musings of wrath

I’m not going to outright accuse members of our government of bombing our ally in attempts to force the PATRIOT Act’s “renewal” through. That would be putting myself on the level of Fox News. However, I DO find it overly-convenient.

Or perhaps Al-Qaeda (or however you spell it) is REALLY in charge of our government, by using “vote yes, or we’ll blow you up!” threats.

Matthew Reilly posted this on slashdot recently:

“If you haven’t done anything wrong, what do you have to hide?”

They are the hunters, and it is right and good for the prey to be afraid of the hunters, and to run away from them. Do not be fooled when a hunter says “why are you running from me if you have nothing to hide?” Because having something to hide is not the only reason to be hiding something.

Well said!

While a certain level of anonymity and privacy are important underpinnings of our society…they are not inviolate bars to investigation when a crime has been commited. In other words a right to privacy is not a protection against the commission of a crime. Just because you can commit a crime in the privacy of your own home does not make it not a crime, but rather just a crime that no one knows about.

The problem is twofold. One is that the police (hunters in Mr Reilly’s column) by our country’s laws require a reasonable reason to hunt for prey. This traditionally has granted fairly decent protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. The downside is that those protections have begun to have serious holes in them with the advent of cell phones, faxes, and the Internet. Traditionally a wiretap was on a physical line…so cell phones were problematic. One provision of the Patriot Act was to allow for cell phones to be tapped. How can the gov’t track e-mails that are used in criminal activities? Pre-Patriot Act that was only allowable by the actual seizure of the PCs themselves after the issuance of a warrant. But what do you do when a person uses Yahoo e-mail exclusively? The mail is effectively never on the PC (assuming they clear their cache) so how can you find an e-mail that talk about committing a criminal act?

The second problem is an outgrowth specifically of 9/11 and that is the expressed desire of the people to be protected from a recurrence of that fateful day. To prevent an attack such as 9/11 (or 3/11, or 7/7 or 7/21) you need to actually be tracking people prior to their actually comitting a crime so that when they begin to commit the crime they can be stopped. This is next to impossible (even if the gov’t were to track everything that we did). Heck, WalMart probably has a better chance of figuring out who might be building a bomb using stuff bought form their store then the US gov’t just on what they track in sales.

To be honest, if you have a problem with the Patriot Act then talk about the specific provision that you don’t like and let’s talk about that…but do you want to go back to the FBI being unable to tap a cell phone? Or the FBI being unable to share data with the CIA on foreign terrorists?

They should require a warrant, requiring the same criteria as they would for a regular crime. In some cases - they do not require a warrant. That’s the biggest concern - an administrative subpeona is NOT a warrant, and provides nowhere near the same protection to the individual.

The problem is that by labelling something terrorism, they get to change the rules - rules that are there to protect individuals from government encroachment.

I’ll admit whole-heartedly, that there ARE some good provisions in the PATRIOT.

HOWEVER… They don’t, in my opinion, out-weigh the bad parts of it - the extension of federal and local authorities’ powers to ignore parts of the constitution/bill of rights when it comes to illegal search and seizure.

I agree, tapping cell-phones should be allowed. I agree, that with WARRANT, email accounts should be able to be frozen.

I’m not a proponent of crime - I am, however, a proponent of the idea that if there’s NO evidence, then there’s *NO EVIDENCE* of a crime. If they want to remove the rights granted to us by the Constitution and its amendments, then it should be put up as an amendment, or put to vote by the populace, not Congress. You are, no matter WHAT you’ve done, innocent until PROVEN guilty.

If we cross that line, there’s no lines left to cross, and we’re back to where we were in the mid 1700s.

As an aside, and *not* directed at you, David, you just happened to say some things that got me thinking of it:

[rant]
I’m getting sick of people professing their belief in Christ, and then turning around and *imposing* their moral beliefs on the rest of America. I have an acquaintance who actually believes that Christianity should take control of America, and that the founding fathers wanted it that way. UGH. Is there no end to the amount evil that will be done in the name of someone who, by definition of their (and my) faith, was supposed to be the epitome of good? I can understand the *belief* that one is doing what’s right. I also can understand having *faith* that it’s right… But how can someone say they love and serve their neighbors and brothers, when they impose THEIR beliefs on what’s right/wrong upon them?

I’m also tired of being labelled a “liberal commie” because I can put 2 and 2 together, and see that SOMEONE is lying through their fucking teeth to us - and it’s MORE Than the media that’s doing it. Bush has back-pedalled so many times, it’s not even funny. He makes Kerry look DECISIVE. This has NOTHING to do with party. I’d feel the same way as a Republican, just as I did when I was a member of the Libertarian party. I say this, because I AGREE with some of the conservatives on some points regarding *public* decency and the like.
[/rant]

That’s my biggest problem with the Act.

What’s worse, is the renewal has MORE of our personal freedoms taken away.

Terrorism is NOT something that’s new. Hell, bombs go off in America on a DAILY BASIS.

You my dear are proving that you really are a member of my family cuz! This is exactly the kind of debate we have over out eggs and coffee in the morning hon.

WEll, if there are provisions of the Patriot Act…then work to get those provisions changed. That is my big problem…let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

As for the other stuff…go ahead and rant…not sure what I said…but if you feel better then it’s all good.

“If you haven’t done anything wrong, what do you have to hide?”

FTW
Do you use envelopes? Then you must be a guilty deviant with something to hide. You would use postcards if you were innocent.

For the most part I agree with you.

THe question that arises is this…at what point does a terrorist start commiting crimes? And the follow up is…is it justified to afford terrorists the benefit of the doubt (privacy) when lives are at stake.

The answers aren’t completely cut and dried. IF a terrorist takes flight lessons is that a crime? If they take a number of cross country flights are those crimes? If they take photos of landmarks are those crimes? If they check out or purchase books on how to build explosives or weapons that can bypass security check points are those crimes? If they get together with others and talk about comitting a terrorist act?

When can the police intervene? When can they get warrants? When can they tap and surveil?

I don’t know the answers to those questions…but I feel that we have to do better then we have done. WE allowed roughly 20 people to enter the US, stay past most of their visas, take flight lessons, make numerous trial runs, and then hijack 4 airliners and kill over 3000 people. Now, in hindsight people say, “but we had evidence of them taking the flight lessons”…but was that a crime…or even a reason to get a warrant to surveil them? I don’t know the answer to that. And what if we did track them, but they were just 20 odd innocent Arabs learning to fly…what a PR disaster that would have been.

ITs a fine line that we as a society have to walk. I don’t like gov’t involvement in most things. THe gov’t is heavy handed, inefficient, and corrupt. WE want an open society where we can travel where we want to, and do what we want to…but that engenders certain risks. WE have not yet as a country decided what that level of risk that is acceptable is.

What it the US adopted Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventist, or some other Christian faith that the person to whom your referring may be not in total agreement with? How would they like to go to jail for not obeying the law of going to a specific church that (s)he may not believe in? What if it was the Baptist faith or Pentecostal faith? What is this person going to say when they are forced to “speak in tongues” if this person doesn’t believe in it? How is this person going to take it if the US adopted Catholicism and forced him or her to pray to saints? What if this person thought that was a form of idolatry? These are the types of questions that these religious fanatics don’t seem to be able to answer. They don’t realize that this country was formed to allow people the RIGHT TO WORSHIP WHATEVER GOD THEY WANT IN WHATEVER WAY THEY WANT, even if means not worshiping at all. If the US Government ever started dictating religion, the religious would not like it at all, no matter how much they think they would.