Posted on 12/03/2001 10:00:13 PM PST by Mercuria
Even in the worst of times, there's always something to be grateful for, a silver lining in the darkest cloud. For my part, I'm grateful the attacks and the events after it didn't happen while Bill Clinton was in office. Clinton was fundamentally in love with power. As he did after the bombing in Oklahoma City, and school shootings, he would have taken advantage of the deaths of other Americans for his own political advancement. In an example of extreme hypocrisy, his backers would call his grubby exploitation honoring the dead, and would accuse anyone who disagrees of having no concern for the loss of life. I've never understood the attitude that the way to memorialize the dead is by giving up freedom, the thing that makes us Americans. All I can say is, I'm glad Republicans don't have that attitude.
Picture what Clinton might have done, through crass political manipulation of the crisis. It would have been an excuse for a federal power grab. I'd imagine that he would get laws passed making it legal for his jack-booted thugs to search homes without even telling the person whose property is searched. He's the kind of dangerous politician to have done that, and more. He might have gone further, letting federal law enforcement track what content a person accesses over the internet, and, in his boundless desire to have unlimited authority over ordinary people, he might have required a lower standard of proof than probable cause. Maybe the only requirement would be that it's relevant to an investigation. I'm glad Bush is in office instead.
In 1998, the Clinton administration released plans to implement a set of regulations called "Know Your Customer", which would have required banks to determine the sources of customers' funds, track their transactions, and report anything considered unusual. The reports would be investigated by something called FinCEN, which would keep the records around for the feds to snoop through, regardless of whether there was any evidence of a crime. The whole idea was abandoned after a public outcry. Bill Clinton thus showed himself to be an enemy of financial privacy, and given what we know about his unscrupulousness he wouldn't have hesitated to exploit the situation to resume his attack. Maybe he would have revived Know Your Customer, or maybe he would have attacked privacy some other way. Maybe he would have made all retailers follow the rules banks already follow under the misnamed Bank Secrecy Act.
On that subject, that Democrats give their bills gimmicky, misleading names has always annoyed me. It's as if they know that political truth in advertising would undo them. If the Bank Secrecy Act had been called the Spy Bank Accounts Act, nobody would have voted for it. Clinton probably would've bundled all of it together in a single bill with a gimmick name like the "Patriot Act". I'm glad the honorable man in the White House now would never do something like that.
Beyond Clinton himself, there was his authoritarian Attorney General, Janet Reno. The Butcher of Waco would have plunged headlong into whatever tyranny she thought she could get away with. That was her nature, seeing no reason not to have a police state and every reason to have one, and thus subjugating ordinary people to official thuggery every time she could. By now she might have hundreds of people held incommunicado in jail, without charges, and in secret. The worst fears of the black helicopter crowd would be coming true. That woman, I tell you, had no respect whatsoever for our basic legal traditions. She might even have gotten the FBI to spy on political and religious organizations, creating the opportunity for purely political investigations like J. Edgar Hoover used to have.
But maybe I've taken it too far. Even if she wanted to, the public would never stand for that. War or not, there would be enough public complaint to stop that. And even if the public is too complacent, at least we now have good men in office, who would never take advantage of that kind of complacency.
Why don't you ask the Feds?
They seem to have a LOT of knowledge. They just don't tell us about it until it's too close...or too late.
Then they come out with cleverly-titled bills-that-become-laws saying that it's worth giving up our freedom to their control for our protection.
In short...to you, are the deaths of millions an acceptable collateral damage of remaining able to continue your "banking in private?" Are you willing to see entire cities disappear from the planet in your country so that your email messages are not recorded by a third party? Can you accept the loss of major Fortune 500 companies within seconds in exchange for someone taking your picture as you enter a football game. Just asking...
Gotta hand it to you...you ask the good tough questions.
The fact that things have even GOTTEN to this point is a source of extreme worry on my part.
I honestly don't believe the Federal Government is sitting around sucking their collective thumb while a lot of rancid activities are going on behind their backs without their knowledge.
We are told if we hold fast to our freedoms, we risk our survival.
We are told if we DON'T compromise on freedoms, we stand a chance to lose our security.
But if we compromise on our freedoms to the degree that some powerful people in the FedGov system wish, we're put on the path of destroying everything this country is supposed to stand for, and this nation, as we know it, will be destroyed anyway.
The answer?
Take steps to make certain we don't get into these situations in the first place.
The Federal Government knows quite a bit more how to avoid situations like this than they claim.
It just helps FedGov gain more power from those not in the know if it pretends that it DOESN'T know how else to avoid such situations besides compromising our freedoms.
Short answer? Quite frankly, I think we're having our heads screwed with.
Uhhhh...whatever...
One element of the critique that is valid is just how flexible and easily bypassed the Fourth Amendment is today, and with the rulings of the SC in the seventies to prove it.
Privacy is a very negotiable item in the law of today, and has been for a long time, notwithstanding the discovery of "rights" and "penumbras" and "emanations" in the Constitution induced by the abortionists. Context is everything anymore.
But some people just aren't happy unless they're finding some lame-ass word or phrase or idea or another to apply to themselves personally so they can take offense.
Being a Victim-American is too big of a fad these days!!
But by then...it'll be too late...and what will you do to stop them when the Usual Power-Hungry Suspects get out of hand?
Quote my exact words saying I have an issue with packets of information passing through machines.
And what will happen when the next Bill Clinton assumes office, and he is granted all these unconstitutional powers?
Yep. You follow politicians, not principles.
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You made a very specific claim. To wit: "On the one hand you claim that it doesn't matter if only machines are reading internet messages, but then on the other hand you claim to have an issue with machines reading internet messages."
You're refusing to quote where I said that because I didn't say it. You are, in short, a liar.
Packets of information passing through computers is fine, that's how the internet works. A person other than the intended receiver reading it, catching it as it passes over his computer or at any other time, is wrong unless there's a warrant.
You need to admit that your comparision between passing through a computer in the function of the internet and someone reading it is apples and oranges. In other words, that you were wrong. Grant the point, and move on.
Personally, I call a spade a shovel.
If you are familiar with the list of detainees and their lawyers, please let me know where it is since you obviously have proof.
My statements are made on a political forum and MOST here know what I was referring to without having to pretend that this is a courtroom in an effort to discredit the statement. I don't have a need to be taken seriously. The choir will sing hallelujia and those in 100% denial will remain so. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, as always.
Oh yeah, no I have no idea what a "JAG Culture" is. Feel free to explain it if its important to you.
That's basically a contradiction in terms. Every packet of data on the internet is read by software on multiple machines, none of whom will end up being the intended receiver. A router in particular will examine numerous packets, but only pass a few through it. A cable modem will see every packet sent into its local loop, yet it will only pass those with a certain IP on to its owner. Yet you want to claim that the cable-modem is wrong to read messages that don't belong to its owner. That just isn't how the Internet is designed.
"You need to admit that your comparision between passing through a computer in the function of the internet and someone reading it is apples and oranges. In other words, that you were wrong. Grant the point, and move on."
I simply compared various government machines that all ran various software programs, all of which read every packet of data traffic on the internet and pass it on. That looks like apples to apples, not oranges, to me.
Perhaps a simpler technical examples would aid you. Consider packet radio. Packet radio has a satellite transmitter that broadcasts all data traffic (that belongs to its sum total sub group of users). Every packet radio receiver reads every data packet, even though the vast majority of those packets are not destined for its owner. The packets with the owners IP get passed to the owner's computer. NOTE: every packet was read by every machine in that scenario, but the packet radios don't need search warrants to legally read all of those packets, betraying your claim above.
Taking this scenario even further, there is nothing wrong with a user attaching a sniffer (that's a device which reads and displays ALL packets in plain text as they pass through) on the packet radio to diagnose technical problems (even if the user has no warrant).
In fact, the odds are that your average daily land-based internet data traffic will pass through numerous corporate and government machines while a sniffer is attached to diagnose a technical problem (displaying the contents of your data in plain text all the while), yet a warrant is not required for this behavior. That is because such data traffic is generally considered to be just as public on the information super-hiway as is your car on an interstate freeway.
And you don't need new laws to protect your privacy, either. You just need to go to the effort of using encryption. Just as writing a note on a postcard isn't going to give you much privacy, sending open text over the Internet isn't very secure. Likewise, enclosing your message in an envelope (be it encrypted or physical) will provide privacy.
Thank you. Reference your site, this article, and the definition of "patriot" we clearly differ on the meaning and the words of patriots. I am still waiting for the original poster to define what should be done in lieu of the Patriot Act. It is easy to say something is bad and potentially threatening but it isn't necessarily helpful. The heavy lifting is in designing a plan that is effective but without threat. Let's here what he would do differently?
I don't blame Mr. Armitage for being cynical about the implementation of the "Patriot" Act. This idea was lying around for MONTHS (like from January!), with those supporting it just waiting for something like 9/11 to happen so that those who are looking to increase the power (and let's be frank, the possible ABUSE) of Federal Government could play upon the fears of someone exactly in your situation to cram it through without comment from the public, without hindrance from the President...and hell, without even READING it themselves.
I would like to understand clearly what you are saying. Is your contention that concurrent with the swearing in ceremony the Bush Adminstration someone drafted these exact line items currently known as the Patriot Act? Please share with us who drafted it and where you got your data. Please cite it here, I would be interested in reviewing it.
And considering the Feds admitted they knew the 9/11 attack was being planned for quite some time, it's rather tough for me and others NOT to be cynical about This Magic Solution suddenly popping up as The Answer To All Our Problems. "We're from the government and we're here to help you", as the old joke goes.
The logical continuation and connectivity from the paragraph above is with this legislation already drafted, the Feds intentionally allowed the attack to happen so that they could enact the Patriot Act. Is that what you are saying? The other way this can be read is that the Patriot Act is part of a planned strategy to usurp our rights, waiting in the wings for an opportune time to roll it out. Maybe that's what you are saying. A clarification would be appreciated.
I'm POSITIVE if President Clinton signed something like this under such circumstances, the red warning lights would have been flashing like Rudolf's nose on Christmas Eve 'round these parts.
We will have to disagree. I am equally positive that the public support would have been the same. I can not speak for the radical fringe who would have "flashed like Rodolf's nose" in that case anymore than I can for there counterparts who are doing the same thing now. I am sure there are those who would have objected.
As to the current conflict (or war, whatever you want to call it)...I say find the bastards who did this and who assisted them, put them down, and then bring our troops home. No "nation-building" aftermath, if you please.
We agree on this. Though it is in our interest to help them get started, to assure Afghanistan doesn't become Club Med for the terrorists again. After that we need to be gone.
I think we've discovered over the past few years that too many of these people we've assisted in the past usually wind up NOT appreciating it.
And we've got more important things to do at home than set up future, dangerous foreign ingrates into positions of power.
I agree partially with the first part. But that's the stating the obvious, you can get that from TV. The less obvious part, because you have to be there to see it, is many people do appreciate and benefit from our assistance. It may not be evident on the national level, yet, but as individuals many lives are better for the US's efforts. Over time the investments we make in educating citizens of foreign nations will payoff.
I will await your clarification then reply accordingly.
That begs the question of whether the individual in question makes any difference.
Does it matter if a 5 year old girl is alone in a room with her mom? Does it matter if a 5 year old girl is instead alone in a room with a convicted serial child rapist?
If one states that the 5 year old girl should (or shouldn't) be alone in a room with any adult, then one has opined a position based upon a "principle" (such as that little girls should or shouldn't be alone in a room).
But perhaps trying to lead a life based upon 100% blind adherence to "principles" can lead to unintended consequences...
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