The gang that simply cannot talk straight

Here we go again -- or rather, here they go again. How many times must we suffer the president or a member of his administration shaking his finger and peering into the camera and averring that he never had sexual relations with the Bill of Rights.

They just can’t be honest. There’s something deeply, morbidly ingrained in their psychological makeup that prevents them from being aboveboard.

The latest administration scam was a meeting of Internet executives called by the attorney general and FBI director to discuss, purportedly, the corporate record-keeping of Web-surfing activities that child pornography investigators could tap, if needed. That was the “hook” -- child pornography -- that has been publicly touted by the attorney general as the sole justification for expanded snooping powers. Who wouldn’t want to see child-porn purveyors nailed, right?

“In a speech in April,” recalls the NYT, “[Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales said that investigations into child pornography had been hampered because Internet companies had not always kept records that would help prosecutors identify people who traded in illegal images.”

“The investigation and prosecution of child predators depends critically on the availability of evidence that is often in the hands of Internet service providers,” said Mr. Gonzales. Good. Fantastic. Go get ‘em.

But when ISP executives were gathered by Mr. Gonzales of the Justice Department, accompanied by FBI Director Robert Mueller, to discuss ways of identifying these nefarious, on-line creatures, “they gathered that the department was interested in records that would allow them to identify which individuals visited certain Web sites and possibly conducted searches using certain terms” [emphasis added] -- and for purposes far outside the originally offered reason.

“An executive of one Internet provider that was represented at the first meeting said Mr. Gonzales began the discussion by showing slides of child pornography from the Internet. But later, one participant asked Mr. Mueller why he was interested in the Internet records. The executive said Mr. Mueller’s reply was, ‘We want this for terrorism.’”

Nor did it end there. Administration officials went on to talk of the records’ “value in investigating other crimes like intellectual property theft and fraud, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, who attended the session.”

“It was clear that they would go beyond kiddie porn and terrorism and use it for general law enforcement,” said a startled Rotenberg, adding that “This is a sharp departure from current practice. Data retention is an open-ended obligation to retain all information on all customers for all purposes, and from a traditional Fourth Amendment perspective, that really turns things upside down.”

Fourth Amendment? That old thing? Pshaw.

Kate Dean, the just-as-startled executive director of an ISP trade group, noted that “When they said they were talking about child pornography, we spent a lot of time developing proposals for what could be done. Now they are talking about a whole different ball of wax.”

Which is what we have for a government these days -- “A whole different ball of wax.”

Comments

[KJ Lovell]

Isn't this just the cover story they are using to further their political control?

This so called administration can't tell the truth if their lives depended on it. Caught in one lie and scandal after another and never tell the truth.

Using the cover story of kiddie porn, spying on innocent Americans phone calls, war protests etc. You can tell that the main objective is to eliminate all forms of free speech. Don't mis understand, I am in favor of nailing the kiddie porn people, but NOT at the cost of my free speech and privacy. If I want to call Bush a war criminal I will, and shouldn't have goons in the government passing that information to their buddies that might be interviewing me for a job, approving a mortgage, or worse making decisions about my health care.

What if I said Bush/Cheeney were such liars they had to have someone else call their dogs. It pisses off the goons in the government and they decide to pull a political Hidatha on me for it. They pass this information and some suggestions to my physician that is treating me for a life threatening condition. Since the physician is a RETHUGlican and a scull and bones guy (bonesman) he decides to forget that oath he took when he became a doctor and remembers the oath to the "order" and deglects to give me safe treatment and I die. Perfect crime, no messy trials and convictions.

If you think this type of thing does not happen, you are sadly mistaken.

So, I am just not buying their cover story and neither should you.

My President (the last legally elected one) would never be caught on record saying "...the Constitution is just a Goddam**ed piece of paper." and my Attorney General would never say the Constitution is "an outdated document".

Would yours?

[pikaomega]

Before, I would awaken every day and begin to sift through the mass electronic media chaffe, shaking my head and quietly musing "this cannot be for real". I do not say this anymore. For years, I have been a political organizer in St. Louis, MO. I had the fortune (good or bad, depending on how you read it) of working for one of the country's largest PACs during the 2004 election. We witnessed people on adjacent rooftops photographing the daily working of our office and had "plants" sent in to apply for employment, seconds after they had been dropped off by a marked RNC van. At that point, being 24 and still wet behind the ears, I was astonished by the level of attention we were given regardless of our position in a key battleground state.

I am no longer green, and I am no longer surprised. I am well aware that my most recent campaigning has left me open to the possibility of being more closely scrutinized than most. I know that my phone conversations may be apprehended, my emails hijacked. I accept this as a possible casualty of the path I have chosen to take. What comforts me is the youthful belief that things can change, regardless of the cynical reservation I feel about the possibility of that taking place.

I have become weary of the outrage that we, at least those of us who possess the slightest cerebral activity, by our very natures are driven to as cattle by the unyielding torrent of affronts to our lives and our liberties. I urge all who read this to become involved locally. Change will only occur at a glacial pace without a persistant force behind it. It is now up to we the people to determine that force, before the cataclysmic actions of unelected tyrants choose it for us. Stop being cattle, girded into anger and inaction. Forgiving may be virtuous, forgetting's always dangerous.

[The Oracle]

Let's see. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, initially enacted to catch suspected terrorists or spies, has been transformed by the Bush administration into the Domestic Intelligence Surveillance Program (DISP), with wide-ranging and uncontested intrusions into the private lives of ordinary U.S. citizens.

As part of this vast data-mining operation on U.S. citizens, the Bush administration is trying to enlist internet service providers to literally spy on U.S. internet users, just like the system the Communists have set up in Red China to spy on mainland China's internet users.

Are the people in the Bush administration nothing more than Communists? I know they claim they are Christian, but their actions invoke images of Communism...not Jesus Christ.

Which leads me to conclude that the Bush administration and all their neo-Communist backers are more dangerous to our democracy, and to the well-being of our nation's children, than the relatively small number of pedophiles lurking about.

In other words, pedophile activity seems to be fairly limited in scope, while what the Bush administration and twisted people like Alberto Gonzales are promoting will have much longer-lasting adverse effects on U.S. citizens, including the children of U.S. citizens...because once freedom is lost, it is hard to regain...and in the attempt to regain freedom lost, violence often ensues...which hurts the children caught up in the carnage much more than anything pedophiles reportedly do.

And from what I've gleaned in reading reports of war-torn societies around the world, the violence that arises between adults often leads to increased incidences of violence toward children, including increased predation on children by pedophiles in these war-torn societies.

This is where the adage comes from that states: the path to hell is paved with good-intentions. I don't doubt the "good-intentions" of righteous folks like Alberto Gonzales and his religious fundamentalist kind, but what they are really proposing can only lead to hell. Why?

Censorship never gets rid of that which is censored...it only drives what is censored further underground.

In other words, will eliminating child pornography from the internet eliminate child abuse or children being preyed on by pedophiles? No. The pedophiles will continue abusing children. How do I know this?

Remember, some Catholic priest pedophiles have reportedly been abusing Catholic children under their care as far back as fifty years ago (or much longer)...and these abuses happened long before there ever was an internet.

So, just like the "gay marriage" issue, the internet "child pornography" issue is just being used as leverage by some very devious people who are promoting totalitarianism instead of democracy...which can only wreak hell on American citizens, as well as the children of America. I'm not fooled.