Pandora's Black Box of FBI Snooping

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Monday July 10, 2006 · 10:10 AM PDT

2006/07/10 · 10:10

Declan McCullagh writes on C-NET the FBI is pushing for new legal cover to remove the next layer of electronic privacy in a nation-wide dragnet. Our various intelligence agencies had all of data sets needed to track the 9-11 plot and failed to do this. Removing more of our hard-fought rights will do nothing to make our Brave Dear Leaders "die Heimat-Sicherheit" connect more dots and can only be akin to throwing more haystacks on the needle.

Lost in this bureaucratic rush to sniff each and everyone's electronic shorts is how this back-door un-locking master-key mechanism means savvy criminals and clever terrorists will get in and mouse around your files just as easily as poltical operatives looking for petty reasons to smear someone. It's little different from the government having your internet provider pay to install cameras in your bedroom - and given how ever-more computers have built-in webcams this is all too real.

http://news.com.com/...
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Cindy Sheehan's Road to Sainthood

MisterGibson

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Friday July 07, 2006 · 8:00 AM PDT

2006/07/07 · 08:00

I knew Cindy before she got all famous and it was unpopular to decry this sad farce of a Schlock & Offal war. We lived in Benicia, CA, were a small group of about a dozen of us had established regular weekly anti-war vigils starting the very day after Bush pushed his big-boy Red Button. We were a peaceful group who often faced spewing inarticulate heavy-breather males who would threaten, bellow, veer vehicles dangerously close as threatening weapons, and generally intimidate the mostly elderly female group. I was regularly thanked by the women for my presence as they indicated the nastiness was kept more remote and lower-key when a male was around.
Eventually, the stalwart efforts of a few to make signs and stand in gloomy winter weather drew ever-wider attention and we routinely saw guests trickle in from near and far. Cindy and her {then} husband would periodically drive in for the evening and my wee family got to meet them several times in the face of such adversity. It was always a pleasure and she has been a pillar of strength from the beginning. Read More

S.W.I.F.T. is a boat named T.I.A.

MisterGibson

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Thursday July 06, 2006 · 4:23 AM PDT

2006/07/06 · 04:23

The furor over New York Times reporting on international banking monitors via the Belgium SWIFT system are just blow-hards spitting dust into the wind.

If this was such a double-secret burn-before-reading program, then why did I learned of this "classified" method two years before GwB himself announced "his" initiative a few short months after 9-11 and four years before his Treasury Dept takes a gaggle of reporters overseas just to strut the money-tracking acumen "they" created...
These goats gloat when the "leak" is on their to-do list, but clutch chest and fein mortal wounds to the sheep when "leaks" aren't.

Maybe Steve Colbert can start minting the political version of an Oscar. Read More

Open Letter to "Lil' Verde Pigskins"

MisterGibson

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday June 30, 2006 · 7:10 AM PDT

2006/06/30 · 07:10

So, the flag-pin festooned 101st Keyboardist Division is shocked, shocked, that their cult of Dear Leader personality isn't really the Uber-King. This most conservative Supreme Court in a century is just too wedded to quaint notions of the Constitution for the wingnuts, heh?

Apparently everything DIDN'T change after 9-11.
We still don't have a King named George.
We don't have a State Church.
The Constitution means something, still. Read More

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