Anti-Terrorism Law Passed 777
Saratoga C++ writes: "Today (Oct 25) was the day that the US Senate voted on if to pass H.R. 3162, the anti-terrorism law. I have the roll call for today from the Senate. The only person with a "Nay" vote was Russ Feingold (D-WI). Thanks Russ. The final turn out was Yes: 98, No: 1, No Vote: 1."
Courage (Score:3, Insightful)
gus
One question... (Score:3, Insightful)
More? (Score:2, Insightful)
... (Score:3, Insightful)
"All your freedoms are belong to us!
(For great justice!)"
Feingold's comments... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Question... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ashcroft's speech (Score:4, Insightful)
I can imagine what the more pragmatic law-enforcement agents are thinking right now: "gee, this probably won't do a damn thing to stop terrorism, but think how many marijuana dealers we'll pick up now. yippee."
Re:Feingold's comments... (Score:2, Insightful)
Samuel Adams stood virtually alone for years in his bid to defeat slavery (and this was after his stint as President). I'm not saying we have a modern day Adams in the Senate, but that standing alone doesn't make you wrong.
Gulf of Tonkin (Score:2, Insightful)
Why is it that Afhghanistan reminds me of Vietnam?
Am I rightfully very, very scared?
Re:Question... (Score:2, Insightful)
>there must be endless examples. And by the
>way, "potential" abuses don't count. I want REAL
>examples.
And why the Hell would, as you put it, "potential" abuses not count?
So if they were to pass a law saying its ok for police to break into your house, without any liability for any damages whatsoever, and confiscate whatever they see fit with no limitations, on the mere suspicion that you may have pirated copyrighted material on your computer - but they passed this law with the promise that this won't be used against good people and won't abuse it. So in that case, that would be ok with you? I mean, they say they won't use it against good people, that they won't abuse it. Just because it has the potential to be abused doesn't mean that it will, so it should be alright right?
Give me one concrete example of what you could do before that you can't do now. I don't give a damn about quote unquote "potential" abuses, I want REAL examples. C'mon, be exact.
What the Hell do you even mean when you say "potential" versus REAL examples? This law hasn't even been passed yet, how can anything besides potential examples even exist yet?
I mean, obviously this is an extreme example, but extreme examples are useful in that they point out the flaws that may be present in the reasoning on not-so-extreme examples. The price of liberty is eternal vigilence. Don't let a law pass today that has the potential to be abused, and then complain down the road when it is abused....
Re:Feingold's comments... (Score:2, Insightful)
Sam Adams was never president, John Adams and John Quincy Adams were. Samuel did say this, which is apropos:
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
Re:A little late (Score:2, Insightful)
What IS terrorism? (Score:3, Insightful)
To me, if Mr. X puts a bomb in a plane to kill his wife, that's first degree murder (though not terrorism). However if Mr. Y does the same thing for a political cause, it is terrorism, although the action is exactly the same. The same way, for me a serial killer is not a terrorist, though I think none is "better" of "worse" than the other,
Does that make any sense. Surely at some point it could be hard to determine the intent in a trial, but for me it's important to make the distinction. Otherwise you just end up with all crimes being labeled as "terrorism act" and the word doesn't mean anything anymore.
"we are different" (Score:5, Insightful)
And you think Europeans didn't? Come on, what kind of argument is that?
The main historical difference is that until the mid-20th century, the US was an agricultural frontier society: if you didn't like goverment, you could move or change your identity (as long as you were white and male). Europe at the time already was densely populated and had a well-functioning administration in place.
It's only over the last few decades that the US has gotten the technology to track, supervise, and control its population. But now that it's here, the US political system has not caught up with it, and neither have the political sensitivities of the US population.
And even in its earlier periods, the US managed to almost completely exterminate American Indians, deny democracy to the majority of its citizens, and enslave blacks. The US does not have a stellar record of democracy, individual freedoms, or justice. And unlike those European countries, the US still has the same political and legal systems in place that allowed those abuses.
If abuses start, the public will speak out, and this bill will be quickly curbed.
If people risk their jobs, credit records, government surveillance, and being thrown in jail for being "suspected terrorists", "the public" will quickly become quiet.
Re:"Enemy of the State" (Score:2, Insightful)
Movies can give insight, wether they're based on something true or not. I think 'Enemy of the State' is a really good way of Joe Sixpack what could happen if he didn't care about his privacy.
Re:Not the same old enemy (Score:2, Insightful)
Even in the darkest days of the Soviet invasion, we all knew that the Soviets loved the same things we did: a good days work at the farm, walks around the countryside, their children. Todays enemy just wants us to die - the more gastly the better. I'm glad that we decided to curtail some conveince to help weed out the scum, and I'm really glad that our government is brave enough to do somethig about it.
Our enemy appears to have nucluar capabilitys and obviously isn't afraid to use them: http://www.exploratorium.edu/nagasaki/mainn.html [exploratorium.edu]
Let's hope we can kill them all, before they kill us. These are not people who just have a differing viewpoint than us, or a different way of life. These are human debris that use the fruits of our civilisation to destroy us.
Our well measured response, at home and abroad, will save our lives, as well as save the lives of the vast majority of decent people in Afganistan: if we were sucuessfully attacked with weapons of mass destruction, we would suffer horribly, but many more good people would die in the fires of our retaliation.
A bit of violence and self sacrifice, now, will save lives.
They fight for the same reasons as you. They too want to defend their country and way of life.
Think about it.
No, it's already so bad that any worse... (Score:5, Insightful)
This legislation makes it legal for the FBI to read every line of every header on every packet that ever goes out on the Internet, without a warrant. That means that the FBI can legally quite easily maintain lists of who visits what websites, who sends whom e-mail, etc. This is analogous to how the FBI used to send people to follow dissidents and people with political beliefs they didn't like, and wait for them to do something they could exploit publicly to embarrass someone, or privately to blackmail someone (like they did to Martin Luther King, Jr., with his affair). Do you ever do anything at all online that you wouldn't want everyone in the world to know about? Then don't speak out too loudly against whatever ever-more-draconian things the FBI wants, or you may get on their radar. Ever do anything that's technically illegal, or can otherwise get you into trouble, even though whether it should is debatable? Like, gamble, protest (just ask the WTO protesters how often they get arrested for exercising this *right*, even peacefully), visit European or Asian pr0n sites where some of the models are 16 because it's perfectly legal in that given country, be gay and in the military, tear the tag off the mattress at the store, write literature or have performances that get deemed a violation of your community's standards, etc.? Just don't say anything about it or e-mail anything about it or visit any sites related to it, on the Internet.
Oh, and if you ever gamble online, you're helping terrorists to launder money, BTW, and don't be surprised if it gets you into a lot of trouble. Granted, no one has ever maintained that any major online offshore gambling houses are actually being used by terrorists to launder anything; this was just moralizing rightwingers using terrorism as an excuse to foist their morality on everyone else. And that is despicable.
And don't ever visit online boards filled with political dissidents and prograssives, like the Independent Media Center which is somethimes the only source of good information on and from protests--unless you want to get on a McCarthyesque list or get detained for questioning by the FBI. After all, they served the IMC with a search warrant this year after the WTO/IMF protest in Canada, which would have forced them to turn over all server logs so that the FBI could find out who was posting updates from the protest so that they could interrogate those people about some documents or somesuch which were taken from a police car (IIRC), and a gag order to prevent them from revealing it to site visitors. They warrant was quashed, being unconstitutional and all. But now, THEY DON"T NEED A WARRANT. They have license to gather all that data for themselves by directly bugging the Internet backbone. And if something they want slips through, or is encrypted and has its path scrambled by something like a Mixmaster remailer, then this legislation makes it very easy for them to get a warrant and search logs or install password sniffers while you're away without even telling you they were ever there.
Slashdot has already carried a story about the FBI's proposal to concentrate all Internet traffic at a few key points to that it can do just that sort of broad monitoring of every Internet user everywhere. Funny thing is, it's an idea which came to the FBI 2 years ago. Interesting how something the FBI has been secretly lusting after for years is now the answer to the present situation, eh? They're just opportunists who have been wanting this power, and the current situation gives them an excuse for circumventing the Constitution with only a single senator voting against their power grab.
And once the FBI has its closed boxes installed throughout the Internet backbone, is there any way to really prevent them from looking at more than just the header data that they can now get, legally, without a warrant? Recent studies indicate that there are thousands of illegal telephone wiretaps performed by law enforcement agencies each year in the U.S. With the power to instantly see what anyone is doing on the Net, probably with no one ever being the wiser, that is an even greater temptation to abuse. They will implement such capabilities into their closed and secret boxes under the auspices of needing the capabilities for when they get search warrants to read the data itself, not just its headers; and then no one is there looking over their shoulders to make sure they don't take peeks whenever they want, without warrants, or with a warrant that's just a rubber stamp from a judge in their pocket who makes it a secret warrant under this new law, that no one ever need know about?
And what is the FBI if not an agency which has proven its capacity to abuse power, along with its sister agencies like the ATF? The entire Reno administration in the DOJ was one long abuse of the people, from using pyrotechnic devices at Waco and lying about it for 8 years until it was proven by their own photographs and documents which had been conveniently misplaced, to the murder of two innocent people at Ruby Ridge (the man they came to arrest won a million+ dollar lawsuit against them), to deporting a minor child on very dubious grounds while his custody proceedings were still moving forward in a state Court, just to prove a political point, to lying to the U.S. Army to get military training for agents under a law that says agents can get military training only when preparing for an international drug bust, when those agents were serving a warrant for 1 count of selling a shotgun with a too-short barrel, to inventing allegations of child abuse in several cases which were later disproved, for the purposes of making a defendant who would have been vindicated look bad. And the Ashcroft DOJ is looking at least as bad.
Don't forget that Hoover may be dead, but his training and indoctrination methods are still very much alive at the FBI, where new agents are still taught according to principles he established. Terrorism isn't the greatest threat to freedom in this country; the DOJ is.
Ponder this Vietnam-era quote:
"The mushrooming of surveillance has been explained by the sense of panic
and crisis felt throughout the government during this period of extremely
vocal dissent, large demonstrations, political and campus violence, and
what at the time seemed the inauguration of a period of wide- spread
anarchy. While officials... suggested that these crises justified the
surveillance, they failed to recognize that the rights guaranteed by the
constitution are constant and unbending to the temper of the times..."
--Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, 1973
And how about these old stand-bys:
"Implicit in the term 'national defense' is the notion of defending those
values and ideals which set this Nation apart... It would indeed be
ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the
subversion of one of those liberties... which makes the defense of the
Nation worthwhile."--Chief Justice Earl Warren, U.S. Supreme Court, US v Robel
"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the
argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."--William Pitt to the House of Commons, November 18, 1783
"Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor
to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better
secured."--Thomas Paine, 1791
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty
when the government's purposes are beneficient . . . the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."--Justice Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court
"Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, What should be the reward of such sacrifices?
"When people fear the government, there is tyranny. When government fears the people, there is liberty."-- Thomas Paine
"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get
yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is
to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding
fathers used in the great struggle for independence."--Charles Austin Beard, 1874 - 1948
These are my "stock quotes" that I drag out on discussion boards and on USENET whenever I see a well-intioned post which goes against these words of wisdom from men greater than you or me, men who established or defended and defined the rights which we now enjoy as proud Americans. But I am not proud of my country at this. We have set a precedent which is terrible, and tommorrow when the President signs the bill into law we will have lost rights which it may take generations to recover--if we ever do. Sure, it's meant to be temporary--but it can be passed again, permanently, after we've gotten used to having no more 4th Amendment rights the moment we turn on a computer. Remember that the income tax which we now all pay so copiously was passed as a temporary measure to fund the Spanish-American War. Remember that Social Security, which we all still have to pay with no opt-out option, was a temporary measure to help soften the Depression.
Temporary things have a habit of becoming permanent in this country. Just ask the people who had to foment a Revolution to get out from under the burden of so many "temporary" taxes the English imposed upon their Colonies.
This is the sort of invasion of liberties which, historically, has slowly caused armed revolutions. Three hundred years from now, they may be studying this and similar events in high schools much as we study the small erosions of freedom which by themselves were considered nothing, but which together are considered the genesis of the American Revolution. Strong words? No, strong legislation. At best, history will judge the next years under this law as being not unlike a new McCarthyism.
Re:The Constitution (Score:5, Insightful)
1937: J. Edgar Hoover becomes head of the FBI. Within 25 years Hoover had so much dirt on everyone that even Presidents were afraid of him. Ever wonder why he stayed in power for over 30 years? J. Edgar Hoover ran this country for the entire period. He had more dirt on Kennedy alone to fill several books.
1950: Senator Joe McCarthy declares was on domestic communism. Over the next 5 years thousands, repeat thousands, of people were harrassed, intimidated, arrested, imprisoned and deported. In the entire time not one single communist was ever uncovered. Never mind that in a so-called free country we allegedly have the right to free speech, the press and assembly. Yet all these people were oppressed for exercising that very right.
1933: Hitler becomes Chancellor. Over the next 6 years he gains so much power, in large part by hunting down and executing anyone daring to disagree with him. This included hundreds of german students caught passing out anti-nazi flyers in libaries. They were arreseted and immediately shot! I don't have to remind you what happened next after he finished eliminating any remaining opposition do I?
Today: Congress hands the Executive branch the most power it has ever been given since the countries inception in 1776. The traditional balance of power that has up to this point kept the government in check is eliminated with the USA ACT, now giving the Executive Branch all the power it needs to fight domestic "terrorism" without Judicial oversight.
So ask yourself this. If the governments fight against terrorism is a just cause, then why does it need to eliminate parts of the constitution and the normal checks and balances to pull it off? One Answer: Because its real agenda has nothing to do fighting real terrorism. Now they have the power to eliminate any remaining dissent against their power base. A powerbase that gained power suspiciously if not downright illiginately. If Bush really had won the election, then why did the New York Times decide to *not* publish its poll findings? Becasue Gore actually won. We have an illigimate president in power who in less than a year has managed to take us headlong into war that may erupt into WWIII and the effective elimination of Constitution protections to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Now they have the freedom to compile complete dossiers on everyone. Ever subscribed to 2600 magazine? Ever got a catalog from Loompanics? Ever baught a "alternative" book from Amazon? Are you a registered Libertarian? Are you a member of the Green Party? If so you have now been targeted. Lets just hope they don't try to paint you as a "suspected terrorist". Even the most harmless acts of computer intrusion could give you life in imprisonment - LIFE!
Assuming soneone manages to challenge these new laws in court, don't you think these anti-democratic croonies running our country will the case to get anywhere? Give me a break! They will harrass, intimidate, incarcerate anyone they deem a "threat" to National Security - read Threat to their power. This is a classic power play people! The most sinister one ever carried out in History. Assuming we make it through this - this will time will go down as one of the darkets in human history. Chinese curses indeed! History has repeatedly shown that once the balance of power is tipped too far in one direction (as it is with the USA ACT) it is never regained, excpet with the downfall of the regime itself - coup's, revolution or internal decay. Either way we are now in for a very long, dark and opressive time in this country. If you had any doubt before - We are now living in a Totaltarian Police State. Who is going to save us? The Russians? The Chineese? The Canadians?
Re:Leahy Sold out! (Score:2, Insightful)
The terrorists are winning.
"Soccer Moms" talking about being scared to open their mail at home because of anthrax fear.
Our politicals voting on absurd anti-terror "prevention" measures, out of fear. Fear of looking unamerican/unpatratriotic. Fear of not being re-elected.
Terrorisms number one weapon? Fear.
Re:Feingold's comments... (Score:2, Insightful)
If this bill had been floated in Washington before the tragedy on September 11, half of the nation, especially people who frequent
I have heard talk that suggests we may all be seeing Feingold in a bid for the Presidency sometime in the next decade. If those are indeed his plans, anticipate how great it will look in 2007 and 2008 when the public has recovered from the shock of the attack and Our Savior Russ Feingold was the one who tried to protect us from it in the first place.
On the other hand, maybe he's just a good guy who stands up for what he feels are the best interests of his constituents.
Who knows. Either way, thanks for standing up for us Russ.
Re:full list of provisions (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a fourth:
Re:The Constitution (Score:3, Insightful)