Big Brother Unleashed (a rant)
 

Prologue

The Story

Epilogue

The story is from yesterdays New York Times report that revealed many Americans are being spied upon by our own NSA, at the request of the White House.

I am neither a supporter of nor a detractor from the Bush administration. But I am highly offended when my freedoms are stripped away without due process of law.

It surprised me when so many missed this in the wake of 9/11.

If we were 'going to war' against 'people who would attack us,' that means we are going after people for what they think. As the other thread points out, Orwell called it "thoughtcrime."

So many people were so fearful after 9/11 that they passively watched rights that generations had fought to establish and keep be thrown away.

The "Patriot Act" (as misleading a name as there ever was) was over 700 pages and passed within days. How it was written so quickly is a mystery that conspiracy theorists love to point to. What isn't a mystery is that virtually nobody who voted to pass it had read it.

Tech - You need to re-phrase this to "people who would attack us again". I think after 9/11 we really didn't know who was out there and what they were planning next. Any administration of any political stripe would have done the same thing. Even goofball Al.

As for you cash, when you are in NY next, please PM me. I want to show you the view down into "the pit" from 26 stories up. Then I will walk you over to the local Firehouse and you can quote Mencken on the front steps.

President Clinton's proposed $1.84 trillion budget includes millions of dollars in new spending on technology and law enforcement programs.

The record budget request for the 2001 fiscal year, which begins 1 October, asks Congress for more money for wiretapping, police databases, antitrust enforcement, and computer crime forensics.

One of the heftiest increases, from $15 million to $240 million, will pay telephone companies to rewire their networks to facilitate federal and state wiretapping.

Under the 1994 Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), Congress may "reimburse" phone companies for their efforts, but the controversial process is the subject of a lawsuit currently before a federal appeals court.


Where was the left friendly press back then?

Nice try at revisionism. We knew exactly who flew those planes into the WTC the day it happened. :rolleyes:

I'll be sure and do just that. You see, I'm not afraid to speak out and stand up for my constitutional freedoms. I don't care what outside source would attack us or may attack us, or may never attack us... our freedom should NEVER be attacked by the government sworn to protect it.

If you think that it's okay for government to strip away your freedoms, then you're no more an American than the people who created "the pit."

No, you're not getting it.

Al Qaeda already was long identified as an organization with multiple attacks on US interests. We, in turn had used a huge amount of ordnance against al Quaeda in the late '90s.

By broadening the concept to people with bad intentions, the administration went off the rails. The concept created a nebulous enemy of potentially millions or hundreds of millions, depending on world perception of the US.

*I* don't need to "rephrase" anything. It ws the Bush administration that broadened and de-focused the need to destroy al Quaeda into a vague "war on terror."

Blah, blah, blah. Talk is cheap coming out of Greenville. Your about 10,000th down on the hit list for a subway bomb, dirty divice or bio-chemical attack.. When you know and everyone you work with personally has a dozen family, friends or colleagues who were killed on 9/11 you look at this a bit differently.

it appears that the terrorists are winning and that fear is so great it is forcing our government to take away more and more of our rights..in the name of protection.

then why does the bush admin allocate Homeland Security funds to Greenville equally with NYC.

It was the Bush administration being politically correct. Radical Islamists who have used and would use terror are the enemy. al Quaeda has and is and would some more. Any member, any cash supporter anywhere in this world is fair game. Anytime. Any way. By fair means or foul. Sorry to be so blunt.

very well put!

Gee... 10,000th down on the list. I don't know what to say, other than, you just don't get it.

I have not suggested that we quit looking for potential terrorists. What I am disturbed by is that the Bush administration has gone about it in an unconstitutional manner.

If they have evidence that leads them to a need for a wiretap, then get a warrant. According to the Justice Department, such warrants can be obtained within a matter of hours if needed.

There is no justifiable need for the unconstitutional, warrantless eavesdropping that Bush authorized.

Usurping freedom is not about protection; it's about control.

Thank you for your expert opinion on international terrorism and constitutional law. Others apparently have not yet made up their minds.

From the NY Times article:

"...some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches..."

"..The decision by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review....noted "the president's inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance." But the same court suggested that national security interests should not be grounds "to jettison the Fourth Amendment requirements" protecting the rights of Americans against undue searches. The dividing line, the court acknowledged, "is a very difficult one to administer.."

And thank YOU for posting quotes that exactly express what I was pointing out. I'm glad we are in agreement.

I can do that too, it is all in the emphasis. There was an "alleged" terrorist cell in Lodi, a dinkass town South of Sacto. SHortly after this was exposed, in Elk Grove, slightly South of Sacto, a high school kid, of Palestinian descent, had PLO written on his binder and some photos of suicide bombers on his cell phone. The FBI came and spoke to him briefly, and now CAIR and another civil liberties group is threatening suit, violation of the young man's 4th amendment rights, where would y'all come down on that?

I would agree that we are on a very slippery slope here; part of the problem is that some of our own citizens could potetntially be doing some very bad things in cooperation with Islamofascists, or however you would like to refer to our opponents. In the rush to protect ourselves, I am afraid we have given up some of our consitutional protections, things that are difficult to get, easy to lose.

You seem to have convinced yourself of this. Government officials, courts and many other (flag waving) Americans are not. The court said this is "difficult to administer" but you have Bush unsurping freedom and grasping for control.



I think this may be an NSA vs FBI turf war being played out in the media:

"The National Security Agency, which is based at Fort Meade, Md., is the nation's largest and most secretive intelligence agency, so intent on remaining out of public view that it has long been nicknamed "No Such Agency.'' .....

What the agency calls a "special collection program" began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, as it looked for new tools to attack terrorism. The program accelerated in early 2002 after the Central Intelligence Agency started capturing top Qaeda operatives overseas....... The N.S.A. surveillance was intended to exploit those numbers and addresses as quickly as possible, the officials said.

In addition to eavesdropping on those numbers and reading e-mail messages to and from the Qaeda figures, the N.S.A. began monitoring others linked to them, creating an expanding chain. While most of the numbers and addresses were overseas, hundreds were in the United States, the officials said.....

Traditionally, the F.B.I., not the N.S.A., seeks such warrants and conducts most domestic eavesdropping. Until the new program began, the N.S.A. typically limited its domestic surveillance to foreign embassies and missions in Washington, New York and other cities, and obtained court orders to do so."

Yes, I am fully convinced that there is no justifiable need for the unconstitutional, warrantless eavesdropping that Bush authorized. And from what was reported, this was an "executive order" - meaning that the authorization came directly from king George.

As Tobra mentioned, freedom is costly to attain and very easy to lose. As for his scenario with the Palestinian kid, even there I would insist that his constitutional rights not be violated. I know this is hard to accept in todays environment. Sometimes you just have to do the right thing, even when it's difficult.

But I guess that many so-called Americans hold the same view that Bush does, that the Constitution is "just a G**-damned piece of paper." But it is much more. Along with the Bill of Rights, it is a promise secured in blood, that every American will enjoy freedom, liberty, and justice - equally.

It's a promise that I don't want to see broken, secured by sacrifices that I don't want to see trivialized.


Your change of emphasis, Tobra, is good. It is a difficult dividing line. But the fact is that there is a dividing line between right and wrong; between justifiable and unconstitutional. And I feel that that line was crossed.

See, but you are not a judge, your opinion, while important, does not carry as much weight. It does not appear that this"Court of Review felt it was unconstitutional, it was close to the nebulous line.

So you do feel that the FBI talking to a 17 year old, but not doing anything, violated this young man's rights.

I would also disagree that the President feels the Constitution of the United States is, "just a piece of GD paper", your interpretation of his actions notwithstanding.

I have written my "representatives" (I use quotes, because I don't feel that I have any representation in the Senate at all, I don't count DiFi or senator boxer)about my concerns, have you?

Actually they don't. In the Senate, where every state has two votes, they voted that no state would get less than 1.5% of the total funds (1.5% x50 states=75% of the funds available). The House did it differently, to get it through on the other 25% of funds based on need. That's why Alaska and Montana get more funds per capita than states like NY or CA. Its really stupid, and makes no sense, but you can blame the allocation on your democrat and republican legislators. Some states have insane wasteful homeland security like body armor for their German Shepards that they use for search and rescue. They ran out of things to spend money on under the guise of Homeland Security.