Posted on 05/06/2006 8:03:23 AM PDT by Imnotalib
A U.S. appeals panel sharply challenged the Bush administration Friday over new rules making it easier for police and the FBI to wiretap Internet phone calls.
A judge said the government's courtroom arguments were "gobbledygook."
The skepticism expressed so openly toward the administration's case encouraged civil liberties and education groups that argued that the U.S. is improperly applying telephone-era rules to a new generation of Internet services.
"Your argument makes no sense," U.S. Circuit Judge Harry T. Edwards told the lawyer for the Federal Communications Commission, Jacob Lewis. "When you go back to the office, have a big chuckle. I'm not missing this. This is ridiculous. Counsel!"
In the current case, Edwards appeared especially skeptical over the FCC's decision to require that providers of Internet phone service and broadband services must ensure their equipment can accommodate police wiretaps under the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, known as CALEA.
The 1994 law was originally aimed at ensuring court-ordered wiretaps could be placed on wireless phones.
The Justice Department, which has lobbied aggressively on the subject, warned in court papers that failure to expand the wiretap requirements to the fast-growing Internet phone industry "could effectively provide a surveillance safe haven for criminals and terrorists who make use of new communications services."
Critics said the new FCC rules are too broad and inconsistent with the intent of Congress when it passed the 1994 surveillance law, which excluded categories of companies described as information services.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
These people keep enabling the bad guys by refusing to make the logical jump from existing laws to new technology. As long as Congress has to play catch up, writing new laws to address the new technology and how it's being used by criminals, our law enforcement community will always be at a disadvantage.
Codswallop! I agree with the judge completely on this issue. Also the internet porn crap the AG keeps pushing. Keep the feds out of the internet.
Normally, they simply yell "Allahu Akbar!" and leave it at that.
By all means, let's make sure the internet is a safe haven for terrorists, child molesters, and other criminals. It's much more important to make sure perverts can access pornography in anonymity.
You've never actually read the Constitution, have you.
L
"He was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the seat vacated by David L. Bazelon."
Jimmeh Catarrh....the Incompetent gift that keeps on giving.....angst.....agitah.......
God forbid that Congress should actually do any necessary work or have public debates on laws. What we really need is to have administrative agencies and law enforcement write laws for us - after all we are stupid and unconcerned about terrorism and the government only has our best interests at heart.
The panel includes Janice Rogers Brown and David Sentelle (Reagan nominee), so if the government loses it'll hardly be due to liberal activism. It will be because what the Bush administration claims is in the statute simply isn't there, and just because they say the statute provides for regulation of ISPs doesn't make it so, when it's clearly not in the statute.
I don't see what's so hard about passing a new statute that actually provides for what they want if they think it's necessary.
Wrong. I am not a terrorist, and this is placing--actually recognizing--my rights as a civilian.
And, might I add that the Congress has had a decade to "catch up" with the widespread use of the Internet..
Have you not seen anything on the negative effects of porn on our society? It isn't a victimless crime. The United States is one of the biggest perveyors of sex slavery, including children. Any idea how many of the girls on the internet are forced into making the photos and videos? Any idea how many of those who aren't forced into it die of AIDS or other diseases?
I'd like to see us police internet porn like the Chinese do religion and politics.
Or, what might be easier to do - treat sex on camera as prostitution. If someone's paid to have sex in front of a camera, how is that different from just getting paid for sex?
A fool's errand in both cases.
You obviously do not understand how the Internet works or how easy it is for someone to disguise their VOIP phone calls as other traffic and further, encrypt it.
Sorry, don't buy it.
Any idea how many of the girls on the internet are forced into making the photos and videos? Any idea how many of those who aren't forced into it die of AIDS or other diseases?
Hysteria and hyperbole. Got any credible sources for this? Also, since that is already illegal, the feds can do something about it right now if it were the case.
I'm constantly rereading it. It amazes me how things that are specifically allowed (right to bear arms) are attacked while things that aren't even mentioned (right to privacy) are constantly assumed to be there.
Freedom of speech? Don't get me started. If you study up on what the framers intended, you find they wanted the free exchange of IDEAS, not the right to use any language and any image in any place, regardless of the consequences.
If Jefferson, Franklin, and the rest had lived in a world with the internet, WMD's, terrorists, the internet and electronic communications, kiddie porn, and liberal courts perverting the intent of those who wrote our Constitution, ut would be much different than it is now.
We had better get busy adapting to today's world, or tomorrow's world is going to be really a sad place.
Not just VOIP, but proxy servers and PGP as well.
Yes, try reading "Illicit : How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy" or "The Natashas : Inside the New Global Sex Trade"
The former covers (and documents) all types of illicit trade around the world and the latter is exactly what it says.
For reasons that seem to escape everyone, sex trade is not treated as a priority by any police organizations, even when children are involved.
"Illicit" is a fascinating book - it explains how the internet, the new world economy, and other things that, at first glance, would seem to work for the police, actually work in favor of the criminals and the terrorists.
In the US, the slavers used to go after the low class and minority women in big cities. They are now focusing on middle class white girls in rural areas where there's not a lot of things to do.
You not 'buying it' and living in ignorance of what's going on is the norm that allows it to continue. And sex slavery is just one of the tools that terrorists are now using to raise money for their causes. Terrorists and criminals from all over the world are learning to cooperate regardless of thier different aims and attitudes. THIS IS A BIG THREAT, AND WE'D BETTER START REACTING TO IT.
Evidently you haven't read anything about how effective the chinese and the arabs are at controlling access to the internet. I don't know how, when Google's willingness to accept the chinese government's demands that they filter content and searches.
Anyone in China searching for "falun gong" or "tiananmen square" is apt to find nothing.
We are treating the internet like it's sacred ground. If we wanted to eliminate internet porn and it's effects on women and society, it could be done, but ohmygoodness, perverts absolutely must have freedom to communicate absolutely anything regardless! (I'd like to see Thomas Jefferson questioned on the subject - I'm sure he'd say, "Yes, when we worded 'freedom of speech' we certainly intended to include the right of lowlife scum to transmit video of women having sex with 3 guys and terrorists to transmit articles about how to construct an atomic weapon."
Is there a random propaganda generator you use to come up with this ?
The Constitution is a grant of power to the federal government by the people not the other way around. The government here has no authority to regulate speech.
Still not buying it. However, I am not going to get in a flame war either. We will have to agree to disagree.
Al things considered however, a further limiting of Internet privacy and adding more controls and regulations will not stop that even if it were true.
Nope, see post 19 for 2 of the many sources. Drug dealers, sex slavers, gun runners, and terrorists are all figuring out how to link up with each other to accomplish their vastly diverse goals.
One of the simpler examples is the way the 'coyotes' in Mexico are being tapped for their expertise and capability to get people across the border to get drugs across the border at the same time. Terrorists are tapping in to just about every kind of crime to raise money. To them, the ends justify the means, so they don't care what kind of filth or evil they benefit, as long as it allows them to further their objectives.
Yes, I have seen the effects. Mainly church ladies going balistic.
I'm actually pretty well-read on the Internet in general, and security tactics and methods in particular. The Chinese have not been so effective as they think they've been at controlling the Internet. In the long run they'll lose, and I'm glad they will.
I agree with you that porn and prostitution are bad things, but I don't agree that they need to be illegal. Not everything that's wrong needs to be against the law, and not everything that's good needs to be required by the law. They call prostitution the "worlds oldest profession" for a reason. Throughout history, different tyrants have tried to stomp it out and every attempt has failed utterly. It's the classic of tilting at windmills.
It's a waste of time and we've got better things to do.
Yes, Congress has to play catch-up. That's a good check against Congress's power and protects our rights.
For the first time, eh? Those things also florished before phones and telegraph, pony express, or messages in bottles.
Are you perhaps under the impression that our spy agencies are somehow flummoxed by this new technology and cannot deal effectively with it? If that's the case... rest easy.
Well.... James Madison was the sponsor of the Bill of Rights. When he had attended the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), he got in trouble for writing "ribald verse."
Later in his career, when he was Secretary of State, the ambassador from Tunis requested "concubines" for himself and his embassy. Madison was able to arrange for prostitutes to be provided. Reportedly he wrote off the charges on the federal budget as "expenses for foreign intercourse."
Consider that this was the mindset of the "Father of the Constitution" and the sponsor of the Bill or Rights," I think a broad reading of "Freedom of Speech" is appropriate with regard to its original intent.
The Russian mob, the mafia, the asian gangs - they all used to be enemies, and the terrorists not only steered clear of them, the mafia in the US used to consider itself patriotic and would help stomp out such evil (while of course perpetuating their own). Today's evildoers work in concert to evade the authorities. Because the general public isn't aware of it doesn't mean it isn't happening.
Sometimes trying to make a point on here is really frustrating. It's like trying to discuss the evils of partial birth abortion with a group of Christian conservatives - a group you'd think would be knowledgeable and a natural ally on the subject - and find you can't get anywhere because the audience is so ignorant of the subject that they don't see any reason to care.
All it takes for evil to fluorish is for good men to do nothing. An excellent comment, but it should have been followed up by "or live in ignorance".
So you would really argue that Madison would agree that 'freedom of speech' guarantees the right of perverts to go to the library and look at porn in full view of any 5 year old that walks by? That's where taking the bill of rights to its' extremes has gotten us.
I would argue that Madison would defend the right to publish porn as freedom of the press. The rest is a question of library policy (which should be a local issue) and parental responsibility.
Like I said, I don't think that's taking the Bill of Rights to extremes. Or, if it is, it was the original intent that the Bill of Rights be taken to extremes.
As delineated in post#33, your concerns involve National Security issues that do not concern the courts or the congress.
Furthermore I concur with Ramius in post#29:
Are you perhaps under the impression that our spy agencies are somehow flummoxed by this new technology and cannot deal effectively with it? If that's the case... rest easy.
But... good men *are* doing something. I'm now not really sure what you've been trying to say.
""Have you not seen anything on the negative effects of porn on our society? "
Said the Taliban...
So don't we just put everyone in jail and release only those who can prove they are innocent?
I'm trying to say that it's obvious by the responses to this and other similar articles, that many don't even see the problem.
Many are so locked in by freedom of speech issues that they can't even consider the possibility that such freedom doesn't include absolutely everything (remember the SCOTUS comment that it doesn't mean the right to shout "fire" in a crowded theater), those who are so paranoid about government 'spying' that they don't want the government to have access to anything, and those who don't think that there is any harm done by porn and prostitution. (This is the first I've run into someone that thinks the new technology isn't hindering law enforcement - it clearly is; just consider as an example all the problems being caused by criminal and terrorist ability to switch disposable cell phones and all the uproar over whether the wiretap order follows the individual or the phone.)
I'm the first to say I don't know where to draw the line. But if I have to choose between absolute freedom and giving up some privacy in order for the government to stop terrorists, I'll choose the latter, and will demand oversite.
Frankly, I like the way the Brits handle freedom issues - getting evidence illegally doesn't get the evidence thrown out of court like it does here - the evidence is admitted and those who got it are brought up on charges for the way they obtained it. I believe that protects the public while not giving the bad guys a pass because the cops screwed up.
In many areas, such as the various sex trades, only a few good men are doing anything because MOST don't even know it's a problem. And those who are trying to do something find their hands tied at many junctures - they need more tools and more lattitude to catch the scum that perpetrate these crimes.
The Bill of Rights to the extreme? ROFL! You seem to be a little authoritarian. You believe that freedom is great as long as it doesn't somehow offend or trouble you. If you are offended or troubled by someone else's activities you try to find a way to associate what they do with terrorism and want the government to use its power to make things the way you want them to be.
YEAH, Right! If any of that logic was true, it wouldn't have taken almost 200 years for Hugh Hefner in the late 50's to become the first porn Mogul! Madison lived in a time where pictures of woman in nude forms was considered immoral. Thats why you don't see any great art over 200 years old of paintings of women spead eagle in Hustler poses!
Hey, I just wanted to ask you, where exactly can I find a wide sheet paper shredder like the one you're using?
I mean, I normally can't fit a page as wide as the Constitution into mine, as well as you seem to have...
Only there were a lot of nudes painted. And, there was a lot of explicit material produced -- often for snuff boxes and the like -- that was as explicit as anything today. I don't know that it's "great art," but then again, neither is Hustler.
Not to mention the verse of the time. Sometime check out the unexpurgated Robert Burns. Or "The Merry Muses of Caledonia" which is a lot of Burns and some of his contemporaries.
Congress created a specific law. It excluded certain things. Now you want a judge to say, well times changed and that's NG no more, so fix it for us yer honor. We don't need Congress your honor, the administration says so, just put your stamp on it so we can move along. They'll be child porn in every pot, then we'll all die in a terrorist plot.
When you actually sit down and read the US Constitution, come back and let us know. Until then your meaningless, liberal rants are just that. Or you could read what intelligent, learned people have to say:
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evilminded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
--Justice Louis D. Brandeis dissenting,Olmstead v. United States
Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of "emergency". It was the tactic of Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini. In the collectivist sweep over a dozen minor countries of Europe, it was the cry of men striving to get on horseback. And "emergency" became the justification of the subsequent steps. This technique of creating emergency is the greatest achievement that demagoguery attains.
--Herbert Hoover
“One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.”
— Thomas B. Reed, 1886
“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression.”
— Thomas Paine, 1795
"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined [and] will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce."
--James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 45
"No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words 'no' and 'not' employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights."
--Edmund A. Opitz
Just because you can't control yourself and are obsessed with porn, doesn't mean that the government should step in and impose upon the rest of society your narrow minded views.
Maybe this last one had people like you in mind when he wrote it:
"The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands..."
-- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 180-181
activist judge running amuck alert.
Why is this an activist judge and not an activist administraiton? Did Congress pass some law here, or did the administraiton pull one out of thin air?
There, fixed.
Burns lived in Scotland did he not? Talking American Revolutionary Pornmeisters.
Considerting some of the incompetence of Justice Department lawyers it is not surprising.
Many DOJ types think "just because" allows them to be able to BS their way into whatever they want.
Those are the lawyers who are going to dominate the lower levels of the federal judiciary.
IT WOULD NOT SURPRISE ME IN THE LEAST that a DOJ lawyer would try and BS a judge with technical gobbledygook. The fact the judge ridiculed the lawyers is just plain PRICELESS, if he really wanted to zing them he could impose sanctions under rule 11 for being stupid before the court.
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