Total Information Awareness, Disguised And Alive 439
unassimilatible writes "According to the AP, aspects of the controversial Total Information Awareness DARPA program, officially shut down by the U.S. Congress in September 2003 after a public outcry, seem to have survived. The article reports, 'Some projects from retired Adm. John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness effort were transferred to U.S. intelligence offices, congressional, federal and research officials told The Associated Press. In addition, Congress left undisturbed a separate but similar $64 million research program run by a little-known office called the Advanced Research and Development Activity, or ARDA, that has used some of the same researchers as Poindexter's program.'"
Common practice (Score:5, Insightful)
From the ARDA Page (Score:5, Insightful)
High Risk as in 'Public Backlash'?
Why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
am I not even remotely surprised by this announcement ?
Could anyone actually trust a government that passed the PATRIOT Act to actually can TIA ?
This just keeps happening (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do we keep electing these people who keep misrepresenting us to represent us?
No surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
So most of the projects continue, but under a different name. And this time I am sure they will be much better hidden from the public eye. 1984 anybody?
lessons learnt (Score:4, Insightful)
now that they knew public doesn't like the idea of such thing, why bother asking in the future? just go ahead and do it.
Not smart... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think treating americans diffrently based on where they are in the world is a good precident to set....
Re:This just keeps happening (Score:1, Insightful)
In Government... (Score:4, Insightful)
America... (Score:2, Insightful)
From the article:
"to help the nation avoid strategic surprise
This kind of reasoning to destroy rights is sick. What does that mean, "such as those"? Where are all these 'terrorists' (sick of THAT word) who wait to waylay me and bugger me bloody?
Ooooh, that's right! The New & Imroved ARDA is protecting me from them. Thanks for that.
BTW. Not believing privacy is my right
MEANS NOTHING TO ME. I'll still claim I have that right, and fight for every inch of it.
Big government (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this a surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
The tools are only going to get better, and the more laws and policies that allow the "leakage" of personal information will only make "privacy" a state of mind as opposed to something you actually have. If congress was so concerned about privacy perhaps they would rethink the Patriot Act, or other invasive police policies that have been en vogue for the last decade.
Re:This just keeps happening (Score:5, Insightful)
Because you can only elect from those people on the list that is essentially chosen for you. And you don't get much of a say in who goes on that list.
Those with Power (those who own and/or control this country's largest corporations) choose who get on that list and "sell" it to you via their mass media outlets.
And the end result is that the only people you can realistically choose from are people who will not represent you, but who will represent Those with Power. It's why the "democracy" part of the "democratic republic" title for the U.S. is a lie.
I like this (Score:3, Insightful)
The government isn't really spying on you, per se. They are taking all the public information out there, and data mining it to potentially flag and catch criminals and terrorists.
The crowd here turn into luddites as soon as technology is used by the government, but I think this is a great use for it. The 9/11 hijackers were in plain view, but because of the different agencies and bureaucracies, they fell through. This could be a tool to find the next 9/11 and I am all for it.
Re:Similar (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
You should not be surprised - this is behavior that should be expected from any government no matter what benevolent face it puts on.
The only things that keep power hungry government officials in check is fear of retribution from the populace. When the country was small and the military little more than a couple boy scouts with prettier boots (a situation that persisted well into the 20th century to some degree), there was the potential for armed revolts. Even pockets could cause huge problems.
When the official forces were bulked up as a result of the world wars, there was still the ever hanging axe of the ballot box to keep politicians under control. When the media gained the power of radio and TV, any little foible could be broadcast within hours to a population that might actually care.
Now, armed revolt isn't a threat, the media is broadcasting sensationalist bullshit for ratings meaning people don't take it that seriously, and the typical voter turnout is so horribly anemic that I have a hard time believing people even realize that they have a vote sometimes.
Politicians are free to pursue whatever agenda they want now. Nobody is going to stop them. With a few exceptions like TIA, nobody speaks up against ridiculous, authoritarian programs coming out of D.C. anymore. When they do, you just see this - they get broken up and hidden in various budgets and departments in such a way that they look like harmless little pocket programs, but the same folks are still pulling the strings at the top.
I've got to wonder sometimes how much farther this can go. The technology will just keep evolving in favor of loss of privacy and big brother-esque data collection and monitoring. When will people step up to draw the line and, depending on how long it takes, what will it take to actually keep the government from crossing it?
Re:Why ... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:From the ARDA Page (Score:2, Insightful)
Futile Waste of Money? (Score:5, Insightful)
Use these 100,000 measurements of 10 known varibles and outcomes to build a model to predict unkown outcomes for new variables.
DARPA and ARDA's goal of predicting terrorist behavior, or will fail due to a paucity of observed terrorist behavior, an inability to precisely define the objective and an enormous amount of poorly collected, noisy and irrelevant data.
Very telling quote (Score:4, Insightful)
[quote]
Ted Senator, who managed that research for Poindexter, told government contractors that mining data to identify terrorists "is much harder than simply finding needles in a haystack."
"Our task is akin to finding dangerous groups of needles hidden in stacks of needle pieces," he said. "We must track all the needle pieces all of the time."
[/quote]
This would be where the "Total" part of "Toal Information Awareness" comes in.
Re:Big government (Score:5, Insightful)
History (Score:4, Insightful)
Having democratic elections creates the illusion of that process, but unless the organisations that operate under the government get shuffled as well, then nothing much actually changes. Something tells me that overthrowing the CIA, NSA, FBI, Army, Navy, Airforce, etc, etc isn't going to be easy...
No sir, I don't like it! (Score:1, Insightful)
This could be a tool to find the next 9/11 and I am all for it.
If you really want to see the next 9/11 stopped, start with foreign policy.
The man with a presidential pardon on his resume (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why ... (Score:4, Insightful)
unreasonable search (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, the government's paranoia about terrorists will make it illegal to look like a terrorist to this list. If you refuse to give your SS#, you look bad to the list. If you refuse to show ID, you look bad to the list. It doesn't matter that your SS# is supposed to be privately used only for purposes of social security, and it doesn't matter that you can't be forced to show ID unless you are suspected of a crime. What looks bad to the list will become a crime.
I hate this idea because it will imiplicate and punish innocent people for matching the trends of guilty ones. Furthermore, the people said "NO!" to this once, and it's disgusting that our government forces its will over that of the people.
I think data mining is scary (Score:5, Insightful)
US gov TLAs with access to certain types of data alone have phenomenally clean and good data to use for data mining. For starters:
* Phone calls. Forget *contents* of phone calls -- a cop doesn't even need a warrant to get a list of phone calls. Plug all phone calls into a nice big database, and you have an excellent association network -- I can build up a list of all the people you know.
Now, suppose I want to detect flow of causuality. I look for some degree of correlation between a phone call from entity A to entity B and entity B to entity C. If a phone call of the second type follows a phone call of the first type within a day or two more than, say, 25% of the time, there's an interesting link to explore. Maybe entity B is passing on instructions to entity C. I'm not sure what the status of past location data is -- whether a warrant is required for telcos to turn over the data they've logged on your movements. Given a couple of years of accurate movement data, it's probably really interesting when a phone call from entity A to entity B is frequently followed by a physical visit from entity B to entity C.
* Purchasing-related data. Movements can be tracked via ATM withdrawals, credit-card use, phone card use, store purchasing card use. You ever let a friend use your store grocery card? That's a great source of determining who knows who -- a store card associated with two credit cards.
When you get a driver's license, most states fingerprint you (or at least thumbprint). I didn't even know that I *could* opt out of the thumbprint until afterwards.
I agree that mining is probably less useful to find terrorists (frankly, unless a terrorist is just incredibly stupid, he's going to avoid the above), but it *is* useful to track all kinds of other people.
Any person with a cell phone should have no expectation of privacy. They're carrying around a portable tracking device with a microphone that can be turned on remotely. End of story.
Wack a mole... (Score:4, Insightful)
If it fails here, they'll wack it. Sure.
It will pop up there, and if uproar continues, they'll wack it there.
It will pop up over there, under security this time, and if it leaks and there's more uproar, they'll wack it again. With "feeling".
But, once told "no", only criminals will find another way. And the Feds have so very many options.
They'll move it into "private research" inside Lockheed.
Or, they'll bust it up into dozens of subject matter and time compartmentalized graduate projects in their Universities.
Or, or, or...
Seems real terrorists just won't allow themselves to be stopped.
The real question is: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Blanket search warrents.
I predicted this one already... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:US CON says otherwise (Score:5, Insightful)
---------------------
July 1, 2002
Citizen Padilla: Dangerous Precedents
by Robert A. Levy
Robert A. Levy is senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute.
Jose Padilla, a.k.a. Abdullah al-Muhajir, supposedly plotted to build and detonate a radiological "dirty bomb." He is a U.S. citizen. Yet he's being detained by the military -- indefinitely, without seeing an attorney, even though he hasn't been charged with any crime. Yaser Esam Hamdi is also a U.S. citizen. He, too, is being detained by the military -- indefinitely, without seeing an attorney, even though he hasn't been charged with any crime. Meanwhile, Zacarias Moussaoui, purportedly the 20th hijacker, is not a U.S. citizen. Neither is Richard Reid, the alleged shoe bomber. Both have attorneys. Both have been charged before federal civilian courts.
What gives? Four men: two citizens and two non-citizens. Is it possible that constitutional rights -- like habeas corpus, which requires the government to justify continued detentions, and the Sixth Amendment, which assures a speedy and public jury trial with assistance of counsel -- can be denied to citizens yet extended to non-citizens? That's what the Bush administration would have us believe. Citizen Padilla's treatment is perfectly legitimate, insists Attorney General John Ashcroft, because Padilla is an "enemy combatant" and there is "clear Supreme Court precedent" to handle those persons differently, even if they are citizens.
Ashcroft's so-called clear precedent is a 1942 Supreme Court case, Ex Parte Quirin, which dealt with Nazi saboteurs, at least one of whom was a U.S. citizen. "Enemy combatants," said the Court, are either lawful -- for example, the regular army of a belligerent country -- or unlawful -- for example, terrorists. When lawful combatants are captured, they are POWs. As POWs, they cannot be tried (except for war crimes), they must be repatriated after hostilities are over, and they only have to provide their name, rank, and serial number if interrogated. Clearly, that's not what the Justice Department has in mind for Padilla.
Unlawful combatants are different. When unlawful combatants are captured, they can be tried by a military tribunal. That's what happened to the Nazi saboteurs in Quirin. But Padilla has not been charged much less tried. Indeed, the president's executive order of November 2001 excludes U.S. citizens from the purview of military tribunals. If the president were to modify his order, the Quirin decision might provide legal authority for the military to try Padilla. But the decision provides no legal authority for detaining a citizen without an attorney solely for purposes of aggressive interrogation.
Moreover, the Constitution does not distinguish between the protections extended to ordinary citizens on one hand and unlawful-combatant citizens on the other. Nor does the Constitution distinguish between the crimes covered by the Fifth and Sixth Amendments and the terrorist acts Padilla is suspected of planning. Still, the Quirin Court justified those distinctions -- noting that Congress had formally declared war and thereby invoked articles of war that expressly authorized the trial of unlawful combatants by military tribunal. Today, the situation is very different. We've had virtually no input from Congress: no declaration of war, no authorization of tribunals, and no suspension of habeas corpus.
Yet those functions are explicitly assigned to Congress by Article I of the Constitution. It is Congress, not the executive branch, which has the power "To declare War" and "To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court." Only Congress can suspend the "Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus
Re:Why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
True, so why give them more power to do stupid things with?? This specific event may not have anything to do with the patriot act, but it shows that people can and will abuse their power. That in of itself is the main reason why the US was founded on giving away as little power as possible.
Re:Why ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Bad example.
a.) The operative word here is 'one'.
b.) It's being fought, as opposed to it just happening without any checks and balances in place.
c.) Shit happens.
I'm not arguing that it's right or that it's harmless. Rather, I just want a more substantial reason to be afraid. I'm not a "whoah I better join the crowd" kind of person, I'm a "give me the info so I can judge" kind of person. So please, help me out so I can understand.
(P.s. Modding the guy down for asking "What harm has it caused" is ridiculous. Not everybody (including myself) stays on top of every little thing that happens. Questions like that are never harmful.)
Re:Why ... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not justifying these programs, all I'm saying is that they arn't linked to Big brother type bullshit.
Re:I like this (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course not.
They are taking all the public information out there, and data mining it to potentially flag and catch criminals and terrorists.
And it won't flag and catch me by mistake. They'd never make an error like that. This technology only affects bad guys.
This actually should be wonderful news for me. I made $92 off of Poindexter's stupid Total Information Awareness program last year by selling this T-shirt [zazzle.com] protesting it: "I gave up my essential liberties to obtain a little temporary security, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt!" [Disclaimer: I might make money off you if you click that link and buy one, but I have a job, honestly don't need your money, would forward it to no worthy cause, and am just showing off my shirt design and bragging about the fact that I made $92 off of Total Information Awareness.]
The crowd here turn into luddites as soon as technology is used by the government, but I think this is a great use for it. The 9/11 hijackers were in plain view, but because of the different agencies and bureaucracies, they fell through. This could be a tool to find the next 9/11 and I am all for it.
Well, let's not get too presumptive about 9/11. It hasn't been demonstrated at all that the only way to prevent this attack would have been to implement a massively connected database with an extensive electronic dossier on each one of us. In fact, it hasn't been demonstrated at all that the attack could not have been prevented simply by people doing their jobs like they were supposed to.
Once the 9/11 commission finishes its report, maybe we will see what improvements can be made short of creating an unAmerican police state.
Re:Civil War (Score:3, Insightful)
The USA is a wonderful place to live. It would take a catastrophic set of events along with nobody trying to fix them in order to cause people to fight the government. Frankly, with 300 million people in this country, the chances of that are VERY low, even if we were to look towards 2050.
For a civil war to happen, the bads have to outweigh the goods we have. We take them for granted, but we have a LOT to be thankful for here.
Slashdot is not the world (Score:3, Insightful)
While the program was unified under Poindexter, it was easy to publicise, easy to criticize, and easy to attack. Now that there are 20 different projects run by N different agencies, how are you going to stop it? Since oversight is so much more difficult, this may even end up being more of an invasion of privacy then the original TIA plan.
Re:Why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad example.
a.) The operative word here is 'one'.
Well, you know, it always starts with one.
One Bolshevik, one kulak, one "Enemy of the People", one Jew, one Japanese-American, one Communist, one educated person, one literate person, one Arab.
(Roughly in chronological order; I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to connect each "Enemy" to the society that demonized them. Feel free to add other examples.)
That one is supposed to be our warning that it's time once again to fertilize the tree of liberty.
Because if we don't, suddenly it's not "just one" anymore; it's a thousand, a hundred thousand, six million, 20 million. And then everybody exclaims in surprise, "how could this happen in a civilized nation?!"
Re:Why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The politicians are closely linked to commercial interests.
Commercial interests have a great deal to gain from knowing everything about everyone.
Both the politicians and the agencies are closely linked to the private sector. The agencies, as you stated, have a great deal to gain from knowing everything about everyone.
None of these three can exist in their current incarnation without the crucial link of the politician. Would you like a pencil to connect the dots? This is not just some paranoid goon bullshit either, it's the most likely series of connections in the event that anyone really is "out to get us". Whether anyone is actually out to get us, or this is simply massive incompetence, pork-barrel spending, or a vulgar display of power by some sniveling twit with a shriveled cock sitting in Congress somewhere is up for debate.
Flamebait? How so? (Score:1, Insightful)
"Criminal Organization". The entire system flat out lied about WMDs. Went to WAR because of it. Murdered Iraqis "for their own good".
"Wack a mole"? Seems it's happening as we speak.
"Terrorists", you define them then. Those that blow up buildings, without provication? Can we say IRAQ? What provication did the US have? What? Name it.
Oh, Sadam is "mean". Sure he was. But so are dozens of others depot regiems around the world. Why him? Why now? Make no mistake, the US commited a henious act of Terrorism there. Just because you "agree" with murder doesn't make it right. Are they "happy" for it? Sure, some are always happy for regime change. If China took over the US, I'm sure many would be "happy", or Cuba, or whomever.
Re:Get real (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. I challenge you to name one area of our lives that is entirely outside of government control. I can't think of any.
Re:This just keeps happening (Score:5, Insightful)
And you don't get much of a say in who goes on that list.
Sure you can choose. In MN your chance in March 2nd, also called super tuesday where people in 10 different states all at once get a chance go choose who goes on the ballot.
Of course you have to belong to a political party in order to have a choice, but if you don't want to belong to a party why would the party want you to have a say in who they put on the ballot. Get your own party, or just go out and get on the ballot yourself. (If you can't get enough signatures to get on the ballot in an afternoon in a local city you aren't trying)
The greatest tradgity is that people have been convinced that a vote for a third party is a wasted vote. Don't fall for it.
Re:Why ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Blanket search warrents.
Nationwide roving wiretaps.
Re:This just keeps happening (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what I find odd though, is that when there is a choice (like, say, the Green Party), people complain about it and claim they're taking votes from an electable party. It's sad that America is completely dominated by two parties, both very similar (race to the middle, anyone?), and any apparent deviation from that is met with great hostility ("Nader cost us the election!"). It would be nice to be able to vote for something, instead of a reflex vote against what you don't want. I see people as voting for Nader because they believe in his policies, rather than because they don't want Bush to get elected.
But who knows? The voter turnout for 18- to 24-year-olds in the 2000 election was 9 percent. Nobody cares anyway.
Alternatives? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or does the fact that the intelligence agencies aren't able to even analyze the massive flow of info they have not bother anyone?
Certainly we don't need a repeat of past events. What's the point of saying, "no don't look, no don't look, no don't look, no don't look", and then when the attack comes, scream, "why weren't you looking???"
Re:US CON says otherwise (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I like this (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that the details are super secret, so it could have been just a confidence improving spoof. I don't remember any evidence being produced to the public that there was a threat on any of the planes that were grounded.
I don't see how TIA or PATRIOT are needed. The events of 9/11 happened because of broad agency incompetence at handling the power they already had at the time, not because of a supposed lack of power. I fear giving more power to the incompetent.
Re:US CON says otherwise (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW: Thanks for the mental stimulation
Re:I like this (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I could ask about your address, bank account, relatives, or hint at hidden cameras in bathrooms and bedrooms and such. But, I'll just say this. If you have nothing to worry about, feel free to post your main email address or phone number on here.
Oh, wait: from your slashdot page
"tealover (187148)
tealover
* (email not shown publicly)"
Got something to hide do we?
And sorry, just because someone works for the government doesn't make automatically give them integrity. As for laws, you mean those things that stop regular people from exploiting such information as well?
Re:Big government (Score:2, Insightful)
We have always accepted that the right to free speech is not an absolute right; hence the overused, but still true "yelling fire in a crowded theater" example. When it comes to campaign finaince reform, a small amount of free speech is being sacrificed in order to ensure that our elections are democratic and not influenced by money. Whether that is a good tradeoff or not is argueable, but the idea that campaign finance reform is strictly unconstutional because it is a violation of the right to free speech is just silly.
Re:Why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you been paying attention lately? (Score:3, Insightful)
The greatest tradgity is that people have been convinced that a vote for a third party is a wasted vote. Don't fall for it.
Did you notice what happened in the 2000 election? In New Hampshire and Florida, about 3% of the votes went to Ralph Nader. Polls showed that the majority of those votes, had Nader not been there, would have gone to Gore.
If a majority of those who voted for Nader in 2000 in either of those states had voted for Gore instead, he would have had a very clear majority and become our president.
So I suppose that sometimes, yeah, votes for a third-party candidate can make a difference. They can achieve exactly the opposite of what you want. People voted for Nader because he was for the environment, basically. And...um...what has Bush done for the environment lately? (Note, for, not to)
Voting for a third-party candidate is throwing your vote away in the current political-economic climate. Someday, I think there will be third-party candidates who can stand a chance, but not until there's real, serious campaign finance reform.
By this I mean that what I hope to see is no election can be funded, at all, by private money. Everyone gets the same amount, from the government (yes, obviously, it means more taxes. Deal. We pay very low taxes compared to the rest of the Western world).
But, to get a little more back on topic, unless you can raise significantly more than any of the other candidates and get serious name recognition, you don't stand a chance as a third-party candidate these days. So voting for a third-party candidate is throwing your vote away. Vote Democrat, at least they say they want campaign finance reform, and have a much better record of standing up for what they believe in (no, I don't have specific examples. Find your own).
Dan Aris
They won't be stopped... (Score:3, Insightful)
Too much at once (Patriot II) is also scary. So they implement all the little bits of Patriot II over time, until it is eventually all done. Once it's done it'll be much harder to roll it back.
The story of boiling a frog once again comes to mind: stick the frog in boiling water and he jumps out; you lose your dinner. Put the frog in warm water and gradually heat it to boiling -- he stays in and eventually gets cooked.
We are the frogs.
Re:Why ... (Score:4, Insightful)
When it comes to 10's of millions of people (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear Washington, (Score:4, Insightful)
I really don't appreciate this.
Although September 11th was scary, and a wake-up call (to whom, I'll let you decide), you certainly have taken the ball and run with it.
From control of the media, to your obvious relationships with big business, you're feeling pretty good right now, I'll bet. Hell, you barely try and hide controversial projects now; really who's going to stop you? Voter turnout is a joke, and even if people showed up, there's not really a guarrantee that the results haven't been tampered with.
The 'war on terror' is just amazing. So much can be rationalized for 'safety's sake'. Who's un-american this week? Who's a potential threat? Who stands against freedom?
I'm sure you will provide the answers to these questions from your bully pulpit, from newspapers and television that run whatever is put in front of them.
Frankly, terrorists don't scare me. You do.
That's right, my very own government. You've declared war. Not on terror, but on privacy, civil and human rights, and freedom.
Washington? Are you listening? When did rampant wiretapping, invading library records and putting gag orders on librarians, installing keyloggers on our computers, and treating every citizen like a criminal become the definition of freedom?
I'd sure like an answer, Washington, because it sounds like you have it in for me, as well as everyone else who lives here - in the most free nation on earth. For now.
Sincerely,
teamhasnoi
Re:Why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
We alread have some recent historical precedent you can draw from. What it took last time was:
- A lengthy, ugly, pointless, war in Vietnam that killed and maimed large numbers of American soldiers and millions of Vietnamese. Vietnam for the U.S. and Afghanistan for the U.S.S.R. created large numbers of returning veterans who were disillusioned with their government after being subjected to the senseless horrors they were producing in the name of their geopolitical and economic manuevering.
- A CIA that had essentially run amuck and was using covert operations, coups, assasinations and rigged elections to install despotic regimes around the world
- An FBI engaged in a massive domestic spying and social engineering campaign
- A President, Richard Nixon, who was caught using dirty tricks to destroy political oponents and insure his reelection.
- Economic upheaval thanks in part to the massive expenditures in Vietnam
America did manage to come back from the brink then for a time thanks to:
- The antiwar movement. We forget this now but a lot of people were politically very active in the late sixties and early seventies.
- Congressional investigations by the Church Commission which reined in the CIA and FBI for a time.
- Investigate journalists, Woodward and Berstein, who refused to accept the mush being spoon fed them by the government and actually did what journalists are supposed to do which was find the truth.
Today many of the same elements are coalescing though it took time for them to develop in the 60's and it wont happen overnight this time either:
- the war in Iraq has the same potential as Vietnam to incite an anti war movement unless the U.S. is successful in disengaging its occupation army and fostering a stable government soon. Both are unlikely. If the U.S. were to disengage its army Iraq would likely devolve in to a civil war. Any real attempt to actually turn sovereignty over to the the Iraqs, with a democratic vote, would lead almost immediately to a Shia dominated Islamic republic which the U.S. won't tolerate. As a result the U.S. has to manipulate the politics in Iraq and maintain an occupation army, indefinitely, or cut and run and let it collapse like South Vietnam eventually did. If things continue as they are the root of an antiwar movement will form each time a new wave of 100,000 soldiers return from Iraq with the permenent scars of the horrors they are subjected to there. Occupations with a creditable insurgent resistance are always very ugly for everyone involved. This disillusionment would be an instantaneous process though. It will take years as it did in Vietnam. There are some forces that work against another Vietnam too. The Army learned a lot of lessons about what caused the moral collapse of the Army and public opinion in Vietnam and they have remedied some but not all. The three obvious ones are:
- drug testing to prevent drug abuse
- maintaining unit cohesion
- suppressing media coverage of the ugly side of the war, in particular wounded soldiers screaming in pain and the unloading of the coffins in Delaware(the later insituted by non other than Dick Cheney when he was Secretary of Defense). The media today obsesses endless over the sensational murder/kidnapping of the day, but the nearly daily causalties in Iraq pass by with little more than "2 soldiers were killed today by an IED".
- As for reining in the intelligence establishment with a new Church commission, there is one force working towards that and one against. The force working for it is growing public awareness of the blatant and obvious deception used to justify Iraq which should be grounds to once again rein in the CIA and to launch impeachment proceeding against the President. The force working against it is the Republicans control the government. As long as they do the deceipt will be
Re:Why ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Common practice (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly right, you do have something to hide, and most people here would fully understand your reasons for hiding it.
Now what happens if a few years down the road a new Law passes saying that it is illegal to post anonymously to the internet, and that all users must be registered and traceable.
Are you the type who would just say, "Ah well, posting to the internet is a privilege not a right," and accept it? Will you go underground and post in places where you can be anonymous and thus be (technically) a criminal?
Seriously, just because you are known here as tealover, you are still essentially anonymous and you probably prefer it that way, and yet, you do not feel that you are entitled to that privacy? Enlighten me as I cannot understand that.
Don't let Legislators watch CSI... (Score:5, Insightful)
Talk to the leadership in the Intelligence Technology, and they'll tell you, finding bad guys is hard enough. Trying to sift though mountains of pepper hoping to find the one fly speck, is just insane. One "Intelligence Researcher" refered to the idea of watching every single American for signs of terrorist affiliation is like "Looking for a needle in a haystack of haystacks..." This will ultimately make it much harder to find the real bad guys, waste precious human and financial resources on fantasy tech that does not exist (and won't for some time to come), and in the end... innocent lives continue to hang in the balance.
I have a close friend who during Pappa Bush's administration, worked at Lockheed. He worked on debunking "Brilliant Pebbles" the next incarnation of "Smart Rocks", intelligent projectiles in space designed to hunt down and elliminate the threat of ICBMs to America (all part of the Star Wars Initiative.) He explained that the hardware to make this possible wouldn't exist until some time after 2010, and that even when that hurdle was cleared, there was no way to control the pebbles or have them communicate, that couldn't be jammed by EMP or radiation. In short, it was a doomed idea, and no amount of sexy or comic book fantasizing by Pentagon hawks was going to make this dog hunt. It took years and millions of dollars to finally convince these guys.. this was a bad idea. God only knows what we'll have to do, to get the Dexterites to wise up in a sane timeframe.
This is of course above and beyond the simple gutting of the entire philosophy of our particular form of government. That being;
Government should be transparent, and citizens should have operational privacy.
Somehow, our executive seems to believe the opposite, and it's all too clear that an opaque executive can simple be equated to one who is interested in paving his agenda all over the citizenry and the landscape, rule of law be damned.
Genda
-- Thems that trade a bit of liberty for a bit of security...
Re:Why ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I am not afraid of the government abusing that information. A big difference.
The government is made of people.
Did you even -read- my post? (Score:2, Insightful)
You obviously missed my point entirely.
My question was how would you determine with absolute certainty that someone is guilty of a crime, being it under costitutional protection or not, if there is no due process?
Would you except being stuck at Guantanamo for years without an attorney, simply because someone named you as a "illegal combatant"? May I ask you, as you may clarify this, illegal according to whom?
I'll claim with great prejudice, "illegal combatant" is simply a political rethoric, a rethorical rewrite to avoid difficult questions. Obviously works on Americans though.
You obviously take it for granted that these people are, oh whatever, say "illegal combatants" or terrorists, name your favorite. How can you know this with certainty? So far there has been only claims, captures, and complete ignorance of basic human-rights.
Which really is no good method of determining guilt. And is this kind of treatment really worthy of a modern democracy?
The Party never ends (Score:1, Insightful)
Now Poindexter is back, pardoned for his treasonous crimes under President VP Bush by the judge who cleared the Whitewater investigation's transformation into the Lewinsky investigation, now whitewashing for Bush Jr's Intelligence failure commission. Just like Star Wars came back with the Bush remission, as a "missile defense shield", so essential to fighting a war on suicide bombers. He never left. And this TIA will never leave. Our government has got herpes - just look at all the pockmarks shaped miraculously like their original outbreak during the wild party for rightwingers while Bush Jr was DJ'ing.