U.S. Politics, 8

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

If there exist non-military-action threats to your country, the government needs to be able to respond to them, yes?

No.

This is the entire crux of the matter. If someone is making war on your country, they are trying to defeat your army and subjugate or topple your government. That is war and the government must respond.

If someone is trying to kill an individual citizen or group of citizens, that is murder, and there is an ancient and mostly effective legal framework by which that is responded to. You ask for extradition, you make deals, etc. etc. Assassination has never been considered an acceptable legal option.

Is it war, or crime? I maintain that it is crime, and therefore must go through criminal channels. And you know what? Sometimes the bad guys get away. Idi Amin got to die of natural causes. Roman Polanski walked away scot-free. It sucks serious ass, but it's worth it to keep in place a system that protects liberty.

[ThinkerX]

No person shall be held to answer for any capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

And that is what is at stake in the US today. Right Now, it is deemed acceptable to assassinate US citizens because they are allied with a hostile power (Al Queda). However, given the various wiretaps and survellances it is only a matter of time until that distinction becomes deliberately blurred, when assassination orders are issued against people not because they are terrorists, but because 'they know too much' or have too great a chance of winning an election that threatens those in charge. Put it this way: given this precedent, what is to stop some future president (or even Obama, for that matter) from having a few candidates of the other party for this or that congressional seat discreetly bumped off.

Earlier in this thread, I linked to a couple of articles where the FBI, acting on what was almost certainly political motives, raided various anti-war persons and organizations. Because of these politically motivated raids, these people were placed on the infamous terrorists watch lists, which among other things, means they might as well forget about climbing on an airplane (unless its heading to Gitmo) for a long while to come. I suppose, though, they got off lucky. It could, under this edict, just as easily been an assassination, rather than a raid.

[Shryke]

Really? I'm pretty sure EVERYONE is on the terrorist watch list at this point. I don't think it really does much.

[Lord Mord]

Shryke,

Police do have the power to "gun down civilians" though. Just only in certain situations. Which is the same as what we are talking about here. Although obviously the "certain situations" differ because of differing contexts.

Sorry, I made the mistake of assuming the purpose of the analogy was pretty plain. My language was ambiguous, but I didn't mean a proscription against gunning people down should be absolute -- I might be persuaded that way, but what I'm saying is it wasn't my point.

I was referring to those gunning-down abuses TM likes to post from time to time, especially those lovely long daily lists that he links whenever someone says wanton police violence is a relatively minor problem.

Now, yes, there are means of redress, but it's a bit fucking late all the way around, isn't it?

And, may I add, this is in a system with an assload of checks and balances to try to prevent it.

Hard to think of myself as free, when whether by oversight or overzealousness or sheer fucking accident I might be rubbed out for a terrorist. If we're that afraid, nothing will ever make us safe.

If there exist non-military-action threats to your country, the government needs to be able to respond to them, yes?

Depends on your intended response.

You can investigate all you want, but at some point you must act on that information or there seems little point in gathering it in the first place. And sometimes extracting people for trial isn't a viable option.

As I said, we can have a discussion about whether the government is allowed to use force against non-military threats, but once you've accepted that you can, I don't see what's the big deal about who's country he belongs to. Especially since there seems to already be extra procedures in place for American citizens.

Nothing I've said contradicts either of these two paragraphs. I don't know that your dichotomies are true, but if that's the way it's got to be, then I don't see how a ban on all clandestiny isn't the most moral position.

[ThinkerX]

Really? I'm pretty sure EVERYONE is on the terrorist watch list at this point. I don't think it really does much

It's a club that can be held over your head for future reference (intimidation).

I find it disturbing in that to an extent, the 'police state mentality' being brought forth by the Patriot Act and these recent rulings is being supported by the mass media. Like '24', for example, which featured everything from secret prisons to torture and assassination of US citizens on US soil; or any number of cop type shows such as 'CSI' or 'NCIS' where its perfectly alright to put even a suspected bad guy through hell just because you don't like him. Which, in a way, is what we are seeing more and more of in the real world.

There is also the 'dependency' issue. Just how legitimate is a government that depends on a massive secret or semi-secret police presence to maintain power? Here in the US, we have various highly placed officials in both republican and democratic regimes saying that things like warrentless wiretapping, assassinations, and secret prisons are 'essential', Question becomes - essential to whom? The government - or the people being ruled by that government? Is the government so 'dirty' it see's such measures as necessary to protect itself from its own populace?

I would argue that far from increasing security and stability, things like warrentless wiretaps, assassinations, and secret prisons actually *destabilize* the governments employing them, all the more so when such measures are directed against their own people.

[sologdin]

Is it war, or crime? I maintain that it is crime, and therefore must go through criminal channels.

i hope that i haven't lost track of the underlying fact pattern here, but if this is in reference to AQ and 9/11, then, yeah, of course it's a matter for the criminal law. this is manifest in the manner in which the matter was initially handled, to wit:

1) the US made a hamfisted extradition demand;

2) the demand concerned individuals and members of a destated criminal organization

3) no declaration of war was sought or granted;

4) hostilities began weeks after the event, indicating a police action rather than a matter of necessary self-defense against imminent attack; and

5) enemy soldiers were routinely denied protected status as defined in the international law of warfare, but were rather considered to be terrorists, as defined under the criminal statutes of the united states.

such items indicate that the US should have perfected an extradition treaty with the taliban in order to take wanted persons into custody and then try them under RICO and other relevant criminal statutes.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

Is it war, or crime? I maintain that it is crime, and therefore must go through criminal channels.

i hope that i haven't lost track of the underlying fact pattern here, but if this is in reference to AQ and 9/11, then, yeah, of course it's a matter for the criminal law. this is manifest in the manner in which the matter was initially handled, to wit:

1) the US made a hamfisted extradition demand;

2) the demand concerned individuals and members of a destated criminal organization

3) no declaration of war was sought or granted;

4) hostilities began weeks after the event, indicating a police action rather than a matter of necessary self-defense against imminent attack; and

5) enemy soldiers were routinely denied protected status as defined in the international law of warfare, but were rather considered to be terrorists, as defined under the criminal statutes of the united states.

such items indicate that the US should have perfected an extradition treaty with the taliban in order to take wanted persons into custody and then try them under RICO and other relevant criminal statutes.

I refer to "terrorism" in general, but yes, the 9/11 attack falls neatly within the confines of a crime and not an act of war.

Oddly enough, the same series of occurrences applies to the Iraq invasion.

[Commodore]

I refer to "terrorism" in general, but yes, the 9/11 attack falls neatly within the confines of a crime and not an act of war.

How should that distinction affect our response?

[ThinkerX]

How should that distinction affect our response?

As a general rule, lawfull societies do not pre-emptively assassinate criminals. Instead, you arrest and prosecute them.

The whole 9-11 and Al Queda thing has been used as an excuse to ramp up secretive intelligence agencies in the US and infringe on the freedoms of US citizens under the pretext this is a 'war', and as such requires special draconian measures. An excuse to impose greater top down control,. which is most definitely not needed.

Treating 9-11 as grounds for war, rather than targeted police action, also resulted in two extremely costly and utterly pointless wars that have effectively permanently crippled the US economy and deeply scarred the national psyche.

[lokisnow]

clearly the next thread subtitle should be Obama's Wars

speaking of, I may buy it tomorrow, sounds tremendous:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-rutten-20100927,0,6157028.story

When the president-elect got his first private briefing from Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he discovered that eight years into it there was "no strategy" for fighting the Afghan war, that the contingency plan for military action against Iran dated to the Carter administration — a 90-day bombing campaign followed by a Normandy-style invasion by a force larger than the entire U.S. military — and had no plans at all for dealing with the growing Al Qaeda presence in Yemen and Somalia. While no contingency plans exist for dealing militarily with a collapse of nuclear-armed Pakistan, there is "a retribution plan" in place, developed by the Bush administration, if the United States suffers another 9/11-style terrorist attack. That would involve bombing and missile strikes to obliterate the more than 150 Al Qaeda training and staging camps known to exist, most of them in Pakistan, which presumably would suffer extensive civilian casualties.

"One of the closest held secrets of President Bush's inner circle," Woodward writes, "was that the president had lost his appetite for military contingency planning. The tough-talking, saber-rattling Bush Administration had not prepared for some of the worst-case scenarios the country might face."

In fact, according to Woodward, at the last National Security Council he convened before leaving office, Bush decided to suppress a report on the Afghan situation he'd commissioned from his "war czar," Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute. That review concluded the United States had no coordinated strategy in Afghanistan, that we were neither losing nor winning the war there, that the local government was hopelessly corrupt and that the far greater strategic threat to American security was in Pakistan.

*snip*

There are telling insights into the president's character here. Former Clinton White House of Chief of Staff John Podesta, who managed the transition for Obama, compared him to the hyper-rational, unemotional Mr. Spock in the "Star Trek" films. "He was unsentimental and capable of being ruthless. Podesta was not sure that Obama felt anything, especially in his gut. He intellectualized and then charged the path forward, essentially picking up the emotions of others and translating them into ideas. He had thus created a different kind of politics…. But, Podesta thought, sometimes a person's great strength, in this case Obama's capacity to intellectualize, was also an Achilles' heel."

In his one-on-one interview with Woodward, Obama explained his predecessor's failure to do critical strategic and contingency planning with some empathy: "Wars absorb so much energy on the part of any administration that even if people are doing an outstanding job, if they're in the middle of a war — particularly one that's going badly, as it was, obviously, for a three-year stretch there in Iraq — that's taking up a huge amount of energy on the part of everybody. And that means that there are some things that get left undone."

Taken together, Podesta's insight and Obama's analysis may tell us a great deal about why this presidency has foundered as it has.

[Guest Raidne]

I'm not necessarily against any particular bill: I'm against the philosophy that makes mandated backdoors legally sound.

Fine, then show either that (1) the government does not have a compelling interest in doing this or (2) it is not narrowly tailored to meet that compelling interest.

(Picture standing up in front of all 9 members of the Supreme Court and telling that the more reasonable fullproof "narrowly tailored" plan is to just make sure the government hires better hackers than the criminals. IMHO, this argument fails to pass the straight face test. This is not a Hollywood movie, or a joke - this is about preventing terrorism - it's about people's lives. I'm not one of those people who thinks that excuses all things, but I also don't think it's appropriate to stand in the law of constitutionally allowable methods of preventing harm on the grounds that I saw "Catch Me If You Can" and think that hiring criminals to prevent crime is a pretty swell idea. You don't think the government is going to show up with a full break down of its program to hire hackers, how long it takes to train them, the security clearance process, how few of them can pass it, and the success and - notably - failures they've had utilizing them in the past? Also, you think making sure the government has the best hackers is going to ensure your privacy more? Are you crazy? It just gives them an incentive to write after-the-fact warrants drafted up by prosecutors who have no knowledge of the illegal searches being regularly conducted by the hackers. It would be a bad, bad day in Court, my friend.)

Either that, or show that the strict scrutiny test is not the appropriate as our strictest test to determine whether or not something is allowable under the Constitution.

[Lord Mord]

Raidne,

Fine, then show either that (1) the government does not have a compelling interest in doing this or (2) it is not narrowly tailored to meet that compelling interest.

I call bullshit. The worst problem of it is this runs contrary to the notion of individual freedom -- the burden of proof is supposed to lie with the state to prove the compelling interest, my freedom from such a tyranny is supposed to be assumed. Or should I also show why the state does not have a compelling interest to quarter troops in my home or to restrain my speech and religious practice?

[Guest Raidne]

I call bullshit. The worst problem of it is this runs contrary to the notion of individual freedom -- the burden of proof is supposed to lie with the state to prove the compelling interest...

Sorry, I stated that before - thought it was obvious. The state's compelling interest is to execute lawfully obtained search warrants.

So, I'll ask again...tell me why either why the state does not have a compelling interest in executing lawfully obtained search warrants, or why requiring the existence of a back door into electronic modes of communication is not narrowly tailored to meet that compelling interest.

...my freedom from such a tyranny is supposed to be assumed. Or should I also show why the state does not have a compelling interest to quarter troops in my home or to restrain my speech and religious practice?

Okay, or you can argue that your right to privacy trumps the government's compelling interest in executing lawfully obtained search warrants.

But here, you're going to have a real problem with the "lawfully obtained search warrant" part.

[Altherion]

(Picture standing up in front of all 9 members of the Supreme Court and telling that the more reasonable fullproof "narrowly tailored" plan is to just make sure the government hires better hackers than the criminals. IMHO, this argument fails to pass the straight face test. This is not a Hollywood movie, or a joke - this is about preventing terrorism - it's about people's lives.

Raidne, I am not sure if you fully understand the scenario. First, there are no hackers the government can hire who can break the best currently available encryption within a reasonable amount of time. As far as anyone in academia or the open source community knows, these algorithms do not have any flaws that hackers can exploit -- you can brute force it with massive amounts of CPU power, but even that is relatively easy to beat (briefly, the resources needed to break the encryption grow exponentially with the resources needed to encrypt).

Second, this will only affect the terrorists and criminals stupid enough to use programs and services that have these government mandated backdoors. The alternative would be to use an old version of any encrypted communication program that currently exists -- there are a lot of them and many are open source so they're practically impossible to get rid of. I'm sure some of them will be affected (it's easier to use a Blackberry than to talk via an internet service), but by no means all.

Third, it's not obvious how to make a backdoor that is for the government only without also letting the hackers in or in some cases how to make a backdoor at all. For example, take Skype (in case you don't know: it's one of the most popular voice over IP services in the world and would appear to be targeted by this law). It works by routing the conversation and video through a network of other computers running Skype. These have to be encrypted or else any one of the computers in the middle could eavesdrop. I don't see how this arrangement could be changed to allow the government to spy -- it would need to somehow not only decrypt the conversation, but reroute it through a node it has access to. This article has a pretty detailed description of why this was decided against the last time the FBI brought it up.

[Lord Mord]

Raidne,

Okay, or you can argue that your right to privacy trumps the government's compelling interest in executing lawfully obtained search warrants.

But here, you're going to have a real problem with the "lawfully obtained search warrant" part.

I think we're talking past each other. If you have a lawfully obtained warrant to search my computer, then, yeah, I'm obliged to make it accessible or suffer arrest. That only makes sense.

My problem is you were saying that no encryption is legal which exceeds the government's ability to hack. That, to me, is like saying I can't have a safe which doesn't have a doggy-door in the side, just in case the government decides they have a compelling interest to dig around inside.

Also: you waved the big "T" club around at me earlier and that was rather disappointing. "We're talking Turrrists!". Haven't we had enough of that? I'm tired of people trying to cudgel me with their "Big Bad Other." It makes me almost physically ill that you've let fear get that deep a hold of you. There will always be terrorists, just as there will always be murderers and thieves. You're not going to scare me into thinking that my privacy is trumped, on its face, by the exigencies of a murder investigation -- why should terrorism be any different?

[Guest Raidne]

Altherion, that's a lot of stuff hitting all over the place all at once.

To your first point, I know. That's what I'm saying. I think you're confusing me with LC there.

Second, presumably any system found to be noncompliant would be preemptively shut down, thereby eliminating any need for any back door to be provided. I realize there are many and it is hard to eradicate all of them, but that appears to the tack the government would like to take.

Lastly, the point that opening up a "back door" in encryption programs for the government essentially makes encryption programs unreliable (because, as we've already agreed, hackers in the private sector far outclass NSA's best and brightest) is a good one. It would be an argument for why this approach is not narrowly tailored, as it has far reaching effects totally outside of the scope of the government's interest.

So, good points, thanks for the article. It will be interesting to see what data the FBI comes up with when it releases new stats on how often they encounter this problem.

So, anyone want to translate this:

The FBI did not return a call seeking comment, but the FBI's general counsel Valerie Caproni told the New York Times that companies "can promise strong encryption. They just need to figure out how they can provide us plain text.”

But, from what I'm understanding, the companies generally aren't even able to decrypt their own encryption, rendering that statement nonsensical. Is that correct?

[Guest Raidne]

I think we're talking past each other.

No, you're just not making sense. And worse than that...

Also: you waved the big "T" club around at me earlier and that was rather disappointing. "We're talking Turrrists!". Haven't we had enough of that? I'm tired of people trying to cudgel me with their "Big Bad Other." It makes me almost physically ill that you've let fear get that deep a hold of you. There will always be terrorists, just as there will always be murderers and thieves. You're not going to scare me into thinking that my privacy is trumped, on its face, by the exigencies of a murder investigation -- why should terrorism be any different?

You're being a big drama queen about the fact that I recognize that encrypted communication is probably a total godsend for terrorists (which is not to say it's not much more important for many, many other people).

I assure you, if I had an irrational fear of the Big Bad Other and it had a hold on me to the extent that you were compelled to vomit over the disgustingness of the depths of my fearmongering, I would not, right now, be sitting one block away from the White House, where I sit five days a week every week, nor would I reside less than a mile away from Congress.

[alguien]

Obama has a pretty interesting interview in Rolling Stone magazine. Some interesting tidbits on the first page:

On Republican obstructionism:

What I was surprised somewhat by, and disappointed by, although I've got to give some grudging admiration for just how effective it's been, was the degree to which Mitch McConnell was able to keep his caucus together on a lot of issues. Eventually, we were able to wear them down, so that we were able to finally get really important laws passed, some of which haven't gotten a lot of attention — the credit-card reform bill, or the anti-tobacco legislation, or preventing housing and mortgage fraud. We'd be able to pick off two or three Republicans who wanted to do the right thing.

But the delays, the cloture votes, the unprecedented obstruction that has taken place in the Senate took its toll. Even if you eventually got something done, it would take so long and it would be so contentious, that it sent a message to the public that "Gosh, Obama said he was going to come in and change Washington, and it's exactly the same, it's more contentious than ever." Everything just seems to drag on — even what should be routine activities, like appointments, aren't happening. So it created an atmosphere in which a public that is already very skeptical of government, but was maybe feeling hopeful right after my election, felt deflated and sort of felt, "We're just seeing more of the same."

On Republicans, tax cuts, and economy:

...what they will say is, "We just want these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which will cost us $700 billion and which we're not going to pay for.

Now what they'll also say is, "We're going to control spending." But of course, when you say you're going to borrow $700 billion to give an average $100,000-a-year tax break to people making a million dollars a year, or more, and you're not going to pay for it; when Mitch McConnell's overall tax package that he just announced recently was priced at about $4 trillion; when you, as a caucus, reject a bipartisan idea for a fiscal commission that originated from Judd Gregg, Republican budget chair, and Kent Conrad, Democratic budget chair, so that I had to end up putting the thing together administratively because we couldn't get any support — you don't get a sense that they're actually serious on the deficit side.

On the Tea Party (a viewpoint that is actually similar to our FLOW):

I think the Tea Party is an amalgam, a mixed bag of a lot of different strains in American politics that have been there for a long time. There are some strong and sincere libertarians who are in the Tea Party who generally don't believe in government intervention in the market or socially. There are some social conservatives in the Tea Party who are rejecting me the same way they rejected Bill Clinton, the same way they would reject any Democratic president as being too liberal or too progressive. There are strains in the Tea Party that are troubled by what they saw as a series of instances in which the middle-class and working-class people have been abused or hurt by special interests and Washington, but their anger is misdirected.

And then there are probably some aspects of the Tea Party that are a little darker, that have to do with anti-immigrant sentiment or are troubled by what I represent as the president. So I think it's hard to characterize the Tea Party as a whole, and I think it's still defining itself.

Finally on Democratic frustration:

When I talk to Democrats around the country, I tell them, "Guys, wake up here. We have accomplished an incredible amount in the most adverse circumstances imaginable." I came in and had to prevent a Great Depression, restore the financial system so that it functions, and manage two wars. In the midst of all that, I ended one of those wars, at least in terms of combat operations. We passed historic health care legislation, historic financial regulatory reform and a huge number of legislative victories that people don't even notice. We wrestled away billions of dollars of profit that were going to the banks and middlemen through the student-loan program, and now we have tens of billions of dollars that are going directly to students to help them pay for college. We expanded national service more than we ever have before.

The Recovery Act alone represented the largest investment in research and development in our history, the largest investment in infrastructure since Dwight Eisenhower, the largest investment in education — and that was combined, by the way, with the kind of education reform that we hadn't seen in this country in 30 years — and the largest investment in clean energy in our history.

...

What is true, and this is part of what can frustrate folks, is that over the past 20 months, we made a series of decisions that were focused on governance, and sometimes there was a conflict between governance and politics. So there were some areas where we could have picked a fight with Republicans that might have gotten our base feeling good, but would have resulted in us not getting legislation done.

I could have had a knock-down, drag-out fight on the public option that might have energized you and The Huffington Post, and we would not have health care legislation now. I could have taken certain positions on aspects of the financial regulatory bill, where we got 90 percent of what we set out to get, and I could have held out for that last 10 percent, and we wouldn't have a bill. You've got to make a set of decisions in terms of "What are we trying to do here? Are we trying to just keep everybody ginned up for the next election, or at some point do you try to win elections because you're actually trying to govern?" I made a decision early on in my presidency that if I had an opportunity to do things that would make a difference for years to come, I'm going to go ahead and take it.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

The argument isn't that, actually. There hasn't been an argument, and the president says there won't be one. You see, it's a secret.

Yes there has. That much is public.

Based on this - is there anything - anything at all - that could prevent the president from killing me and my whole family if he said that we are supporting Al-Qaeda based on secret evidence that only he knows about?

It's not evidence that only he knows about. And yes, it has to be overseas, outside the legal jurisdiction of the U.S. And you would know about it ahead of time so you'd be able to return to the U.S. and challenge the determination. He is free to do that.

Anyway, getting back to the question I was asking, I gather from your response that you do think that his status as an American citizen means that he should be immune from direct strikes against him, even if that's exactly what we'd do to anyone else engaging in that same activity. Right? Would your position change if he was in Afghanistan and running a Taliban headquarters?

also, I just looked it up -

Nothing about Al-Qaeda in there at all. Is there any evidence whatsoever that the individual in questions helped plan, authorize, or commit the 9/11 attacks? If not, then this (bullshit) "authorization of force" doesn't help.

You are misreading that. The Authorization talks about going after the organization that planned that attack so as to prevent future attacks. The organization is AQ, and the Authorization does not say, as you seem to imply, that the only members of that organization who can be attacked are those members who planned 9/11. If this guy has joined that organization, he's fair game under that Authorization.

[Lord Mord]

Raidne,

No, you're just not making sense.

Okay. Then where am I not making sense?

You're being a big drama queen about the fact that I recognize that encrypted communication is probably a total godsend for terrorists (which is not to say it's not much more important for many, many other people).

I assure you, if I had an irrational fear of the Big Bad Other and it had a hold on me to the extent that you were compelled to vomit over the disgustingness of the depths of my fearmongering, I would not, right now, be sitting one block away from the White House, where I sit five days a week every week, nor would I reside less than a mile away from Congress.

Yeah, that's more than fair. I'm sorry. Yet, even though it's a godsend for terrorists, it's a godsend for anyone, and criminals generally. What's the need to bring terrorism into it in particular?

Why, before I've even done anything wrong, and before any warrant has ever been obtained to search any of my property, real or intellectual, should I be obligated to provide special access appertures just in case the government someday in the future decides they need to invade my privacy -- legal warrant or no?