I Have a Bone To Pick with GW Bush

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

William Safire's editorial today is heating up an important debate. There are two camps: "This is war." vs. "This is Orwellian." I want to open a third camp. "This is ridiculous."

Our borders are wide open. Terrorists could blindside us at will. The foreign threats are much greater than the domestic threats in this war of terrorism. So naturally, we do NOTHING about that. Instead, we strip away our privacies. Sorry. That doesn't fly. If it were truly important to take away our privacy, the borders would have been secured a year ago.

It appears that it is easier to ask us to live in fish bowls than to tell illegal immigrants that we cannot afford to have such loose border control anymore. It appears to be a political calculation. Does that not reduce the lost privacy aspect to nothing but political calculations? Which is more important? Our safety? Or as Dick Morris says it, the 'browning of America'? But hey, the 'browning of America' ends when the borders are secure. Thus, the ridiculousness aspect only grows.

GW Bush is well intentioned, I'm sure. But his political calculations reveal that taking away our privacy can't be all that important, if he isn't willing to tick off parts of the Hispanic community by securing our borders.

This is my suggestion, for what it's worth:

1. First seal the borders.

2. Mention a timeline for this lost privacy. No 'continuation triggers' either. Settle for 4 years of this lost privacy. Then destroy the data of all non-suspects. Only keep data of suspects that is deemed worth keeping by a warrant.

3. Non-citizens can be monitored and that info can be filed at will. Americans generally would like that idea.

4. Put someone in charge other than Poindexter. Why give ammo to the desperate DNC? It makes no sense.

If GW fails to heed this advice, I forsee political havoc. And I will be a part of it.

[Eva]

Yes, Bush has been in control, but not of these agencies that were politicized under Clinton. A good house cleaning is needed to get rid of the unionized leftists in control of these agencies.

[fone]

||| About the only thing left to argue about is when it started |||

My money is on those pesky Phoenicians...

[willyone]

Employer sanctions,Social Security card verifications,repeal of automatic citizenship which is being abused,effective fencing as now exists in San Diego and some other sectors. Lastly get the courage to start rounding up all unattached male illegals for starters followed by females. Either that or just forget this whole sham of National Security. As it is right now the illegal/legal immigration tail is wagging the dog.

[willyone]

Every place where an effective fence has been put up has seen great results. The only problem is that the illegals and drug runners just move else where like Arizona. How would you feel if you came home one day and found someone in your home helping themselves to what belongs to you? Illegal immigration is the same thing. Not only are the illegals exploited but so are the taxpayers who have to bear the consequences of this allowed invasion.

[willyone]

They only do this to those of European lineage. You can be offended since all whites are racists anyway and deserve it.

[willyone]

Just the other day Bush made the statement that he did not care what the conservative base feels or thinks. Make your own conclusion on that.

[willyone]

Foot traffic is the biggest source of illegals and what ever else sneaks in. Stop trying to divert the argument. Total control is impossible. However a huge portion of the problem can be stopped quite easily as has been shown in the San Diego area with a effective border fence that all the pro illegal people said would never work.

[willyone]

The events being allowed to happen are no accident. It is a conscious decision to flood the country with immigrants preferably from third world countries where they have learned to obey the govt. Any efforts at border control are just window dressing to keep the sheep placated while the plan continues.

[Darlin']

The only ones I see trying to divert the argument are Bush bashers and Libertarians. One wonders if they have all the answers then what for God's sake are they doing here. Why aren't they sitting in the Oval Office or better yet running things up in Heaven. Assigning pro-Illegal motives to me and to my reasonable request for a rational approach to the problem rather than the same hysterical rantings is liken to me assuming you are pro-anarchy. It is a no starter and you know it.

[FormerLurker]

Yes, Bush has been in control, but not of these agencies that were politicized under Clinton.

Bush IS the head of the Executive branch. As such, he SHOULD be in control of all departments under him, and is ultimately responsible for what they do. I find it hard to believe that if there were problems within INS of such magnitude he wouldn't have had the opportunity to address those issues well before now..

[Deb]

I'm sure you likewise remember the New Jersey FBI agent who requested a warrant to open Moussoui's computer...and was denied by a judge who "judged" that the federal agency had too much power and not enough evidence.

So much for judges rubber-stamping the public's invasion of privacy.

Maybe you can explain how a computer profile produced out of ramdom information and handed to an agent, would blunt his intuition? And since they must still get a judge to okay any action, how can the process do anything but help get the bad guys?

Of course, the professional paranoids will scream so much about "privacy" and their "rights", that the offending proposition will be stripped from the final HS bill. And our enemies, the Democrats and the ACLU will have won a major victory against us. So don't worry, your privacy will be safe from such "unreasonable searches".

Those who are about to die, salute you.

[wewillnotfail]

book

[Deb]

Maybe you saw "Nightline" last night. You could have written the show. William Safire suddenly became the #1 authority on the Bush administration's violation of the publics privacy.

Except that at the very end, they had to admit that Safire was actually wrong and the true facts were nothing close to what Safire had claimed. In fact, all that is being proposed is a chance for interested parties and companies to take a shot developing a system to aid the CIA/FBI/NSA/ETC in sharing info.

But we must keep vigilant (!) the Bush-hating "expert" bleated at the end.

Oh, well...no harm done. Just another chance to weaken the President. All the better for the Leftists and murderers..

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

Deb, TY for the good news! I'm not trying to destroy Bush. Been praying for him, his wife, and his team, in fact. I'll do a quick check for verification. Then I will do a mass ping on your post. And I will send an email of apology to the president. We thought we could trust Safire to shoot straight with us. I thought it would be quite natural for the president to do everything he possibly can to keep us safe.

You might find it hard to believe, but a lot of good came from this. The beltway is reminded about just how much we cherish our privacy. We reminded each other how much we care. We also made it clear that we drink no one's koolaid. In the end, perhaps we can relax and crack Nancy Pelosi jokes. Oh, and we can roast Bill Safire's chest nuts.

FReegards....

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

I don't watch TV anymore, but Deb caught an important related report on Nightline that discredits Safire.

---

Maybe you saw "Nightline" last night ... William Safire suddenly became the #1 authority on the Bush administration's violation of the publics privacy.

Except that at the very end, they had to admit that Safire was actually wrong and the true facts were nothing close to what Safire had claimed. In fact, all that is being proposed is a chance for interested parties and companies to take a shot developing a system to aid the CIA/FBI/NSA/ETC in sharing info.

But we must keep vigilant (!) the Bush-hating "expert" bleated at the end.

Oh, well...no harm done. Just another chance to weaken the President. All the better for the Leftists and murderers..


113 posted on 11/15/2002 3:58 PM PST by Deb

----
Agencies coordinating data is a good idea. It might have prevented 9-11.

The other side of the issue: safe borders, is still of vital importance.

I'll send an apology to GW Bush, although as many were eager to point out, it's doubtful he even noticed this.

What should be done about William Safire...? He gave us a chance to prove we don't drink anyone's koolaid, but at the same time, he apparently fooled many of us with rash fear-mongering.

FReegards

[My2Cents]

The Safire scare got Hannity and Colmes frothing at the mouth last night. Imagine that: the only time these guys agreed on anything, and it was based on a fraudulent report!

[FormerLurker]

Except that at the very end, they had to admit that Safire was actually wrong and the true facts were nothing close to what Safire had claimed. In fact, all that is being proposed is a chance for interested parties and companies to take a shot developing a system to aid the CIA/FBI/NSA/ETC in sharing info.

And you believe EVERYTHING you see on TV? That's sort of naive, don't you think?

---

Total Information Awareness (TIA) System
Program Manager: Dr. John Poindexter
Deputy PM: Dr. Robert Popp

Program Objective:

The Total Information Awareness (TIA) program is a FY02 new-start program. The goal of the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program is to revolutionize the ability of the United States to detect, classify and identify foreign terrorists – and decipher their plans – and thereby enable the U.S. to take timely action to successfully preempt and defeat terrorist acts. To that end, the TIA program objective is to create a counter-terrorism information system that: (1) increases information coverage by an order of magnitude, and affords easy future scaling; (2) provides focused warnings within an hour after a triggering event occurs or an evidence threshold is passed; (3) can automatically queue analysts based on partial pattern matches and has patterns that cover 90% of all previously known foreign terrorist attacks; and, (4) supports collaboration, analytical reasoning and information sharing so that analysts can hypothesize, test and propose theories and mitigating strategies about possible futures, so decision-makers can effectively evaluate the impact of current or future policies and prospective courses of action.

Program Strategy:

The TIA program strategy is to integrate technologies developed by DARPA (and elsewhere as appropriate) into a series of increasingly powerful prototype systems that can be stress-tested in operationally relevant environments, using real-time feedback to refine concepts of operation and performance requirements down to the component level. The TIA program will develop and integrate information technologies into fully functional, leave-behind prototypes that are reliable, easy to install, and packaged with documentation and source code (though not necessarily complete in terms of desired features) that will enable the intelligence community to evaluate new technologies through experimentation, and rapidly transition it to operational use, as appropriate. Accordingly, the TIA program will work in close collaboration with one or more U.S. intelligence agencies that will provide operational guidance and technology evaluation, and act as TIA system transition partners.

Technically, the TIA program is focusing on the development of: 1) architectures for a large-scale counter-terrorism database, for system elements associated with database population, and for integrating algorithms and mixed-initiative analytical tools; 2) novel methods for populating the database from existing sources, create innovative new sources, and invent new algorithms for mining, combining, and refining information for subsequent inclusion into the database; and, 3) revolutionary new models, algorithms, methods, tools, and techniques for analyzing and correlating information in the database to derive actionable intelligence.

[FormerLurker]

Pentagon Plans a Computer System That Would Peek at Personal Data of Americans

Congressman Ron Paul on Homeland Security

[Deb]

I'm sure this won't be the end, but you're right, and thank you for taking the time to check it out.

Pelosi's dead meat.

[jd777]

So anyoe who complains "total surveilance" is a Bush hater? You're the kool aid drinker, troll.