OT: Orwell must be rolling in his grave...

[SFOracle]

The present political climate in which these onerous bills are being passed makes it so that anyone who disagrees with the Patriot and Homeland Security acts is looked at with suspicion. The entire political debate has been coopted. Examples: On the Iraq war resolution - due to the pending elections, Congress focused on debating how to draft a war resolution rather than IF we needed a resolution authorizing war at this point. The Homeland Security Act - the most contentious issue under debate has been union representation for the employees of the new agency. The Patriot Act - many of the provisions are almost certain to be struck down in court challenges (but too late to help those whose rights have already been violated), but it passed with very little debate. What Senator or Representative wants to go on record as voting against the "Patriot" act? The terrorists have won. The war on terrorism has been a failure - Bin Laden is alive, El Queda is still able to orchestrate and finance terrorist activites, most of the Taliban leaders are still in charge in Afghanistan. We are now politically tied to a rogue nuclear capable regime in Pakistan that is a major propagator or weapons of mass destruction - while we seek to obliterate another one in Iraq. Our economy is in a tail spin, momentum on issues that effect all Americans such as Social Security, Healthcare, education etc. is at a standstill while our President pursues a reactionary foreign policy and pushes a domestic agenda that threatens to erase decades of gains in civil rights.

[Wow]

Whatever !

[Dan South]

In related news, I heard an interesting report on NPR this weekend. Under John Ashcroft, the justice department has run roughshod over civil liberties by allowing wiretaps and other types of electronic eavesdropping, reading of private email, indefinite incarceration without charges, etc. However, the one area where the Attorney General refuses to tighten the reins is the touchy area of gun laws. Because of significant loopholes in American gun laws, international terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah, Farq (Colombia), and the IRA happily shop for their weapons in the United States. Their favorite state is Florida, which supplies eleven percent of all guns found overseas that originated in the United States. Here's how it works. Background checks are required on the purchase of all weapons with the exception of firearms labeled "long guns." You would THINK that this means hunting rifles and shotguns; think again. Several types of automatic assault weapons are included in the "long guns" category because they are manufactured by deep-pocketed manufacturers of hunting guns. Colombia's Farq Brigade recently placed an order for 6,000 Mac-80's courtesy of this loophole. Another combination of loopholes effectively defeat the assault weapons ban. Any assault weapon designed prior to the ban is exempt. Further, the manufacturers of these weapons are permitted to offer a "sports version" that they can sell legally. The sports version is usually the same weapon with minor cosmetic changes. The IRA, Hezbollah, and other terrorist organizations profit from these loopholes and build arsenals of legally purchased American firearms. If the U.S. government is serious about waging a War On Terrorism, one might expect that they would close these legal loopholes, or at a minimum, trace who buys these weapons in order to gain intelligence about terrorist organizations. They have done neither. Ashcroft, Bush, and company would prefer to let foreign terrorist organizations buy weapons unabated than alienate the gun lobby. The next time you hear someone say, "We don't need any new gun laws, we need to enforce the laws that are already on the books," remember these loopholes and think about the cold-blooded killers who are profiting from them.

[Salyphus]

Well, this crap passed today. Will be law as soon as President Tool rubberstamps it. This country is so far off the rails it isn't even funny anymore, and the general public are asleep. I'm outta here ASAP. I know no country is perfect but there are much saner places to live than this. :cry: I just hope the fools aren't able to take the whole world down with them.

[GZsound]

You guys are soooo funny!!! Did you all forget the bar bouncer with all the FBI files running around the White House? Did you all forget about all the IRS audits that just popped up for Paula Jones, Kathleen Wiley, etc. etc. the poor guy in the travel office.. If the government wants information on you right now they have it. And I have some even worse information for you..all the attorneys have it already. They punch in your name and up comes every vehicle you have ever owned, where you bank, who has your mortgage, what your credit looks like, your social security number etc. What if your personal information falls into the hands of some unscrupulous jerk? IT ALREADY HAS!! With a court order, any law enforcement agency can tap your phone, pull your bank statements, credit card purchases, student loan payments, etc. RIGHT NOW. Nothing is changing so stop going into a frantic hard left spin..

[whitefang]

What's changed Mark, is that now they can claim they weren't doing anything illegal if anyone should happen to pitch a bitch about it! Whereas before, even when the damage was done, they could say "oops!", backpedal a bit and make some small, insignificant compensation for the misdeed. Now they don't even have to bother with THAT! NYAH NYAH to us, Eh what? Whitefang

[Skip_dup1]

it`s more than that...to do all that before required [i]work[/i]-it required pulling someone off doing something else with the idea that peeking down your shorts was somehow worthwhile. Now all that`s going to be done as a matter of [i]routine[/i]-no court order, no man-hours, no pulling files. And since it`s automatic who do you blame for a mistake-Cisco systems? I don`t think so. It`s totally different from before.

[realtrance]

I can tell you all one reassuring thing, with certainty (and I won't tell you why, unfortunately): this whole "Global Eye" pipe-dream will take a minimum - MINIMUM - fifteen years to even begin to formulate into something even marginally viable, much less useful as a source of real information. And no, MS is not going to be the provider of this kind of data mining and intelligence software. They're total amateurs in this field. The real danger is not in the technology but -- and this may sound like a subtle point, but it is a critical one -- [b]in the illusory belief that the technology is better than it really is.[/b] I fear the possibility of this kind of massive warehousing of information much less than I fear the idiocy of those in political power who may start making presumptuous assumptions of "intelligence" or "knowledge" they think they're deriving from this information and analysis, without really knowing a damn thing about the technology and its capabilities and limitations. The worst thing that can happen, therefore, is that the people making the political and security decisions remain in the dark about what they're actually able to do at any point during the next fifteen years with this kind of "intelligence infrastructure." That they start taking very unscientific, very limited, very superficial "results" more seriously than is appropriate, and start basing action upon those "results." One critical mission has to be to make sure anyone seeking to derive results from the process be informed, at a sustained, deep and scientific level, of the reality of what they're actually getting along the way. Petabytes and terabytes of information are being collected DAILY already by banks, automobile manufacturers, credit card companies, health and life insurance companies, retirement and mutual fund companies, pharmaceutical companies, retail and grocery companies, mortgage companies, rental property companies, you name it. I'm not exaggerating regarding the quantities and range of data suggested by the above. Even for each separate Fortune 500 company in each of those areas, however, the ability to manage the scale of data accumulated even MARGINALLY is still laughable. Trying to create a system that might in some way pull from and integrate and profile out of a cross-section of those data sources is an ambitious idea, but one that will take far more technical prowess, investment and time than it took to get from Sputnik to Apollo 11. By the time anything of even limited and reliable utility has been derived out of such an effort -- even for individual Fortune 500 companies, much less for entire industries, or across data sources -- I'm sure we'll have a much broader and more informed understanding of exactly how valuable and reliable the "intelligence" to be derived from the effort really is. Meanwhile, although it sounds horrifically ominous, I think the effort will drive a technological process and conceptual revolution that if used for GOOD, could truly provide for a fundamental transformation of the levels of power and knowledge we _all_ have about what's going on in the world. The results would make our current feeling around in the dark about what's happening, based on the pitiful sources of propaganda we call "news" and "education," seem comparable in style to the ancient Druids keeping themselves warm around campfires at night. So my own advice here would be to not let whatever pundits of the right and left are providing you the cartoon reality of what's going on stampede you in a panic into making more dramatic assumptions about all this than are really worth making. And, at the same time, I'd strongly counsel you to treat any claims of "intelligence" capability early on with an extreme number of tons of salt, and recommend you do and say everything you can to question the validity and basis of any claims about same that are made in the press, in the government, in the business world, for the next decade at least. Developing valid knowledge out of information at the scale we can gather it now is an ENORMOUSLY complex challenge, one that very few scientists working on the technologies around the problem would dare themselves to claim has even begun to be met. What has been achieved is impressive, but on a much smaller scale than most would dare admit. Those claiming on the technology side to have gone further than the one or two leaders in this area are truly 99% marketing and 1% ability, and again, are more wasteful and dangerous than the folks who really know what they're doing. It's really still all mostly smoke and mirrors at this point. Don't worry, be happy. rt

[Wow]

GLOOM AND DOOM THE SKY IS FALLING BIG BROTHER IS AT THE DOOR Why dont you guys focus on the REAL enemies and quit bitchin about the very people that are trying to protect you. You guys will be first in line to shit all over the administration if another attack happens. What liberties have YOU lost recently, and dont say some abstract shit that makes no since. I have asked this question alot here lately and the only answer I get is that the price of pot has gone up. Well, that sucks , but what have we lost? You can still do everything that you could 2 years ago.

[Skip_dup1]

[quote]Originally posted by C.M.: [b]GLOOM AND DOOM THE SKY IS FALLING BIG BROTHER IS AT THE DOOR Why dont you guys focus on the REAL enemies and quit bitchin about the very people that are trying to protect you. You guys will be first in line to shit all over the administration if another attack happens. What liberties have YOU lost recently, and dont say some abstract shit that makes no since. I have asked this question alot here lately and the only answer I get is that the price of pot has gone up. Well, that sucks , but what have we lost? You can still do everything that you could 2 years ago.[/b][/quote]The real enemies...maybe you`d like to say specifically who that is. Is it the guys with the shirts or without-I keep forgetting.

[Dan South]

I'll make a comment about the "real enemies." The real enemies are the lobbyists who select our elected officials. The real enemy is a system that requires a fortune to be a candidate for office. I couldn't give a rats ass if the government reads my email. I have nothing to hide. What pisses me off is secret back office deals to remove any liability that pharmaceutical companies may have to bear if their vaccines make people sick. Ever hear of Gulf War syndrome? Untested cocktails of drugs were given to servicemen. Many have never recovered. What if the drug companies come up with an anthrax vaccine that kills or sterilizes tens of thousands of people or leaves them parylized or brain damaged? Too bad. Can't sue them now. According to the Homeland Pork Security Bill as passed this week, government contractors are free to move their corporate headquarters offshore to avoid paying taxes. If the taxpayers - you and I - give a company several hundred million of our hard earned dollars, it would be nice to think that the company might pay a few taxes back into the system someday. Not so if they relocate to the Cayman Islands. All that money that they save on taxes goes can be used on further lobbying efforts; this last one was apparently quite successful. But the scariest provision of all is the one that allows closed door meetings with lobbiests. No record of what's discussed will ever be made public, yet in these back rooms is where government policy will be made, NOT at the ballot box where it should be. This is exactly how Ken Lay, the CEO of Enron, got permission from Bush and Cheney to write the country's energy policy. Ken Lay, whose company's implosion robbed thousands of employees of their retirement savings and triggered the recent downward spiral on Wall Street, whose influence was responsible for energy shortages in California and hiked energy costs across the country, wrote the Bush energy policy. Who will be the next Ken Lay, and how will THEY screw the American taxpaying public? The current Republican regime is - - greedy - unpatriotic - unprincipled - out of control - in the pocket of the richest of the rich - clueless with regard to foreign policy - a curse to the environment - a cadre of war profiteers and sadly - painfully ineffective in the job of protecting the nation (even though they shamelessly wrapped themselves in the Iraqi War and Homeland Security flags to chump voters into giving them control of both houses). The system makes me sick. If we can't enact election contribution reforms, we're going to be stuck with these blood-sucking leeches for a long time. Open up your wallets, folks, and prepare yourself for more foreign aggression. The inmates have taken over the asylum.

[Skip_dup1]

gee, arent`t those the same guys with the key to the computer room? you think they`re going to stop at reading your e-mail? the point isn`t matter whether you have anything to hide or not-I`m sure plenty of people a few hundred years ago in Spain reported themselves to the Grand Inquisitor thinking the same thing. What we`re looking at is a computerized G.I. As for the technology, I read somewhere-can`t vouch for it tho-that the technology employed by official security concerns is about 15 years, on average, ahead of anything commercially available. That`s 15 years of development on information storage and management capacity.

[Wow]

[quote] I couldn't give a rats ass if the government reads my email. I have nothing to hide. What pisses me off is secret back office deals to remove any liability that pharmaceutical companies may have to bear if their vaccines make people sick. Ever hear of Gulf War syndrome? Untested cocktails of drugs were given to servicemen. Many have never recovered. What if the drug companies come up with an anthrax vaccine that kills or sterilizes tens of thousands of people or leaves them parylized or brain damaged? Too bad. Can't sue them now. [/quote]What the Gov. did to the Gulf war people sucked but that was under a different administration. I didn't see anywhere in your post where you said one thing about the previous administration. I hope you dont think they are free of blame, if you do then you cretibility goes out the window.Now, as far as being able to sue the Gov. under the new Homeland act, this is how it goes. You CAN sue the drug company but you cant sue them for PUTATIVE DAMAGES . There is a big difference in not being able to sue a company and not being able to sue for putative. Putative damages is what the 28 Billion was about in the cigarette case a month or two ago. There is only one company in the world that will even attempt to make this stuff, and they told the Government that they could and would not make it if they were liable for putative damages. There are people who are going to get sick from the medicine, but what is the alternative? Let everybody die of smallpox or whatever. This boils down to a simple choice , have thousands die from smallpox, or have 100 or 200 hundred die from the medicine. You make the choice. It sucks but it is one that must be made. [quote] This is exactly how Ken Lay, the CEO of Enron, got permission from Bush and Cheney to write the country's energy policy. Ken Lay, whose company's implosion robbed thousands of employees of their retirement savings and triggered the recent downward spiral on Wall Street, whose influence was responsible for energy shortages in California and hiked energy costs across the country, wrote the Bush energy policy. Who will be the next Ken Lay, and how will THEY screw the American taxpaying public? [/quote]I hate to be the one to tell you but Enron was at its peek in the CLINTON administration. The enron people came to the Bush administration right after they got in office and asked for help and the bush administration said NO. So the company goes belly up after this and you blame it on Bush. I dont know how you come to this conclusion. You pretty much listed the democratic talking points in your post. I know that you know more than this because I have read some of your prior post. :confused: . . . This will be fun, here goes , the Clinton administration: Did NOTHING in 8 years about terrorist Cut the CIA , FBI , ARMY , NAVY , AIR FORCE , Marines , SEC , NSA , All in the name of a balanced budget. Hell, I could balance the budget if I cut all of this stuff. Let Wall Street run crazy in the late 90's, why do you think it was in the shape it was in when Bush took office. SEC was a joke and still is. Bill Clinton used the attorney general as a personal lawyer to fend off all of the sexual lawsuits. Foreign policy, well there was none, except giving money to north korea. Let special interest for the environmental people take over everthing.