Posted on 06/03/2002 7:06:33 AM PDT by Zeroisanumber
WASHINGTON
Under the police powers it operated under last year, and with the lawful cooperation of a better-managed C.I.A., an efficiently run F.B.I. might well have prevented the catastrophe of Sept. 11. That is the dismaying probability that Congressional oversight (it should be called undersight) will begin to show this week.
To fabricate an alibi for his nonfeasance, and to cover up his department's embarrassing cut of the counterterrorism budget last year, Attorney General John Ashcroft — working with his hand-picked aide, F.B.I. Director "J. Edgar" Mueller III — has gutted guidelines put in place a generation ago to prevent the abuse of police power by the federal government.
They have done this deed by executive fiat: no public discussion, no Congressional action, no judicial guidance. If we had only had these new powers last year, goes their posterior-covering pretense, we could have stopped terrorism cold.
Not so. They had the power to collect the intelligence, but lacked the intellect to analyze the data the agencies collected. The F.B.I.'s failure to absorb the Phoenix and Minneapolis memos was compounded by the C.I.A.'s failure to share information it had about two of the Arab terrorists in the U.S. who would become hijackers (as revealed by Newsweek today).
Thus we see the seizure of new powers of surveillance is a smokescreen to hide failure to use the old power.
Ashcroft claims he is merely allowing the feds to attend public events, or to surf the Internet, which "even a 12-year-old can do." That's a masterful deceit: under the former anti-abuse guidelines, of course the F.B.I. could send an agent into a ballpark, church or political rally. All it needed was "information or an allegation whose responsible handling required some further scrutiny" — not even "probable cause" to investigate a crime, but a mere tip about possible wrongdoing.
Same with surfing the Net or reading a newspaper or watching television news. Often that's how F.B.I. agents in the field have been alerted to a potential crime, and could then open a preliminary inquiry. If a lead showed "reasonable indication of criminal activity," agents could initiate a full investigation without going through Washington headquarters — hiring informants, staking out a house, seeking wiretap and search warrants.
But under the new Ashcroft-Mueller diktat, that necessary hint of potential criminal activity is swept away. With not a scintilla of evidence of a crime being committed, the feds will be able to run full investigations for one year. That's aimed at generating suspicion of criminal conduct — the very definition of a "fishing expedition."
Not to worry, say governmental perps — we won't collect data in dossiers on individuals or social or political clubs or church groups — the sort of abuse that suppressed dissent in "the bad old days."
Just because the F.B.I. brass hats are presently computer illiterate, do they think the public is totally ignorant of the ability of today's technologists to combine government surveillance reports, names on membership lists, and "data mining" by private snoops to create an instant dossier on law-abiding Americans?
Consider the new reach of federal power: the income-tax return you provided your mortgage lender; your academic scores and personnel ratings, credit card purchases and E-ZPass movements; your political and charitable contributions, charge account at your pharmacist and insurance records; your subscription to non-mainstream publications like The Nation or Human Events, every visit to every Web site and comment to every chat room, and every book or movie you bought or even considered on Amazon.com — all newly combined with the tickets, arrests, press clips, full field investigations and raw allegations of angry neighbors or rejected lovers that flow into the F.B.I.
All your personal data is right there at the crossroads of modern marketing and federal law enforcement. And all in the name of the war on terror.
This is not some nightmare of what may happen someday. It happened last week. Jim Sensenbrenner, chairman of House Judiciary, said the removal of restraints made him "queasy"; Pat Leahy of Senate Judiciary is too busy blocking judges to object. Some sunshine libertarians are willing to suffer this loss of personal freedom in the hope that the Ashcroft-Mueller rules of intrusion may prevent a terror attack. They won't because they're a fraud.
We're at WAR!
Safire gets it.
You know you're right. I feel much better now about having some unknown, under-educated bureaucrat in Washington rifling through my email and other personal effects (without my knowledge) whenever he/she/it gets a hair up thier ass. The fun will begin when (not if, when) we get another Klintonseque administration.
Ashcroft is a lying, anti-constitutional freak when he says this only allows agents to "surf the internet" or "attend public events". Anyone who is stupid enough to believe that lie is an idiot.
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.
I guess he interprets "secure" to mean some nimrod geek agent looking at the naked scans of your wife with their cute little techno-toys.
I'll be happy when this phoney freak chokes on a chicken bone and dies.
LOL.
Good one old timer.
However, read the Patriot Act and these new guidelines. They basically can look at whatever they want whenever they want. They're now calling email messages "public domain". I suppose it's "public domain" just because they say so.
Maybe it doesn't bother you, but my finances and electronic communications are none of their f***ing business unless I violate someone else's right to life, liberty or pursuit of happiness. Until then they should be chasing illegal 20 something Islmamists who are here illegally and be happy they're getting a paycheck for deriliction of duty.
Now that this crew has shown itself to be in complete contempt of the 1st and 4th amendments, I wonder which of the remaining amendments they'll decide to paint with whiteout.
Some suggestions:
1. Firewall
2. Encription
3. Removable drives (CDRW)
Sounds to me like you should be more concerned about the run of the mill hacker than the FBI.
Stay safe.
BD
The FBI does not need more power -- power that will eventually be misused by the likes of Hillary Clinton, should she get into office. The FBI needs better analysis of the information they did have. Also, The FBI needs to talk more to the CIA and local and state law enforcement.
Most of these partisans would be howling at the top of their lungs had Clinton even tried this.
That's what he is complaining about. It's how the government takes over the life of a free country.
We're at WAR!No moreso than we were from 1945 to 1991.
One thing's for sure. If "we're at war" is an excuse to expect the American people to lay down like sheep at the feet of anyone in the bureaucracy, the JBTs and JBT-wannabes are certain to maintain a state of "war", real or artificial.
-Eric
But, at war, we would think this is ok, to take orders, to give up consumption so that the government can consume us for purposes of preserving the nation from some threat that confines our day to day business. However, consuming a soldier for war does not mean one can use his property as a means of blackmail to force him to do those things, rather the behavior of the soldier towards a mission or with respect to a mission should be observed, and that is it.
However, the problem here is that the threat of confinement against our business is not addressed directly here, the threat that is addressed is a vague and global bunch of people whose profiling is, well, a PC secret of some sort that certainly includes private property but not private experts.
In fact the FBI is not on a treck to balance powers against terror organisations. It is not waging a war on terror. And that is the finer point. The origin of the confinement is not addressed nor sought to be destroyed. Just something to uncover plots. There is a big difference between fishing for plots and going after targets to destroy actively the origins of the terrorist confinement. We do not go after the central nervous system of these threats, we just go after the endings.
We're at "Authorization for Use of Military Force"!
We're at "Police Action"!
"WAR!" hasn't been declared.
Even the CFR "gets it". Can't you?
The Aftermath of Terror: Domestic and International Law and U.S. Foreign Policy October 3, 2001
One issue confronting U.S. policymakers is how to define the struggle and implications. At times, the administration has appeared to adopt a classical use-of-force paradigm, rooted in state-to-state relations, governed by the rules of war. At others, it has evoked a kind of police action, more focused on individual responsibility and governed by international criminal law. In fact, the enterprise is a hybrid, with aspects that belong both to the use-of-force (attacking states that harbor terrorism; targeting terrorist infrastructure in foreign countries) and the police-work (investigation and establishment of culpability; rendition/extradition of suspects; national efforts to freeze assets and round up suspects, etc) paradigms.
But no "WAR!".
Thanks in advance.
BD
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