Posted on 01/27/2005 3:40:30 PM PST by Wolfie
The Drug War isn't shrinking the Bill of Rights: it's ERASING it!
Try this one, from one of the listed vendors:
http://www.verisign.com/products-services/communications-services/connectivity-and-interoperability-services/calea-compliance/page_001652.html
Note that Verisign is a Certificate Authority. Know what that is? THAT is who people "trust" to verify that a public key belogs to the correct holder of a private key, so there can be no "man in the middle" attacks.
Hmmmmm, but if Verisign is hip deep with law enforcement...
Then what's to be done about it??? What's the point in complaining about it when conservative Americans themselves vote for politicians who enact the policies they so despise? You are shooting yourself in the foot by doing so.
Ok I see you have a problem with the CALEA legislation. Can you give me a scenario that distinguishes this from, say, a legal wiretap? It's not as if it's hard to establish a private certificate authority if you don't want to use Verisign. Just because the dominant model of the certificate authority is flawed and in bed with the government doesn't mean we've lost any rights from that. I firmly believe you have the responsibility to ensure your own data security, just like you have the ultimate responsibilty to ensure your own physical security.
The question of profits from our drug use going to terrorist & other criminal organizations is just ANOTHER reason why the Drug War should be extinguished (@ the federal level, anyway). Allow people to grow their own weed, therefore the money won't go to dealers. Allow private, for-profit companies & farmers to grow marijuana & coca & keep the $ w/in the bounds of legitimate business, just like they are already doing w/ tobacco or alcohol...& tax the heck out of it!
I'm one of those "dopers" that you are talking about, & I don't appreciate your insult. The vast majority of us use responsibly & are not a threat to others. We have no desire to violate the God-given rights of our neighbor.
Utter rubbish. First of all. the meth lab is a different issue, as would any industrial process using toxic chemicals.
Second of all, there is a property crime here -- which, by the way, ought to be a state and not a federal matter anyway.
Third of all, the fact that this happened under the most draconian drug laws imaginable proves the the war on drugs is no more effective at stopping drug use than is gun control at stopping gun-related crime.
Here is a position paper I wrote as part of my (unsuccessful application to appear as a "presidential candidate" on Showtime Network's "American Candidate" program which aired last summer:
==============================
I have long been opposed to the federal government’s so-called “War on Drugs,” which is second perhaps only to the income tax in terms of the burdensome tyranny that it imposes on the American people.
One would think that our nation would have learned the lessons of Prohibition -- an arrogant and ultimately failed Progressive Era attempt to improve human beings by engineering their personal behavior. Of course, to their credit, the people who gave us Prohibition were at least sufficiently aware of the extent to which their agenda was inconsistent with the rights of American citizens that they did us the courtesy of seeking and securing a constitutional amendment.
Not so with the War on Drugs, which is far more damaging to our rights, and yet somehow was foisted on the American people without a similar bow to the necessity for submitting it to constitutional authority.
There are many good reasons to oppose the War on Drugs, but certainly at the top of the list is the fact that it has spawned the outrageous federal and state Drug Forfeiture Laws. These laws “enable” the government to confiscate private property without even a cursory nod to our 4th and 5th Amendment rights to due process and protection from unreasonable search and seizure. According to a recent article from Florida Today (1/11/2004):
Federal and state drug forfeiture laws allow authorities to take homes, cars, boats and other personal possessions of those caught with even the smallest amounts of illegal drugs. Often, such decisions are left to the discretion of individual police departments and municipalities.
"Even if you have a tiny pill in your pocket, they can confiscate your vehicle," said Steve Casanova, a former prosecutor with the Brevard County State Attorney's Office and now a Melbourne defense lawyer whose specialties include drug trafficking cases.
The law also allows cash and property of those not directly involved in drug arrests to be confiscated, Casanova said.
"If you loan your car to someone who's pulled over by the police and arrested for having drugs, they can take your vehicle," he said. Sometimes, confiscated cash and property is held in limbo for one or two years before a judge decides whether such forfeitures should go to authorities, she said.
Anyone who thinks they are safe from such abuse because they don’t use drugs might find the following 1993 story from Newsweek a bit chilling:
Gary and Kathy Bergman had their home seized after a houseguest was found with marijuana. After a three hour search of the house, federal agents found a trace of pot and a marijuana butt in a car outside belonging to the Bergmans’ daughter. Even though neither of the Bergmans was charged with a federal crime (Gary pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor state charge) the federal government seized the entire house as the presumed tainted property of a drug ring. The Bergmans have been allowed to stay there under an occupancy agreement. However, their front and back doors post signs stating, "No trespassing by order of U.S. Marshall." – David Kaplan, Bob Cohn, and Karen Springen, Where the Innocent Lose, Newsweek, pg. 42, January 4, 1993.
Most Americans are not aware of the extent to which government has usurped our supposed constitutional rights through drug war legislation. We have been sleeping for a long time. But my presidential candidacy will be the wake-up call that is long overdue, and I will use all of my powers as president to end this indecent assault on our most fundamental liberties.
Of course, the damage that the War on Drugs has done to our nation is not limited just to the abuses of the drug forfeiture laws. There is also the matter of financial cost. In 2002, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy FY 2003 Budget Summary, the federal government spent $18.8 billion fighting the drug war, and still has not made a dent in drug use in the United States.
But even apart from that, there is the fact that the drug war is simply bad public policy. Like Prohibition in its time, the primary social outcome of the War on Drugs is that it has financed the growth of organized crime. But today we are not just talking about good old fashioned Godfather-type organized crime that was mostly focused on high-jacking, prostitution, gambling and corrupting labor unions. We are talking about nationally organized street gangs, with millions of dollars in their treasuries, and nationwide networks of distributors and enforcers. We are talking about arsenals of high-powered weapons owned by criminals in gang controlled neighborhoods throughout America.
One could say, at least the Prohibition-era gangsters kept their own neighborhoods relatively safe. But what has the War on Drugs done to our inner-city neighborhoods, except turn them into war zones? What has it accomplished, except to enable vicious gang-bangers to expand their networks into the heartland of America, and recruit children into the drug business with a pay level that makes working at McDonald’s seem like something only chumps and suckers would do. P>Space does not allow me to adequately chronicle the terrible toll that the Drug War has taken on our nation. But there is certainly a compelling case to be made that the supposed threat posed by individual drug addicts is far less damaging than the threat of the drug war itself.
When I was struggling to make a living during my music career in the mid-80s, I suffered the theft of an entire car-load of expensive instruments and band equipment. I later learned from others in my neighborhood that the likely suspects were several heroin users who shared an apartment up the street. I could never prove that, and I never did recover my equipment.
But let’s assume that the heroin addicts were, in fact the culprits. Had heroin been legal, they would have purchased it at some store for some nominal amount, gone home, shot up, nodded off, and left me alone. Possibly, they could even have managed their drug use to the point where they could hold jobs. Instead, in order to support drug habits made exorbitantly expensive by the artificially inflated prices of illegal drugs, they resorted to crime.
How is that a benefit to society? How do such outcomes justify the cost in lost rights, wasted dollars and the lost productivity of criminalized non-violent individual drug users, many of whom – but for the fact that their habit is illegal – would be in a position to function with relative normality and make at some sort contribution to their communities? Or at least not be driven by addiction to steal and burglarize.
Lastly, there is the pure issue of American liberty. I would agree that there might be a legitimate reason to outlaw certain individual drugs if it could be proven that their effect had a very high correlation to violent behavior. PCP comes to mind as an example as a substance that might merit such consideration. And I would certainly support laws relating to safety, such as prohibiting driving under the influence of certain substances – although such laws rightly belong at the state level.
But to threaten millions of non-violent drug users with prison and huge civil fines for engaging in behavior that is not generally harmful to others is a gross violation of their core liberties. It is not the federal government’s business to prohibit individuals from engaging in non-violent recreational behavior simply because it may not be good for them.
Ending the drug war raises some very complex issues about the practical realities, options and potential regulatory requirements relating drug legalization or decriminalization. These issues will need to be addressed by a policy team that I will put together once I am elected. But I can promise that I will use the full power of my office to bring about the end of the insane War on drugs, to get rid of drug forfeiture laws, and eliminate federal criminal sanctions against individual non-violent drug users
So in other words, it's better to drive into the brick wall of totalitarianism @ 40 mph by electing Republican Drug Warriors into office, rather than electing Dims, who insists on driving @ 70 mph. Nice choice, huh?
I'm not necessarily talking about commie-Kerry anyway. The Founding Fathers considered the House of Representatives to be the most important bulwark against despotism (that's why their lengths of office are for only 2 yrs). On top of that, ALL bills raising revenue for the federal government must be initiated in the House--& there is nothing that the President, the Senate, nor the Supreme Court can do about it if they choose to not fund a certain government program.
We have got to start focusing on the House in order to regain our constitutional republic, & limit the feds to its limited, constitutional functions.
I've seen an abbreviated form of that argument before. It goes something like "Now, see what you made me do!".
Read the "patriot act" lately
Well basically, that's what Reuben Hick, who's post I quoted, seems to be saying.
Thank you at least you understood, perhaps I should have been more clear and said the "domestic" WoT.
I think everyone eventually does it a time or two. I know I have.
Oh anything is possible. Indeed, in about 18 months look for a patent with my name on it that is related to this issue. But the thing is: even relatively informed Americans have no idea how much they live in a fishbowl, a soft cage. If they did, our Army would consist only of mercenaries. NOBODY would consider defending such a system a duty.
Yeah and between the two of us, I'm very clearly the only one that has.
Interesting if you Google the names of the protocols I mentioned, you get exactly ONE unique document, a 3GPP standards document. ZERO hits on all the telecom porducts that use those protocols to implement LI. They ALL have extensive documentation. And ALL those documents are closely controlled. NEVER distributed outside of the few people who "need to know." But one would have thought that it would be all over the Internet f only from carelessness.
I didn't realize people were THAT assiduous about keeping this out of the puclic eye.
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