more on Dan Gilmore: Four Years of Lost Liberties

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: dmcknight15 () comcast net
Date: October 29, 2004 12:05:30 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: RE: [IP] Dan Gilmore: Four Years of Lost Liberties

Far more Native Americans died of European diseases than by European
weapons.  Their immune systems were not prepared for the onslaught of
smallpox and other such foreign diseases.

Likewise, to a terrorist our country must appear as a body ill-prepared 
for
the damage he can inflict.  It is so easy to sit at one's computer and 
type
out an armchair quarterback column that Dan has published.  In a 
vacuum, the
actions the president has taken are certainly inimical to our cherished
freedoms.  I too am queasy about certain provisions of the Patriot Act 
and I
too have disagreed with the president on a number of his decisions.
However, I don't see much of his policy as permanent in nature, and I 
feel
comfortable with the president's motivation for taking the actions that 
he
has.

Perhaps Dan was in New York after the 9/11 attack on our country.  
Perhaps
he helped search for victims in the rubble.  Perhaps he donated money or
blood or sent supplies or even prayed for them.  However, he doesn't 
have
the responsibility of the government on his shoulders for two enormous 
tasks
that the attacks precipitated:  justice for the victims and the 
prevention
of further attacks against the country.  My guess is that if he had 
been in
the president's shoes, he would have taken many of the same actions 
that the
president did.  We can all see in hindsight that the actions taken by 
the
Clinton administration in the wake of the Cole bombing and the African
embassy bombings were clearly inadequate.  The 9/11 attack called for
drastic actions.  We certainly have a duty to offer our support, ideas 
and
prayers in support of the president's actions.  We can even be critical 
of
actions planned or taken, as long as such criticism is constructive, 
offers
alternatives, weighs both costs and benefits and keeps firmly in mind 
what
our goals should be.  Partisans who exploit these dangers for political 
gain
are demagogues.

We live in a dangerous world today.  As technology progresses, it will 
get
increasingly dangerous.  We have seen how technology has increased the
killing power of weapons, with fewer people needed to wield them.  We 
can
already imagine a dirty nuclear bomb being detonated in the middle of a
large city, not only killing many people, but rendering much of the city
virtually inhabitable for centuries.  Five to ten years from now, I can 
see
these trends only getting worse, requiring greater political will to
control.

Freedom is always in tension with security.  Our nation has a long legal
history of restricting freedom when the security of the nation is
threatened.  The greatness of our nation lies in the fact that we love
freedom so much that we hate its restriction even in times of war, and
eagerly cast aside such restriction when the danger has passed.  
However, we
must not delude ourselves in thinking that since there hasn't been 
another
attack on our soil that we are no longer in danger.  If we weren't 
taking
the fight to them, they would certainly be taking the fight to us.

Dan is right that we need to be concerned about where technology is 
taking
us with regard to our privacy and our freedoms.  I love the intense 
exchange
of ideas about these very issues in Mr. Farber's IP listserve.  
Apparently
unlike Dan, I believe that the vigorous debate we see, here and 
elsewhere,
will eventually reconcile, as much as possible, our freedom and our
security.

DeLoss McKnight III

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ip () v2 listbox com [mailto:owner-ip () v2 listbox com] On 
Behalf Of
David Farber
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2004 7:31 PM
To: Ip
Subject: [IP] Dan Gilmore: Four Years of Lost Liberties


Four Years of Lost Liberties
posted by Dan Gillmor 08:02 AM
http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/010960.shtml
(This is also my column today in the San Jose Mercury News.)

If you believe that political and social liberty go hand in hand
with economic freedom -- and that they form an underpinning of a
vibrant free market -- you should be worried about another four
years like the four we've just had.


Let's grant that George W. Bush plainly believes in a free
market, largely unconstrained by government intervention. But he
has made it clear that he doesn't have the same devotion to
other kinds of liberty.

He and his allies have used terrorism to launch a massive
assault on civil liberties. They are not just indifferent to
liberty, they are actively hostile to it.

Bush's first term has been a catalog of encroachments. He has
expanded surveillance -- electronic and otherwise -- without
adequate safeguards. He has had a mania for secrecy, shielding
more and more government information from public view. This
amounts to telling Americans they have no right in many cases to
know how our money is being used or what government is doing in
our names.

This president has curbed dissent through intimidation. His
attorney general practically labeled as traitors people who
questioned the outrageously named ``Patriot Act,'' for
example. More recently, the Bush forces have excluded anyone who
is not a declared supporter from being even in the vicinity of
campaign events, and have even fenced off protesters in
Orwellian ``free speech zones'' far from the scenes.

The Bush years have emboldened rights and privacy invaders
everywhere. A national ID card is making a back-door entrance
via a scheme by the state agencies that issue driver's licenses,
for example.

He has given corporate interests carte blanche to buy, sell,
massage and trade our most personal information -- mocking his
vows in the 2000 campaign to be a president who would protect
privacy.

The federal government now encourages (and buys) all kinds of
data collection and ways to manipulate it, and offers barely a
hint of safeguards. Do you imagine for even a second that the
radio-chip ID implants being sold to track patients inside
hospitals won't be used for much broader kinds of surveillance
someday? Ditto the radio tags the government says it wants to
put into our passports (and soon, no doubt, our driver's
licenses). Surveillance is big business now.

Insidiously, the Bush administration has turned the corporate
data mongers into partners in the dawning surveillance
state. Evading even the most trivial safeguards, including
federal laws protecting privacy, it buys or uses data collected
by private companies that are under no such restrictions.

An intrusive airline passenger screening system, relying on
commercial data and other information, was officially scrapped
after protests. But as the Washington Post reported earlier this
month, one of the former government officials behind that
project has launched a private company that will collect and
provide data for the project's new incarnation -- and
established the company offshore in Bermuda, ``outside the reach
of U.S. regulators.''

The most frightening assault on liberty has had nothing to do
with the Patriot Act, surveillance or privacy. Bush has
systematically ignored the law when it suited his purpose,
treating the Constitution as a suggestion box, not the bedrock
of liberty. He asserted the right to declare American citizens
as enemy combatants here at home and to jail them indefinitely,
with no right even to see a lawyer.

The Supreme Court, thankfully, rejected Bush's dictatorial views
in two pivotal decisions earlier this year. But presidents
nominate justices, and this one means to nominate the kind who
will let the government do pretty much what it pleases.

Early last week, William Rehnquist, chief justice of the
U.S. Supreme Court, had surgery for thyroid cancer. His
condition reminded people that whoever is president during the
next four years will probably nominate three or four justices to
the highest court.

A court with two, three or four judges of Bush's preference
would not be friendly, on balance, to our rights as
individuals. The president has made clear his intention to
appoint judges who would overturn abortion rights. That, too, is
a question of liberty.

Is John Kerry any better? He voted for the ``Patriot'' law,
after all.

But while Bush vows to expand that law's reach over our lives,
Kerry has said he would work to repeal some of the more odious
provisions, such as the one that lets government agents rifle
through our lives -- including what library books we read --
with few safeguards.

I believe that a free economy rests in large part on people's
willingness to feel free -- to take chances, to be different
from others. The surveillance state is a conformist state, where
a fog of fear deadens initiative and the willingness to take
risks.

No sane person wants to make law enforcement impotent. But risk
is part of a free culture, and the more we clamp down on things
that have any element of risk the more we clamp down on freedom
itself.

--
Robert J. Berger - Internet Bandwidth Development, LLC.
Voice: 408-882-4755 eFax: +1-408-490-2868
http://www.ibd.com


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