Putting one's finger on the issues of the day...

[alexpgp]

An excellent satire at the Onion. Excerpts (NOTE: What follows are not actual quotes on the part of Ashcroft and Rumsfeld, they are part of the Onion's satire):

"We live in a land governed by plurality of opinion in an open electorate, but we are now under siege by adherents of a fundamentalist, totalitarian belief system that tolerates no dissent," Attorney General John Ashcroft said. "Our most basic American values are threatened by an enemy opposed to everything for which our flag stands. That is why I call upon all Americans to submit to wiretaps, e-mail monitoring, and racial profiling. Now is not the time to allow simplistic, romantic notions of 'civil liberties' and 'equal protection under the law' to get in the way of our battle with the enemies of freedom."

In the past, Ashcroft said, efforts by federal agencies to restrict personal freedoms were "severely hampered" by such factors as the judicial system, the Bill Of Rights, and "government by the people." Since the attacks, however, some such limitations have been waived, finally giving the CIA, FBI, Pentagon, and White House the greater powers they need to defend freedom.

...

"Remember, under the oppressive Taliban regime, people live in constant fear of an oppressive order to which all must submit," Rumsfeld said. "Under their system, it is illegal to practice a different religion or support a different political system. It is against the law for women to work or leave their homes without their faces covered. There is no freedom of speech, press, or assembly, as dissent of any kind is not tolerated. It is even forbidden to smile or laugh in public, and all who fail to unquestioningly obey are punished with reprisals of brutal violence. We must not allow such a regime to threaten our great democracy. We must stand for something better than that."

"It is therefore urgent," Rumsfeld continued, "that all Americans be quiet, stop asking questions, accept the orders of authorities, and let us get on with the important work of defending liberty, so that America can continue to be a beacon of freedom to all the world."

My first impression, upon reading the satire, was "It'd be funny if it wasn't so close to being real."

However, after unbending my mind from around the satire, reading the comments posted in the first hour after the initial post, and revisiting what's actually being proposed in the Anti-Terrorism Act, the House's PATRIOT bill, and the Senate's USA Act, I cannot foresee the end of the world from the perspective of civil liberties in the United States. But make no mistake, the proposals do expand the scope of what the government may do in terms of monitoring your communications, searching and seizing your possessions, and examining information you might think is protected by privacy legislation.

Cheers...

Comments

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

Even more amusing is that those quotes are being circulated as real ;)

[rillifane.livejournal.com]

And, of course, the reason it's not funny is that it bears zero relationship to reality but is just another attempt spread misinformation.

The administration hasn't even gotten close to suggesting anything that violates anyones constitutional rights.

[bsgi.livejournal.com]

That is anything but amusing.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Based on my reading, if we take a look at the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA, based on Bush Administration proposals), we find:

• Orders for a roving wiretap issued by one judge could be made valid anywhere in the United States. This would have the effect of marginalizing the judiciary and would effectively allow for blank warrants, which are expressly barred by the Constitution.
  
• Orders for roving wiretaps on computers or phones would, by the way, not be limited to the time the computer/phone is being used by a suspect in an investigation. If a suspect is using payphones in some neighborhood, all the phones could be tapped all the time under this provision.
  
• The proposed law changes the rules for admission into evidence of wiretap information collected by foreign governments. Currently such evidence is not admissible, and alternative House and Senate legislation would keep things that way.
  
• Criminal wiretaps could be conducted under lower standards for foreign intelligence-gathering, without showing probable cause of a crime. This would appear to circumvent the relatively tighter requirements for criminal investigations.
  
• The proposed legislation permits disclosure of wiretap information, including intercept content, to executive branch employees. (Clinton would have loved this.)
  
• There no sunset provisions in the proposed legislation. While this is certainly not unconstitutional, it implies that nobody is particularly interested in revisiting the usefulness of these measures anytime down the road. Only the House bill (PATRIOT) says anything about a sunset date.
  

Granted, the ATA does not go as far as the House and Senate bills in some respects. The latter two allow law enforcement agencies to search homes and offices without notifying the owner right away, and allows seizure of property and electronic communications. The Fourth Amendment would, I think, not be amused at this prospect.

The House and Senate bills also override existing privacy laws for medical, financial, and library records with minimal judicial review if this information is requested for an intelligence investigation.

Law enforcement already has impresive powers under current law to investigate suspects in criminal (including terrorist) cases. This includes broad authority to monitor telephone and Internet communications. Moreover, under current law, judges have rejected only three federal or state criminal wiretap requests in the last decade.

With this in mind, I cannot shake the feeling that some parties in government are taking this unfortunate opportunity to further long-standing wish-lists of measures that would make widespread surveillance available with a minimum of fuss involved in dotting those silly old i's and crossing those maddening t's.

Do the current proposals amount to something as drastic as a suspension of habeas corpus? Of course not. And the Onion's satire is just that: satire. It has to exaggerate to get its point across. As far as my remark about what was said being close to real, I was wrong, but not for the reason you suggest. I will modify my post accordingly.

Cheers...

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Somewhere else? Or are you saying that my (original) excerpts made it look as if they were real. In any event, I've modified the post (for the satirically impaired :^).

Cheers...

[rillifane.livejournal.com]

And, as we both know, the Founders never conceived of a vast network of communications facilities nor, most likely, of very many aspects of the modern world.

The constitutional prohibition is against unreasonable search.

I see nothing unreasonable about allowing, upon proper application to a magistrate, the monitoring of the conversations of a particular individual where ever he may be. By no stretch of the imagination can this be considered a "blank warrant."

Physical neccessity demands that if a suspect is using payphones other conversations will be overheard. It is sufficient to disallow any use of information received thru a conversation that does not involve the individual against whom a warrant has issued.

The rights guaranteed by the Constitution restrain the American government and not, for example, the French government operating within France. The idea that the French government must follow the American constitution when operating within France was always absurd and goes against the general reasoning used in hundreds of thousands of other decisions.

It is evident that the standards applied in the case of ordinary crime have little use when investigating the preparation of acts of war against the United States. I remind you that the methods used to obtain information neccessary to break both German and Japanese codes during World War II would constitute actual criminal acts (breaking and enetering, theft) in other circumstances. We are not dealing with mere criminals but enemy nations or their equivalent in the process of engaging in war against the United States.

The executive branch always receives the information from wiretaps. The police, I remind you, are part of the Executive Branch.

Law enforcement has pathetically few powers to investigate crime that is carried out by anyone with a modicum of sophistication who is not lazy or careless.

But, in any case, my objection to the Onion is that most of its readers are not very sophisticated and not very bright. They have no knowledge of the actual protections afforded by the constitution nor of the actual scope of proposals you cite to. I suspect that the writers at the Onion don't either.

We are literally involved in a fight for the life of this country and for Western civilization against a pernicious bunch of crackpots who happen to have vast amounts of money and a significant pool of lunatics to recruit from. Spreading disinformation and seeking to bring the government into disrepute is wrongheaded and morally reprehensible.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

> By no stretch of the imagination can this be
> considered a "blank warrant."

Well, let's see. The cops apply to do a roving wiretap on X. Judge in jurisdiction Y says ok, but the cops, since they don't know in advance where X will be (jurisdictions A, B, C, ...), can't possibly indicate same on any warrant. Amendment Four states "...no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched..." Maybe that's why, under current law, wiretaps only apply within the jurisdiction of the Court that issued them?

> It is sufficient to disallow any use of information
> received thru a conversation that does not involve
> the individual against whom a warrant has issued.

You apparently have your heart in the right place. However, the proposed legislation says nothing about this, and I find it difficult to believe this was an oversight.

> The idea that the French government must follow the
> American constitution when operating within France was
> always absurd ...

Agreed, but that's not the issue. The proposed legislation provides for the use of wiretap evidence gathered by foreign governments, and as long as such collection was done without U.S. participation, the proposed legislation places no restrictions on how or where the evidence was collected. Under such a rule, then (to use your example) it wouldn't matter how or where the French got their skinny, in France, in Belgium, or in Toledo, Ohio. As evidence, it would be clean.

> The executive branch always receives the information from
> wiretaps. The police, I remind you, are part of the Executive Branch.

Be that as it may, current law limits disclosure of wiretap info to the law enforcement agencies involved in an investigation, not (as is apparently proposed) to a broad range of executive branch people.

> Spreading disinformation and seeking to bring the government
> into disrepute is wrongheaded and morally reprehensible.

And so...? Folks should therefore what? not criticize the government? stop asking all these questions and go along with whatever program is drawn up by our leaders?

Or shall we just abandon satire as a vehicle for criticism? Because what you view as "disinformation" in the Onion piece, I saw as exaggeration, the natural appurtenance of satire.

Cheers...

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

I saw examples of the "quotes" before I was aware they were from The Onion and before you posted. I can't remember where, though, except they appeared to be posted to bolster the posters' preexisting views about the government.

I just knew they were way too off the wall to be true, and when I saw them more than once, I suspected a satiric source quoted by the humor-impaired ;)