer, you can probably imagine why I would rather the courts didn't get involved in national security, but if you want the legal reason, because it's a matter of national security and not civil rights. Do we get the courts authorization before we go blow up some house in Afghanistan? Should we? I don't see what good it would do, in fact I see it doing a lot of harm.
The only way I can think of you would be unaware of them is if you only read US news, from certain, specifically biased sources.
I did what you suggested "patriot abuses" in google. I found a reliable source of news who has a little to say on it: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=4756403 . No I'm not going to start reading european tabloids. All the cases of patriot act "abuses" (by any rational person's standards) were Muslim American's being held without cause after being suspected of involvement with terrorists. Your information regarding drug dealers is from a congressional report, reported by the NY Times. Congressional reports are always political in nature, FYI. A congressman can go up with a sign that says "chicken hawk" and start blathering about how bad war is. These things are not all related to the patriot act. Law enforcement has always had tools at it's disposal to investigate suspected drug dealers (watch cops) that are MORE intrusive than anything they'd use to investige any other civilian crime. The only difference now is that they may have access to national intelligence resources, which is not a violation of civil rights in and of itself (despite what the ACLU may tell you. The ACLU can be criticized on multiple levels of political pandering). Furthermore, if the patriot act is used to snatch heroin/opium smugglers, it IS related to the war on terror. The patriot act has been used to perform warrant-less searches in more drug investigations than it has "terrorist" investigations. PLEASE SITE THAT QUOTE.
But that's the point. This isn't wiretapping "suspected terrorists." This is wiretapping everyone, and then looking through the info gathered, supposedly to see if people are terrorists and with all oversight removed. Will this data which has been gathered be misused because their is no oversight? It has been every time we're aware of this same situation happening in the past.
When has this happened in the past? My point was that if someone wants to break the law and wiretap someone, the easiest way is to go to their house and plug a listening device into their POTS terminal. By "the last time this happend" are you referring to Communists and secret police? I'm very informed on the subject, you are stretching and bending the truth every which way, completely ignoring some aspects. Do you even realize how much storage and processing it would take to analyze EVERY conversation connected to the United States? The storage alone would amass so quickly... not to mention the bandwidth required to re-transmit every conversation to one central database. I've heard this said before. If you want to call it an invasion of privacy, then blame the phone company. They've been keeping a log of your phone calls for decades. You brushed off national security last time I mentioned it. You're disturbed by the fact that we invaded Iraq, you're disturbed by electronic surveillance. The way I see it the United States is fighting this threat on every front, and you have nothing but criticism, it's as if you just want everything to fail miserably (very possible, given your extreme political bias).
Tell me about some of these perverts and drug dealers that were prosecuted via the Patriot Act. I don't know of any, but I'm not well informed on news like that.
Do you really think that is so farfetched?
Yes. The president doesn't just turn on his computer and start listening to people's conversations. He has others do his bidding, and no other heads of national security would stand for that. That's how Nixon fell, the CIA ratted him out, and if there's anything a president thinks about more than anything else, it's his legacy. Bill Clinton's legacy is the lewinsky thing, Bush's legacy will probably be this war (however you see it). No president wants to be the next Nixon. Wire taps do more harm than good, in that respect.
I have a lot of faith in the military. I've got a friend living over in Colorado right now working for the NSA, just average American watching out for terrorists, not a politician, no political motivation. You should feel lucky you have that much, and until the gestapo breaks into your house you should appreciate it.
I'm not even talking about technicalities here. That is such a lame comment. How often do people get arrested for consensual sodomy? And to assume that I don't have a clue what you're talking about at the same time. Childish. Those laws don't affect me, however. I can walk around with a gun tucked under my pants and the law protects me from prosecution, ever look at it that way?
Like I said, you can't seem to get your head around the big picture. I'm not going to argue with your talking points, some are good some mean nothing to me. I don't know of any cases where the CIA broke up a cell of marijuana cultivators. I'm sure they must come across them all the time.
I'll answer your question. To say that the news of wiretapping suspected terrorists is somehow tied to politically motivated wiretaps has no supporting evidence and you can hardly make a connection between them at all. I suspect that the politically motivated wiretaps (taking your assertion for granted) could have been done by a schmuck private investigator with a hi-tech bugging device. I don't see why you would even make a connection between them. Now if you're assuming that the president of the united states is wiretapping his political opponents, then you've been watching too much 24;)
Slashdot Mirror
It appears you've associated yourself with the domination crowd. I don't get you people sometimes. You're always sticking up for the trash with the privacy argument. Another post on slashdot right now about some anonymous transfer network being overwhelmingly used for trading child pornography, and you all are defending the pedo's. What gives? When are you going to come to grips with reality?
The guy will get sued and will declare bankruptcy. I'm sure at least one of these people he screwed has an army of lawyers in one hand, and that's what he deserves, in all honesty.
Hah, whatever makes you feel better, bub.
And China.... I see a peaceful outcome with China, the internet will revolutionize their society like the cold war did east europe. I'd be more worried about a country like North Korea.
Ah fuck it. If we give you guys any say it'll just turn into the UN. Wait, are you proposing we turn it over to the UN? Fuck you.
I think the grid is going to become less important as renewable energy (local power generation) begins to become mainstream, but an investment in transportation is seriously needed.
I have my power lines buried out here in Utah, but there are still central distribution lines around my house on 100 foot towers. They certainly are ugly... I walk my dog under them sometimes and I feel like I'm being microwaved, just the sound of them that is. They waste a lot of perfectly good property because nobody wants to live within a few hundred feet of them, when they could be installed under the roads.
Two words: Jeffries Tube
That is a clever way of looking at it, but the resources would have otherwise been used for something equally, if not more worthless, like popcorn at a movie, or a trip to Europe. If there was only as much production necessary to support mankind there would hardly be any need to work at all. A mega-yacht is an enterprise in itself... you've got the pilot and deck hands, and the thing is still there after it's useful life, it can be used for other things, the least of which is a hunk of metal. I can't think of any larger purchases that vaporize resources like smaller purchases do. I throw all my empty coke cans in the trash because it isn't even worth it to recycle them anymore :P
I highly doubt that the private school is DRAINING resources from the public system. I've heard the two-tier argument before, and it is valid, but to say that the private system is DRAINING resources is extreme. As long as people are paying the same taxes then we have to deal with the two-tier system, becauses there is no OUTLAWING private education. Going completely private is unrealistic, but I can see plenty of opportunities for private involvement in the school system, like paid speakers or commercial e-learning software. The writers at the SF Weekly probably just have a tendency to hate anything businessy. The legislation you mention couldn't be any good either.
I just watched this documentary of space ship one on the science channel. Just incredible. Where'd we be without mega-yacht owners like Paul G. Allen? Bigger and better ICBM's, perhaps.
http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/fourier/fourier.h tml
Look up fourier transforms, FFT, anything along those lines. It's pretty easy to reduce an image into it's basic components. It's some truly ingenious math also.
JPEG compression is based on FFT, so theoretically, a program could come up with the least common factor.
I think if you leave it up to the people, the money will be consumed or distributed. Some people build a fortune and go on to build rocket ships (something the government would do anyways), some go on to start charities (something the government would do anwyays) and they do a very good job at managing the efforts, for they are the truly gifted ones. Sometimes you have a situation like the Walton family, where the capitalist mind dies unexpectedly and leaves billions to his clueless children, but those children are just as likely to put the money in a good place, even if it means spending it all on mega-yachts and private jets (or rocket ships, for that matter).
Also, I've noticed the super-rich have a tendency to NOT have kids. Have you ever heard of a billionaire with 10 kids? (plenty of families that size living in poverty, go figure!) Take Larry Ellison for example. The guy has no kids, lives the bachelor lifestyle, and people will still hate him for amassing such a fortune. Try not to let jelousy cloud your vision.
You people saying we need more union action here in America are totally ignorant. Your European economies are tanking for one reason, and I would attribute the recent failures by Airbus to the same reason, lazy workers.
Come over here to America and see how we roll. Might change your attitude.
I turn into an asshole at the slightest sensation that I may be due for some free shit. I got 3 months free (a $300 value) and 2 free phones by being an asshole. I feel sorry for men who are incapable of it because they are at a serious disadvantage. You should have picked up Asshology in high school, otherwise people will walk all over you, especially when it comes to earning a buck (sales rep initially lied to me, that's why I went for the freebies).
I don't see what you're talking about here. Where is the blatant anti-education attitude you talk about? The people I speak with are certainly pro education. Pretty much everyone I know wouldn't settle for anything less than a masters degree these days, a BS doesn't mean as much as it used to. Political campaigns based on education improvements are always winning in my state.
The only sense I can make of this statement is you're saying that businesses aren't as interested in hiring educated employees? That may be true...
I know of one. It's sitting next to me. Lexmark something or other. You can upload files to it via FTP and it prints them.
Also, it's not unfair for them to do that. You still have to BUY office. You still have to download acrobat reader in order to view PDFs. I don't see it hurting competition at all.
I was worried that Adobe's aquisition of Macromedia was unfair. Now Microsoft is going to be the lone source of competition in the graphics software industry.
You want privacy you transmit all the radio signals you want, UNDERGROUND. Talking on a cellphone is like walking around outside, naked.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pag ename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1 149285034044&call_pageid=976163513378&col=96904886 3474
There you are guy. Electronic Surveillance, does a country good.
Courts are much more useful to corporations than they are to individuals. Have you ever tried to get money from a person in court, for example, because of an auto accident? There is no way to get what you want, OJ Simpson still hasn't paid up, and HE butchered two people. Sue a corporation and they'll pay ya before the end of the fiscal year!
Am I repeating myself here? The illusion of privacy has little to do with civil rights. When I say civil rights I am being very specific. You keep referring to instances where the government has "taken" your civil rights, but you have no right to privacy. You have the right to property, with protection from unreasonable search and seizure.
Why do you keep saying it does no good? You think all the terrorists are so smart and we'll never catch them? We've caught hundreds with simple wiretaps. It has been THE MOST effective weapon against Al Qaeda. I think you may be crazy. You haven't a clue what you're talking about.
You're the one spreading fear man, saying the government is going to ruin everybody's life this is just the first step? Psychological costs? You're paranoid and delusional, are you sure you're the right person to be talking about psychological costs?
They always have, and they always will... one thing they can't do these days is bash the cockpit door in.
Hey you sound like a second amendemt advocate. GOOD FOR YOU.
What was he doing wearing his medal of honor around? Was he carrying his bayonette also? By "they" do you mean all the pigs in washington, all law enforcement officials, or just airport security?
My god, that's genius! Judges Judge, Legislators legislate, and executives execute! I applaud your keen observations.
Sources, young grasshopper. Remember your sources. I can't trust your memory. Some of your less interesting points I can take for granted, but something like this requires sources. Often times the ACLU or other legal watchdog organizations will initiate a lawsuit simply to stir up public controversy and intimidate legislators, knowing full well that the lawsuit is un-winnable. So when you say "they have ordered" you may be referring to ACLU attorneys, not judges, for if the supreme court says it, it must be done.
Oh, you MUST be a teenager.
Now you're not making any sense at all. We're fighting a war against an emotion? Does that have anything to do with "hugs not drugs"?
I don't think having the power to supercede civil rights is very important to the United States. Maybe to communist war machines. We are a market economy, if they paid me enough, I'd go join the Army, I have no objection to it besides the pay, somewhere in the range of $90,000/yr would be suitable to me. Right now they're paying about twice as much to recruits as they were when I graduated from high school 7 years ago. I think what we're dealing with here is certainly just cause to revoke some priviledges we've all enjoyed thus far, like what you can bring on an airplane. It's an inconvenience for me to pack my pocket knife in luggage, but oh well, I can deal with that, easy.
You keep saying there is no benefit to surveillance. I would say that you know damn well there is a significant benefit, but I'm starting to think you really don't know. I hope I've added to your understanding by mentioning the hundreds upon hundreds of networked terrorists discovered through electronic surveillance, primarily through cooperation with middle eastern law enforcement. It is orders of magnitude more effective, dollar for dollar, than scanning incoming cargo containers for WMD's. Terrorists are more likely to manufacture nerve gas in a basement in Nebraska. There is no objection to the legislative branch looking over the shoulder of certain civilians who interact with suspected terrorists. The legislators were made aware of it in a closed council. They are not breaking any laws, which is the legislators duty to enact and the judicial branch's duty to enforce. If it were illegal, the courts would certainly have something to say about it. You want to get the courts involved in war fighting, decision making, which is a waste of resources, and it invites another 9/11. Remember we had Bin Laden during the Clinton administration, but it wasn't possible to prosecute him because there were no provisions in the US legal system to capture a foreign enemy of the state. The legislative branch wouldn't get in the way of this, at least not in the foreseeable future. That's the end of this story. It has always been in our best interest to assign responsibility for the military to one, single elected official; the president. If we were to divy out warfighting responsibility, no war would ever be won. That was a problem we solved way back while our country was in it's infancy, all the safeguards put in place to protect the citizens from government made it nearly impossible to prosecute a war. In each and every war the president has come under attack by political extremists. If you could, for a second, take a step back and look at what it is you're argueing for; the rights of our enemies to communicate and hide within our borders without fear of being uncovered, you may notice how silly you look. You may as well argue for the right to carry firearms on airplanes. You know the ACLU has nothing to say about firearms, even though the right to bare arms couldn't be more clearly spelled out. When they ban 50 caliber rifles in California, the ACLU says nothing about your lost liberties. So if you want to hold the ACLU up as some champion of people's rights, you'd be mistaken. The ACLU is the champion of leftist ideals.
See you can't stick with one topic, you're all over the place and your argument is incoherent.
We're not wiretapping everyone. I assume in your most recent post you're talking about the gathering of phone call records, which wouldn't use much bandwidth. I was referring to the bandwidth and storage costs of "wiretapping everyone". You're shifting the topic around to suit your point (as vague as it is). Johnson and Nixon were both ratted out by the people doing the wire taps. It's much harder to find who placed a bugging device than it is to trace these centralized wire taps, you are obviously wrong on that point.
What the fuck does one have to do with the other? You're a computer guy AND a fucking NSA expert? This is wearing away at your credibility...
When you say it is unobserved, you are making a blanket statement. What you really wanted to say was "why don't we get the courts involved?". All that is needed is a set of guidelines, no judicial review. Why don't we have civil rights attourneys follow around police officers to prevent the occasional white officers beating black guy down? It's a complicated answer, you can probably imagine why I would rather the courts didn't get involved in national security, but if you want the legal reason, because it's a matter of national security and not civil rights. Do we get the courts authorization before we go blow up some house in Afghanistan? Should we? I don't see what good it would do, in fact I see it doing a lot of harm.
I did what you suggested "patriot abuses" in google. I found a reliable source of news who has a little to say on it: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=4756403 . No I'm not going to start reading european tabloids. All the cases of patriot act "abuses" (by any rational person's standards) were Muslim American's being held without cause after being suspected of involvement with terrorists. Your information regarding drug dealers is from a congressional report, reported by the NY Times. Congressional reports are always political in nature, FYI. A congressman can go up with a sign that says "chicken hawk" and start blathering about how bad war is. These things are not all related to the patriot act. Law enforcement has always had tools at it's disposal to investigate suspected drug dealers (watch cops) that are MORE intrusive than anything they'd use to investige any other civilian crime. The only difference now is that they may have access to national intelligence resources, which is not a violation of civil rights in and of itself (despite what the ACLU may tell you. The ACLU can be criticized on multiple levels of political pandering). Furthermore, if the patriot act is used to snatch heroin/opium smugglers, it IS related to the war on terror. The patriot act has been used to perform warrant-less searches in more drug investigations than it has "terrorist" investigations. PLEASE SITE THAT QUOTE.
When has this happened in the past? My point was that if someone wants to break the law and wiretap someone, the easiest way is to go to their house and plug a listening device into their POTS terminal. By "the last time this happend" are you referring to Communists and secret police? I'm very informed on the subject, you are stretching and bending the truth every which way, completely ignoring some aspects. Do you even realize how much storage and processing it would take to analyze EVERY conversation connected to the United States? The storage alone would amass so quickly... not to mention the bandwidth required to re-transmit every conversation to one central database. I've heard this said before. If you want to call it an invasion of privacy, then blame the phone company. They've been keeping a log of your phone calls for decades. You brushed off national security last time I mentioned it. You're disturbed by the fact that we invaded Iraq, you're disturbed by electronic surveillance. The way I see it the United States is fighting this threat on every front, and you have nothing but criticism, it's as if you just want everything to fail miserably (very possible, given your extreme political bias).
Tell me about some of these perverts and drug dealers that were prosecuted via the Patriot Act. I don't know of any, but I'm not well informed on news like that.
Yes. The president doesn't just turn on his computer and start listening to people's conversations. He has others do his bidding, and no other heads of national security would stand for that. That's how Nixon fell, the CIA ratted him out, and if there's anything a president thinks about more than anything else, it's his legacy. Bill Clinton's legacy is the lewinsky thing, Bush's legacy will probably be this war (however you see it). No president wants to be the next Nixon. Wire taps do more harm than good, in that respect.
I have a lot of faith in the military. I've got a friend living over in Colorado right now working for the NSA, just average American watching out for terrorists, not a politician, no political motivation. You should feel lucky you have that much, and until the gestapo breaks into your house you should appreciate it.
I'm not even talking about technicalities here. That is such a lame comment. How often do people get arrested for consensual sodomy? And to assume that I don't have a clue what you're talking about at the same time. Childish. Those laws don't affect me, however. I can walk around with a gun tucked under my pants and the law protects me from prosecution, ever look at it that way?
I'll answer your question. To say that the news of wiretapping suspected terrorists is somehow tied to politically motivated wiretaps has no supporting evidence and you can hardly make a connection between them at all. I suspect that the politically motivated wiretaps (taking your assertion for granted) could have been done by a schmuck private investigator with a hi-tech bugging device. I don't see why you would even make a connection between them. Now if you're assuming that the president of the united states is wiretapping his political opponents, then you've been watching too much 24 ;)