Bruce Sterling On Total Information Awareness 488
securitas writes "Declan McCullagh interviews Bruce Sterling about Total Information Awareness (renamed Terrorist Information Awareness and raising concerns) or 'Poindexter's nutty scheme' as Sterling thinks of it. He predicts TIA will destabilize the government and lead to internal KGB-style coups. Whether you agree with him or not it makes for thought-provoking reading."
Re:Well (Score:3, Informative)
You forgot convicted criminal.
To quote the constitution... (Score:5, Informative)
but that seems to have been forgotten, along with.."Congress shall make no law....abridging the freedom of speech or of the press."
Campaing finance reform restrictions on commericals 60 days before elections.
and "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
Every law restricting non-criminals from owning certain types of weapons.
Some times I wonder if legislatures even fscking read the constitution any more.
Don't forget (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Well (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"No longer a guaranteed right"? (Score:3, Informative)
It never once uses the word "internet" either. Is it your contention that the Constitution is therefore irrelevant to any matter concerning the internet?
Furthermore, your argument is hung precariously on a semantic hook which does not support it, at all. When the founding fathers talked about "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized" what do you think they were talking about, if not privacy?
Your understanding of the Constitution is fundamentally flawed. The Bill of Rights is an addendum, spliced onto the body of the Constitution by those who feared that unless certain rights were explicitly enumerated, the government would run roughshod over individual liberties. But the basic concept of the Constitution is that the federal government has certain powers-- and no others. In other words, if the Constitution does not explicitly allow the federal government to curtail the privacy of its citizens, it is prohibited from doing so. 10th Amendment says: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Unfortunately, the feds have grabbed all manner of powers to which they are not entitled, and ideologues on the Supreme Court have permitted it to happen.
Re:Expanding on that... (Score:3, Informative)
Also, the American public would never go to war over "liberating" Iraqis. Some dumbasses, sure. But not the majority of voters in this country. But apparently, its permissible to lie to the American public (and kill American servicemen) if they won't impeach you after the deception is exposed.
That said, currently there is no proof that members of the Executive Branch fabricated evidence or that the President was aware the evidence MAY have been forged or non-existent. All Bush and Powell did was read the CIA/DIA report's conclusions.
Don't think the US suffers no consequences from this action. We lost roughly a hundred servicemen, and more patriotic soldiers lives every week. Apparently, their lives are cheaper than the quality of life of the Iraqi citizen (or the price of a barrel of oil). Lets spill some more American blood to free North Koreans, Iranians, and Africans.
Re:To quote the constitution... (Score:5, Informative)
Rewriting the constitution [mnftiu.cc]: It's not just for legislators anymore!
ARTICLE IV OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be received.
Recent decisions handed down by the United States Supreme Court have held that police can:
Search you home upon the consent of someone who has no authority to give same. (Illinois vs. Rodriquez)
May search every room in your home including the basement and attic without a warrant if they are arresting you in a private residence. Evidence seized may be used in court. (Maryland vs. Bule)
Hold you under arrest and incarcerate you for 48 hours or longer without charging you for a crime. (County of Riverside vs. McLaughlin)
May question you and elicit confessions from you while you are incarcerated without identifying themselves as police officers or advising you of your rights. (Illinois vs. Perkins)
Subject motorists to mandatory sobriety tests without any indication that they have been drinking, or their driving is impaired. (Michigan State Police vs. Sitz)
Stop your car based upon an "anonymous tip" which the court described as "completely lacking in the necessary indicia of reliability." (Alabama vs. White)
May stop, detain and question you anytime, anywhere and for any reason even if there is no evidence or indication of any illegality or wrong doing. (Orange County vs. Lopez)
May record and use as evidence telephone calls made or received from a cordless phone without a warrant and without violating your right to privacy. (Tyler vs. Berodt)
Re:Sour Grapes (Score:5, Informative)
If it's anything like his columns for Wired, it will be filled with bitterness over the 2000 elections spilling over into everything he writes about.
Can't believe I'm taking time to refute this silly and groundless statement. Sterling's first column for Wired, issue 10.12 (December 2002), covered Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index -- no mention of the 2000 elections. Subsequent issues to date:
Re:Expanding on that... (Score:2, Informative)
Friend, you are evading the issue. The issue has nothing to do with the content of the lie, as despicable as it is for a married man to be a serial philanderer (oh, btw: yes, I *was* equally outraged when news of Newt's hypocrisy came to light, and I'm ever so glad that he is gone: and please note that however despicable Newt's treatment of his wife was, he was Clinton's moral superior in this: he didn't lie about it under oath, and he resigned from office). The issue is threefold: that Clinton deliberately misled a grand jury while under oath, and that he suborned perjury, and that he committed these crimes as a) an attorney, who knows better, and b) as the President, who is the ultimate law enforcement official under our form of government.
What Clinton did was a felony, sir. We could at this point go off on a long tangent about how he exacerbated his crimes by going on TV to lie to the entire country about it, and about how he bombed foreign nations in a transparent attempt to divert the public's attention from his behavior, and then we'd begin to get just the smallest idea that maybe a President's lies under oath add up to more than being "about sex".
Where were you hypocrite when Reagan's cronies were subverting the Constitution? Where was your sense of moral outrage then? Or your so-called integrity?
In the first place, this is irrelevant to the present discussion. You are attempting to divert our attention from the (off-topic) topic, which is the moral turpitude and felonious behavior of President Clinton. If you care to discuss that, I'm all ears.
In the second place: a) as others suggested might be the case, I really was too young to understand Iran Contra. I still don't. b) Even if we grant for the sake of argument that Iran Contra was as bad as the Democrat-controlled Congress and its shills in the media would have us believe, to my knowledge no one ever credibly suggested that Reagan was guilty of anything (cf. Nixon for the media's total willingness to pillory a GOP President if possible). c) As you might guess from my revulsion at Newt, I'm not a Republican, so to attempt to pin the "hypocrite" label on me is going to be rather more difficult than pointing at various idiotic GOP boondoggles. In my opinion there is maybe one member of Congress who isn't a liar: Ron Paul, who takes his oath of office seriously enough to actually ask of every piece of legislation whether it is Constitutional or not (hint: the answer is almost always "No" these days).
Now, please address what I said, instead of changing the subject.
Should George Bush be impeached? (Score:1, Informative)
TIA has nothing to do with protecting U.S. citizens from terrorism. It is instead part of a hidden political agenda.
Every year, the U.S. government gives between $3.5 billion and $5.5 billion to Jews in Israel. This money is used to kill Arabs. (The Jews call it defense.) The terrorism toward the U.S. was caused by Arabs who feel they have no other way to protest the brutality of moving them from their homeland, and continuing to kill them, to make a new country called Israel. They are sacrificing their lives to try to make a statement. I don't think violence is justified, but the U.S. government thinks violence is justified, the Jews think violence is justified, and it would be illogical to think that violence is okay for politically powerful groups in the U.S., but not for the people they want to kill.
The people who have brought you TIA have also put the U.S. government back into the huge debt it was in during the Reagan-Bush years. The people who want corruption cause the U.S. government to borrow money so that they can spend it (tax cut) to make themselves look good and on high-profit weapons.
Here are a few links that discuss other kinds of corruption:
War Profiteers [warprofiteers.com] card deck.
"Speaking to Pentagon reporters in a video teleconference from Iraq [nytimes.com], General Conway said, 'What the regime was intending to do in terms of its use of the weapons, we thought we understood.' He added, 'We were simply wrong.'" [last paragraphs]
Secretary of State General Powell believes he may have been lied to about weapons in Iraq: Powell's doubts over CIA intelligence on Iraq prompted him to set up secret review [guardian.co.uk].
"Could be the greatest intelligence hoax of all time." [dailytimes.com.pk]
More about war profiteers and conflict of interest: Lawmaker Questions Scope Of Iraq-Related Contracts [washingtonpost.com].
Questionable accounting practices -- The U.S. government becomes another Enron scam:
Questionable accounting practices [chron.com] in the U.S. government: "The U.S. government is broke." George Bush gave U.S. citizens a tax cut, but it was fraud. The tax cut will be paid by money the U.S. government will borrow.
Questionable accounting practices [guardian.co.uk] at Halliburton, Vice President of the U.S. Dick Cheney's company.
Should U.S. President George W. Bush be impeached?
In a CNN article, John Dean asks, "Is lying about the reason for a war an impeachable offense?" [cnn.com]
An Associated Press article [sfgate.com] reports that a retired Department of State analyst says the Bush administration was "not entirely honest".
International reaction is extremely negative. The Hindustan Times [hindustantimes.com] mentions that "a former CIA analyst with 25 years' experience"
Re:Moderators on drugs again? (Score:3, Informative)
Every male between the ages of 18 and 45 (55 if the person has served in the military), and every female between 18 and 35 (45 with military service) is a member of the state militia.
As a member of the militia, when you are called to service, Mass state law requires you to bring your own firearm.
This state is schizophrenic, sometimes...
Oh, and to respond to the idiot you replied to: The militia was never abolished, because the National Guard is not a STATE MILITIA. Itâ(TM)s federal, and one of the groups the whole idea of the militia was designed to protect the US citizens from. If you donâ(TM)t like it, fine, but donâ(TM)t lie about it.
Stories about lack of Iraqi weapons (Score:1, Informative)
US said to twist its data on Iraq [boston.com]
Some analysts doubt US theory of Iraqi germ trailers: NYT [channelnewsasia.com]
Intelligence Historian Says CIA 'Buckled' on Iraq [reuters.com]
Ex-official: Bush administration distorted intel on Iraq arms [abs-cbnnews.com]
Re:Expanding on that... (Score:3, Informative)
So what would you replace the UN with - I suppose we all just should do whatever the US says? Bow down before Caesar? Pax Americana indeed. The US has been trying to undermine the UN since the UN was founded. It has withheld money, bugged delegations, bribed weaker nations, bullied stronger ones. The UN should be fixed - not abandoned. The USA needs to recognise that it is just one country out of hundreds and each country has certain soverign rights. Until you do even the Dutch can scare the pants off [mac.com] your chicken-shit gangster government.
Re:Terrorist? (Score:1, Informative)
If you do not like it - there is a very easy way to avoid it. Don't participate. Don't buy stuff on credit. Don't give your social out to anyone unless legally required. Don't act as a consumer.
And complain across the board - the liberals never complain when the government forces me to account for how I spend my money every year.
You want to protect yourself from the government watchers - push for a straight sales tax, or at the least a flat tax. Then they can't make you fill out a form every year that accounts for how you use your money. Funny that the libs are so paranoid, but they sure don't mind the government sticking its nose in my finances. They complain about all the regulations involved in the idiotic drug war, but not a peep when the government using the tax system to try to control where and how I spend my money.
It goes both ways kids - not a peep from the libs when Clinton/Gore "allegedly" used the FBI and IRS to harass their political opponents. And the so-called small government conservatives just bah along with no comment as new things like this are put into place.
And all you foreign wanks who have no clue what you are talking about can sod of with your lame Godwinesque nazi references. Try walking an urban street in the UK without being on a camera. You're like 2 years away from them tracking where you drive! Take off the tin foil hats long enough to see that this country is still freer than any other on earth.