Posted on 09/23/2003 10:45:15 AM PDT by Brian S
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:43:57 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
While privacy worries are frustrating the Pentagon's plans for a far-reaching database to combat terrorism, a similar project is quietly taking shape with the participation of more than a dozen states -- and $12 million in federal funds.
The database project, created so states and local authorities can track would-be terrorists as well as criminal fugitives, is being built and housed in the offices of a private company but will be open to some federal law enforcers and perhaps even U.S. intelligence agencies.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Gosh, y'think?
South: This is unacceptable.
That's more than interesting, it's downright disconcerting; and using a "private" company to circumvent the laws we already have on the books against the CIA and other agencies collecting this kind of info on Americans is disgusting. I'm just waiting for Ashcroft to introduce domestic passports for internal travel within this country as the next "Homeland Security" measure before long.
We have a choice in our future elections: Fascism by the left or fascism by the right.
Oh well. America was a neat experiment for about 230 years, but it looks like it's almost over.
All republics degenerate into totalitarian states.
Oh no! Quick, the sky is falling! Everybody run and hide! Someone has figured out how to (drum roll) actually CROSS REFERENCE existing databases!
The world is ending! Quick, somebody pass some neo-Nazi fascistic laws that BAN those evil private companies like credit card firms from selling access to their databases. Help, we need big-government to save us from these evil private credit card firms! Give us new laws and new bans, fast! Help! The sky is falling!
< /MOCKING >
But at least some of the *OTHER* Banana-Republics have better climates.
I'm not particularly happy with it. I think a right to privacy, while not specified, damned well better be specified and quick.
Of course, it's too late now. Your every action will be monitored, Southack. And if you read 1984, you are aware of the dangers of that.
If you are aware and simply don't care, then you and I differ drastically in our desires to be perpetually monitored.
I've already known that about the democrats; it's the acquiescense of the Republicans to these violations of our privacy that has me concerned. Too many Americans seem more than willing to give up their rights for the sake of feeling more secure. If Clinton was the one who proposed the Patriot Act, you can be sure that rank and file pubbies would have gone ballistic, but because it came from one of our own, these kool-aid drinkers have no problem with it. Makes me wonder if anybody really believes in freedom and liberty anymore.
I'm not thinking that's what the founding fathers had in mind. Heck, their first meeting, the Sedition Police would have hauled them in, had this sort of (desired) stuff been in place in 1775.
The whole farce to Roe v Wade is that THERE IS NO RIGHT TO PRIVACY in our Constitution.
Should you give your personal data to a private corporation, then they have the right to use it, or heaven forbid, sell acces to it. It's legal.
The brouhaha about "privacy" is merely yet another trick that the Left wants to use to excuse our government for passing more and more fascist restrictions on what we can use and re-sell of our own property (and once we've collected data, make no mistake that it is our property in our databases).
Discussions on this forum are so drearily and depressingly convincing me that they don't, that I've almost given up. These are my FRIENDS and ALLIES who are baa-a-aaa-a-aaing so loudly. These are my FRIENDS and ALLIES who are encouraging me to get the monitoring chip implant, because if I object, then "the sky is falling and we are all doomed".
I dunno. F*** it. Let the worst happen. Let the cameras be raised in every location in America. Let the RFID chips be imbedded in absolutely every product in America. Let the government collect databases on our every utterance, so that 'troublemaking liberty-lovers' can be monitored or even prevented from speaking. Let anyone who speaks positively of firearms ownership be tagged as a 'potential gun violence perp' under the vast databases maintained by groups the government owns or has access too. Then we will all suffer under the yoke of omnipresent, omniscient government... and at least I will have the satisfaction that they are suffering too.
I give up. This is the country you want; this is the country you're gonna get. Have fun.
Why?
Have you even read the Patriot Act?
It's harmless. I'll bet that you can't cite a single sentence in the entire Patriot Act that even remotely violates any part of our Constitution.
Yet you've been conditioned in useful-idiot-style like Pavlov's dog to bark and drool every time someone mentions the phrase "Patriot Act."
Time for your two minute hate, kid. Orwell would be proud.
Patriot Act!
"Bark! Bark! Bark!" You yell back (even though you haven't read the Act itself)...
It's going to be fun to see what the next Democrat does after they inherit the monitoring infrastructure put in place at this time. If it gets bad enough, I'm taking off. I'll read about what happens from abroad.
Don't think the Third Reich can't happen here. The tools are coming into place for a level of control that Adolph only had wet dreams about. Get another Clinton in office with these tools, and kiss yer ass buh bye.
Your problem is that you are placing the burden in the wrong location.
It is up to me to not give away information that I want to remain private.
Once I've given away information, it's just as though I've broadcast a secret on the open airwaves (i.e. it ain't private no more).
What you want to do is to legislate away everyone's right to hear information on the open airwaves, but that's the wrong place to protect privacy.
To protect your privacy, you must exercise personal responsibility by not giving away your information in the first place rather than trying to pass laws that prohibit companies and individuals from selling information that they have already acquitred legally.
....by applying for any government benefit, identification, license or permit.
....by applying for credit.
....by having a job.
....by expressing your opinion on a public forum.
....by buying items with a credit or debit card.
....by travelling.
....by appearing in public where the cameras will be.
So, if we just stay huddled in our houses, ask nothing of no one, don't work, don't buy anything, and don't express any opinion on any topic in a way that can be traced back to us, we can be free.
ROCK AND ROLL! This is GREAT!
Libertarians would rather have left Saddam Hussein in power where he could continue to reward the families of the suicide bombers in Israel with his $10,000 bounties. They were against (as posted on their official web site) the Iraq War.
In Alabama, the top two donors to the Libertarian Party are seasoned trial lawyers. They do this because it is a cheap and easy way to drop 2% of the Republican vote, an amount that can sway many elections over to the Democrats.
Worse, Libertarians refuse baby steps. They don't want little tiny tax cut after tax cut; they either want a radical new tax system or for the current system to remain as is. It's always all or nothing with those guys.
And while there may be a few pro-life Libertarians, by and large the Libertarian Party as well as their tactics result in an advantage for pro-choice forces.
Libertarians are also against the free expression of one's religion. Heaven forbid that a religious person be elected to office and dare try to decorate his or her public office in a manner that would express his or her religious beliefs.
Somehow I just don't see you as a Libertarian, Laz.
I think that you are the one who more closely resembles Pavlov's dog in your mindless support of any legislation that purportedly is to be used exclusively to fight terrorism.
Patriot Act used to crack down on more common criminals
In the two years since law enforcement agencies gained fresh powers to help them track down and punish terrorists, police and prosecutors have increasingly turned the force of the new laws not on al-Qaida cells but on people charged with common crimes. The Justice Department said it has used authority given to it by the USA Patriot Act to crack down on currency smugglers and seize money hidden overseas by alleged bookies, con artists and drug dealers. Federal prosecutors used the act in June to file a charge of "terrorism using a weapon of mass destruction" against a California man after a pipe bomb exploded in his lap, wounding him as he sat in his car. A North Carolina county prosecutor charged a man accused of running a methamphetamine lab with breaking a new state law barring the manufacture of chemical weapons. If convicted, Martin Dwayne Miller could get 12 years to life in prison for a crime that usually brings about six months. Prosecutor Jerry Wilson says he isn't abusing the law, which defines chemical weapons of mass destruction as "any substance that is designed or has the capability to cause death or serious injury" and contains toxic chemicals. Civil liberties and legal defense groups are bothered by the string of cases, and say the government soon will be routinely using harsh anti-terrorism laws against run-of-the-mill lawbreakers. "Within six months of passing the Patriot Act, the Justice Department was conducting seminars on how to stretch the new wiretapping provisions to extend them beyond terror cases," said Dan Dodson, a spokesman for the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys. "They say they want the Patriot Act to fight terrorism, then, within six months, they are teaching their people how to use it on ordinary citizens."
~snip~Stefan Cassella, deputy chief for legal policy for the Justice Department's asset forfeiture and money laundering section, said that while the Patriot Act's primary focus was on terrorism, lawmakers were aware it contained provisions that had been on prosecutors' wish lists for years and would be used in a wide variety of cases. In one case prosecuted this year, investigators used a provision of the Patriot Act to recover $4.5 million from a group of telemarketers accused of tricking elderly U.S. citizens into thinking they had won the Canadian lottery.
~snip~"We've already heard stories of local police chiefs creating files on people who have protested the (Iraq) war ... The government is constantly trying to expand its jurisdictions, and it needs to be watched very, very closely." http://www.tribnet.com/24hour/nation/story/998483p-7010828c.html
Laz, how do you feel that you aren't "free" specifically?
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