Re: [TSCM-L] {1923} Re: [Fwd: Air rights]

From: kondrak <kon..._at_phreaker.net>
Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2007 22:58:35 -0400

Reginald Curtis wrote:
> A few comments:
>
> 1. Not so very long ago, disclosing details like those revealed in the
> article as to a vehicle's capability would earn one a stretch in a
> federal institution. How things change!
>
> 2. Seems like this is contravening the spirit of 'posse comitatus' if
> not in fact the letter.
>
> 3. 'These are all temporary measures required to meet an extaordinary
> threat and will be terminated when the threat is either contained or
> eliminated'. This is what we were told when the income tax was
> introduced. As far as I know, most countries in the West still have the
> income tax in some form or other and it has rarely been reduced.
>
> 4. Let's face facts. For most Americans in today's world, the immediate
> threat to their freedom comes not from radical Islam but from the
> so-called police/intelligence community in Washington. There will always
> be some group they can designate a threat to justify these 'temporary'
> measures.
>
> 5. Many of the more invasive methods were suposedly justified by "the
> war on drugs". That's another war few would say we are winning no matter
> how many resources are directed towards it. When the government gets
> control of the border with Mexico then it can arguably claim it knows
> what it is doing.
>
> 6. Following the logic behind these recent measures to 'improve
> security, how long will it be before all residents are required to carry
> a cell phone (for their own protection of course) and will be subject to
> sanctions should they either deactivate or disable the phone in any way?
>
> The goal of a 100% safe society can only be achieved when everyone lives
> in either a bank vault or a grave. After trading all our rights for
> safety, we will find ourselves in a society that is neither safe nor free.
>
> *Reg Curtis*
>
> From: /kondrak <kon..._at_phreaker.net>/
> Reply-To: /TSCM-L2006_at_googlegroups.com/
> To: /TSCM-L2006_at_googlegroups.com/
> Subject: /[TSCM-L] {1922} [Fwd: Air rights]/
> Date: /Mon, 03 Sep 2007 03:53:47 -0400/
>
>
>
> http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/editorials/story/676165.html
>
>
> Air rights
>
>
> In the latest government surveillance twist, spy satellites
> will be used for domestic law enforcement. Is this still America?
>
>
>
> Most Americans have accepted the Bush administration's view that
> after 9/11 it's a new and more restrictive world out there.
> Additional security procedures at airports, less privacy for phone
> calls -- we go along with all sorts of measures aimed at thwarting
> another terror attack.
>
> Is the sky the limit?
>
> A new program ordered up by Michael McConnell, director of National
> Intelligence, will give police and others access to some information
> from the spy satellites that pass above the U.S. along their paths
> over the globe. The images and data will be employed initially for
> border security and emergency preparedness; law enforcement uses
> ("covering both criminal and civil law," according to The Wall
> Street Journal, which broke the story) are to follow. These spy
> satellites are able to "see" through cloud cover and even obtain
> data from inside buildings and bunkers.
>
> They can't, we're assured, tell whether that gent in the street
> needs a haircut. Not yet, anyway.
>
> Up to now, with a few exceptions for scientific purposes, spy
> satellites have been used for spying on bad actors abroad. Now
> they'll focus on us too.
>
> It's hard to swallow, if you think freedom means more than national
> independence. But it fits a pattern that's not easy to break.
>
> *Keeping close tabs*
>
> Americans' expectations of personal privacy have been pushed and
> prodded plenty in recent years, until we hardly know what rights we
> have. We're videotaped on the streets, radar-timed on the roads,
> monitored in our calls to companies, told to wear security badges
> and asked for a phone number even when we pay cash. We're followed
> by "cookies" in our wanderings around the Web, and when we e-mail or
> call someone abroad, our words may be intercepted by the government
> and sorted through by a supercomputer for a revealing word.
>
> Not to mention the trade-offs we make oh-so voluntarily as we trade
> privacy for convenience -- in the supermarket checkout lane (store
> cards track personal purchases); in a turnpike's electronic
> transponder lane (E-ZPass records are being used in divorce cases);
> and when we sign up for car-tracking services such as OnStar that
> know if we made the right turn back there.
>
> Now the Feds and local law enforcement will also be looking in on
> America from low-Earth orbit. As for civil libertarians' concerns,
> Homeland Security says it will have its lawyers review law
> enforcement agencies' requests for satellite data before granting
> them. Does that include review by a court too? The stories are silent.
>
> And even with a nod to civil liberties, the bottom line is that
> police are winning access to satellites run by the defense and
> intelligence establishments, satellites intended for quite different
> purposes than domestic law enforcement ("criminal and civil").
>
> *When the eyes have it*
>
> At times in our past we've allowed the authorities to curtail
> liberty at home. It's always been justified on the basis of national
> security, and always will be. Looking back -- at the Alien and
> Sedition Acts of the early 1800s and the internments of World War
> II, for example -- these have not been proud moments. Americans,
> however, have always pulled back from the brink, back toward liberty.
>
> Now the matter of the spy satellites offers another chance. This
> program blurs too many civilian-military lines, and sets precedents
> for ever more acute technological intrusions. Implicitly, it gives
> officials sweeping new powers (think of life under the satellite
> "eyes" of some future president you don't think much of). It
> unbalances the equation between security and liberty. It goes too far.
>
> Are we still Americans that the men who drafted and ratified the
> Bill of Rights would recognize? Pushed, prodded and spied on from
> space, we have to wonder.
>
>
>
> >
Received on Sat Mar 02 2024 - 00:57:28 CST