McCain Supports Warrantless Domestic Surveillance 650
Posted
by
timothy
from the just-lookin'-just-listenin' dept.
from the just-lookin'-just-listenin' dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "While there have been shifting reports about McCain's view on warrantless wiretapping, nothing could be clearer than the latest comment by McCain adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin, who said, 'We do not know what lies ahead in our nation's fight against radical Islamic extremists, but John McCain will do everything he can to protect Americans from such threats, including asking the telecoms for appropriate assistance to collect intelligence against foreign threats to the United States as authorized by Article II of the Constitution.' Article II, of course, is what Bush has argued gives the President virtually unlimited power during war, and McCain has already voted in favor of Telecom Immunity, though he sometimes mentions, to those asking for accountability, wanting to hold hearings about what the telecoms did."
Misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
Good old Slashdot political smearing.
Obama's Stance (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to read it from his site, there's a pdf that explains [barackobama.com]:
Strengthen Warrantless Wiretap Approval Process: Barack Obama opposed the Bush Administrationâ(TM)s initial policy on warrantless wiretaps because it crossed the line between protecting our national security and eroding the civil liberties of American citizens. As president, Obama would update the Foreign Intelligence Paid for by Obama for America Surveillance Act to provide greater oversight and accountability to the congressional Intelligence Committees to prevent future threats to the rule of law.
Doesn't really matter in a two party system though, does it? Take what you can get over the crap I read about in this article from McCain's campaign.
Damnit, why did the USSR have to collapse? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perpetual War? (Score:5, Insightful)
Brilliant!
What defines a war? Does it have to be against another country? Can it be...
a war on terror [wikipedia.org]?
a war on drugs [wikipedia.org]?
a war on cancer [wikipedia.org]?
a war on poverty [wikipedia.org]?
Re:radical Islamic moderates (Score:2, Insightful)
There's no fricking practical need in the world to throw that "Islamic" adjective on there. It sounds great because there's some implied racism associated with Muslims and Islam but it really rubs me the wrong way.
How about we focus on terrorism in general? How about we make it hard for ANYONE to perpetrate terror attacks on our country?
Re:Parity (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:McFlipFlop (Score:5, Insightful)
just look at his campain financiers (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Parity (Score:5, Insightful)
Legal externally (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:radical Islamic moderates (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Business as usual (Score:3, Insightful)
They don't have to (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Parity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Parity (Score:5, Insightful)
Responding to my own post.
Yes, I can imagine plenty of situations where a president might commit an act that, while technically illegal, prevents more harm than it causes. By the same token, I cannot imagine any such situation that could not be horribly abused.
Warrantless wiretaps could catch criminals, but it is precisely the penchant for abusing authority that we, as human beings, have that led to laws requiring a court order for warrants. Bush has abused that authority, and in doing so has broken the law.
Warrantless wiretaps may be useful for preventing crimes and terrorism ... but only in the hands of a saint. Bush is no saint, and neither is McCain.
Re:McFlipFlop (Score:1, Insightful)
They are clear in what they believe and in what to do, but they will change their mind if they find something that makes them think that they are wrong.
Re:Damnit, why did the USSR have to collapse? (Score:3, Insightful)
I RTFA and... (Score:1, Insightful)
The title of the article is "McCain: I'd Spy on Americans Secretly, Too"
And the article includes this gem:
"The Globe's Charlie Savage pushed further, asking , "So is that a no, in other words, federal statute trumps inherent power in that case, warrantless surveillance?" To which McCain answered, "I don't think the president has the right to disobey any law."
McCain's embrace of extrajudicial domestic wiretapping is effectively a bounce-back from Fish's comments, made at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in Connecticut last month."
This is clearly written by someone who already doesn't like McCain. I'm a huge supporter of Obama, but the article is just pure anti-McCain propaganda, and not worth the read.
Article II exists, and no one can change it. I suppose what everything hinges on is your definition of 'wartime', hopefully McCain's isn't as broad as Bush's. If occupation = war then we're going to be at war forever under that definition.
Short Constitution (Score:3, Insightful)
Dear Senator McCain,
Please obtain a new copy of the Constitution, and continue reading it all the way through Amendment XXVII.
Thank you,
The American People
Re:Hedging our Bets with ParanoidLinux (Score:2, Insightful)
Erm no, this is why you need to stop pretending that TOR is a valid cryptographic solution "providing everyone plays fair".
Re:Parity (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a system of checks and balances (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I consider the original FISA requirements to be reasonable in the context of an intelligence collection mission (not traditional law enforcement). However, what Bush did to FISA is an abuse of Executive power specifically because it removes not only the weaker proactive checks, but also the stronger retroactive balances of an investigative trail.
Re:radical Islamic moderates (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but we'll ALWAYS piss someone off just by existing. It's not an excuse for terrorism.
Re:radical Islamic moderates (Score:1, Insightful)
I've said it before (Score:5, Insightful)
and I'll say it again:
The extent to which those who watch over us are unwilling to be watched by us is the precise extent to which we are not a free and just society.
This has nothing to do with war, or terrorism. It is simply a matter of accountability. The people have a right to know what our elected officials do in the name of ensuring our safety, regardless of whether they actually live up to that goal or not. That we are not able to do so is the true barometer of our freedom, despite whatever a centuries-old piece of paper might proclaim.
Re:Parity (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not surprising that McCain will follow suit. McCain lost my respect when he started flip-flopping like a fish out of water. Now it seems every day brings another reason not to trust him.
Re:radical Islamic moderates (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Damnit, why did the USSR have to collapse? (Score:5, Insightful)
The threat is manufactured, those in power know exactly what they are doing. It's all laid out by right wing think tanks in a plan called The Project for a New American Century [wikipedia.org]
Re:Perpetual War? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:radical Islamic moderates (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Parity (Score:5, Insightful)
DISCLAIMER: this is purely speculation, although I consider it in character for the current US administration.
Re:radical Islamic moderates (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:McFlipFlop (Score:3, Insightful)
My loathing of social conservative, do-gooder, busybodies is beyond my dislike of the socialist tendencies of Obama.
McCain is such an obvious fear-mongering asshole. Such a condescending prick. How the fuck are republicans impressed by that shitbag?
When you're selling fear (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:radical Islamic moderates (Score:2, Insightful)
If you butcher people's families you can bloody well expect them to come and try to kill you right back.
Re:Unfortunately... (Score:1, Insightful)
2. Obama will be 4 more years of Jimmy Carter, and we all know how well that went...
Re:Parity (Score:1, Insightful)
while the Dems are fighting to gather everyone that hates bush (no pun intended)
When it's all said and done, whoever is elected will be self serving and further their and their party's agenda and the working american people will be screwed outright no matter what.
This is a fact, it happened under nixon, ford, carter, regan, bush, clinton, and then bush II turned it up a notch. Anyone expecting anything different this time needs to read the definition of insane.
They install their buddies into the important offices that bake a difference, tell the rest of the world to F themselves with a statue of liberty replica and continue to bully everyone else.
Yes I am an american and I believe the FIRST thing any real leader needs to do is publicly apologize to the rest of the world for the USA's actions and ask that a forum be convened to find out how we can be better global citizens as a country.
But I am sure that Hitler will be reborn as the new pope before that happens.
Re:radical Islamic moderates (Score:5, Insightful)
You are not pissing them off by existing.
You are pissing them off by killing and torturing them.
Re:radical Islamic moderates (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Parity (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the contempt that Bush shows for the rule of law. And it's what he got away with, and thanks to that, what future presidents will get away with.
Re:Perpetual War? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Parity (Score:5, Insightful)
Who knows what might happen when he gets in office, though.
That's a stupid objection that could be applied anywhere to anyone. Why bother with what the candidates say or have done at all, in that case? "Vote Hitler! I know he *said* he'd kill all the Jews, but who knows what might happen when he gets in office?"
Re:Article I Makes Congress More Powerful (Score:2, Insightful)
You show me where the Constitution says that the Executive can fail to enforce a law passed by Congress. All the stunts you mention are prohibited by Article II, Section 3 [wikisource.org]:
Now show me where that explicit and unambiguous instruction is contradicted in the Constitution.
Re:radical Islamic moderates (Score:5, Insightful)
The Taliban may be the the ONLY target we can justify over there, and a) we quit going after them, and b) we gave them all their money and weapons in the 70s (I think the 70s?)
If we got invaded by some nation bent on wiping out "radical christianity," you don't think a bunch of heavily armed down-home rednecks with a hand-bound copy of the Anarchist's Cookbook wouldn't be equipping their children so they could get that much closer to the invaders? Insurgents, indeed.
Re:Damnit, why did the USSR have to collapse? (Score:2, Insightful)
One of the fundamental goals of a terrorist is to evoke change in society. If a few hundred people a year were killed by terrorist car bombing, mall shootings, etc., in the continental US, think of the phsycological impacts.
People were wound tight after a uniquely over-the-top attack on 9/11. Imagine what it would be like if the average Joe or Jane started to worry about IEDs made to look like a pile of garbage next to the expressway on their way to work.
Allowing a very small contingent of people to hold a sword of Damocles over the head of a given society does more harm to societal operations and evolution than lightning strikes or car accidents, and they have to be dealt with proactively (militarily, economically, diplomatically, etc.) Doing so after an attack lets the terrorists achieve their objective - terror.
Hyperbole and smoke, or substantiated story? (Score:5, Insightful)
Citations, please?
Cheers,
Terrorism is what we want. (Score:3, Insightful)
The real reason all of these stupid decisions are being made is because we have no representation in government. Power is concentrated in the media, which is a for-profit enterprise, the military, which the biggest part of our for-profit economy, and the executive branch, where we have no voting authority over the cabinet that infests it, who also through strange coincidence go on to or come from large corporations who participate in huge government contracts.
Our involvement in the middle east has been a disaster for ONE HUNDRED fucking years. The only thing that's changed in the last twenty or thirty is that they are finally fighting back effectively. As the most powerful and morally hypocritical force in history, we're finding that we have no palate for our own medicine.
More of the same (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Parity (Score:4, Insightful)
While it is very, very unlikely that the FISA court would leak a request for a wiretap, if the request were groundless/abusive enough, I suppose it is a possibility.
Re:Parity (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing that can really throw the federal bench out of whack is if you had a president and justice department who was pressuring federal judges and prosecutors to bring (or not bring) cases based upon a political agenda. Somehow, the system had been pretty good about that until Bush and the Gonzalez Justice Department came along. Even Ashcroft, who I disagree with totally, was an honest justice who put the Constitution before political gain. But not 'Berto Gonzalez, who is probably the most crooked Attorney General since the late 1800s. The funny thing is that these guys got elected pushing the notion that the judiciary was crooked and "activist" and then turned around and made it crooked and activist.
Even though the reign of these little shits is coming to an end, it's going to take a committed leader to chase the rats out of all the little nooks and crannies of our judicial system. It can be done, however. Now that the Dem nomination is settled, I think we'll see some of the prosecutors in Congress (Leahy, Conyers) start to dig into the meat of the criminal activity of the last eight years, and I think the filthy way they prosecuted the Alabama governor will be the starting place. It's going to be an interesting five months.
I hope Senator McCain really pushes the warrantless eavesdropping thing hard. It's the kind of thing that goes against most Americans' deeply held beliefs and it will show just what McCain is made of. "War on Terror" my pink hairy ass.
Re:And? (Score:4, Insightful)
At no point in my 36 years have Republicans been any more conservative than Democrats.
Re:radical Islamic moderates (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean other than that most of the terrorists they refer to actually happen to be Muslim?
It sounds great because there's some implied racism associated with Muslims and Islam but it really rubs me the wrong way.
There's no "implied racism" there: it's a fact that a large fraction of the people who have been perpetrating terrorism against the US have been Muslim.
You know what has always pissed me off about McCain and his cohorts (and many others too) when talking about terrorism? Calling it "Islamic terrorism"
They're calling it "Islamic terrorism" because, say, Catholic terrorism, Buddhist terrorism, or atheist terrorism simply aren't problems for the US right now.
Re:Parity (Score:1, Insightful)
Who knows what might happen when he gets in office, though.
That's a stupid objection that could be applied anywhere to anyone. Why bother with what the candidates say or have done at all, in that case? "Vote Hitler! I know he *said* he'd kill all the Jews, but who knows what might happen when he gets in office?"
Not true. The OP describes a *skeptical* approach to politicians' promises, which is healthy, whereas your facetious example is *naive*.
Big difference!
Laughable conclusions. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not divide up the middle east? Because it doesn't belong to us, and we lack the cultural understanding to effectively govern it.
The Japanese, Germans, and other prisoners of war were not tortured, as far as I'm aware, in WWI or WWII. Torture in the War on Terror is officially approved as long as you don't call it torture.
There's been no decline in military spending since WWII. We have hundreds of more military installations around the world, and we're building many permanent installations right now in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have not left any significant amount of the bases we established nearly seventy years ago.
Every single improvement in American life since WWII has been the result of popular movement, and the government has been dragged with it kicking, screaming, and killing it's own citizenry in the process.
Re:Parity (Score:1, Insightful)
Recently a bunch of students were arrested for either participating in a riot, or inciting one. The arresting officers filled out much of the paperwork identically. The arrests were thrown out because the police had done blanket arrests.
It's a similar thing. Having blanket warrants is too easy to abuse. Not saying the local arrests were not justified, but we need to checks and balances to prevent falling into some fascist state.
Re:Parity (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:radical Islamic moderates (Score:3, Insightful)
Um, because then he would have to support wiretaps and investigations of anti-abortion groups that hav e used or approved of terror tactics against abortion clinics and doctors. That would piss off his right-wing religious extremists.
You see he wants to make clear that it will only be used against the "bad" terrorists, and not the "good" terrorists.
Re:bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
Second, it's sad that you don't believe in the same Republic that the founding fathers did.
I'm proud of most of our post-war work, if not some of the terrorism we committed during the war. It was our inability to control the machine that we created that has led to our current situation, just as Dwight Eisenhower predicted.
Wikipedia! Providing accurate histories of both sides of Western thought since 2001!
Re:radical Islamic moderates (Score:4, Insightful)
Puts a whole different spin on invading and occupying a country that poses no articulable strategic or tactical threat on the basis of "spreading democracy"...
Re:Parity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No it isn't, you're full of crap (Score:3, Insightful)
Are they trying to pander to some particular interest group, some noisy part of their
parties political base, or are trying to pander to more general concerns?
Re:Article I Makes Congress More Powerful (Score:3, Insightful)
The president is not the judge of whether a law is un-constitutional. The Supreme Court is the only judge of that. So if a president thinks a law is un-Constitutional, the Constitution says he has to ask the Court, and they decide. Which is what in fact happens all the time, when the president is not violating the Constitution.
Which Bush has indeed done every time he's written a Constitutional "signing statement" that says "I will disobey this law". Which Bush has done hundreds of times [boston.com].
So you just take your un-Constitutional signing statements and shove them up your traitorous ass. We've had enough of you Republican traitors destroying the country and lying about the Constitution.
Hmmmmm..... (Score:3, Insightful)
When Big Brother makes it hard for citizens to see what's going on, it's called "Privacy".
Ever notice how pissy and elitist congress gets when citizens what to snoop throught their business to see what they have their hands in? Yet, they have no problem going through our business, especially when there are far, FAR fewer of us actual working folk doing shady things.
Re:radical Islamic moderates (Score:5, Insightful)
That's right! They hate our freedom to invade, steal from them, install puppet governemts, tear up the puppet governments and install new ones, blame them for terrorism while remaining really friendly with countries that actuall y produce the terrorists - in fact giving them VIP rights to fly when no one else in the US is allowed to.
Yep, they hate it that anyone has that kind of freedom.
Re:Damnit, why did the USSR have to collapse? (Score:4, Insightful)
The point being made is that these groups of dedicated individuals draw their support and motivation from the abuse (economic, military, civic) of American power in the region. From the military bases and puppet governments. Changing the abusive relationship the US has with the rest of the world would do a lot to remove the base of their support. Abusing more countries in the region with a violent occupation will only cause more problems. If the US believed in democracy or freedom or any of the other purported reasons for being in Iraq they wouldn't support the appalling regime in Saudi Arabia (the source of many terrorists), or have supported the Shah, etc etc.
What would you do if your country was occupied by a foreign force which imposed martial law and built military bases, and worst of all allowed the rule of the gun to take over your streets - would you sit back and take it? Would you feel well disposed to that country or her citizens?
PS The only unrelenting global war is the one being waged by the US against an elusive enemy, whose best chance at global influence is to bait you into as many unwinnable occupations as possible. Seems to be working so far.
One small, reasonable step at a time. . . (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a progression in effect with these evil-doers; these holdovers from the Nixon years, (half of them are the same people, for goodness sake.)
Here's an example of that progression. This disturbing article is current; it's happening right now
This new program starts in D.C. next week. . . [dcist.com]
Now, here's an article from 2002, New York. The original link is dead, but the Internet Archive had it [archive.org] on file. . . Notice the difference in intensity? The new version of this program doesn't include guys mowing your lawn. What will be the next step in the process?
Re:Parity (Score:3, Insightful)
One glaring problem with that.... (Score:2, Insightful)