quote:Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports. The Bush administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and has offered no example in which the use of a national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot.
I should note I suspect these letters have been helpful on occasion, we'd just never say how. This is just to underscore how broad the power to obtain information is.
quote:In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed. Late last month, President Bush signed Executive Order 13388, expanding access to those files for "state, local and tribal" governments and for "appropriate private sector entities," which are not defined.
Chances are you or several people you know have had such letters gather information about them. That information is now being kept forever, and may be handed off to government at any level, or to "appropriate private sector entities" (I just love that phrase, I know its exactly where I want my private information going).
It gets even better. Right now places can refuse to answer National Security Letters without serious repercussions.
quote:The House and Senate have voted to make noncompliance with a national security letter a criminal offense. The House would also impose a prison term for breach of secrecy.
And of course, they're doing it for informed reasons:
quote:The Justice Department has offered Congress no concrete information, even in classified form, save for a partial count of the number of letters delivered. The statistics do not cover all forms of national security letters or all U.S. agencies making use of them.
Bob Barr strongly dislikes them, btw. You know, the highly conservative former representative?
And Bush administration officials apparently have the audacity to say these letters are like the subpoenas a grand jury can send out. In addition to the several major differences pointed out in the article, I like to think there's one major, extremely important one: a grand jury is an empaneled body of citizens, not a random bureaucrat.
And let it never be said these letters were not used to obtain information beyond their purview -- the washington post was able to get into contact with officials at North Carolina State. An FBI agent tried to use a national security letter to obtain a long list of things, including medical information. The FBI admits this attempt was mistaken. But lots of places aren't going to check and see if the FBI has the authority to request specific information -- and any information that gets incorrectly collected is theoretically available to your city council and those pesky "appropriate private sector entities".
Okay. I can think of cases in which some of this information might be the government's business. For example, if someone was trying to access kiddie porn from a library computer...although it shouldn't be too hard to find someone like that, becuase if they are stupid enough to use a public computer for that, they are obviously too stupid to evade detection for long.
But I have a few big problems with this. First of all, the secrecy. Why should the government be able to go around collecting private information on people without any kind of oversight or accountability? If they need the information for a legitimate, for example, law enforcement purpose, they should be able to justify it. It should be like a search warrant, with a showing of probable cause necessary before the warrant is issued. Accountability, people. A government not held accountable for its actions is well on the way to dictatorship.
Second, whatever happened to all those soothing words from the administration when they were trying to get the Patriot Act passed, that they wouldn't use it for anything except to stop terrorism? If they are widening the pool of entities that can access such information, it is obviously going to be used for many other purposes.
Third, why should anyone in the private sector be able to access personal information about an individual? Answer: they shouldn't, especially if it is information on things like income (outside a standard credit check, which I think in some cases are too invasive, as well, as years ago when my mother bought a car for cash and they still wanted to do a credit check even though she was going to be paying with a cashier's check) and medical information.
At least my library system no longer requires patrons using the internet to log on using their library card number or any other means of identifying who is using the computer. We used to have to, until around the time the Patriot Act was passed. Connected? Probably.
It becomes clearer and clearer every day why both the friends and the opponents of the Nixon administration have been saying for some time now that the current Bush administration is worse than Nixon's boys ever were.
Oh, and all that is just from reading the first page of the linked article. I'm afraid to read the rest of it.
Posts: 2454 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
That's scary. Bush is seriously scary. Why do you guys vote for him? He wants to be a dictator. Torture, indefinite detainment of U.S. citizens, arrested on U.S. soil, with no charges ever filed, unlimited ability to spy and eavesdrop on our own citizens. Does anyone think this stuff won't be used against powerful political rivals? Come on! We fought a war over this stuff in the late 18th c. and we have a constitution and bill of rights and stuff. Are we just going to let them toss that out the window?
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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Another thing is the way the whole FEMA thing went down with Katrina. Thinking back on all the stories of people being turned back at gunpoint who were trying to walk out to safety, and people who were trying to help rescue people being told to go away, it seems like FEMA was more worried about our own citizens being terrorists or criminals than about saving people in desperate need, you know? Is the US becoming the new Soviet Union? This sounds like the way the USSR acted after Chernobyl.
It really sounds like my government is turning against its own people. I find that very disturbing.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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Because I don't know that anyone who has posted in this thread is the type to vote for Bush. Besides, his two terms are almost up.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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kq, I was reading tonight in Helamon about the Gadianton robbers, how they insinuated themselves into the government and used their positions of power to get gain and commit all sorts of evils with impunity, and it was ringing all kinds of bells.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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kq, okay, I guess I meant "you guys" as in half of hatrack and half of the voters in the country.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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Errr...? He's less than a year into his second term. We've got another three years of this sort of thing to look forward to.
But at least we know that the administration would never deliberately spread this information around (except to the "appropriate private sector entities", a listing of which I'm almost scared to ask for), unless of course they're trying to pay someone related to you back for trying to stop them from saying things they should know aren't true.
I've sent the obligatory e-mails to my reps and the President. My despair deepens.
edit: George W. Bush doesn't scare me. President George W. Bush is a different story.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Hey, I was one of the people trying to convince John McCain to play Teddy Roosevelt to George Bush's Howard Taft, instead of, you know, (in lieu of using language inappropriate for this site, I'll say) playing Bush cheerleader. If he'd raised the Bull Moose standard, we might have had a candidate in the 2004 election who wouldn't have taken us down this path.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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You could always try and see -- if you currently believe they won't, there's certainly no loss .
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Objectively speaking, leaving my personal feelings for the man aside, McCain really has no choice but to support Bush. As I was implying in my previous post, this kind of crap is not something Bush cooked up by himself. You know that Patriot Act II provisions were mostly passed by a show of hands vote or tacked on to other bills, which Dems supported?
I also think it's also extremely hard for a Republican/Democrat to speak out against a president (edit: of his own party). I have heard some stories that the current administration is very insistent on team ball, not to mention the various conservative mouth pieces like Limbaugh who regularly lambast moderate Repubs like McCain and Snowe, painting them as political opportunists. You get the same thing with Dems (but we all know there is a mile of difference between McCain and dorks like Zel Miller who have no political savvy whatsoever and destroy that which they purport to love, right ).
I have to give grudging respect to McCain. Inasmuch as he is too socially conservative for me, he does what he can when he can, while doing his best to be a team player so he doesn't get squeezed out.
posted
Mr. Squicky, I just prefer to look on the bright side. "He can't get elected again" sounds so much better than "We've got another three years of him"...
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Tatiana, I support Bush. I've said before I support him on the merits that I think he is a good man. I can't be argued out of thinking he is a good man. I have my reasons and I don't care to argue them.
But, Bush made decisions long time ago before he was unpopular that I didn't like (a lot), so it isn't like I support him because of what he is doing. I support him because I believe the "better" (IMO) person should be in office. Stupid belief maybe, but that is what I believe.
So with that background, it puts me in kinda a strange place. Because this seriously sounds like the seeds of what can easily become a police state.
So I have to look for alternatives because I seriously don't believe Bush is bad. Something is seriously wrong, and I think it is more than just the current president.
What if no matter who we elect, this downward trend will go on? I believe it would. The fact that it is taking this form is because of Bush. But if we had someone else, it would take another form. Who is to say which one is worse? Because I believe Bush is a good man, I'm hoping his form is the less of 2 evils.
Posts: 1209 | Registered: Dec 2003
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I don't believe the President is a bad person either, but I do belive he has low moral character. Whether it's his drug and alcohol abuse, his strong support for the Vietnam war unless he's the one who would have to fight it, leading him to go into the rich boys Air Force, which he then skipped out on, his propensity to tell lies and apparent aversion to taking responsibility, his string of constant failures that he doesn't have to care about because his daddy would take care of him, his hiding infomration whenever he can get away with it, his preferring buddies over people who can do the job, etc. they all point, to me, to a man with a weak character. I went to college with a bunch of the people who never had to grow up because their daddies would take care of them. George Bush has always reminded me of them.
It's no suprise that his Presidency has been marked by grave lapses in character and failure in most things he tries to accomplish. Bill Clinton's lapses in character were so disappointing because he was failingto meet his potential to be a very good President. The Bush Presidency has been him meeting his potential. I don't think anyone should have reasonably expected better from him.
edit: When you choose between the lesser of two evils, you still get evil. I started a thread all about that.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I don't think it's a low moral character. I think it is an overly single-minded dedication to what would otherwise be a commendable desire: to protect American citizens from another attack. Unfortunately, Bush has latched onto that idea at the expense of all others, and his fervency for it blinds him to the possible consequences of his actions.
He does not want to become a dictator, but in the process of trying to do the impossible (rid the world of terrorism), he may end up instituting the framework for someone's eventually doing so.
Posts: 5663 | Registered: Jun 2000
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I've only skimmed the posts so far, but the initial one made me think of this...
My husband was asked to develop a program that would correctly parse unformatted messy data into a nice excel spreadsheet. (The program turned out to be pretty cool.) Anyway, the job was for a car company, which had bought bankruptcy information from the state. What really disturbed my husband is that the Social Security numbers were included for each name and address. Thankfully, before he finished the project, someone seemed to wise up and suddenly there were no more social security numbers.
We were both surprised that not only would the government sell bankruptcy information to a mailing list, but be careless enough to include social security numbers as well. Methinks they don't care very much about our privacy.
Posts: 2880 | Registered: Jun 2004
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David, I see no reason, knowing what we know, of expecting that George Bush's presidency would have been less marked by poor character and failure had we not been attacked by terrorists. I'm pretty sure we still would have attacked Iraq, for example, which would entail even greater use of the fraudulent WMD information as they wouldn't have been able to keep falsely claiming that Saddam had connections to terrorists and 9/11 until people made them stop. And I imagine they still would have leaked Valerie Plame's name (which, I don't know, suggests a less than total focus on keeping the country safe to me) and then refused to do anything about it except lie to cover it up. He still would have appointed an incompetent to FEMA (again, not exactly totally focused on the nation's safety, from my perspective) and then said afterwards "No one could have expected the levees to break." even though he had been fully briefed that this was a major probability days before it happened.
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edit: I feel kinda guilty about going down this path, but I really don't have anything to say aboutthe National Security letters. We don't have a government of the people, by the people, for the people anymore. We do have the ability to take the government back, to re-introduce transparency and accountability, but the wider populace seems to lack the will to do so. The best solution I can come up with is to try to change the nature of America outside the political arena while doing my best to say "Hey, don't do that." when our government does bad stuff.
posted
Squicky, I see where you're coming from, but your argument is full of assumptions I don't share. Even given those assumptions, I doubt that a, say, Gore presidency would've differed markedly from the substance of actions taken by Bush (with the possible exception of Iraq). The difference would've been superficial, a rhetorical difference, the essential distinction between Democrats and Republicans in this increasingly government-heavy day and age.
Posts: 5663 | Registered: Jun 2000
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I think it likely the Gore administration would have been a lot less consistent in a minimalist approach to protecting the rights of citizens.
Say what you want of Clinton's administration, but it was possible to not toe the party line and be a member in a way that is not possible in the Bush administration. Furthermore, accounts of insiders suggest a strong motivation to at least try to obtain the best research/science on subjects. Gore was a product of this administration, and we certainly know he is enamored of science.
The overall theme of actions would be similar, but we would have a lot more international friends while doing what we did, and we wouldn't have to wonder why our administration's position is that as few rights as can be permitted, should be permitted.
And there would be no NCLB, just as an example of a domestic program of interest to some.
Plus, Republicans in the Senate would have been the ones in the lead of the Republican party instead of Bush, so they'd be able to push through more initiatives of their own design (and likely enjoy more support from the people) instead of spending so much time establishing a psychological distance from Bush and making some of his worse stuff get stuck in committee so it doesn't seem to the public there's infighting.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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David, I'm curious as to what those assumptions would be. Take the Valerie Plame thing. To me, this is a clear instance of low character and a lack of concern for American security. What assumptions do you see me making that you don't share such that our assesments are so different here?
I don't disagree with you about a Gore or Kerry Presidency. I also don't think that's relevant. That other people do (or would do) similar things is not a defense we'd accept for bad behavior from a 10 year old. I see no reason why it becomes valid when applied to politics. It may make me strange, but I'd argue that it's even more important to hold the people in charge of running our country responsible for the things they do than grade school kids.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I don't know what Gore would've done. Knowing then what I knew then...I would still have voted for Dubya, twice.
Knowing then what I know now...I still would have voted against both Gore and Kerry, happily...but I don't think that my vote would have gone to Dubya either time.
The lengths to which Dubya is willing to go to make what I feel are serious infringements on civil liberties are very disturbing, along with it bears mentioning much of Congress. Frankly there wasn't much sign of that at all in his first campaign or in his political history, and the signs were there but arguable in the second campaign.
I don't think he wants to be a dictator. That's too extreme, even for him. However, he does want to give the federal government power over individual lives that is seriously out of step with what I feel being a Republican means.
Hell, he wants the federal government and law enforcement to intervene in individual lives as much as many Democrats want the federal government and social services programs to intervene. But whereas the latter is often inefficient and a waste of money, the former is a bared knife.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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