The Freedom Thread

[BigJon]

France bans broadcasting violent video by ordinary citizens.
Hold on to your freedoms, value them dear.

[jamiebk]

Holy crap....that's really crossing the line! What's next? Will they start arresting anyone who reports a crime?

[Trumpetmaster]

Absurd, Idiots, .....................

How stupid can they be?

Not that I was planning a trip there but after reading that
article.... I don't think I would ever set foot on French soil......

Their heads are so far up their a$$es on this one........

[analog]

Sounds like maybe they're setting the stage for a police showdown with those Parisian car-burning street mobs . Mayor Daly (senior) sure woulda welcomed such power during the '68 Democratic convention.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/1553/

Chicago '68
An Introduction
They called it "Czechago." Nowhere else during that decade was dissension so dramatically opposed as on the streets of Chicago during the turbulent Democratic National Convention in August 1968. The barbed wire-laced jeeps in Grant Park evoked images of Russian tanks in the streets of Prague....

Or maybe it's just the French auto insurance companies pushing it....

[barfle]

And to think they helped us win our freedom.

The horror. The horror.

[DavidS]

They must be barmy.
Had that been the law in Israel when Rabin was assassinated, it would have been far more difficult to nail the perpetrator.

[Trumpetmaster]

And to think they helped us win our freedom.

The horror. The horror.

We should send them a "Statue Of Liberty"

[jamiebk]

And people wonder why we distrust the government??? Not unexpectedly the the Patriot Act has been misused to to the point of violating our liberty, freedom and civil rights...ironically the very rights we fought for in many wars:

Justice Department: FBI acted illegally
Audit finds agency misused Patriot Act to obtain information on citizens

The Associated Press
Updated: 7:50 a.m. PT March 9, 2007

WASHINGTON - The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States, underreporting for three years how often it forced businesses to turn over customer data, a Justice Department audit concluded Friday.

FBI agents sometimes demanded the data without proper authorization, according to a 126-page audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. At other times, the audit found, the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances.

The audit blames agent error and shoddy record-keeping for the bulk of the problems and did not find any indication of criminal misconduct.

Still, “we believe the improper or illegal uses we found involve serious misuses of national security letter authorities,” the audit concludes.

At issue are the security letters, a power outlined in the Patriot Act that the Bush administration pushed through Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The letters, or administrative subpoenas, are used in suspected terrorism and espionage cases. They allow the FBI to require telephone companies, Internet service providers, banks, credit bureaus and other businesses to produce highly personal records about their customers or subscribers—without a judge’s approval.

‘Uncovering serious problems’
The Justice Department, already facing congressional criticism over its firing of eight U.S. attorneys, began notifying lawmakers of the audit’s contents late Thursday. Justice spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said Attorney General Alberto Gonzales “commends the work of the inspector general in uncovering serious problems in the FBI’s use of NSLs.”

A spokesman at the FBI declined to comment on the findings.

Sen. Charles Schumer, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee that oversees the FBI, called the reported findings “a profoundly disturbing breach of public trust.”

“Somebody has a lot of explaining to do,” said Schumer, D-N.Y.

Fine’s audit also says the FBI failed to send follow-up subpoenas to telecommunications companies that were told to expect them, the officials said.

The subject of legal battles
Those cases involved so-called exigent letters to alert the companies that subpoenas would be issued shortly to gather more information, the officials said. But in many examples, the subpoenas were never sent, the officials said.

The FBI has since caught up with those omissions, either with national security letters or subpoenas, one official said.

National security letters have been the subject of legal battles in two federal courts because recipients were barred from telling anyone about them.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the Bush administration over what the ACLU described as the security letter’s gag on free speech.

A federal appeals judge in New York warned in May that government’s ability to force companies to turn over information about its customers and keep quiet about it was probably unconstitutional.

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11100916/

[analog]

Is there a tally sheet somewhere showing how many individuals have suffered a "damnum" (actionable loss) by activities stemming from patriot act?

I for one am glad the feds are snooping around. They're doubtless learning the process as they go.

The significant line in that article is : "The audit ........ did not find any indication of criminal misconduct. "

And it should've been headlined thus:

"Audit brings FBI's investigations closer to 'By the Book' ".

Don't let 'em spin you up from either extreme.

Check this blog:
http://lesterhhunt.blogspot.com/2007/01 ... house.html

especially last 3 paragraphs

[Shapley]

I believe the article I read said that about 3500 individuals have been investigated in something like 9300 incidents, many simply involving failure to follow up the requests for data with the proper paperwork. I'm sure more will be known in the future, but I seem to recall that very few people made a stink about President's Clinton's illegal access to something like 900 FBI files when he was in office.

[Shapley]

Apparently, I'm mistaken. The 3500 number represents the number of investigations that the FBI reported, not the actual number of investigations that were conducted. The article does not cite the actual number of persons investigated, I'll have to look further.

[piqaboo]

I seem to recall that very few people made a stink about President's Clinton's illegal access to something like 900 FBI files when he was in office.

I on the other hand remember a very large stink.
I have this feeling that were it a more recent President who'd veiwed the FBI files and a more distant one who let FBI collect the data, I'd read an argument on this board that 'viewing legally collected data is not as bad as illegally collecting data' and in fact, someone would provide justification. Congress is not the sole home of partisanship and whitewashing.

[Shapley]

Piq,

I am aware that I am not above partisanship. Nor do I consider partisanship to be necessarily a bad thing. If bi-partisanship or non-partisanship requires the abandoning of principle in favour of expedience, then I am opposed to it.

The FBI collects all sorts of data - unsubstantiated rumours, 'tips' from unreliable sources, even outright lies, on individuals that are under investigation. A typical FBI file is full of such raw data, or so I'm led to believe. I'm not opposed to the collection of such data, since it is by investigating such information that hard data is obtained. It has to be filtered, however, before it is disseminated to parties outside the investigative unit. The President is outside of the investigative unit.

There is no evidence that this President has personally accessed anyone's FBI files. The present complaint involves the collection of data, or specifically the means of collection of data, by the investigative unit itself. If it comes to pass that this President is personally accessing that data, or that it is being disseminated outside of the investigative community, we can then discuss my reaction to this information. Until then, it is merely speculation.

I'm glad you recall a large stink about the FBI files issue, but I don't. I recall an effort by my party to create a large stink, and I recall a collective yawn by the other party and by the majority of the American people. Now it is the other party being stirred to a frenzy over the issue of unwarranted wiretaps and other means of collecting data that will find its way into the type of files that the previous administration had had such liberal access to.

I don't oppose the collection of the data as long as safeguards are in place to protect the raw data once it is collected. You apparently prefer that the safeguards be implemented prior to collection, because you have less confidence in the security of the data once collected. It appears to go back to the liberty vs. security argument, and how much liberty you're willing to surrender in the name of security. As I've said in earlier posts, I think that trade-off has to shift towards the security side in times of war, and we are in a time of war.

V/R
Shapley

[jamiebk]

As I've said in earlier posts, I think that trade-off has to shift towards the security side in times of war, and we are in a time of war.

V/R
Shapley

I do not believe that a Declaration of War has ever been advanced. The administration seems pretty loose with that term (war). Many, many legal issues are triggered and arise with a full declaration of war.

[Shapley]

Perhaps, but you can't deny that we were attacked, and that we have deployed armies in response to that attack. Whether that is legally a 'war' is moot, IMHO.

[jamiebk]

Perhaps, but you can't deny that we were attacked, and that we have deployed armies in response to that attack. Whether that is legally a 'war' is moot, IMHO.

That's total BS Shap....Iraq had nothing to do with 911. I think that is pretty well established.

[piqaboo]

Shapley, if its 'moot', then why dont they just declare the war and give themselves legal & official standing?

[Shapley]

I didn't say Iraq had anything to do with 9/11.

Have you forgotten that we still have troops in Afghanistan?

However, to say that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 is not to say that 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq.

[barfle]

Perhaps, but you can't deny that we were attacked, and that we have deployed armies in response to that attack. Whether that is legally a 'war' is moot, IMHO.

Since the government is responsible for carrying out armed agression, killing of declared enemies, and occupying foreign lands, the legality of the action is far from moot.

And those who attacked us are not those we are taking up arms against. This includes the Taliban.

[Haggis@wk]

Gramscian damage

The U.S., fortunately, is still on a demographic expansion wave and will be till at least 2050. But if the Islamists achieve their dream of nuking “crusader” cities, they’ll make crusaders out of the U.S., too. And this time, a West with a chauvinized America at its head would smite the Saracen with weapons that would destroy entire populations and fuse Mecca into glass. The horror of our victory would echo for a thousand years.

I remain more optimistic than this. I think there is still an excellent chance that the West can recover from suicidalism without going through a fevered fascist episode and waging a genocidal war. But to do so, we have to do more than recognize Stalin’s memes; we have to reject them. We have to eject postmodern leftism from our universities, transnational progressivism from our politics, and volk-Marxism from our media.

The process won’t be pretty. But I fear that if the rest of us don’t hound the po-mo Left and its useful idiots out of public life with attack and ridicule and shunning, the hard Right will sooner or later get the power to do it by means that include a lot of killing. I don’t want to live in that future, and I don’t think any of my readers do, either. If we want to save a liberal, tolerant civilization for our children, we’d better get to work.