The new "terrorist" legislation. Do you think it's a good idea?

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MY life is too mundane to be concerned with much governmental interference, but I AM concerned when it looks like the constitution is being violated...AGAIN.

Guilty until proven innocent?

I understand that the Administration is "clutching at straws", trying to "save" us from terrorism, but does this mean that *I* must give up my rights? *I*'m not the one who flew those planes.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), October 30, 2001

Answers

it's just beginning Anita.

-- al-d. (dogs@zianet.com), October 30, 2001.

Here's another article on the same subject.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), October 30, 2001.

This legislation is obscene.

-- David L (bumpkin@dnet.net), October 30, 2001.

First, brand all the children Cyber-liberties swept away by tidal wave of security concerns

OPINION
By Brock N. Meeks
MSNBC

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 — Anthrax, Afghanistan, al-Qaida, Ashcroft and anti-terrorism legislation. We aren’t even through the first letter of the geopolitical alphabet before jumping all the way to “S” as in “screwed” as in what’s happening to civil liberties in the online world.
WITH AMERICA LOOKING more like a nation running scared than a nation standing strong, our leaders here in Washington are rolling back privacy protections or launching proposals that will have us all hard-wired into some all-seeing government database faster than they can evacuate their offices during an anthrax scare.
Am I the only one to notice how sick and twisted it is for Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Sun Microsystems’ Scott McNealy to be vocally advocating the establishment of a national ID card system? Just a few years ago, these two baby billionaires couldn’t be dragged kicking or screaming to Washington, and now they’re pimping for a national database system that could track you and me from cradle to grave?
The word “evil” is being tossed around a lot these days, and it rightly applies to the concept of a national ID card. Even conservative icon Ronald Reagan brushed off that idea. During Reagan’s presidency, national ID cards were proposed as a way of dealing with illegal immigration. But Reagan feared they could be abused for, say, tracking all gun owners or gun purchases. Even after he was shot, Reagan rebuffed the lunacy of a national ID card. Legend has it that during a Cabinet meeting, when the ID card topic was raised in relation to immigration, Reagan deadpanned: “Maybe we should just brand all babies.”
Or maybe we should just allow the FBI to tap any and every conversation — spoken or written — that it merely suspects might be related to “suspicious” activity? Because in fact, that is exactly what the new anti-terrorism bill allows.

‘SNEAK AND PEEK’

The anti-terrorism bill now passed by both houses of Congress contains a “delayed notice” provision (section 213) that allows federal agents to conduct covert searches of your home.
“This means that law enforcement agencies can enter a person’s home or office, search through the person’s possessions, in some cases seize physical objects or electronic information, without the person knowing that law enforcement agents were there,” the American Civil Liberties Union wrote to congressional leaders in a letter outlining their concerns about the bill.
These so-called “sneak and peek” provisions treat the Fourth Amendment protections as if they were written in pencil, easily erased and malleable, tied to the crisis-of-the-day level of paranoia. There is a damned good reason the Fourth Amendment exists. The last time I read the Fourth Amendment I didn’t notice a clause that said, “… unless, of course, the country is cowering from a recent terrorist attack.”
That a constitutional provision — revered by conservatives and liberals alike — could be so easily and bluntly assailed is frightening. No congressional hearings were held; there was no public debate. The few in Congress saw fit to speak for the many.
And unlike some of the other expanded law enforcement provisions in the anti-terrorism bill, this secret search language doesn’t have a “sunset” deadline or a date certain when the law would have to be reaffirmed or stricken from the books.

MOTHER OF ALL CARNIVORES

At the same time that the FBI is being allowed to rummage through your personal effects — imagine a glove-wearing agent finger-dancing his way across your keyboard and joy-riding through your hard disk, all without your knowledge — the agency also is putting the final touches on a technical plan to funnel all electronic communications through an easy-to-wiretap electronic pipe.

The plan would require all Internet service providers to reconfigure their e-mail systems to better facilitate FBI wiretapping. It is a capability the FBI has been lusting after since the laws were changed in 1994 mandating that all telephone companies build in capabilities for the FBI to more easily tap the country’s telephone system.
“It’s clear [the FBI has] decided that in the next year or so they are going to make a big push on [electronic communication] and they are going to use whatever leverage they can to get people to cooperate,” said Stewart Baker, former general counsel for the National Security Agency and now a lawyer with Steptoe & Johnson. Baker, who made his remarks at a recent seminar, said the FBI would be doing so to ensure that e-mail systems “are more wiretap-friendly than the ones we have today.”
Again, such developments have been in the works for years, with the agency running into a stone wall from civil libertarians, ISPs resisting the implementation of what is essentially a window on the soul of their networks. But the bureau is exploiting the dulled senses of an American public still trying to shake off the shock of the Sept. 11 attacks. The catch: This is a one-way window, and we’re on the wrong side of it.

NAKED TO THE WORLD

It is dangerous to be nearsighted in times of crisis. All the changes happening now affecting your online privacy or allowing your personal information to be stored online will continue to do so, with no end in sight.
“Big deal! I have nothing to hide!” I hear you shouting.
I know you’re shouting it, because I’ve answered that question from hundreds of you who have cared to write asking for an answer. I posed the same question to A.P., a long-time reader of this column who also happens to be a criminal defense attorney.
“‘I have nothing to hide’ from whom?” asks A.P. “Is it from the police as we now know them? Then you don’t know some of the police I know. Is it from the politicians? Then think what you were saying about politicians one year or five years ago,” he says.
“Our founding fathers were, to George III, not heroes; rather, they were ‘terrorists,’” A.P. says. “They blew stuff up, destroyed property and openly demanded and fomented rebellion. They wanted protection from open warrants predicated upon the unsubstantiated allegations of unknown and untested informants, the burdens that George had placed on them,” he says.
Do we, as a country governed by “mostly ordinary people,” really want them deciding what is best for our families? A.P. asks. “Are we to return to government by rumor and threat?” he asks.
The current concerns about the loss of privacy and increased security go far beyond the airport, bus or train station.
“We are talking about being secure in our thoughts, words and deeds,” A.P. says. “Are we, as a people, willing to risk the loss of the right to dissent, the right to criticize our government, the right to elect someone different? It might not happen overnight or all at once, but it is the little erosions that frighten me and should frighten everyone else.”


-- Cherri (Jessam5@home.com), October 30, 2001.


This is worrysome. Anything any one has written inthe past, years before sept.11 which is still on the web can be found in a search and used for justification for the writer to be "investigated" in the name of national security.

As was done in the past, the political party in office can spy on those in the country that do not follow their beliefs. Anyone remember the 60's when groups who were verbal about their opposition to the Viet Nam war were infiltrated and had their phones tapped?

A while back I talked about those little moduals that were inserted under the skin of pets which sent a signal that could be traced so the pets could be found if lost or stolen. I worry that new born babies will one day have them inserted so everything they do can be tracked and traced and stored somewhere. Can you invision a time when this module, perhaps placed under the skin on the back of the upper wrist, would be used for access and identification, just running wand over the module would check the identity and authorization as well as make a record of where the person was and what they were doing.

Is it 1984 yet? Or will it be worse.

What about all of the complaints about too much government and government's intrusion into our daily, personal lives?

-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), October 30, 2001.



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