Domestic Spying without a Court Order by the FBI

Do you approve of Domestic Spying without a Court Order?

  • Yes

    Votes: 8 28.6%

  • No

    Votes: 18 64.3%

  • Not Sure

    Votes: 2 7.1%
  • Total voters
    28
I can read the thread you posted Phoenix and it explains a lot about where some of your post come from. At least to me.
Eventhough I dislike the mullah's reign over Rafsanjani and the way they blocked his feeble attempts to more liberties and I dislike the current ruler far far more, I wonder if this your major supplier of political thoughts?
 
Damien435 said:
Personally, I don't care. If the FBI is listening in on phone conversations fine, I don't talk about bombing any government buildings and would never do such a thing. If they are watching people of suspicion to see who they are talking to and what they are talking about good for them, helps keep me safe.
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Sounds great but here's the thing. I seem to remember "land of the free" being a rather important part of the national anthem, maybe I'm wrong. I happen to enjoy ideas like "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", liberty being a rather key ingrediant.

Maybe I'm mistaken in my views, but I'm not a huge fan of living in a totalitarian state. Totalitarianism is ultimate safety. The nazis and soviets never had much problem with terrorism. It's what you're giving up for safety that's the problem.
 
No concentration camps yet. They have 1.3 billion people to watch and they prefer to limit access rather than try to stamp out every little fire. I don't go preaching to anyone so I fly under the radar and just ask questions and let people talk talk talk... once I get out of here I have some truly interesting stories to tell. Soon I hope.
 
Nope. They don't hang anyone. Most get jail time after a trial. Thieves and so on are given a couple years. Murder is a capital crime and you are shot. No hangings and even people who cross the political line only get jail time, they aren't executed. Its nothing like North Korea, Cuba or Iran. People here have almost too much freedom in their daily lives. Its only when you bump up against the invisible barriers that you notice and it is all about information control. Its not a visible police state like so many believe it to be. Yes, they do exercise control but it is very passive.
 
Bulldog are you sure there are no laogais anymore? You as a stranger might noe be aware of them being still open. How can you be sure there are no laogais in remote provinces? Just wondering since information is not free.
 
Oh sure they have the political labour reeducation camps and they aren't out in the boonies but they don't hang people anymore. Beatings and sleep deprivation sure but then look at current US practices with its political terror suspects... its all good in my book. You don't get sent off to these for being critical of the government or walking with your girlfriend. But cross the line and talk too vocally and begin to cause a noticeable disturbance on the subjects they are very touchy about and you'll go away for a couple years. As of this moment I am actually not comfortable enough to type the name of these subjects as the Great Firewall does pull each reference much the same as the firewalls in the US pull up and flag any communication that mentions certain words like "bomb" for one example.
 
Oh yeah I forget that, at times. Thank you very much for your insights. I guess since you're able to tell us all that you do, then PRC is really changing.
 
My deep rooted fear is that THIS, the way China is now, is where the US is headed with its ever increasing surveilance and control of information and the slow whittling away of privacy and freedoms. Almost imperceptible until you bump up against the barriers. I see many parallels and it both frightens and saddens me.
 
bulldogg said:
My deep rooted fear is that THIS, the way China is now, is where the US is headed with its ever increasing surveilance and control of information and the slow whittling away of privacy and freedoms. Almost imperceptible until you bump up against the barriers. I see many parallels and it both frightens and saddens me.
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Could that be thanks to this increased and tightened security that the US hasn't been hit by another terrorist attack? Just your opinion.
 
No. I believe it is owing to the patient and meticulous planning of these terrorists. The 9/11 attacks had been in the works since the underground bombings failed, years. We in the west are used to lightning strikes and these terrorists are slow and methodical and by the time they hit you're left scratching your head going "Where did that come from?"

Like I have told my good good mates back home, were I a terrorist in the US even today I could with my knowledge and skills bring any major city to its knees in under 24 hours. I have talked to friends about this, especially my friend working for Homeland security and he passed on my scenarios and he was then INTENSELY grilled where it came from. Since that time he has not had any contact with me. Coincidence or am I paranoid? You tell me.

Even to this day four years after 9/11 less than 10% of all containers coming through LA harbour are searched. A shipping container is more than adequate to house a thermonuclear device. This is a commonly discussed scenario so I don't feel remiss delineating it here... freighter loads up in Hong Kong, trusted ally port, sails through Philipine or Indonesian waters and an offshore loading platform comes along side and tops them off with one last container. This container is easily fudged on the bill of lading and it completes its voyage to LA. Once in the harbour you don't even have to get it off the ship for MASSIVE damage to be done and since the prevailing winds in the US run west to east all that radiation sweeps across Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas... get the picture. And it shuts down the biggest port for all goods going into and coming out of the states. The damage would be catastrophic and there is no adequate checks in place.

So to answer your question the reason it hasn't happened again is not the laws stripping away Americans privacy and constitutional rights. It is a lull as the terrorists wield the next big one into place. Time is on their side and Bin Laden has the Islamic approval from a high ranking cleric in Saudi Arabia authorising him to use nuclear weapons against Americans in the United States and he has given clear and explicit warning that he intends to do so.

http://www.nationalterroralert.com/updates/index.php?p=367
 
Yes I see your point. The harbor container issue is indeed not new, and I agree with you on how easy it would be to carry out a terrorist attack on our cities. Same is valid here in Italy and I verify it many times, since I travel a lot.
In other words, sounds like there's pretty much nothing we can do about it.
 
Indeed and that is both truly frightening and also very liberating depending on how you want to look at it. I fluctuate between the two to be completely honest.
 
bulldogg, I think that such a statement about terrorism completely overestimates al-quaida's abilities, misunderstands its objectives, and underestimates the difficulty of blowing something halfway accross the world from a cave in a 3rd world country.

I agree with you that the Patriot Act and other such civil-rights-reducing legislation hasn't done much against terrorism for one simple reason... if it had done ANYTHING you can bet the Bush Administration would be on TV talking about how great the Act is and how important it was in capturing suspect X and thrwarting terrorist plot Z. Can you imagine a better political coup for the Bush admin?

No, the way we've caught our terrorists is always through completely different means than you see on slick TV shows like "24" or "CSI". The origional 1993 world trade center bomber caught his apartment on fire while making bombs, left his laptop with all his terorrist information INSIDE the apartment for us to find, and we STILL didn't get him. It wasn't until his "new" aprentice in Pakistan decided to turn him in did we get him.

Same deal with Khalid Shaik Muhammed, mastermind of the 9/11 plot, no Patriot Act anywhere in sight. We learned that before the Spain train bombers blew their bombs they called a guy in Morocco for confirmation, so the moroccan authorities picked him up and handed that guy to the US. We 'interrogated' (I'm sure it was just by asking politely since torture is wrong) this guy and he told us about his handler in France. The French arrested him and gave us everything he had including a cell phone he used to call Khalid. We already had troops searching a region of Afghanistan, but with this cell phone we could basically pin down within the range of a cell tower where Khalid was. So we narrowed our search, found him, and now he's probobly been questioned (politely again I'm sure because torture is wrong) in a black prision. (which are wrong because everyone knows the only good prisons are the white ones)

Anyway, my point in this is that it is always very small crazy things that lead us to capturing terrorists, not some Patriot Act nonsense.

There are a lot of very good things America has done to prevent terrorism and as much as they've wanted to hit us over the last 4 years, they have been unable to. However, it looks like the Patriot Act and other civil rights curtailing laws haven't done a damned thing but move us one step closer to having our new national motto being "America, home of the brave and land of the free-er than North Korea!"
 
I agree with WD on this one. Beside that, when you talk about how bad North Korea is, you look at the end result. What is happening in the US can lead to that end station. I'm not saying that it is, I'm merely saying that it can!
In Amsterdam we registered where all the Jews lived, this was mainly done by the Jewish counsil for some reason. When the Germans started deporting them, they just visited the adresses. I can't think of place where the rounding up was done so succesful. When the Jewish Council started registering everybody they didn't have this in mind, but other abused it. That's why I'm against such measures. It can be used against you, even when you think you are doing nothing wrong.
 
WD you're making a big assumption about the capabilities of any terrorist group. They are not to be belittled and underestimated. The command and control of these groups is NOT centralised. And who's to say where they actually are?
 
bulldogg said:
WD you're making a big assumption about the capabilities of any terrorist group. They are not to be belittled and underestimated. The command and control of these groups is NOT centralised. And who's to say where they actually are?
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Because they need $$$ and men. Although much more decentralized than any previous army to be sure, the logistics of major operations such as those directed against the USA require a good deal of centralization.

Even operations in Iraq carried out by al-quaida have a fairly centralized unity to them.

You don't just wake up one morning, call you buddies, and say "hey, let's hijack a plane today!"

Like I wrote previously, even the madrid train bombings which where not as sophisticated as the 9/11 operation required a chain of command going straight up to Khalid Shaik Muhammed.
 
My point is that although it is a comforting thought to think of the terrorists arrayed against the west are holed up in a cave in some remote mountaintop with smoke signals and hiding from predators, it is only a bed time story. The people at the top are millionaires and they have some very sophisticated equipment and are not stupid. To underestimate them and denigrate them to the level of cavemen hurling stones against the juggernaut of western military might is foolish and self-deceiving and to what ends? Better to accept the reality of the situation in my opinion. My uncles who were cops used to tell me that "the only thing society has going for it is that 90% of all criminals are idiots." Well these guys aren't idiots or we would have caught them by now, eh??
 
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