] The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1
] ruling, said only the U.S. Congress can authorize such
] detentions and it ordered the government to release Jose
] Padilla from military custody within 30 days.
]
] The court said that the government can transfer Padilla,
] a U.S. citizen who has been held incommunicado in a Navy
] prison, to a civilian authority that can bring criminal
] charges against him.
]
] "Presidential authority does not exist in a vacuum and
] this case involves not whether those responsibilities
] should be aggressively pursued, but whether the President
] is obligated in the circumstances presented here to share
] them with Congress," the court said.

ABCNEWS.com : Appeals Court Says Bush Can't Hold U.S. Citizen

Jeremy wrote:
] While I appreciate the entertainment value, I think that
] "Sneakers" offers a futurist's vision of the situation. It's
] supposed to make you think ... but it's not trying to be
] "right."

I know, I was just trying to be funny... Perhaps a bad time as you seem to be dawning on some sort of revelation, but I couldn't resist.

] When I see the popular debate repeatedly circling around the
] same targets, bookending the variously weak and/or alarmist
] arguments with portentous excerpts from "1984", I am reminded
] of Flatland.

I must admit that I'm not sure what you're getting at with the juxtaposition you are making. I must still be thinking in 2D.

In any event, while that article's arguments may have been weak and alarmist (it was a liberal newsweekly) the perspective wasn't wrong. It doesn't matter if you've got a bunch of illegal mp3s in your ipod as long as you don't listen to them, but assuming that you do, we've got a problem, and probably an intractable one.

Total information awareness is a solution to the "problem" of super-empowered individuals that leaves a bad taste in my mouth for much the same reason that I don't like Bill Joy's book burning. It attempts to respond to the maturity of the individual by arming the state.

There are two ways that feudal societies handled the development of books. One was to become republican. The other was to become totalitarian. One response accommodated the increased power of individuals by providing a means to wield that power without resorting to violence. Its was a mature, realistic response to the situation, and ultimately successful. The other was an attempt to regress the empowerment of individuals through more effective "safeguards" that continued to buttress the old nature of the state. It was a way of band-aiding an obsolete system because that arrangement had certain benefactors, and it caused widespread human suffering where-ever it was attempted.

The reason Fukuyama is wrong is because we just empowered the individual again, by as much of a relative jump as we did in the 1500s, and we are going to have to through this process all over again. Some will wisely choose to find ways to ratchet down the concentration of formal power so that it comes in balance with reality, and some will choose to buttress the present status quo.

The danger I find long term, living in America as I do, is that we're the benefactors of the present arrangement, and so we are most likely to resist change despite our previous successes and the obvious reasons for those successes, and we're got guys like Fukuyama telling us that its not even something worth thinking about. So our ideas are all statist. Unfortunately, we're also on the cusp of this thing. I don't think I know of anyone who is coming up with alternatives. Other then maybe the cypherpunks.

RE: On Privacy

] "We are beginning to see a shift in the traditional
] privacy debate from simply focusing on an individual's
] right to privacy, to also including consideration of
] society's right to protect itself," says a letter from
] ChoicePoint CEO Derek Smith in the company's most recent
] annual report. "ChoicePoint as a company and I as an
] individual continue to believe, however, that in a free
] society -- particularly in today's society -- we do not
] always have the right to anonymity."

This is a loaded perspective coming from someone who has a financial interest in the erosion of privacy. (I'm reminded of Scott McNealy's comment that privacy is dead. Easy for you to say asshole, the computers you sell are being used to kill it!)

As you read into this article it just gets worse. Their next trick is to claim that they "self regulate" access to this information better then the government would. If Mr. Lee really believes this then he doesn't have a basic understanding of economics. The money that the feds pay you to do a search would be reflected in the overall costs of running their own system anyway, so no, you aren't prohibiting access in any way. PR at its best. Say something simple, and wrong, which requires a complex response. Simple beats correct in public debate every time.

Then you find out about a large number of black people who were excluded from the 2000 election in Florida...

The fact is that we are building extremely effective systems for fine grained social control. They are coming out of the wood work at every level. We are using the 911 attacks to justify actions we considered reprehensible in the wake of the 1993 WTC bombing (proving that emotions are more significant then needs here), without any clear relationship between the absence of these technologies and the success of these attack (anything could have been helpful).

The fact is that these systems are already being abused.

The fact is that there will be more successful attacks against us, and that we will further use those attacks to justify more technologies of social control. Eventually those in our society who desire to control us will finally have the means at their disposal, and they will take upon those means to enslave us.

I hope this country has the god damn spine to stand up to these fuckers when they arrive. If not, the next terrorist attacks will be our Reichstag fire.

Creative Loafing Atlanta | COVER | BIG BROTHER'S LITTLE HELPER

] Revisiting a motion that had narrowly passed by a 4-3
] vote last month, Los Alamos County Council rescinded
] funding for the purchase of 17 Sequoia Pacific "Edge"
] touchscreen voting machines by a vote of 7-0 Tuesday.

A victory for the open source voting movement...

lamonitor.com: The Online News Source for Los Alamos

] The President's determination that an individual is an unlawful
] combatant receives deference and need only be supported by
] 'some evidence.'

The DOJ is apparently passing around a word document where they gloat about their court victories. Each includes a quotation from the judge in question. The formatting here is terrible, but its still worth a read. That above quote is a judge deciding that your constitutional right to do process can be eliminated by the executive as long as it has 'some evidence' that you are associated with an enemy force.

[Politech] Justice Department's list of terrorism-related court cases

] This event features a rare face-to-face meeting of a supporter
] and a critic of the Patriot Act:
]
] Assistant US Attorney Randy Chartash is responsible for
] enforcing the Patriot Act.
]
] Former US Congressman Bob Barr has been an outspoken critic.

IP3: Patriot Act event in Atlanta

] The Supreme Court said Monday that it would decide
] whether foreign nationals can use U.S. courts to
] challenge their incarceration at the U.S. military base
] in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the first cases it will hear on
] the Bush administration.

Justices to hear Guantanamo appeals

] The appeals court disagreed, noting that ``in the wake of
] a mass atrocity and in the midst of an investigation that
] galvanized the nation, Awadallah did not step forward to
] share information he had about one or more of the
] hijackers.''
]
] Awadallah's failure to come forward established probable
] cause for his arrest, the court ruled. The FBI found
] Awadallah after his phone number was discovered in a
] hijacker's car.

You do NOT have the right to remain silent.

Someone wrote:
] Huh?

I promise I can build a comprehensive argument that a policy of sending trouble makers to people who engage in torture is a violation of several treaties on human rights, and if it involves American citizens is directly unconstitutional. Furthermore, there are few things which can be more offensive to our ideal of civil liberties then a policy such as this.

The thing that makes this case so stark is that we aren't even talking about a trouble maker. We're (as far as I've been able to tell) talking about a guy who once got someone that we suspect of being linked to troublemakers to cosign on a lease. Thats all that it seems like they had on him.

Should we investigate that? Yes. Should we have done it this way? No. This is not an investigation, this is sending someone to die a prolonged and horrible death at the hands of people who will not and cannot provide us with useful information (how do you trust the government of Syria to report clearly to you on their interrogation?) simply because it creates an atmosphere of fear.

In the United States we do not employ torture because it is cruel and unusual. Because it violates the very essence of our Constitution. In the United States we have due process because when we do punish people they ought to actually be guilty. This case is an absolutely perfect example of why you have due process. Because if you don't have due process you harm innocent people. When your system of justice meters out punishments arbitrarily upon the innocent it is no different in its effects then the criminals it intends to control!

Now it is not at all clear that such an executive order exists, and if it exists it is not at all clear that it applies to U.S. citizens. People, recently in particular, are fond of making the case that the constitution does not apply to citizens of other countries. There are obviously limits to that argument. How can you build a nation based on the ideas about rights, about equality, about the pursuit of happiness, while simultaneously engaging in, for example, the ethnic cleansing of a people? The fact is that you cannot. The fact is that it is possible to engage it activity which is so far beyond the pale, so completely malicious to the values that our system of government is supposed to uphold, that it is impossible for any thinking person, and indeed any court of law, to stomach the argument that one can engage in such an activity legally as long as the victims don't have green cards.

A formal administration policy which orders our border police to hand people, on the slightest suspicion, over to a government with which we do not maintain any kind of regular relations, such that they may be tortured to death, for no other reason then to spread fear, in particular when so many other options exist, is just such a policy.

I pray that when, and if, the truth comes to light here, that it does not remotely resemble the situation which I have just described.

] Unidentified officials told the Washington Post the case
] apparently occurred under a secret presidential "finding"
] that allows the CIA to send suspects to other nations
] without due process to allow those countries to obtain
] information by torture.

To sign such an order is highly illegal and probably grounds for impeachment.

Bush Administration policy directly connected to torture case?