This blog printed on 100% recycled electrons.
Not only can't we get any of our South Dakota delegation to stand up for the 4th Amendment; we can't get Senator Obama to help, either. Back in October 2007, the Obama campaign said the Illinois Senator would support a filibuster of the FISA reform act in the form it took at that time. That promise left Obama a lot of wiggle room: the FISA reform act before the Senate today has changed some from last year's incarnation, and Obama only said he'd support a filibuster, not actually start one himself.
Great. Grand. I can't wait to defend Obama with that line.
No one else started a filibuster, so Senator Obama joined 68 other senators today in voting for a FISA reform act that lets corporations off the hook and guarantees continued arbitrary disregard of the Fourth Amendment by our government. More than 40 lawsuits against AT&T, Verizon, et al. move to a circuit court for a show hearing and summary dismissal, and the government continues to listen to Americans' phone conversations without any court order.
A Democrat-led Congress hands George W. Bush a big victory in the dog days of his lame-duckery, and on a basic issue of Constitutional liberties, no less.
Interestingly, not joining Senator Obama in his capitulation to fear and Bush was the junior Senator from New York, Hillary Clinton. Harrumph. Maybe Hillary needs to get together with Dennis Kucinich for that Cleveland insurrection at the convention after all....
The Predictability of the Sioux Falls City Council is painful to watch
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Former City Councilor Big T wrote an excellent letter to the editor about
how the citizens need to vote on the new parks’ expenditures. I would
agree, $77 ...
14 hours ago
Amen, Brother Cory, amen.
ReplyDeleteTodd Epp
SD Watch http://www.southdakotawatch.net
new boss sames as the old boss....or so the saying will go when obama gets elected....
ReplyDeleteAttempting to listen in on communications to enhance security is such a short sighted and costly idea (similar to the security theatre we all endure at the airports now). Any group that is angry enough to attempt terrorist actions against the government (here or abroad) is assuredly paranoid enough to encrypt their communications. I can't even begin to fathom the cost of a system capable of contextually recognizing unencrypted communications.
ReplyDeleteLastly, the whole concept will eventually be over run by technology. Many P2P networks are already using decently strong encryption. Anyone who has used P2P technology is most likely familiar with the various companies that have been paid to seed those networks with garbage data. It's only a matter of time until a patriotic code writer puts together an applications that showers the WWW with false hits for the government to find.
Out of public scrutiny, an intelligence gathering organization could at least hope to break encrypted data. Now that these issues are being highlighted, the technological complexity of the counter measures being employed will increase geometrically.
It's as though the government actually wants to create a drug resistant bateria by exposing it to all of our best weapons today. There will be some pain and loss of privacy in the short term, but not in the long term as all of our communications will be encrypted to such an extent that it is not economically feasible to read them without the key.
Okay, I shall play the devil's advocate. I have a little booklet called The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America. I looked up the 4th Amendment in this book and read it. It's amazingly short.
ReplyDeleteThe 4th Amendment protects the people against "unreasonable search and seizure." It even precludes the issuing of warrants except when absolutely necessary.
The key word here is, of course, "unreasonable." A judge might decide that a certain search paradigm (such as monitoring all private citizens' electronic communications) is reasonable nowadays, even if it might have been unreasonable prior to September 11, 2001.
It might also be possible to argue that this Amendment applied only to physical searches, such as agents coming to your house and rummaging through everything. Such an argument might go along the lines of, "Our founders never foresaw anything like the Internet." Of course, that's a weak argument. Ben Franklin would not be surprised should he see what we're doing on computers. He might even wonder why it has not gone further.
I am surprised that Obama caved on this. I am also surprised that Clinton stands by the Amendment. Didn't her husband's administration have a sophisticated surveillance system going in the '90s? Is it perhaps still in operation? Let the reader remember the name ... I am afraid to type it on my keyboard for fear that, in the pre-dawn hours on some unhappy morning ...
That said, I've been a ham radio operator for more than 40 years, and the prospect of people hearing or seeing what I say or type on electronic media is not alien to me at all. Some of the stuff people spew out on the Internet today would bring the full wrath of the Federal Communications Commission down on them if they were to try it on a ham radio transmitter. It's been that way since before World War II.
wow, not a single one of you even seems to understand what the the government surveillance program does. This is not a information dragnet. They are not sifting through American communications in the hopes of catching somebody say "bomb" There has never been any evidence that this has occurred. All that the government wanted was the leeway in its foreign surveillance activity to be able to monitor electronic communications that were reasonably believed to originate and terminate outside of the US. It would be almost impossible to function if FISA court review governed the ability to view email from someone in Zimbabwe to someone in Iraq just because one of them used a email server that routed through the US.
ReplyDeleteThis has no relationship whatsoever to the 4th Amendment. It is not domestic. It is not wiretapping.
Amen to Phaedrus! If this prevents one terrorist attack and saves lives, no one should argue against it. The problem as I see it is that too many people have a kumbaya view of the world and those who want to do us harm. There are some really, really bad guys out there, people.
ReplyDeleteSince no terrorist is going to be calling me, I'm safe from FISA. And I should hope you are too.
I'm still nervous. Not too long ago, a fiction writer's home was raided, apparently because she made the mistake of ordering the wrong sorts of books online for research purposes.
ReplyDeleteOh, but she's just an isolated case. Just one casualty in the name of security for all. And anyhow, that sort of thing could never happen to me. I only write nonfiction.
Is it machismo or fear that blinds Phaedrus and Anon to the very practical arguments Tony makes against the use of wiretapping? His point is that this surveillance of Americans won't stop serious terrorists. We pay a price in privacy and liberty and get nothing in return. The government gets one more way to potentially harm innocents; "...no terrorist is going to be calling me" is the lamest excuse for expanding government power I've heard this week. Anybody in DeSmet calling Ireland to get help for Father Gallagher could have been snooped on.
ReplyDeleteSo gee, why doesn't the federal government do away with the Second Amendment to protect Americans from harm? Homicides and suicides by gun each kill more Americans each year than al-Qaida. But if we tromp on the Second Amendment, the same "security at all costs!" crowd will go ape.
Oh, yeah: evidence on that claim about Americans doing more harm to themselves with guns than al-Qaida does with planes, IEDs, etc: read the Washington Post,, the Brady Campaign, the Huffington Post,...
ReplyDeleteHardly unbiased sources, Cory.
ReplyDeleteTry this website.
http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?id=206&issue=007
I put up the Washington Post, and someone responds to my biased sources with the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action. Always good to start the morning with a laugh!
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, and Obama is still wrong on the 4th Amendment. Prosecutors can use FISA powers as a way to get warrants that a normal court review and the Fourth Amendment would block. (Wall Street Journal—they're biased, too.) The new FISA bill "eviscerates" the 4th Amendment.
ReplyDeletephaedrus:
ReplyDeleteYour faith in the government scares the crap out of me. Evidently you have never had it wielded against you in the slightest. The government is not a "good" or "bad" entity. It's a bunch of people directing authority. That authority can be used for "good" or "bad" depending on how the people in charge use it.
And let's not kid ourselves here, the government is attempting to provide immunity for obviously illegal past deeds. Some telco's agreed and others did not (everyone should be switching to Qwest accounts as we speak).
This is a crazy scary situation.
This could easily set precedent and allow for all kinds of violations of our personal freedoms with the government just providng immunity after the fact. If law doesn't restrict government action, what does? If the government decides that by locking you away in a hole in the ground, they could prevent terrorism, does that make it ok for them to do so? What happens if after 5 years in the hole they pass a law saying the contractor that manages the hole is immune from prosecution for imprisonement?
Actually my NRA website was to refute your citing of the Huffingto post, which is hardly a credible source of anything!
ReplyDelete[yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm off topic] O.K., Anon, I'm waiting for the cards that refute the Brady Campaign (maybe not so hard) and the Washington Post... not to mention the article that ran in the print Madison Daily Leader last week that said folks who try suicide by gun have a 90%+ success rate, while folks who try suicide by overdose have a 2-3% success rate.
ReplyDeleteTony: It is not ill-advised blind faith in my government that supports my argument. We must be forever vigilant (I'm sharpening my pitchfork as we speak) My argument is that no such infringment is being allowed in the eavesdropping issue. THe government never asked and did not get a green light for monitoring people in America. It only was granted the sensible benefit of the doubt that the people they are monitoring are foreign when there is factual logic that indicates it. There is no perfect way to take a packet of bits on the internet and know "Hey we can't touch that one because it's on its way to Detroit" It is not a blank check and there is review. I would never without thought trust the government...look at who's likely to be president soon!
ReplyDeleteCory: So what is the statistic for the number of prevented crimes? You know, rape, home invasion, robbery, assault, and garden variety muggings. I didn't realize the framers were worried about people shooting themselves when they formulated the bill of rights. I had the misconception that they were more concerned with an over-reaching government and wanted to curtail that power from being abused, say by confiscating up to 90% of a person's property for "the general welfare"
'Dilyn': you're a fake story written in the opinion pages of 'Romance Writers Report' and never vetted. The magazine doesn't stand behind their story. Go climb back into the black helicopter you flew in on.
ReplyDeletePhaedrus,
ReplyDeleteI hope you're right. Where can I find information that backs up your claim that "Dilyn" faked the story? I will gladly eat egg off my face if it's from real chickens.
I originally saw this report in the Authors' Guild bulletin, not the romance writers' magazine. I got the link for my post from a Google search.
Phae: stats on crimes prevented by guns? probably the same as the stats you've presented for crimes prevented by abolishing the 4th Amendment... oh, oops, you (and George W. Bush) haven't presented any. Funny what fear can make good people do.
ReplyDeleteAbolish the fourth amendment and the only people who will have guns are the criminals. A little late for statistics in that case!
ReplyDeleteThere are no statistics on that because so far we still have the fourth amendment, thank goodness and thank our founding fathers.
eggs:
ReplyDeletewhile the actual online newpaper articles about this are all archived now so I couldn't get one, the name of the woman is Dianne Holmes-Despain, from Indianapolis. She was raided it is true--for fraud. here are the related links:
http://booksquare.com/a-convenient-smoke-screen/
http://leegoldberg.typepad.com/a_writers_life/2004/11/index.html
CAH: Fully agree about the 4th amendment, I cannot show proof how getting rid of it has saved anyone. Mostly because the amendment is completely intact
ReplyDeleteas far as statistical support for the 2nd Amend...see 'Crime and self-defense'
Phaedrus,
ReplyDeleteIt sure looks like I was duped!
I have contacted the Authors' Guild to see if they have, or can, publish something to the effect that there's no evidence to back up the claims made by "Dilyn."
I prefer my eggs over easy with bacon. But not too often. The cholesterol thing, you know.
Thank you for setting me straight. I guess even federal agencies deserve due process in our minds.
Makes me wonder what the heck I can believe, anymore.