More Intrusion Into Our Freedoms
by Big Dog on Jun 19, 2010 at 22:40 Political
Big Sis, Janet Napolitano, thinks that there needs to be monitoring of the things we do on the Internet because of homegrown terrorism. Yep, she says there is an inevitable trade off when it comes to privacy and keeping people safe.
Forget for one moment that she is a member of the political party that opposed most of the Patriot Act as an invasion of our privacy and focus on what she wants to do.
Fighting homegrown terrorism by monitoring Internet communications is a civil liberties trade-off the U.S. government must make to beef up national security, the nation’s homeland security chief said Friday. FOX News
The left went nuts when legal wiretaps were used (in accordance with law and precedent) to monitor people who were suspected of terrorism and where one party was out of the country but thinks it is OK to monitor communications on the Internet.
This woman also thinks that full body scanners are not much of an invasion and are warranted because her department and her boss were unable to keep the underwear bomber off an airplane. No, it is an invasion of privacy and people have every right to refuse them (of course they will then be harassed with a secondary screening) but to Big Sis, it is OK to invade our privacy at the airport, just as it is on the Internet.
Look, if the government wants to troll around and see what websites are trying to recruit people that is their business but to target individuals or to monitor specific people is an invasion unless it is known that the person has terrorist connections. We already know who this jackass thinks is a domestic terrorist and it is everyone who is not a liberal leftist.
And how about these morons worry about the real threats, you know terrorists from other countries, men, who strangely enough, have Middle Eastern names and practice the religion of Islam?
I have an idea how we can handle Napolitano and her invasion of privacy and stop the oil leak in the Gulf.
How about we stuff her fat *** in the leaking pipe?
Never surrender, never submit.
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Tags: napolitano, Obama, oil leak, patriot act, Privacy
I’m of two minds about this.
First, we have the classic “It’s not wrong when we do it” attitude of the Left. That’s always deserving of a good solid rhetorical whack across the snout; the more persons reflect on the inconsistency of the Obamunists’ policies with their oppositional and campaign rhetoric, the better. The Obamunists’ desire to control everything in America is no more “for the greater good” than Stalin’s was. It’s high time that they were compelled, publicly, to present their rationales for their adoption of Bush Administration policies they condemned, and for disregarding the Constitutional protections of private rights.
But second, I continue to be concerned by the “catch it and you keep it” problem. There is no defensible basis for any claim of privacy except for a legitimate claim of property rights over the thing deemed private. A requirement of any defensible claim of property rights is the requirement for adequate control. If you cannot or will not control it, you cannot and do not have property rights over it — and therefore you cannot maintain that it is your right to exclude others from it, which is the core meaning of property rights.
A person who releases garbage, whether by pushing it out to the curb or by tossing it from the window of his car, has openly relinquished control of it, and therefore has lost all his rights over it. Does a person who releases information of any sort into a communications medium he does not own have a defensible claim to property rights over that information? If it’s a targeted communication, doesn’t the person on the receiving end have an equal right over it? If it’s untargeted, as for example a Website must be at this time, doesn’t he forfeit his claims over it, on the grounds that he no longer exerts adequate control over it?
There are numerous byways to this problem, including copyright, contractual non-disclosure agreements and guarantees of privacy, “common carrier” notions, and the like. But the heart of it must be addressed to make sense of the increasingly acrimonious contentions over whether, when Davis overhears Smith speaking to Jones, he has a logically defensible right to make use of what he learns for his own, hopefully legitimate purposes.
I believe that this is just the opening salvo in their quest to CONTROL the message, deeming any criticism of the admin to be “traitorous” or “seditious”- and therefore to be squelched. You just have to remember how thin-skinned this resident really is- a lesson that Gen. McCrystal is about to learn first-hand.
The Gen. either WANTED to be relieved of his command, or made the mistake thinking that a “reporter” from ROLLING STONE would keep confidential ANYTHING the Gen. might say- that might constitute a mental condition making him unfit for duty.
People in the Armed Forces have limits on their freedom of speech- even (or especially) if it is true.
I think there is a difference between Davis overhearing Smith and Jones and Davis putting up something to intercept the conversation.
I think I pointed out if they wanted to troll around looking at conversation then fine but that putting things in place to monitor or intercept is a little more than casually overhearing the conversation.
I agree, if it is out there and you have no control over it you can’t claim privacy but many aspects of the internet include an expectation of privacy like with email. Certainly someone might forward it to a million people but if the government intercepts and reads it there is an issue because there is a reasonable expectation that they will not just intercept, like with snail mail.