IP: Brock Meeks: First, brand all the children

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah () shipwright com>
> Subject: Brock Meeks: First, brand all the children
>
> http://www.msnbc.com/news/646793.asp
>
>
> First, brand all the children
>
> Cyber-liberties swept away by tidal wave of security concerns
>
> OPINION
> By Brock N. Meeks
> MSNBC
>
> WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 - Anthrax, Afghanistan, al-Qaida, Ashcroft and
> anti-terrorism legislation. We aren't even through the first letter of the
> geopolitical alphabet before jumping all the way to "S" as in "screwed" as
> in what's happening to civil liberties in the online world.
>
>        WITH AMERICA LOOKING more like a nation running scared than a nation
> standing strong, our leaders here in Washington are rolling back privacy
> protections or launching proposals that will have us all hard-wired into
> some all-seeing government database faster than they can evacuate their
> offices during an anthrax scare.
>        Am I the only one to notice how sick and twisted it is for Oracle's
> Larry Ellison and Sun Microsystems' Scott McNealy to be vocally advocating
> the establishment of a national ID card system? Just a few years ago, these
> two baby billionaires couldn't be dragged kicking or screaming to
> Washington, and now they're pimping for a national database system that
> could track you and me from cradle to grave?
>        The word "evil" is being tossed around a lot these days, and it
> rightly applies to the concept of a national ID card. Even conservative
> icon Ronald Reagan brushed off that idea. During Reagan's presidency,
> national ID cards were proposed as a way of dealing with illegal
> immigration. But Reagan feared they could be abused for, say, tracking all
> gun owners or gun purchases. Even after he was shot, Reagan rebuffed the
> lunacy of a national ID card. Legend has it that during a Cabinet meeting,
> when the ID card topic was raised in relation to immigration, Reagan
> deadpanned: "Maybe we should just brand all babies."
>        Or maybe we should just allow the FBI to tap any and every
> conversation - spoken or written - that it merely suspects might be related
> to "suspicious" activity? Because in fact, that is exactly what the new
> anti-terrorism bill allows.
>
> 'SNEAK AND PEEK'
>
>                        The anti-terrorism bill now passed by both houses of
> Congress contains a "delayed notice" provision (section 213) that allows
> federal agents to conduct covert searches of your home.
>        "This means that law enforcement agencies can enter a person's home
> or office, search through the person's possessions, in some cases seize
> physical objects or electronic information, without the person knowing that
> law enforcement agents were there," the American Civil Liberties Union
> wrote to congressional leaders in a letter outlining their concerns about
> the bill.
>        These so-called "sneak and peek" provisions treat the Fourth
> Amendment protections as if they were written in pencil, easily erased and
> malleable, tied to the crisis-of-the-day level of paranoia. There is a
> damned good reason the Fourth Amendment exists. The last time I read the
> Fourth Amendment I didn't notice a clause that said, "Š unless, of course,
> the country is cowering from a recent terrorist attack."
>        That a constitutional provision - revered by conservatives and
> liberals alike - could be so easily and bluntly assailed is frightening. No
> congressional hearings were held; there was no public debate. The few in
> Congress saw fit to speak for the many.
>        And unlike some of the other expanded law enforcement provisions in
> the anti-terrorism bill, this secret search language doesn't have a
> "sunset" deadline or a date certain when the law would have to be
> reaffirmed or stricken from the books.
>
>
> MOTHER OF ALL CARNIVORES
>        At the same time that the FBI is being allowed to rummage through
> your personal effects - imagine a glove-wearing agent finger-dancing his
> way across your keyboard and joy-riding through your hard disk, all without
> your knowledge - the agency also is putting the final touches on a
> technical plan to funnel all electronic communications through an
> easy-to-wiretap electronic pipe.
>
> The plan would require all Internet service providers to reconfigure their
> e-mail systems to better facilitate FBI wiretapping. It is a capability the
> FBI has been lusting after since the laws were changed in 1994 mandating
> that all telephone companies build in capabilities for the FBI to more
> easily tap the country's telephone system.
>        "It's clear [the FBI has] decided that in the next year or so they
> are going to make a big push on [electronic communication] and they are
> going to use whatever leverage they can to get people to cooperate," said
> Stewart Baker, former general counsel for the National Security Agency and
> now a lawyer with Steptoe & Johnson. Baker, who made his remarks at a
> recent seminar, said the FBI would be doing so to ensure that e-mail
> systems "are more wiretap-friendly than the ones we have today."
>        Again, such developments have been in the works for years, with the
> agency running into a stone wall from civil libertarians, ISPs resisting
> the implementation of what is essentially a window on the soul of their
> networks. But the bureau is exploiting the dulled senses of an American
> public still trying to shake off the shock of the Sept. 11 attacks. The
> catch: This is a one-way window, and we're on the wrong side of it.
>
> NAKED TO THE WORLD
>        It is dangerous to be nearsighted in times of crisis. All the
> changes happening now affecting your online privacy or allowing your
> personal information to be stored online will continue to do so, with no
> end in sight.
>        "Big deal! I have nothing to hide!" I hear you shouting.
>        I know you're shouting it, because I've answered that question from
> hundreds of you who have cared to write asking for an answer.
>        I posed the same question to A.P., a long-time reader of this column
> who also happens to be a criminal defense attorney.
>        "'I have nothing to hide' from whom?" asks A.P. "Is it from the
> police as we now know them? Then you don't know some of the police I know.
> Is it from the politicians? Then think what you were saying about
> politicians one year or five years ago," he says.
>        "Our founding fathers were, to George III, not heroes; rather, they
> were 'terrorists,'" A.P. says. "They blew stuff up, destroyed property and
> openly demanded and fomented rebellion. They wanted protection from open
> warrants predicated upon the unsubstantiated allegations of unknown and
> untested informants, the burdens that George had placed on them," he says.
>        Do we, as a country governed by "mostly ordinary people," really
> want them deciding what is best for our families? A.P. asks. "Are we to
> return to government by rumor and threat?" he asks.
>        The current concerns about the loss of privacy and increased
> security go far beyond the airport, bus or train station.
>        "We are talking about being secure in our thoughts, words and
> deeds," A.P. says. "Are we, as a people, willing to risk the loss of the
> right to dissent, the right to criticize our government, the right to elect
> someone different? It might not happen overnight or all at once, but it is
> the little erosions that frighten me and should frighten everyone else."
>
>
>
> --
> -----------------
> R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah () ibuc com>
> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
> "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
> [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
> experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'


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