Source:"We have moved from the age where military capability depended on air supremacy to an age where the key capability is surveillance supremacy. Only a few -- the Kurzweilians -- seem to have noticed."
Me:"Some Tactics for fighting the shadows: Shed light on their movements. Control the land, sea, air, and information environments. To succeed in the wars in the shadow, we must shed light on the roaches. Transporting illegal goods must be nearly impossible. Transporting illegal money, must be even harder. We must be able to intercept their communications to find supplies, attack them in their sleep, and disrupt their carefully laid plans. How this can be done in without giving up our rights, I have no idea."
cube
8 comments:
Damn bill you really know what you are talking about....heh...I am just joking with you. You are wrong.
There are laws against illeagal search (which i consider monitoring searching) and seasuire and due process. I even think some of those concpets are mentioned in the lovely bill of rights.
If the USA is conducting an investigation they have to get warrants to get info. Plain and simple.
Secondly, I doubt you are aware of the information that is in private hands. We are talking, electitricy usage, water usage, online activity, every single purchase you make, location of you vechile via GPS, location of your Cell phone via GPS, every single phone call you make, given the information it can probably be found out how much sex you have (based on how many condems you buy).
Do you want the goverment owning any of that info?
Bill, are you one of those people who belives that if you are innocent you have nothing to hide? Well I have news for you, given the amount of absurd laws, no one is innocent.
Everyone can be charged, fined, or arrested for somthign.
Bill, you are assuming that all Arabs/Muslims are terrorists and therefore deserved to be denied the rights granted in the Constitution. How long will it take for this line of reasoning to affect you? What if the FBI discovers a link between violent crime and men with small penises? Then they will search your old credit card charges and you will be targeted as well Bill.
I absolutely have zero problem understanding and agreeing to both of your points.
Shocking?
Yes, I know about the property rights - the same ones that were shredded for eminent domain.
You mention all the info in private hands - do you honestly think and can you honestly assume that the government doesn't already know all that information? Please. To use it though, they would need to show a paper trail of conforming to the law via warrant.
The NSA tabs every single cell phone call for tagwords across the globe already.
We elect supposedly responsible congressman to pass laws that reflect what the public wants. We elect supposedly responsible executives to sign those laws into place. Our executives nominate justices, approved of by the congress, to oversee whether any of those laws written by the congress and signed by the president violate the constitution.
Thus, we have a vested interest in maintaining those members of elected government to safeguard our interests.
Am I frightened about them having information? Not as long as our elected govt continues to respect the freedom of the populace. They already have all that info you mentioned. They already know everything they need to know about me to determine that I'm not a threat by my habits. To assume the govt doesn't watch you/us is wishful thinking.
All muslims are not terrorists. However, ALL terrorists have been muslim. That speaks the loudest for racial profiling. We gender profile so don't act like racial profiling is something bad.
If every single terrorist is a young to middle-aged muslim male who recently attended some idiotic madrassah, then we better start looking at every single muslim male who went there. We can do it within the bounds of our current law without "trampling" rights.
OUR safety as Americans is at stake.
"Yes, I know about the property rights - the same ones that were shredded for eminent domain."
Can be overturned easily (once bush get his thrid replacement).
"Am I frightened about them having information? Not as long as our elected govt continues to respect the freedom of the populace."
What is the line and where do your draw it?
"However, ALL terrorists have been muslim. That speaks the loudest for racial profiling. We gender profile so don't act like racial profiling is something bad."
Timoth McVeigh was not a muslim and his act is the second worst terrorist act on american soil that I am aware of.
"OUR safety as Americans is at stake. "
I would agree, but safety does not need to come at all costs to rights. You can't shake down every single muslim who enters the country. That is against the core beliefs of America, and more importantly injust.
Good point about the Oklahoma City Bombing. I would also like to point out the Unabomber, the Weathermen in the 1970s, and every terrorist not targeting the World Trade Center. One admittedly devastating attack and you are not only ready to declare a holy war, but accept martial law in the US as well. Jefferson said something like "Liberty is when the government fears the people. Tyranny is when people fear the government." Who is drawing the line and make you a "good guy" and the rest of them "bad guys"?
These are my big problems with your last argument. You use terror selectively. It only applies to foreigners attempting to kill Americans. Are you aware that the US is the only country to be indicted for terrorism by the International Criminal Court for our actions supporting and equipping the Sandanista rebels against the freely elected government of Nicaragua? And my other argument is not that we should roll over for the terrorists, but that we should work within the framework of the Constitution. If we start abandoning our basic rights, it may be hard to get them back. And once we agree that they can be applied selectively to only certain groups of people then we are all in danger in becoming one of those selected groups in the future.
Excuse me for getting the names backwards. You are right that the Sandanistas were the government, and we supported the rebels. But the rebels were the ones responsible for the most civilian deaths. In 1985 we even sent a memo from the CIA advising the rebels to stop confronting the army and start attacking "soft targets" ie civilians. The rebels that we equipped killed hundreds of thousands of unarmed Nicaraguan citizens. The land reform measures taken by the government of Nicaragua were a response to the United Fruit Companies consolidation of land into the hands of a few wealthy (and foriegn) corporations. As for my being an American. I am in Iraq right now, finishing out my second tour in OIF. So what have you done for America? Put your money where your mouth is and join the forces that are fighting to keep us safe. I am all for defending our country, but my primary responsibility is defending the Constitution and our way of life, not allowing it to be subverted by terrorists, paranoid intelligence agencies, or anyone else.
profiling upsets!
'In other words even if the government has to ask you what you're doing, the "rights" of the innocent are not being violated and their privacy survives just fine.' bill
privacy: survives?.. maybe
the innocent bliss of ignorance.. shattered!
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