Posted on 12/17/2001 5:05:25 AM PST by johnandrhonda
Hecklers drowned out a commencement speech when the speaker said the federal investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks might threaten civil liberties. Janis Besler Heaphy, president and publisher of The Sacramento Bee, was speaking Saturday to 17,000 people at California State University-Sacramento. When she raised questions about racial profiling, limits on civil liberties, and the establishment of military tribunals, the audience interrupted by heckling, clapping, and stomping their feet for five minutes. Heaphy stopped speaking but said she plans to continue to voice her concerns about potential civil liberties violations.
Please don't change the subject. There's still yet a lot of water the L.P. needs to be carrying for the Greens, the DNC, and the Spartacist League. ;)
If you're a professional malcontent and you know it, stomp your feet...If you're happy and you know it clank your chains...If you're sad and you know it piss your pants...
minimizes judicial supervision of federal telephone and Internet surveillance by law-enforcement authorities.
expands the ability of the government to conduct secret searches.
gives the attorney general and the secretary of state the power to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations and deport any noncitizen who belongs to them.
grants the FBI broad access to sensitive business records about individuals without having to show evidence of a crime.
leads to large-scale investigations of American citizens for "intelligence" purposes.
More specifically, Section 203 (Authority to Share Criminal Investigative Information) allows information gathered in criminal proceedings to be shared with intelligence agencies, including but not limited to the CIA — in effect, say critics, creating a political secret police. No court order is necessary for law enforcement to provide untested information gleaned from otherwise secret grand-jury proceedings, and the information is not limited to the person being investigated.
Furthermore, this section allows law enforcement to share intercepted telephone and Internet conversations with intelligence agencies. No court order is necessary to authorize the sharing of this information, and the CIA is not prohibited from giving this information to foreign-intelligence operations — in effect, say critics, creating an international political secret police.
The concern here is about the third branch of government. One of the overarching problems that pervades so many of these provisions is reduction of the role of judicial oversight. The executive branch is running roughshod over both of the other branches of government. I find it very bothersome that the government is going to have more widespread access to e-mail and Websites and that information can be shared with other law-enforcement and even intelligence agencies. So, again, we're going to have the CIA in the business of spying on Americans — something that certainly hasn't gone on since the 1970s when the illegal investigations of thousands of Americans under Operation CHAOS, and the spying carried out by the CIA and National Security Agency against U.S. activists and opponents of the war in Southeast Asia.
Nor do the invasion-of-privacy provisions of the new law end with law enforcement illegally searching homes and offices. Under Section 216 of the USA PATRIOT Act (Modification of Authorities Relating to Use of Pen Registers and Trap and Trace Devices), investigators freely can obtain access to "dialing, routing and signaling information." While the bill provides no definition of "dialing, routing and signaling information," the ACLU says this means they even would "apply law-enforcement efforts to determine what Websites a person visits." The police need only certify the information they are in search of is "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation."
This does not meet probable-cause standards — that a crime has occurred, is occurring or will occur. Furthermore, regardless of whether a judge believes the request is without merit, the order must be given to the requesting law-enforcement agency, a veritable rubber stamp and potential carte blanche for fishing exhibitions.
Additionally, under Section 216, law enforcement now will have unbridled access to Internet communications. The contents of e-mail messages are supposed to be separated from the e-mail addresses, which presumably is what interests law enforcement. To conduct this process of separation, however, Congress is relying on the FBI to separate the content from the addresses and disregard the communications.
In other words, the presumption is that law enforcement is only interested in who is being communicated with and not what is said, which critics say is unlikely. Citing political implications they note this is the same FBI that during the Clinton administration could not adequately explain how hundreds of personal FBI files of Clinton political opponents found their way from the FBI to the Clinton White House.
And these are just a few of the provisions and problems. While critics doubt it will help in the tracking of would-be terrorists, the certainty is that homes and places of business will be searched without prior notice. And telephone and Internet communications will be recorded and shared among law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, all in the name of making America safe from terrorism.
I understand the desire of lawmakers to respond forcefully to the Sept. 11 attacks but this is more of the same old same old. Government has the tendency to want to proliferate during times of crisis, and that's why we have to constantly fight against it. It's a natural impulse and, in many ways, I don't fault it. In some ways they're just doing their job by aggressively seeking as much law-enforcement power as possible, but that's why we have checks and balances in our system of government, and that's why I'm upset that Congress just rolled and played dead on this one.
This legislation wouldn't have made any difference in stopping the Sept. 11 attacks. I seriously believe this is a violation of our liberties. After all, a lot of this stuff in the bill has to do with finances, search warrants and arrests."
I don't like the sneak-and-peek provision because you have to ask yourself what happens if the person is home, doesn't know that law enforcement is coming to search his home, hasn't a clue as to who's coming in unannounced … and he shoots them. This law clearly authorizes illegal search and seizure, and anyone who thinks of this as antiterrorism needs to consider its application to every American citizen.
The rationale for the Fourth Amendment protection always has been to provide the person targeted for search with the opportunity to point out irregularities in the warrant, such as the fact that the police may be at the wrong address or that the warrant is limited to a search of a stolen car, so the police have no authority to be looking into dresser drawers. Likely bad scenarios involving the midnight knock at the door are not hard to imagine.
The Fourth Amendment states: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated; and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
This action by the Bush Administration is indefensible.
Our intelligence community knew who most of these perpetrators were, and did absolutely nothing to curtail their activities - even after specific warnings from at least two different foreign gov'ts. There are no measures that can be taken that will ever stop random acts of insanity, but grand schemes, plots that involve many months of planning, many accomplices, and could affect many, many people - we already have the means to uncover and interdict. There is no threat so great that I might be convinced to live under such a gov't. that would ignore man's most basic freedoms - destroying the very ideas & principles that made America great, in order to preserve...what? What would be left? Could we really still call it America?
What I don't want, is for everyone here to be forced to accept and live with the dangers of any more immigrants from terrorist nations. It matter's little to me that they are nice, good, people, they can be good in their own country that evidently is set up just the way the Quaran likes it, oppressive. If they don't like oppression, throw down that religion and it's mandates don't bring it here to gain political influence, with their oil money, in the corrupt pockets of our congressmen that have "for sale cheap" tatooed on their foreheads, because I feel we are under a two pronged attack here from radical Muslims.
Ya, our government should continue giving hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign-aid and billions in military hardware to Afghanistan like they've been doing for the last 20 years. Then when they use it to commit atrocities against their own people and people in other countries we should expand our own government and pass thousands of new laws and subjugate ourselves to further government surveillance to deal with the situation.
That's akin to saying the first thing an automobile needs is a powerful engine. Or that the first thing a house needs is CAT-5 cabling.
You build an automobile from the chassis up, a house from the foundation up. All the whiz-bang tech toy additions are worthless without a sound foundational structure to house them and to direct their function to good and effective purpose.
The first thing civilization must have is a sound, intact, healthy family structure for the rearing of children. That is its foundation, its chassis.
I cannot easily understand why so many libertarians believe civilization can be had on the cheap, by paying mere lip service to families. In their cramped minds civilization somehow blossoms forth spontaneously from an ether of dope, nonchalant sex, booze, porn, and adult ocnceits. The value of families lies obscured by a libertarian "me first, best, and only" lacuna.
Watching a libertarian grapple with the concept of family is akin to watching an old Star Trek episode in which Spock struggles to understand the nature of human emotion.
True to your character you took one sentence and twisted it out of context. Then go on to construct a straw man around that. A disingenuous one at that.
The first thing civilization must have is a sound, intact, healthy family structure for the rearing of children.
Okay, I'll play your game, but just this once. The second thing civilization and the family needs (I mean, how hard can it be to make love and conceive a child. I suppose you'll want to argue that government is needed to referee that too.) is business/science. It's especially useful for the family members to be healthy and lead creative productive lives.
I'll skip resending to your below rant. ...And rant it is.
I cannot easily understand why so many libertarians believe civilization can be had on the cheap, by paying mere lip service to families. In their cramped minds civilization somehow blossoms forth spontaneously from an ether of dope, nonchalant sex, booze, porn, and adult ocnceits. The value of families lies obscured by a libertarian "me first, best, and only" lacuna.
Watching a libertarian grapple with the concept of family is akin to watching an old Star Trek episode in which Spock struggles to understand the nature of human emotion.
This is where you constantly err in your assessment of libertarians. Libertarians call for the government to quit meddling in its citizens private affairs and consensual activities, not because we endorse or approve of all such behaviors but because it is immoral for government to do otherwise.
To err is to make an error. Once the error has been identified it is the person's responsibility to correct their own error. If they continue to make the same "error" (in quotes because it's intentional) it is dishonest and only serves to compound the problem and dig a deeper hole to extricate oneself from.
The thing that strikes me is that a person always benefits by identifying and correcting their own errors. Conversely, to not acknowledge an error and correct it causes a lose of trust, respect and credibility. That is self-abuse.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.