The wiretapping you are alluding to was ALWAYS possible before,
it was just that a lot more warrants needed to be served.

From: [link|http://www.acm.org/usacm/DOJ_Terrorism_Law.htm|http://www.acm.org/...rism_Law.htm]
Moreover, since, under previous law, a court could only authorize the installation of a pen/trap device within its own jurisdiction, when one provider indicated that the source of a communication was a different carrier in another district, a second order in the new district became necessary. This order had to be acquired by a supporting prosecutor in the new district from a local federal judge \ufffd neither of whom had any other interest in the case. Indeed, in one case investigators needed three separate orders to trace a hacker\ufffds communications. This duplicative process of obtaining a separate order for each link in the communications chain has delayed or \ufffd given the difficulty of real-time tracing \ufffd completely thwarted important investigations.

You have no evidence of how/why this is likely to impact you.
You have not described anything which could happen now which could not have
happened before 9/11.
You have no evidence for why the government is now more interested in you
than they were before.

You are letting yourself feel threatened and responding emotionally.

>>So, if they had to expend X hours to get Y warrants to spy on me before,
>>and now they have to expend .5X hours to get Y warrants to spy on me...
>>Then it is easier for them to spy on me.

Do you believe that making it easier has caused you to surrender
any of your rights? If so, which ones.....and how?

>>Possibly a reread of 1984 will disclose a few more events and ""issues"" than >>your one-sentence remembrance; sounds as if it made no lasting impression on >>your 'feel'ings.
Absolutely correct. It made no lasting impression. However I can see that
it has the potential to be something which would give sleepless nights
to those who want to feel threatened and give the chronically bored something
to chafe about.

>>Well then, Mr. Babbitt - just keep on keeping your nose clean; don't whistle >>any dirty songs and - you'll be just fine.
{sarcasm on}
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah but (if you've been following the thread) I don't need to
do any of the above....I have my impregnable force field of statistics
to guarantee my safety and security.........don't I?
{sarcasm off}

All aspects of the world painted by George Orwell have already existed
either in Hitler's Third Reich or Stalin's Soviet Union. There's no need
to resort to a tired cliche when you want evidence that man and governments can do bad things. Unless that is, you want a pre-packaged fast-food "acronym" to engage in some gold old-fashioned fear mongering a la 1950s. You see, persuading anyone that we are headed the way of the Third Reich...that actually might be difficult.....because people will try to compare reality with reality.

I find it fucking astonishing that people like Brandioch will pompously refer another to "1984" as if by doing so some great insight is being performed.......but then that same person will tell you that "we fought the second world war according to the rule of law". He (and others) apparently were forgetting that..... "He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future."
I don't want to open up that whole debate anew.......I think its clear what
the point is. If not ... think it over.

Just as radical philosophers can engage in the hours of questioning the very fundamentals of existence, so it is possible to do with our own government(s).
But there comes a time when you have to revisit all those questioned assumptions
and mould from them a model which helps you get through life. You can pretend the wall is not solid if it suits you....but as a guiding principle its probably not going to serve you well. If you WANT to, its possible to tease out a sinsiter plot, its possible to see things which are threatening, its possible to imagine yourself as one of the "suppressed" souls. And its totally okay to be afraid of it.

But I have a big problem with people who will allow themselves to be scared by this and then at the same time be dismissive of those who fear the violence being threatened......fear those who clearly have been trying to tool up with the means of causing mass destruction. The degree to which they could succeed is very poorly understood - anyone who claims otherwise is lying.
The statistical argument is a bogus useless piece of crap. Were this not so,
it could be used to allay fears about what happened to Louima(sp?) in a New York police station. Oh but wait......you say....when viewing THAT you want to see it in the broader perspective of ALL civil rights and freedoms? OKay I'll grant you that. In which case......I would like to view the WTC in the broadwer context of war, violence and social unrest in general.

>>All aspects of the world painted by George Orwell have already existed either in Hitler's Third Reich
>>or Stalin's Soviet Union. Yet when someone points out that we're starting down that same road, it's
>>okay as long as >YOU<, personally, don't feel threatened?
I already made it clear that you don't have to be personally threatened to be concerned.
Remember?



>>I have a newsflash for you. Most of the citizens of the USSR were NOT personally threatened by their government.
>>Only the ones that stepped out of line, politically, verbally, whatever.
You are saying that statistically, the citizens were unlikley to be threatened?
Your face should be red.


>>Then people need to learn the ORIGINS of the Third Reich and the USSR and various other totalitarian socialist regimes.
Very well put. Less time spent reading fiction perhaps?


>>I find it fucking astonishing that people like Brandioch will pompously refer another to "1984" as if by doing so some great insight is being performed.......but then that same person will tell you that "we fought the second world war according to the rule of law".
>>Umm, we bombed cities and civilians in WWII. AFTER the war, we treated the prisoners well. We helped our enemies rebuild their countries. We tried the criminals in front of the world. But we killed innocents who's only crime was to be born on the wrong side.
>>But I have a big problem with people who will allow themselves to be scared by this and then at the same time be dismissive of those who fear the violence being threatened......fear those who clearly have been trying to tool up with the means of causing mass destruction.
>And, once again, you are being ruled by your emotion.
I've said that I feel safe from the terrorists. I've said that I don't think I am going to be monitored by the government.
It is woefully inadequate to argue that someone is being emotional after they point out that there is paradox in how
threatened people are allowing themselves to feel. You are the one who is worried. I think your worry is unnecessary.
You don't. I think we are talking about your emotions and your emotional responses.



>>Instead of looking at the situation and thinking about what happened and why and how to prevent it in the future,
>>you're making an emotional decision based on your fear to surrender your rights for "security".
You have not listed ONE right which has been surrendered. Because you have not surrendered.
(The right to have wiretapping be made difficult is not a right you have).

>>I've asked you before what, specifically, you'd "monitor" now.
And I told you.....anything which you find a concern.


>>None of your examples would have changed the attack. Your "solution" wouldn't have stopped the LAST attack, so why do you think it will stop the NEXT attack?
>>The "threat" of being killed by a terrorist is less likely than the "threat" that you'll be killed by a car.
>>Or at LEAST try to see whether the SPECIFIC actions you advocate will, in what way, would have PREVENTED the first attack (and how, specifically) or wold have REDUCED its likelyhood of success.


Even though that "safety" is an illusion. As I have demonstrated by asking you to specify what you'd be monitoring
and how that would have prevented the first attack.

Oh jeesh........you really thought that was worth pursuing?
Yawn. It kinda goes like this:
a) you identify some people you are interested in examining more closely (see below).
b) you monitor their movements using GPS when they rent a car. You note all the people they visit
and put those people under surveillance.
c) you monitor that, coincidentally, several suspected terrorists are arriving at airports at the same time (using GPS).
d) you delay the plane - and discover that they have all bought expensive one way tickets
e) they are given a thorough search
f) the plane is given a thorough search
g) You break up the suspects into smaller groups and tell them they will need to fly on separate planes.
g) you place Federal air marshals on the plane (some in the cockpit some in the cabin)

So.......there's a fairly simple scenario which isn't contrived. It describes WHAT I would have
monitored. I have described HOW it might have helped. No doubt the FBI/CIA/FAA have more tools
than I know about. What else ya got?




[link|http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2001/11-05-2001/vo17no23_prevented.htm|http://www.thenewam...revented.htm]
The December 1994 hijacking of an Air France flight from Algiers was carried out by four
members of the "Phalange of the Signers in Blood," a subsidiary of Algeria\ufffds Armed Islamic Group.
The terrorists seized control of the plane and demanded that it fly to Marseilles, where it was
to be refueled for a trip to Paris. The hijackers also demanded that the Airbus A300 a plane of
comparable size to the Boeing 767s that were used to attack the World Trade Center be loaded with
27 tons of fuel, which was three times what was necessary for the short trip.
After debriefing released hostages and working with other sources, French authorities determined
that the terrorists intended either to explode the plane over Paris or ram it into the Eiffel Tower.
Corroborating evidence, in the form of 20 sticks of dynamite, was found by French troops who stormed
the plane and killed the hijackers.

FBI agents tracked Moussaoui\ufffds movements to the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma, where he logged
57 hours of flight time earlier in 2001 but was never allowed to fly on his own because of his poor skills.
This alone should have set off alarm bells, since a confessed Al Qaeda operative, Abdul Hakim Murad,
had trained at the same school, as part of preparations for a suicide hijack attack on CIA headquarters.
Murad testified about these plans in the 1996 trial of Ramzi Ahmed Yusef, the principal organizer of the
1993 World Trade Center car-bombing.

Several of the September 11 hijackers had either enrolled in or visited the Oklahoma flight school,
as a more thorough investigation determined in the aftermath of the suicide hijackings.



[link|http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jan2002/mous-j05.shtml|http://www.wsws.org...us-j05.shtml]
Excerpts:
* On August 13th, a flight school in Eagan, Minnesota, informed the FBI that a student named Zacarias
Moussaoui had asked to take 747 flight simulator training, but that he only wanted to learn how to
steer the aircraft not take off or land. Moussaoui, who was in this country illegally, was arrested
and held for deportation. But, as Novak notes, "no connection was made with the 1995 revelations"
about "Bojinka." In fact, the October 6th New York Times reported that the FBI "held back its own
agents" from investigating Moussaoui.

* The US government was monitoring the electronic communications of bin Laden and his associates
during the extensive period of advance planning which preceded the September 11 attack.

* Several of the September 11 hijackers, including Mohammed Atta, the alleged ringleader,
were under direct surveillance by US agencies as suspected terrorists during 2000 and 2001.
Yet they were allowed to travel freely into and out of the US and eventually carry out their plans.


>>Even though that "safety" is an illusion. As I have demonstrated by asking you to specify.......
When someone declines to take you up on specific request......it doesn't >prove< anything.
I ask you to list the specific rights you were surrendering. You came up with....they can
get wiretaps more easily now.....no talk about your rights and the potential impact
whatsoever. You're describing something you fear will impact you. You have not submitted ANY evidence
of how it will. You have not submitted any evidence of how things are worse now than they were.
(perhaps less FBI agents engaged in red tape?). Hooohooooo...very threatening.
Your ability to point to a government who kept files on famous people is no more relevant than the fact
that we have had goverments who supported slavery.

You recognise that the guy arrested at the canadia border probably prevented a disaster.
Ahhh but that was >before<. So what? It proves that the safety of people can be impacted
by monitoring and vigilance. Become less vigilant and you will become less safe.
Me personally? Maybe not. We've already eastablished that I'm not concerned about me.
You on the other hand are concerned that >YOU< will be monitored. And you think its
likely that you will be monitored. You have no reason to explain why this should be so.
You have no explanation for why, in this case, the statistics confound you time and again....
but in the case of terrorism.......the statistics leave you completely without danger.

Your statistic that you are more likely to be killed by a family member is hopelessly flawed because
America is very violent society. The statistical relationship changes if you use Norway or England as your backdrop.
The idea that people should measure the threat of terrorism to the nation depending on the context in which it occurs...
..is nothing if not novel. If its allowed to prevail....its a sad indictment.

One more time......I'm not worried by either. You're the worried one.

Hey ...send us a special sign whenever your fundamental position changes, that way we can stop wasting our time on you. Much appreciated.

[link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=33065|http://z.iwethey.or...tentid=33065]
Brandioch: Which is when/where we get into the question of whether the government will ever care where I go or what I do. Yes, they will.

The post above:
Mike: You on the other hand are concerned that >YOU< will be monitored.
Brandioch: Nope. I'm not.
Mike: And you think its likely that you will be monitored.
Brandioch: Again, nope. I don't.
Mike: You have no reason to explain why this should be so.
Brandioch: Because it isn't so.

This one's over. You're wasting my time.

>>If you toed the line, you lived without any problems. I only have the reports >>from the USSR and my experience in East Berlin to go from.
Would it hurt to recognise that guy might know what he's talking about?