[Stoner]

Mulder:

Your timeline of the integrety of the US Constitution conviently left out a period of intense conflict where not only did a traitorus part of American society try to alter ( destroy ) the Constitution, it chose to wage war against the United States of America.
------------------
Dec 20, 1860 - South Carolina secedes from the Union. Followed within two months by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas.

Feb 9, 1861 - The Confederate States of America is formed with Jefferson Davis, a West Point graduate and former U.S. Army officer, as president.

April 12, 1861 - At 4:30 a.m. Confederates under Gen. Pierre Beauregard open fire with 50 cannons upon Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. The Civil War begins.

April 17, 1861 - Virginia secedes from the Union, followed within five weeks by Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina, thus forming an eleven state Confederacy.
-------------------------

The Constitution was not despoiled from these actions!
It takes effort and awareness to avoid conflicts such as the above. It also takes a strong Federal Republic-- the issue Lincoln impressed on the Confederacy- to uniformly protect the Constitution
and the Constitutional Rights of the citizen. This was the party of Lincoln-- Republican. Not today's version(IMO),with the same spelling, a party now inclusive of states righters, southern Dixiecrats, neo fascists, and fundamentalist cults.

So, here we are with elements of the present 'Republican' party trying to slide unknown legislation through in the name of 'security' and you sit back and exclaim to everyone:

quote:
--------------------------
"I certainly won't lose any sleep over this one!"
-------------------------



---------------------------------------------

Published on Thursday, November 14, 2002 by the New York Times
You Are a Suspect
by William Safire

WASHINGTON — If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you:

Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend — all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."

Also See:
U.S. Hopes to Check Computers Globally
Washington Post 11/12/02


To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you — passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance — and you have the supersnoop's dream: a "Total Information Awareness" about every U.S. citizen.

This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is what will happen to your personal freedom in the next few weeks if John Poindexter gets the unprecedented power he seeks.

Remember Poindexter? Brilliant man, first in his class at the Naval Academy, later earned a doctorate in physics, rose to national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan. He had this brilliant idea of secretly selling missiles to Iran to pay ransom for hostages, and with the illicit proceeds to illegally support contras in Nicaragua.

A jury convicted Poindexter in 1990 on five felony counts of misleading Congress and making false statements, but an appeals court overturned the verdict because Congress had given him immunity for his testimony. He famously asserted, "The buck stops here," arguing that the White House staff, and not the president, was responsible for fateful decisions that might prove embarrassing.

This ring-knocking master of deceit is back again with a plan even more scandalous than Iran-contra. He heads the "Information Awareness Office" in the otherwise excellent Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which spawned the Internet and stealth aircraft technology. Poindexter is now realizing his 20-year dream: getting the "data-mining" power to snoop on every public and private act of every American.

Even the hastily passed U.S.A. Patriot Act, which widened the scope of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and weakened 15 privacy laws, raised requirements for the government to report secret eavesdropping to Congress and the courts. But Poindexter's assault on individual privacy rides roughshod over such oversight.

He is determined to break down the wall between commercial snooping and secret government intrusion. The disgraced admiral dismisses such necessary differentiation as bureaucratic "stovepiping." And he has been given a $200 million budget to create computer dossiers on 300 million Americans.

When George W. Bush was running for president, he stood foursquare in defense of each person's medical, financial and communications privacy. But Poindexter, whose contempt for the restraints of oversight drew the Reagan administration into its most serious blunder, is still operating on the presumption that on such a sweeping theft of privacy rights, the buck ends with him and not with the president.

This time, however, he has been seizing power in the open. In the past week John Markoff of The Times, followed by Robert O'Harrow of The Washington Post, have revealed the extent of Poindexter's operation, but editorialists have not grasped its undermining of the Freedom of Information Act.

Political awareness can overcome "Total Information Awareness," the combined force of commercial and government snooping. In a similar overreach, Attorney General Ashcroft tried his Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS), but public outrage at the use of gossips and postal workers as snoops caused the House to shoot it down. The Senate should now do the same to this other exploitation of fear.

The Latin motto over Poindexter"s new Pentagon office reads "Scientia Est Potentia" — "knowledge is power." Exactly: the government's infinite knowledge about you is its power over you. "We're just as concerned as the next person with protecting privacy," this brilliant mind blandly assured The Post. A jury found he spoke falsely before.

[Stoner]

http://news.com.com/2100-1028-997218.html?tag=fd_top


Uncle Sam: Share your system secrets


By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
April 16, 2003, 4:08 PM PT


WASHINGTON--The Department of Homeland Security is hoping to convince technology and telecommunications firms that it's safe to share information about infrastructure vulnerabilities with the federal government.
This week, the new department published a set of proposed regulations designed to convince corporate America to hand over infrastructure information to the government, promising that it will be kept in the strictest confidence.

The proposal sweeps broadly, covering any data submitted to the government about any real or possible attack on "critical infrastructure or protected systems by physical or computer-based attack" or any programming errors, glitches or bugs that could endanger important services like the Internet, utilities or telephone networks.




Industry groups had worried for years about the potential negative consequences of handing over proprietary or embarrassing information to the federal government, fearing it could be leaked to the press or obtained through requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Their worries led to an amendment being added to the legislation enacted last year that created the department. It says that critical infrastructure information voluntarily submitted to federal agencies "shall be exempt from disclosure" through FOIA.

Open-government advocates protested the amendment, saying it was unnecessary since FOIA already said that sensitive information could not be disclosed.

David Sobel, general counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said at a congressional hearing last July that the department should not be completely immune to FOIA requests. "Any claimed private sector reluctance to share important data with the government grows out of, at best, a misperception of current law," Sobel said. "Exemption proponents have not cited a single instance in which a federal agency has disclosed voluntarily submitted data against the express wishes of an industry submitter."

The proposed rules published on Tuesday are the result of the legislation. Comments may be sent to cii.regcomments@DHS.gov on or before June 16.

In charge of running the department's vulnerability collection and storage program will be an under secretary of the information analysis infrastructure protection directorate, who will be chosen by Secretary Tom Ridge. That person will oversee a vulnerability database to be called the Critical Infrastructure Information Management System.

The directorate is allowed to disclose some information in the database to the public when publishing a general alert. "In issuing a warning, the (directorate) shall protect from disclosure the source of any voluntarily submitted (information) that forms the basis for the warning; and any information that is proprietary, business-sensitive, relates specifically to the submitting person or entity, or is otherwise not appropriately in the public domain," the proposal says.

[Stoner]

I could easily overwhelm this thread with the following, but most wouldn't read it anyway- so here is the link for 'Procedures for Handling Critical Infrastructure Information; Proposed
Rule'. It is lengthy.



http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2...03/03-9126.htm

[Stoner]

Mulder:

you said;

quote
--------------------------
I think it foolish, frankly to be concerned over rewriting the Consitution--this reminds me of the McCarthy era irrational fear of communists.
---------------------------

Your usage of the McCarthy syndrome is interesting. You do realise that it was an affliction of rightwingers??



edited for spelling

[Stoner]

http://www.sltrib.com/2003/apr/04132003/utah/47594.asp

Hatch Leading Charge to '1984,' Critics Warn




Orrin Hatch
By Christopher Smith
The Salt Lake Tribune

WASHINGTON -- At the same time coalition forces are bringing liberty to Iraqis, organizations on both the left and right of the U.S. political spectrum say members of Congress led by Sen. Orrin Hatch are trying to strip precious rights from Americans.
Utah's senior Republican lawmaker last week quietly proposed and then retracted an amendment to eliminate the Dec. 31, 2005, expiration date of the expanded electronic surveillance authority given to the Justice Department under the USA Patriot Act, the sweeping anti-terrorism legislation quickly passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.
There is growing debate over the complex law's full implications to privacy and civil liberties. Some Republican members of Congress now openly express regret they voted for the bill that Hatch had a direct hand in crafting. Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, recently called it the "worst act we ever passed . . . stupid, it was what you would call 'emotional voting.' "
But Hatch is the Patriot Act's most rigid defender.
"Despite the dire predictions of some extremist groups, the Patriot Act has not eroded the civil liberties we hold dear as Americans," he said while chairing a recent hearing on terrorism in his Senate Judiciary Committee.
An opposites-attract alliance ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Eagle Forum disagrees. Dozens of groups are stepping up campaigns to repeal the Patriot Act entirely or let it expire as planned, while warning of additional forthcoming measures. A loose-knit coalition of Utah organizations plans an anti-Patriot Act rally at 11 a.m. Saturday on the steps of the state Capitol.
In Washington, prominent conservatives are publicly questioning why Hatch, whose political rise was based on a philosophy of getting government off peoples' backs, now is seen by many as the congressional front-man for helping government look over peoples' shoulders.
"Senator Hatch, over time, has done a fairly good job balancing some of these different concerns in his job, but I think this is a mistake," said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, the largest and oldest organization in the country dedicated to conservative politics, at a forum sponsored by the ACLU this week.
Hatch's amendment to make permanent Patriot's expanded law enforcement authority to wiretap, electronically eavesdrop, monitor personal Internet use, require Internet Service Providers to disclose subscriber information and allow greater access to financial records was to be attached to the so-called "lone wolf terrorist" bill now pending in Congress.
Currently, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) only authorizes FBI surveillance or physical searches of noncitizens when there is probable cause to believe he or she is an agent of a foreign government or an international terrorist organization.
Hatch said he supports amending FISA to allow surveillance of suspects not associated with an organization or country, but opposes allowing the new provisions, like the Patriot Act, to expire in 2005.
"As everyone knows, I opposed including the sunset in the Patriot Act and I oppose applying that same sunset to this provision as well," he said in a statement. "If enacted, [it] will only serve to jeopardize legitimate law enforcement and intelligence agency efforts to disrupt terrorists and protect our country."
Hatch's stand to make Patriot and FISA provisions permanent has raised the hackles of some Utahns who say while they support the fight against terrorism, they believe Hatch has ceded too many constitutionally protected individual rights to federal law enforcement.
"In his oath of office he swore to uphold the Constitution, and now that he is in office he is doing everything he can to eviscerate our Bill of Rights," said Salt Lake County Libertarian Party Chairman Francis Tully.
Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, a leading conservative who also sits on the board of the National Rifle Association, suspects Hatch is trying to make Patriot permanent while Americans are still in a defensive mind-set following 9-11 and the war in Iraq.
"Why in the world would you not wait until 2005 to find out what provisions do or do not work? What's the hurry?" said Norquist, who fears Patriot and its successors may infringe on the right to bear arms. "The only reason to hurry up and do it now is because you think in 2005 people will say, 'Let's not re-up them.' "
Hatch's spokesperson, Margarita Tapia, said Hatch intends to monitor the use of the Patriot Act to determine the merits of the current sunset provision.
"We were circulating that amendment in response to weakening amendments to the FISA from the Democrats," Tapia said.
Tim Edgar, the legal counsel for ACLU in Washington, said Hatch pulled his amendment revoking Patriot's sunset this past week after Democrats backed down on threats to amend the lone wolf act on the Senate floor to rein in secret warrants used by the government.
"Senator Hatch has since dropped all his amendments, which were seen widely on the Hill as being completely over the top," said Edgar.
But many activists feel the fight with Hatch over privacy is just beginning. Besides Patriot, other proposals that have been drafted or are in development at the federal level include the so-called Patriot II act, which would further extend surveillance powers; the FBI's Carnivore device, which "sniffs" out targeted communications such as e-mail over the Internet; CAPPS II, the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening Screening system to be deployed by the new Transportation Security Administration; and the Department of Defense's Total Information Awareness (TIA) project to study ways to scan various public and private databases for suspicious activity.
"TIA is a government system of connecting all the dots of your life," said Lori Waters, executive director of Eagle Forum, the national conservative social issues group, noting that the federal logo for the project was a giant eyeball. "We've lost some civil liberties since 9/11, but how far do we want to take it and will it really make us safer?"
Hatch counters that "much of the public is misinformed" about TIA.
"It would be a shame to prevent the mere research into this potentially valuable area of technology, which may aid in defending our homeland, out of fear that someday the technology could potentially be misused," Hatch said last month in a speech to the Privacy and American Business annual conference in Washington.
Former Central Intelligence Agency official and retired Republican Congressman Bob Barr of Georgia contends elected leaders should be more skeptical of administration initiatives, even if the White House and Congress are controlled by the same party.
"It's a question of Congress re-asserting its proper oversight role," said Barr. "If we are moving in the direction of a '1984' society, at least we should be doing it consciously."

[Stoner]

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics....20030416a.html

Critics of Anti-Terror Law Warn about Dangers of Sequel
By Steve Brown
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
April 16, 2003

(CNSNews.com) - Libertarians still critical of the USA PATRIOT (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act find a further erosion of civil liberties in a leaked Justice Department memorandum outlining a second PATRIOT Act that is expected to be submitted to Congress in the coming months.

In response to the leaked memo, obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, the Justice Department said there were no formal proposals for PATRIOT II submitted either to Attorney General John Ashcroft or President Bush.

It would be premature to speculate on any future decisions, particularly ideas or proposals that are still being discussed at staff levels," Barbara Comstock, director of public affairs for the Justice Department, stated in a press release.

However, another spokesperson who did not want to be identified, told CNSNews.com that the department was in the process of preparing a legislative package on anti-terrorism measures for the consideration of Congress "in the near future."

At a Capitol Hill briefing this week, Tim Lynch, director of the Cato Institute's project on criminal justice, warned congressional staffers not to "make the same mistake as we did on the first PATRIOT Act." Calling the legislation "a textbook case of how not to do it," Lynch said the bill was too bulky and should have been introduced in several pieces.

"These gigantic, telephone book-sized bills should be completely unacceptable. They should be broken down into smaller parts and voted on separately," Lynch said. "Keeping these bills in these gigantic packages just increases the chances of bad or unwise provisions being enacted into law."

Lynch added that lawmakers "should insist on sunset provisions" when crafting PATRIOT Act II. The passage of PATRIOT I rested on a compromise by lawmakers to "sunset" or expire certain provisions at the end of 2005.

Lynch said "no reasonable objection" could be raised to the idea of sunset provisions in PATRIOT II.

However, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) recently announced he might use pending anti-terrorism legislation as a vehicle for stripping the sunset provisions from PATRIOT I, making those government powers permanent. The pending bill (S. 123), co-sponsored by Sens. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), expands the government's power to wiretap and use additional surveillance on lone terrorists.

Hatch's spokeswoman, Margarita Tapia, told CNSNews.com the PATRIOT sunset removal amendment was meant to deter Democrats from offering their own amendments that would "weaken" S. 123. The bill is expected to hit the Senate floor shortly after lawmakers return from their spring recess at the end of April.

"We want to see that bill (S. 123) passed the way it was reported out of the Judiciary Committee on March 6, without any amendments," Tapia said.

Jim Dempsey, executive director for the Center for Democracy and Technology, said PATRIOT II reflected many of the same alarming themes as PATRIOT I. He said these include: removal of judicial oversight, removal of checks and balances, and "across-the-board expansions of government power" in some instances completely unrelated to terrorism.

Dempsey outlined the suspect PATRIOT II provisions. These provisions:

-- Grant FBI agents the power to issue subpoenas for any records or other tangible things (Sec. 128);
-- Allow the government to obtain telephone toll records, bank records and credit records without judicial approval in domestic terrorism cases (Sec. 129);
-- Allow wiretaps without a court order for up to 15 days following a terrorist attack (Sec. 103);
-- Terminate court-approved limits on local police spying on religious and political activity (Sec. 312);
-- Authorize secret arrests in terrorism cases (Sec. 201);
-- Expand the implications of the definition of domestic terrorism so that it is a predicate for wiretapping (Sec. 122) and civil asset forfeiture (Secs. 427, 428);
-- Expand the government's power to strip people of their U.S. citizenship (sec. 501);
-- Make it a crime to encrypt any communication related to a federal felony, even without intent to conceal (Sec. 404);
-- Further curtail rights of even lawful immigrants to a fair deportation hearing and further limits federal court review of immigration decisions (Secs. 503, 504).

Dempsey underscored the concern lawmakers have about PATRIOT II advancing in Congress.

"We need to find a way to get more public information out there about this, so that when the sunset (for PATRIOT I) comes around, and when PATRIOT II, if it ever comes, rolls around, that members of Congress and the public are better able to understand what powers the government has and if it is using those powers well," Dempsey said.

[LANMaster]

Originally posted by shortnpretty:
Hey, Hey, Hey.........you talking bad about me while I'm gone

Of course not.
I was saying that I agree with you more than Mulder.

[bassetman]

Stoner, thanks for all your digging!

[Stoner]

ocregister-- Mulder approved


http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/oc...month=3&day=21

Preserving our freedoms






Especially during wartime, Americans need to be extremely vigilant that their individual rights and liberties are not infringed, or even withdrawn. We raise a red flag in light of a speech Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gave Tuesday at John Carroll University in University Heights, Ohio.

"The Constitution just sets minimums," he said. "Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires." In wartime, "the protections will be ratcheted right down to the constitutional minimum. I won't let it go beyond the constitutional minimum."

John Eastman, a constitutional law scholar at Chapman University Law School, told us that Mr. Scalia's remarks were a continuation of one of the themes of Justice Scalia's tenure on the court. "He's taking issue with some of the expansive interpretations of the past 40 years after the Warren Court," Mr. Eastman said. The Warren Court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren from 1953-1969, handed down such rulings as the Miranda warning given to suspects.

The Warren rulings "may be considered prophylactic to implement the Constitution" during peacetime, but not necessarily during wartime," Mr. Eastman said. "These are not debates about what's in the Constitution, but disputes over "the Warren Court's expansions."

Mr. Eastman said the areas affected might include the Fourth Amendment right to protection against "unreasonable searches and seizures." He said, "What is unreasonable in peacetime might not be unreasonable in wartime."

We're not so sure there's a big difference. Remember that during the Civil War President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, under which an accused person must be brought before a judge and formally charged. And the Sedition Act in World War I punished anyone who "shall willfully utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States."

Most recently, the U.S. Congress unfortunately passed the USA Patriot Act in 2001, which vastly expanded the government's powers, such as easing restrictions on eavesdropping on U.S. citizens.

"It's good to be concerned because government tends to expand its powers," Mr. Eastman said. This time, he said, "we don't have the wholesale infringement of liberties of the Second World War," when, for example, most Japanese-American citizens were put into internment camps. This newspaper, under publisher R.C. Hoiles, was one of two publishers in the country we know of to protest that civil rights infringement.

He wrote in 1943: "True democracy is always dangerous but it is the safest thing we have. If we are not willing to run any risks and cannot have faith in humanity and regard people innocent until they are proved guilty, we are on the road to losing our democracy."

This time, we disagree with Mr. Scalia and do not believe our rights should be scaled back, even as prudent steps are taken in the name of security.

Rather, this ought to be a time of increased vigilance to make sure that Operation Iraqi Freedom in the gulf does not diminish American freedom at home.

=============================

http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/oc...month=4&day=10

Thursday, April 10, 2003
Needle points






The repressive 2001 USA Patriot Act granted vast new snooping capabilities to U.S. law enforcement, including letting the FBI and other agencies check patrons' library records. The public library in Santa Cruz has come up with an innovative way to protect its customers' privacy: It's shredding old library records. "The basic strategy now is to keep as little historical information as possible," Ann M. Turner, the library system's director, told The New York Times. This way, the FBI won't be able to assume you're a potential terrorist if you check out, say, a book on Civil War guns or the Bill of Rights.

[Stoner]

Originally posted by Mulder:
Uhhh, we took care of this problem 220 years ago. We separated the powers for balances and check. The Constiution has not been "secretly rewritten" ever and in this day and age of the Internet and massive sharing of communication, I think it foolish, frankly to be concerned over rewriting the Consitution--this reminds me of the McCarthy era irrational fear of communists. As with the war on Iraq, this is simply another topic for those that like to stir the pot to stir the pot. And there were also conservatives who did that with the war, although they were by far the minority of the pot stirrers, so simply because you cite some conservative voicing concern doesn't lend anymore credence to the concern. There are much bigger problems to worry about in this country than fretting over secret re-writing of the Consitution alah Fox Mulder and the X-~~~~~!!! I certainly won't lose any sleep over this one!

--------------------------

Mulder approved site.
If nothing else, read the last paragraph.





http://www.cato.org/current/terroris...rtial-law.html

The USA Patriot Act: We Deserve Better
by Robert A. Levy, Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute

A version of this article orginally appeared in Liberty magazine.

If you think the Bill of Rights is just so much scrap paper, and the separation of powers doctrine has outlived its usefulness, then the USA PATRIOT Act, passed overwhelmingly on Oct. 25, is the right recipe to deal with terrorists. On the other hand, if you are concerned about Fifth Amendment protection of due process, and Fourth Amendment safeguards against unreasonable searches and seizures, then you should be deeply troubled by the looming sacrifice of civil liberties at the altar of national security.

To be sure, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Government is legitimately charged with defending life, liberty, and property against both domestic and foreign predators. First among those obligations is to protect life. With America under attack, and lives at risk, civil liberties cannot remain inviolable. But that's a far cry from asserting that they may be flouted to wage war against fanatics.

Proponents of the new bill surely understood that many of its provisions were incompatible with civil liberties. Yet rather than modify the offending provisions, the president and Congress decided to promote the bill as an expression of patriotism. Hence the acronym - USA PATRIOT - and its bloated title, Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. The sales pitch worked. Fearful of being labeled disloyal after the September atrocities, the House endorsed the bill 357-to-66, followed by a 98-to-1 rout in the Senate, with only Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) in opposition.

From its initial draft to its final adoption, USA PATRIOT zipped through in six weeks - gutting much of the Fourth Amendment in far less time than Congress typically expends on routine bills that raise no constitutional concerns. Congress' so-called deliberative process was reduced to this: Closed-door negotiations; no conference committee; no committee reports; no final hearing at which opponents could testify; not even an opportunity for most of the legislators to read the 131 single-spaced pages about to become law. Indeed, for part of the time, both the House and Senate were closed because of the anthrax scare; congressional staffers weren't able to access their working papers.

The negligible legislative record will make it difficult for courts to determine the intent of Congress. And because legislative intent matters to some judges - for example, Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer and David Souter - the USA PATRIOT statute might ultimately be invalidated as unconstitutionally vague. Ironically, Congress' rush job, which facilitated passage of the bill, could be the cause of the bill's downfall. The same law that was promoted as an act of patriotism might even provide a rationale for releasing the madmen who committed the horrific terrorist acts against the United States.

Yet the more acute objections to the new statute are substantive, not procedural. They fall into three main categories. First, any law with the potential to dramatically alter conventional notions of individual freedom should fastidiously guard against abuse. The doctrine of separation of powers, a centerpiece of our Constitution, has been a traditional buffer against such abuse. By requiring advance judicial authorization of certain executive actions, followed by judicial review to assure that those actions have been properly performed, our liberties are shielded from excessive concentrations of power in a single branch of government. As we shall see, the USA PATRIOT Act does not pass muster.

Second, if the new rules are at all justifiable, they are defended as a necessary instrument of anti-terrorism. If so, why do many of the provisions apply not only to suspected terrorist acts but also to everyday national security investigations and even ordinary criminal matters? In effect, our government has exploited the events of Sept. 11 to impose national police powers that skirt time-honored constraints on the state. The executive branch will not always wield its new powers in the service of ends that Americans find congenial. Better that the government be shackled by the chains of the Constitution.

Third, laws that compromise civil liberties must be revisited periodically to assure that temporary measures, undertaken in response to a national security emergency, do not endure longer than necessary. Such laws must contain sunset clauses; that is, the law should expire automatically within a short time of enactment - thus imposing on government the continuing obligation to justify its intrusions. In this instance, the Bush Administration rejected any sunset provision whatsoever. Congress demurred, and insisted on including such a provision; but it applied only to new wiretap and surveillance powers, not to the whole bill. Moreover, the sunset date was fixed at Dec. 31, 2005 - more than four years after passage of the legislation. Plainly, a shorter time frame - one year, or two years at most - would have been appropriate. If the emergency persisted, Congress and the president could reenact the law.

Skeptics might dismiss those objections as mere abstractions - civil libertarianism run amok - unless they are illuminated by concrete examples from the statute. Here, then, are just a few of the more egregious threats to personal freedom.

During the Carter administration, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which created a new federal court to approve electronic surveillance of citizens and resident aliens alleged to be acting on behalf of a foreign power. Until now, the FISA court granted surveillance authority if foreign intelligence was the primary purpose of an investigation. No longer. Under Section 218 of the USA PATRIOT Act, foreign intelligence need only be "a significant purpose" of an investigation. That sounds like a trivial change, but it isn't. Because the standard for FISA approval is lower than "probable cause," and because FISA now applies to ordinary criminal matters if they are dressed up as national security inquiries, the new rules could open the door to circumvention of the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirements. The result: rubber-stamp judicial supervision of phone and Internet surveillance, even in regular criminal cases, and FBI access to medical, educational, and other business records that might conceivably relate to foreign intelligence probes.

The FISA revision is but one example of the government's expanded powers to conduct searches and surveillance. There are others. Government will have access to some financial records, without notice or judicial review. While judicial approval is necessary to retrieve voicemail messages, the requisite court order can now be obtained with a minimal showing of relevancy. That same low standard governs traces on Internet surfing and email. Perhaps worst of all, under Section 213 of the Act, secret "sneak and peek" searches of physical property will be condoned in routine criminal investigations. Those searches can be conducted without knowledge of the property owner until a "reasonable" time after the search has occurred. No knowledge means no opportunity to contest the validity of the search, including such obvious infractions as rummaging through office drawers when the warrant authorizes a garage search, or even searching the wrong address.

On the money laundering front (Sections 301 through 377), the secretary of the treasury is empowered to label any jurisdiction a "primary money laundering concern," in which case foreign banks will be required to disclose their customers and transactions. Predictably, the identified countries will be those with low tax structures and strict financial privacy laws. Yet there is little evidence that tax havens are a magnet for dirty money. In fact, when money is transferred across borders and back again, the risk of detection is high. That serves as a deterrent to such transactions. To punish nations that harbor terrorists and their assets, we should shut off U.S. access to financial institutions that refuse to provide evidence associated with the September carnage. We should also invoke existing bilateral agreements, and negotiate new agreements, waiving bank secrecy and requiring mutual cooperation when prosecuting terrorist acts.

Finally, civil libertarians are rightly alarmed that the attorney general can detain, for seven days, non-citizens suspected of terrorism. After seven days, pursuant to Section 412 of the Act, deportation proceedings must commence or criminal charges must be filed. Originally, the Justice Department had asked for authority to detain suspects indefinitely without charge. Congress could not be persuaded to go along. But the final bill, for all practical purposes, allows expanded detention simply by charging the detainee with a technical immigration violation. And if a suspect cannot be deported, he can still be detained if the attorney general certifies every six months that national security is at stake.

To illustrate the magnitude and scope of that problem, the Wall Street Journal reported on Nov. 1 that seven Democrats had filed Freedom of Information Act requests for a detailed accounting from Attorney General John Ashcroft on the status of more than 1,000 detainees. The lawmakers cited reports that "some detainees have been denied access to their attorneys, proper food, or protection from … physical assault." Some of them were allegedly being held in solitary confinement even though they hadn't been charged with any criminal offense. According to a representative of the New York Legal Aid Society, several Arab detainees had been limited to one phone call per week to a lawyer and, if the line was busy, they had to wait another week.

Maybe those reports will turn out to be groundless. But it's time for some answers. Here's what the Washington Post had to say in an Oct. 31 editorial: "The Department of Justice continues to resist legitimate requests for information regarding the 1,017 people it acknowledges having detained in its investigation of the September 11 attacks…. The questions are pretty basic. How many of the 1,000-plus are still in custody? Who are they? What are the charges against them? What is the status of their cases? Where and under what circumstances are they being held? The department refuses not only to provide the answers but also to give a serious explanation of why it won't provide them."

Ultimately, the Supreme Court may have to clarify how the civil liberties / national security tradeoff will unfold. This past term, in Zadvydas v. Underdown, the Court held that immigrants who have committed crimes cannot be detained indefinitely, but must be deported within a reasonable period or released. Moreover, said the Court, temporary and even illegal immigrants, not just U.S. citizens, are entitled to due process. Still, the Court noted that different rules may apply to immigrants who are denied entry, suspected of terrorism, or considered to be national security risks.

Thus, the law is murky; and the legislation passed in the aftermath of September's events adds new elements of uncertainty. Nonetheless, the controlling principle is unambiguous. Any attempt by government to chip away at constitutionally guaranteed rights must be subjected to the most painstaking scrutiny to determine whether less invasive means could accomplish the same ends. The USA-PATRIOT anti-terrorism bill does not survive that demanding test. In a free society, we deserve better.

[shortnpretty]

Originally posted by LANMaster:
Getting tired of this reference. I do not always agree with Mulder. Now SnP may be a different story.


How about, "Great post, LAN"

HMMMMMMMMMMM......I'm just finding this LM.... Now, this statement could be taken different ways...care to elaborate??

[Rep]

Business Week online
April 17, 2003

PRIVACY MATTERS
By Jane Black

The System That Doesn't Safeguard Travel
The government's error-prone database of possible terrorists now has 13 million travelers' names, and once you're in, just try getting out

"As a public official, I appreciate and commend those trying to protect our nation against terrorist attacks," the letter from a municipal employee of Bothell, Wash., begins. "I also have concerns, specifically regarding the treatment of those who have been identified as potential risks. It has become apparent, over the course of my last few trips, that I am one of those individuals."

Put yourself in the shoes of this man, who wrote to his local congressman, Representative Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), last year. The man's listing as a possible security threat is a mistake. Yet every time he flies, he has to arrive at the airport three-and-a-half hours early to ensure enough time for the inevitable thorough search of his baggage.

And he's not only the only one who encounters trouble. On a recent trip, his co-workers, who were booked under the same reservation number, were refused boarding passes until he passed security. "I have now become known to staff as the person not to travel with," he wrote. "I am asking your help because all other attempts to clear my name have been futile."

INNOCENT AND TRAPPED. The letter is among a raft of documents offering new proof that government efforts to build an electronic tracking system of suspicious travelers simply aren't working. The documents, obtained by Washington (D.C.) privacy-advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) under the Freedom of Information Act, recount case after case of innocent travelers who are on the terrorist watch lists, yet have no way to remove themselves.

Since September 11, various federal agencies, including the State Dept., Customs Service, and FBI, have created lists of suspicious travelers, Americans and foreigners. All told, some 13 million people (equivalent to 4.5% of the U.S. population) are now on the terror watch list. Security experts and common sense say 99% of those pinpointed aren't terrorists.

The Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) says errors like these are the reason that it needs to build a better, more complete database of information to track and flag suspicious behavior (see BW Online, 3/27/03, "Putting the Blinders Back on Big Brother"). Security and privacy experts, however, warn that no software exists to do the job better. A look at the most sophisticated and successful systems used to detect credit-card fraud supports their case.

EASY TO SPOT. Antifraud software works because a large number of legal credit-card transactions and a large number of unlawful transactions occur each year, says Peter Swire, a professor of law at Ohio State University and the former privacy counselor during the Clinton Administration. According to consumer-payments newsletter The Nilson Report, 21.1 billion credit-card transactions took place in 2001. With all that data, a change in patterns is easy to spot. If John Doe usually spends $1,000 a month on groceries, clothing, and airline tickets, and then suddenly buys two new cars, the system is going to flag it.

Antifraud software also works well because most credit-card thieves act the same way: They find or steal a card, and immediately use it at a convenience store or a gas station. If it works, it's off to the jewelry store.

That's not the case with terrorists. Since September 11, only a few terrorist attacks around the globe have occurred that might help authorities build a profile. Compare that to more than 30 billion credit-card transactions over the same period in the U.S. alone.

"FINGERING INNOCENTS." Terrorists also rely on the element of surprise. Those who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 parked a van full of explosives in the underground parking lot. The September 11 hijackers used box cutters and trained pilots to turn four jet planes into missiles. Richard Reid tried to blow up a passenger jet by packing explosives in his shoe.

"Antifraud software is designed to help [credit-card companies] cut their losses.... It's not designed to jump-start an investigation or curtail any criminal activity," says Frank Abagnale, a leading authority on forgery and embezzlement and the inspiration for the Steven Spielberg blockbuster Catch Me If You Can.

Moreover, while you might not mind the occasional call from your credit-card company, you would mind getting on the government's terrorist watch list. "The problem with even the best-designed system is that you end up fingering thousands of innocents without ever finding the guilty person," says Bruce Schneier, a security expert who has written frequently about the trade-offs between liberty and security.

THE WRONG GUY. In a simple database with a 1% error rate -- not an unreasonable estimate considering the quality of the data the government plans to feed into its terrorist watch system -- Schneier says only one guilty person would be included for every 100 people erroneously added. Even worse, you wouldn't know you were on the list until you tried to board a plane or apply for a mortgage or a job.

The heedless march toward database surveillance will only lead to more cases like Rochester (N.Y.) resident Asif Iqbal who, unfortunately for him, shares his name with a terrorist that's in custody at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. According to EPIC documents, Iqbal was stopped at check-in as he tried to board a plane on Feb. 18 out of Rochester. The flight system indicated that he was a risk and should be denied a boarding pass.

After an interview with the police and an hour-and-a-half wait while airline staff received clearance from the FBI and other federal agencies, he was allowed to fly. By that time, however, Iqbal had missed his flight. The airline promised it would not happen again and offered him an $8 coupon to buy breakfast.

"VERY DISAPPOINTED." The next day, when Iqbal showed up, he was again denied boarding and was "forced to endure the agonizing process" again, he wrote in a letter to his congresswoman, Representative Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.). He says authorities and airport representatives explained that he would have to endure this rigorous background check "each and every time before I'm allowed to board a plane."

"I completely understand the measures taken by airport security since the September 11 attacks," he continued. "But isn't American airport-security technology more advanced than this current program?" In the closing of his letter, Iqbal wrote: "I expected so much more from the United States government and find myself very disappointed by it at this time." So am I.

[shortnpretty]

bump

ummmmm.......LM??? #56

[Stoner]

The following article is not directly related to the Patriot Act i or ll, but it does show how our rights are being eroded with poorly written State and Federal laws that have a direct impact on computers, the internet and the security of digital transmitions.



http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1032977,00.asp

New Law Putting Net—and You—at Risk
By Jim Rapoza


As of this moment, the security level of the Internet has taken a big hit. And it's not because of a new worm or some nefarious hacker collective; it's because of a set of badly conceived laws that have been passed by several states.


These measures, referred to as Super DMCA laws (see Freedom-to-Tinker's Super DMCA page) are badly designed laws promoted by the Motion Picture Association of America. Super DMCA legislation has already been passed in Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Michigan, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Wyoming.

Now Super DMCA has claimed one of its first victims, the award-winning open-source application LaBrea, which is designed to stop the spread of worms such as Nimda across the Internet. Tom Liston, the developer of LaBrea, has stopped distribution of the program for fear of prosecution under the Illinois version of this law.



Why would a program that stops harmful worms from spreading run afoul of a law that is on the surface intended to stop cable theft? Because, like the less-damaging federal DMCA law, Super DMCA is overly broad and lacks common sense (see Peter Coffee's column on these laws).

One of the common aspects of these laws is that they make illegal any device or program that can "conceal or to assist another to conceal from any communication service provider or from any lawful authority the existence or place of origin or destination of any communication." Aside from LaBrea, this makes a whole set of common IT programs and hardware illegal, from firewalls to VPNs to privacy applications.

So if you live in one of these states, you are now breaking the law if you run a firewall. And if you're an IT admin that has all of your internal systems running on NAT, you could face as much as five years in prison and up to a quarter-million-dollar fine.

Tom Liston's LaBrea, which I named the most useful application of 2001 and which was also a finalist in eWEEK and PC Magazine's 2002 I3 Awards, clearly violates the letter if not the spirit of these laws.

Some would say that Liston probably wouldn't face any legal action, but under the federal DMCA, several companies and individuals have faced legal consequences for actions that had nothing to do with the original intent of the law. Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov was even jailed for a time under the DMCA.


Liston outlined several of these concerns to me in an e-mail exchange. He wrote: "The real issue here is that the law is just so utterly vague that you can't be sure of anything. Everyone has been telling me that I need to get a lawyer's opinion on this, but somehow hiring a lawyer to tell me whether or not I can legally give away what I know is perfectly legitimate software just strikes me as wrong. Just plain wrong."

Liston also told me that he had been working on a next-generation "LaBrea on steroids," but this is now in limbo until the Illinois law gets straightened out.

So now, possibly millions of people in these states are breaking the letter of these laws—with fines and jail time possible, if unlikely, penalties. And because of these laws, a highly effective program that stops the spread of worms is no longer available.



So if the spread of a worm ravages your company, you might want to thank the legislatures of Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Michigan, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Wyoming for making it more likely.

If you live in one of these states, or in a state that is considering one of these Super DMCA laws, you should contact your representatives immediately. And you might want to remind them that if they have any kind of normal IT setup, they are probably also breaking these laws.

For more information on the Super DMCA laws and to see where your state stands, go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Super DMCA page.

[Stoner]

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1023158,00.asp

IT Laws Defy Reality
By Peter Coffee


When eight states propose laws that could make it illegal to use a network firewall, it would be nice if working IT professionals could laugh it off. It would be nice if those who know better could assume that laws like these would fail as quickly and obviously as a measure that seeks to repeal the law of gravity.


Unfortunately, I've seen little in the history of cyber-law to inspire much hope that legislation will converge with common sense—not, that is, unless those who understand IT operations start taking a more active role in writing the rules.

Texas, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alaska, Tennessee and Colorado propose to forbid the use of any technology that conceals "the existence or place of origin or destination of any communication." Such as, for example, a router? Or a network address translator? Or any of several other basic tools of Internet connection and management?


From what I've seen, most legislative bodies routinely fail to understand the requirements of practical system administration and their difference from malicious mischief. The resulting laws can criminalize everyday practices.

For example, suppose I drafted an attempt at an anti-hacking law that made it a crime "to alter or remove information resident on a computer system without the permission of the person who originated that information"? That sounds good, until you realize that a system administrator could no longer purge the e-mail ~~~~~ of an employee who had left the company unless that former employee gave consent. In fact, that language is so badly drawn that I technically could not delete unsolicited commercial e-mail messages unless they contained a clause allowing me to do so.

Before you object that no competent body would write a law that could be interpreted in this way, consider this clause from the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime, passed in November 2001 and still binding on signatory nations: "Each Party shall adopt such legislative and other measures as may be necessary to establish as criminal offences under its domestic law, when committed intentionally, the serious hindering without right of the functioning of a computer system by inputting, transmitting, damaging, deleting, deteriorating, altering or suppressing computer data."

OK, let's say I'm a market research company. I make my living by sending out millions of e-mail messages with embedded HTML tags, devised to send uniquely identifiable queries to my server when a message is read—thereby to determine which e-mail addresses are promptly receiving and reading my customers' commercial content. Suppose that a popular e-mail client application, or an ISP's e-mail server software, recognizes and blocks that identifiable query, under the control of an end-user privacy preference setting. Does that "intentionally hinder the function" of my business intelligence collection system, "without right," by "suppressing computer data"? Can you afford to go to court and see what the judges say?


I want to be fair to those who make good-faith efforts to strike a careful balance. The Explanatory Report, for example, that accompanies the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime explains its intentions in the key area of whether possession or use of security testing tools would be inappropriately criminalized: "As a reasonable compromise the Convention restricts its scope to cases where the devices are objectively designed, or adapted, primarily for the purpose of committing an offence." This language is intended to exclude tools that have legitimate security assessment applications. I've heard many security professionals decry the Convention's criminalization of their tools, apparently without appreciating the effort that's been made to avoid that result.

It seems to me, however, that engineers hear the word "law" and think "the way the world behaves." Legislators hear the word "law" and think "how we're going to make the voters and campaign contributors happy." When legislators' declared laws conflict with engineers' discovered laws, one can't expect the politicians to apologize and change. They're more likely to compound their original errors.


Enterprises already strive to guide the creation of laws that affect the taxes they'll pay or the competition they'll face. Enterprise professionals should likewise seek involvement in processes that redraw the IT playing field.