Fang-Face stands on a soap box and makes this call to action: “On March 18th the ACLU e-mailed an alert about a new threat from John Ashcroft. The alert, along with tips and assistance on opposing this new threat, can be found at the ACLU web site. Keep in mind that patronizing the site of a group that opposes Bush will mean that you are soft on terrorism, law abiding, homeland security, and a close personal pal to Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein both.”
Not satisfied with the new snooping powers granted by the PATRIOT Act, the Department of Justice is now asking the Federal communications Commission to allow law enforcement the power to regulate the design of Internet communications services to make them easy to wiretap.
If implemented, the new request by Attorney General John Ashcroft would dramatically increase the government’s surveillance powers and set a precedent for opening the entire Internet to law enforcement. By forcing technology companies to build “backdoors” in their systems for wiretapping, the Ashcroft plan would also create weaknesses that hackers and thieves could use to invade your privacy and steal personal information like credit card numbers.
The government already has more than enough power to spy on individuals suspected of wrongdoing. This measure is the equivalent of requiring
all new homes be built with a peephole for law enforcement agents to look through.
Clarification
The Reno Justice Department and FBI were pushing for this in the late 1990’s. That certainly doesn’t make it ok or the right thing to do. I suspect the ACLU knows that if they put Ashcroft’s name on it then it will sell better.
Re:Clarification
Or maybe they put Ashcroft’s name on it because he’s the one pushing for it this time around. It must really tick off you bushites that you can’t keep on blaming Clinton for everything.
Re:Clarification
Nah, doesn’t tick me off a bit. I’m just putting a little context and clarification to the information. You are for full disclosure of information, aren’t you? Anonymous.
Yawn.
You know the routine. Blake has provided a wonderful feature. . .
Ever Vigilant
“Clinton gets a wiretapping bill that covers new technologies”, New York Times, 10/9/94
Re:Clarification
This was probably CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act). I’m not sure where this stands now.
Re:Clarification
I’m just putting a little context and clarification to the information.
Your context is a half truth. Here’s the whole context. The Clinton/Reno pair attempted to implement a highly intrusive and probably unconstitutional measure to monitor the private activity of web surfers. It was not implemented. The Bush/Ashcroft pair, demonstrating that they have no capacity to learn from the lessons of history, have resurrected it.
I’m willing to bet that Bush supporters who still blame all of the U.S.’s current problems on Clinton will turn a blind eye to their “hero” attempting to implement a Clinton program, or will praise it fulsomely as a much needed measure to protect their cowardly asses.
Oh, and by the way, you aren’t intimating in your message that Anonymous shouldn’t have full first amendment protection of anonymity, are you?
Here’s
some more context on that Clinton/Bush thing. Feel free to point out how Pitt can’t possibly make any sense because his political leanings tilt in the wrong direction.
Re:Clarification
Ah, truthout.org there is objectivity at its finest. I suspect if I cited something from some nutty right wing website the you would accept it as truth.
Oh, and by the way, you aren’t intimating in your message that Anonymous shouldn’t have full first amendment protection of anonymity, are you?
First Amendment? I didn’t realize that I was the government. I didn’t realize that lisnews.com was run by the government. Maybe we should have the cracker-jack staff at truthout.org to investigate?
Re:Clarification
Here’s a truth for you. One of the principles of leadership is: you’re in charge, it’s your fault.
Here’s another truth. Clinton wasn’t the president when the towers came down, Bush was.
Here’s a third truth: the first amendment protects us from each other as much as from Big Brother.
Re:Clarification
So it was Bush’s fault that the twin towers came down? I thought it was the guys who hijacked the planes and flew them into the twin towers.
Did your truthout.org site tell you that? You really need to come up for air from truthout.org, I think it is giving you the vapors.
You know, the first amendment to the United States Constitution states that “Congress shall make no laws …. abridging the freedom of speech …”. This applies to the states also. It doesn’t say “pchuck shall make no laws abridging the freedom of speech”. Nor does it say “Lisnews.com shall make no laws abridging the freedom of speech”. Nor does it state that “Fang-Face shall make no laws abridging the the freedom of speech”. What does the Canadian first amendment say?
Re:Clarification
The intrepid “pchuck” seems to have a lot of time on his/her hands. It’s simple: Reno was evil. Ashcroft is evil. It’s just flip sides of the same coin.
Re:Clarification
I’m grading papers. It is a task that I don’t enjoy but have to do. Lisnews breaks up the monotony.
Should we?
Chuck – You musn’t be too hard on Fang’s sources. This is all he knows. Why use an index when a hack web puddle can be used?.
Question. Should any of us from academe tell him about the academic success of students that include this type of piffle in a bibliography???
ACLU & terrorism back in 1996
Speaking of 9/11. Your beloved ACLU weighing in on behalf of hijackers with Clinton’s Anti-Terrorism bill back in 1996.
“Terrorism bill pits safety vs. privacy”
Computerworld
10/7/96
You get to the airline ticket counter and provide identification. Then the clerk taps in to a vast database which has details about your marital status, travel habits and income to see if you have been flagged as a potential terrorist……
….The proposal calls for airport security personnel to develop the passenger profiling database from information supplied by airlines and other, unspecified sources. A “civil liberties advisory board” would oversee the project.
But the American Civil Liberties Union and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) in Palo Alto, Calif., complained that there are no guarantees that information such as medical history and political affiliation wouldn’t be in the database. Karen Coyle, Western regional director for the CPSR, said unscrupulous airline employees might use the information for monetary gain.
Re:Clarification
The failures in intelligence and security are the result of the Bush adminstration, not the Clinton administration. It doesnt’ surprise me that you can’t understand that. Perhaps you should take a break from the ideology of whatever wrong-wing sources you patronize as well.
Re:ACLU & terrorism back in 1996
Bill Clinton is only responsible for Bill Clinton’s screw ups. Not for the screw ups of George Bush and his administration. And you’re trying to blame this on the ACLU now is rather amusing. Especially as the piece you quoted pointed out that what concerned the ACLU was private medical information. Care to explain, how exactly, it proves that I’m a terrorist because I had my tonsils or appendix out when I six or seven years old? And criminalizing a person for his wrong-wing political affiliation? I’m sure the Republicans would like that.
To reiterate:
Moreover, there is this nasty piece of business.
Of course, I’m sure that you’ll just dismiss everything as invalid since it offends your hypersenstivities. It must be so handy to live in such a state of denial. That doesn’t change reality, however, and the reality is: Bill Clinton was not president when the towers came down, George Bush was. You may cry and snivel about that until your dieing day if you wish.
By the by, there is more to that article, particularly about how the Clinton officials are facing some rather hard questions about how vigorously the Clinton administration pushed anti-terrorism measures. That still doesn’t defray Bush’s responsibility.
Please read carefully
Clinton’s culpability:
>>They said the warnings were delivered in urgent post-election intelligence briefings in December 2000 and January 2001 for Condoleezza Rice, who became Mr. Bush’s national security adviser; Stephen Hadley, now Ms. Rice’s deputy; and Philip D. Zelikow, a member of the Bush transition team, among others.
Help me Fang. The Kenyan and Tanzania embassies were bombed in August in 1998. Clinton retaliates by bombing an aspirin factory, albeit by mistake. He fingers CIA for bad intel, but we all understand how this can happen. Right? His war on terrorism from this point is two-pronged. Blow up chemical factories in Khartoum
during federal depositions by Ms. Lewinsky and do nothing. When Lewinksy “blows” over so does his resolve to fight terrorism. If he had any to begin with.
Clinton the Anti-Terrorist.
National Review 9/2/2002
In an article headlined “Could 9/11 Have Been Prevented?” Time
Indeed, even a cursory look at the Clinton administration’s record on terrorism raises questions about the article’s premise. For example: If there was indeed such a plan, why did the Clinton team wait so long to come up with it?
In the past, former Clinton officials have said that they moved into fully engaged anti-terrorism mode after the August 7, 1998, bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. More than 200 people, including twelve Americans, were killed, and an investigation quickly showed the attack to be the work of Osama bin Laden. In an interview with National Review last year, Daniel Benjamin, a former National Security Council official, said the Africa bombings were a turning point in the administration’s response to terrorism. “I and a whole lot of people basically did very little else other than Osama bin Laden for the next year and a half,” Benjamin said.
At the time, top Clinton officials vowed a long, tough campaign. “This is, unfortunately, the war of the future,” Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told reporters on August 21, shortly after the U.S. fired cruise missiles at al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. “This is going to be a long-term battle against terrorists who have declared war on the United States.” Other officials, including President Clinton, said similar things.
So why, when by their own account the war unquestionably began in August 1998, did Clinton administration officials wait until December 2000, a few weeks before leaving office, to come up with a plan to fight it? Why was the plan created so late that it could not be implemented but was instead presented to the incoming Bush administration with the admonition, “Here — do this”? There’s no answer in the Time story.
In addition, the Clinton defenders’ account is plagued by some internal contradictions. For example, Time says the Clinton administration was constrained from taking action in the aftermath of the Cole bombing because “the CIA and FBI had not officially concluded [that bin Laden was behind the attack] and would be unable to do so before Clinton left office.” But the article also documents the frustrations of John O’Neill, a top FBI official who had “run afoul of Barbara Bodine, then the U.S. ambassador to Yemen, who believed the FBI’s large presence was causing political problems for the Yemeni regime.” Time says that “when O’Neill left Yemen on a trip home for Thanksgiving, Bodine barred his return.” It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Clinton administration, for whatever reason, made the investigation more difficult and then claimed it could not act against al-Qaeda because the investigation had not yielded conclusive results.
It didn’t quite make sense, and indeed, after the Bush White House denied the Time story, some former Clinton officials began to pull back on some of its claims. Now, one of them — who asks not to be named — says Time didn’t have it quite right. “There were certainly ongoing efforts throughout the eight years of the Clinton administration to fight terrorism,” the official says. “It was certainly not a formal war plan. We wouldn’t have characterized it as a formal war plan. The Bush administration was briefed on the Clinton administration’s ongoing efforts and threat assessments.”
That’s pretty much what the Bush White House says happened. So why make all the headline-grabbing charges in the first place? More than anything, the article’s appearance is evidence of the dogged determination of former Clinton officials to portray their administration as tough on terrorism. Sometimes that public-relations campaign has involved positive defenses of Clinton’s record, and sometimes it has involved attacks on the Bush White House. The Time piece was the most spectacular example yet of the latter; it was, in Saxby Chambliss’s words, “a full-bore shotgun blast at the Bush administration.” And even though it missed, there will no doubt be more. For their part, Bush officials say they don’t want to “get into this game.” But they’d better get used to it.
Re:Please read carefully
Bush is not responsible for Clinton’s screw ups. Clinton is not responsible for Bush’s screw ups. Yet the first thing the Bushites did was to blame Clinton, and they’re still doing it. One more time: Clinton was not president when the towers came down, Bush was. By the principle of leadership I cited a few messages ago, Bush was in charge, it’s his fault.