Three Lawmakers Ask For Enforcement Against Leak Sites 316
eldavojohn writes "You may recall the TSA demonstrating how tech-savvy it is by releasing a document with redactions intact. Now three Republican lawmakers are asking what's being done to prosecute those hosting the document (e.g. Cryptome and Wikileaks). In a letter to the DHS (PDF), Charles Dent (R-PA), Gus Bilirakis (R-FL), and Peter T. King (R-NY) asked, 'How has [sic] the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration addressed the repeated reposting of this security manual to other websites, and what legal action, if any, can be taken to compel its removal?' And they asked if the DHS is 'considering issuing new regulations pursuant to its authority in Section 114 of Title 49, United States Code, and are criminal penalties necessary or desirable to ensure such information is not reposted in the future?' King is the representative who announcing a probe into Wikileaks after the half million 9/11 pager messages were released."
Dear My Government... (Score:5, Informative)
Dear My Government, It's Officers, Agents, And All Of That:
You do not own the internet. You do not control the internet. You screwed up by releasing sensitive information to the public through lawful channels, via a lawful request, that was not in any way fraudulent or deceiving. Man up to this, and figure out how to avoid the problem in the future like every other self-respecting government would -- instead of trying to throw your citizens to the wolves without a trial, or god only knows what else you're planning.
Sincerely,
A Whole Lot of Patriots
P.S. Those badges look like something out of a cereal box. Take this as an opportunity to make them actually look like something better than what you'd expect from a first year graphic design student. Or use psychic paper. Your choice.
I can answer that for you (Score:5, Informative)
what legal action, if any, can be taken to compel its removal?
Wikileaks is hosted outside the United States. So, none.
They posted what was released (Score:4, Informative)
How are the web sites at fault? The TSA gave them the information. If the TSA didn't want it posted they shouldn't have released the information.
The TSA's lack of technical skills is not a crime on the web sites part?
Re:Like Google CEO Says... (Score:3, Informative)
Like the Google CEO said a few days ago in a story, " If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide".
Swing and a miss. If you're going to use quotation marks, take the time to look up what he actually said [slashdot.org]:
'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.'
Of course, we'll remove the 'maybe' and the 'don't want anyone to know' and make it sound more Orwellian and before you know it, 640 kilobytes ought to be enough for anybody!
More important question is who TSA fired for this (Score:3, Informative)
Re:They posted what was released (Score:4, Informative)
You talk like this was a matter of logic.
It’s a matter of power. The one with the most power is the one who defines right and wrong.
That’s why I always say, that the laws are an illusion. They are only true as long as the one with the most power stands behind them.
Re:Corrupt Republicans hate freedom/truth (Score:1, Informative)
I don't disagree that corruption is party-agnostic, but I take umbrage to terms like Republicrat or RINO that marginalise the centre right and left. They promote a "with us or against us" mentality that was famous with the United States' last president.
We need to get past the whole left-right paradigm. Overall there's really not a whole lot of difference between the parties. Both want more government, more control, more corporatism and corporate welfare, war (though the "opposition party" tends to be anti-war), etc.
I personally prefer the graph used at Advocates for Self-Government: http://theadvocates.org/ [theadvocates.org]
Left = Economic control
Right = Social control
Up = Liberty, Less Government
Down = Tyranny, More Government
On that scale, both parties are fairly center. Probably a bit to the right with the Democrats being slightly left and the Republicans being slightly to the right of each other. The important part is where they are vertically. Both are rather far down towards tyranny.
(if you're wondering about me personally, I'm fairly center on that scale and up very close to the top)
Re:Once it's out of the bag.. (Score:2, Informative)
Did you read the actual letter? (You and I both know the summery is supposed to be sensational, not accurate.) They had 7 questions they wanted answered, and one of those was how to get the sensative documents off the interwebs, if that's even possible. The answer will most likely come back "not possible." The other 6 questions were things like "why were the documents up on the TSA's website in the first place?" "are there other documents that can be compromised the same way?" "What policies are there to deal with security breaches like this, and what can we do to keep our stuff more secure?"
I was fooled by the summery too and I was about to write Bilirikis a little letter from a citizen, but then I read the actual letter that was written, and it's pretty reasonable.
Re:Dear My Government... (Score:4, Informative)
It's become a clear precident that the protections afforded by the First Amendment can (and are) overlooked during wartime.
Not just the first amendment. In WWII, native-born American citizens of Japanese and certain other anscestries were put in camps. In the Civil War, unarmed civilians were killed by both sides, and their properties burned.
And it's not just in times of war, either. [wikipedia.org]
has no place in a high school classroom with children that still believe that there are no losers, everything is sunshine and kittens, and basic language skills consist of "hey dood wut up? u wana cut skool n go smoke sum pot?"
First off, I wouldn't characterise high schoolers as "children" even though people in their twenties seem like children to me (yeah, I'm gettin' old). Only a few centuries ago the average age of marriage was the same age as these high schoolers. Yes, I realise that the teenaged brain isn't fully developed, but still...
And even prepubescent children know that there are losers in any game (if you don't want to lose, don't play), and that everything isn't sunshine and kittens, especially if they're being raised in a slum. AFAIK It's a particularly American trait to characterise anyone as a "loser". And unless things have changed dramatically since my kids were in high school (youngest is now 22), the number of kids that were incapable of speaking anything but Ghetto English are a small minority.
Illinois state law mandates that these kids learn and be tested on both the US and Illinois constitutions.
Pedantric Nit (since you dissed the teens' language and literacy skills): it's "whose words", not "who's words". Who's is a contraction of "who is".
As to slander and libel, the Constitution doesn't gurantee you the right to harm me. Your right to swing you fist ends just before my nose.
Re:Dear My Government... (Score:3, Informative)
I'd bet that out of all its officers, agents, and all of that there are a surprising number that actually ARE reading slashdot.