Category Archives: Stupidity

Security guru (and personal hero) Bruce Schneier has written an excellent article on the current Presidential regime’s abuse of power. Excerpt:

bq.. The result is that the president’s wartime powers, with its armies, battles, victories, and congressional declarations, now extend to the rhetorical “War on Terror”: a war with no fronts, no boundaries, no opposing army, and — most ominously — no knowable “victory.” Investigations, arrests, and trials are not tools of war. But according to the Yoo memo, the president can define war however he chooses, and remain “at war” for as long as he chooses.

This is indefinite dictatorial power. And I don’t use that term lightly; the very definition of a dictatorship is a system that puts a ruler above the law. In the weeks after 9/11, while America and the world were grieving, Bush built a legal rationale for a dictatorship. Then he immediately started using it to avoid the law.

p.. It’s a must-read, whether you’re a Republicrat or Democratan.

Woohoo! Finally, some sense has found its way to DC.

From Yahoo!:

bq.. The Senate on Friday refused to reauthorize major portions of the USA Patriot Act after critics complained they infringed too much on Americans’ privacy and liberty, dealing a huge defeat to the Bush administration and Republican leaders.

In a crucial vote early Friday, the bill’s Senate supporters were not able to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster by Sens. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and their allies. The final vote was 52-47.

President Bush, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Republicans congressional leaders had lobbied fiercely to make most of the expiring Patriot Act provisions permanent.

They also supported new safeguards and expiration dates to the act’s two most controversial parts: authorization for roving wiretaps, which allow investigators to monitor multiple devices to keep a target from evading detection by switching phones or computers; and secret warrants for books, records and other items from businesses, hospitals and organizations such as libraries.

Feingold, Craig and other critics said those efforts weren’t enough, and have called for the law to be extended in its present form so they can continue to try and add more civil liberties safeguards. But Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker
Dennis Hastert have said they won’t accept a short-term extension of the law.

If a compromise is not reached, the 16 Patriot Act provisions expire on Dec. 31, but the expirations have enormous exceptions. Investigators will still be able to use those powers to complete any investigation that began before the expiration date and to initiate new investigations of any alleged crime that began before Dec. 31, according to a provision in the original law. There are ongoing investigations of every known terrorist group, including al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamic Jihad and the Zarqawi group in
Iraq, and all the Patriot Act tools could continue to be used in those investigations.

Five Republicans voted against the reauthorization: Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, John Sununu of New Hampshire, Craig and Frist. Two Democrats voted to extend the provisions: Sens. Tim Johnson of South Dakota and Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

Frist, R-Tenn., changed his vote at the last moment after seeing the critics would win. He decided to vote with the prevailing side so he could call for a new vote at any time. He immediately objected to an offer of a short term extension from Democrats, saying the House won’t approve it and the president won’t sign it.

“We have more to fear from terrorism than we do from this Patriot Act,” Frist warned.

If the Patriot Act provisions expire, Republicans say they will place the blame on Democrats in next year’s midterm elections. “In the war on terror, we cannot afford to be without these vital tools for a single moment,” White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. “The time for Democrats to stop standing in the way has come.”

But the Patriot Act’s critics got a boost from a New York Times report saying Bush authorized the National Security Agency to monitor the international phone calls and international e-mails of hundreds — perhaps thousands — of people inside the United States. Previously, the NSA typically limited its domestic surveillance to foreign embassies and missions and obtained court orders for such investigations.

“I don’t want to hear again from the attorney general or anyone on this floor that this government has shown it can be trusted to use the power we give it with restraint and care,” said Feingold, the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act in 2001.

“It is time to have some checks and balances in this country,” shouted Sen. Patrick Leahy, ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. “We are more American for doing that.”

p.. Exactly, Mr. Leahy. Now just do us a favor and remember saying this when/if the Democrats ever gain power again.

The Memory Hole has an interesting article showing that the Justice Department has censored a Supreme Court decision by redacting a quote that discusses the abuse of power by the Government. Talk about self-referential…

bq.. The Justice Department tipped its hand in its ongoing legal war with the ACLU over the Patriot Act. Because the matter is so sensitive, the Justice Dept is allowed to black out those passages in the ACLU’s court filings that it feels should not be publicly released.

Ostensibly, they would use their powers of censorship only to remove material that truly could jeopardize US operations. But in reality, what did they do? They blacked out a quotation from a Supreme Court decision:

_”The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect ‘domestic security.’ Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent.”_

The mind reels at such a blatant abuse of power (and at the sheer chutzpah of using national security as an excuse to censor a quotation about using national security as an excuse to stifle dissent).

It’s hard to imagine a more public, open document than a decision written by the Supreme Court. It is incontestably public property: widely reprinted online and on paper; poured over by generations of judges, attorneys, prosecutors, and law students; quoted for centuries to come in court cases and political essays.

Yet the Justice Department had the incomprehensible arrogance and gall to strip this quotation from a court document, as if it represented a grave threat to the republic. Luckily, the court slapped down this redaction and several others. If it hadn’t, we would’ve been left with the impression that this was a legitimate redaction, that whatever was underneath the thick black ink was something so incredibly sensitive and damaging that it must be kept from our eyes.

Now we know the truth. Think about this the next time you see a black mark on a public document.

Excellent Forbes article by Cato analyst Radley Balko:

bq.. This country’s laws are being rewritten by puritans, prigs and busybodies.

Earlier this year, when Major League Baseball questioned Congress’ right to hold public hearings on steroid use in the big leagues, Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-Va.) and ranking minority member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) sent back a striking response. Davis and Waxman told baseball that the committee “may at any time conduct investigations of any matter.”

Any time. Any matter. And this from the congressional committee charged with curbing government excesses.

But “any time, any matter” jurisdiction is fast becoming the norm in Washington. Think Terry Schiavo and gay marriage. Think obesity, the “crisis” that has Congress poking around in your kid’s lunchbox and in your refrigerator. Think the drug war, which gives cops access to our medicine cabinets, doctors’ offices and hospices.

If you think the feds are bad, state governments are even worse. The Nanny State is descending, from 50 capitals.

Via Bruce Schneier’s blog:

bq.. The Transportation Security Administration misled the public about its role in obtaining personal information about 12 million airline passengers to test a new computerized system that screens for terrorists, according to a government investigation.

The report, released Friday by Homeland Security Department Acting Inspector General Richard Skinner, said the agency misinformed individuals, the press and Congress in 2003 and 2004. It stopped short of saying TSA lied.

p. I’ll say it: the TSA lied.

Here’s the report. It’s worth reading. And when you read it, keep in mind that it’s written by the DHS’s own Inspector General. I presume a more independent investigator would be even more severe. Not that the report isn’t severe, mind you.

Another AP article has more details:

bq.. The report cites several occasions where TSA officials made inaccurate statements about passenger data:

* In September 2003, the agency’s Freedom of Information Act staff received hundreds of requests from Jet Blue passengers asking if the TSA had their records. After a cursory search, the FOIA staff posted a notice on the TSA Web site that it had no JetBlue passenger data. Though the FOIA staff found JetBlue passenger records in TSA’s possession in May, the notice stayed on the Web site for more than a year.

* In November 2003, TSA chief James Loy incorrectly told the Governmental Affairs Committee that certain kinds of passenger data were not being used to test passenger prescreening.

* In September 2003, a technology magazine reporter asked a TSA spokesman whether real data were used to test the passenger prescreening system. The spokesman said only fake data were used; the responses “were not accurate,” the report said.

p.

Read the rest of the article.

From BoingBoing:

Deirdre McNamer (how appropriate) wrote a story in The New Yorker magazine in October 2002 about a 28-year-old pinko-gray-skinned, blue-eyed, red-blond-haired criminal called Christian Michael Longo who used the alias ‘John Thomas Christopher.’ His alias was placed on the DNFL used by the Transportation Security Administration. He was arrested in January 2002 but his alias was not removed from the DNFL. On March 23, 2002, 70-year-old brown-skinned, dark-eyed, gray-haired grandmother Johnnie Thomas was informed that she was on the master terrorist list and would have special security measures applied every time she flew. Indeed, the poor lady found that she was repeatedly delayed by a scurry of activity when she presented her tickets at an airline counter, extra X-rays of her checked baggage, supplementary examination of her hand-baggage and extra wanding at the entrance gates. On one occasion she was told that she had graduated to the exalted status labeled, ‘Not allowed to fly.’ She discovered that there was no method available for having ‘her’ name removed from the DNFL; indeed, one person from her local FBI office dismissively told her to hire a lawyer (although ironically, he refused to identify himself). An employee of the TSA informed her that ‘four other law-abiding John Thomases had called to complain.’

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