A Fundamentally Childish Argument

I don't even know where to start with this. The argument that says that "if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about" is the one that will screw us all.

The essence of the chief argument against this – and rest assured, I’ve used it myself – is, “if you’re not doing anything wrong you don’t have anything to worry about.” The government, police or “the authorities” in general are looking for The Bad Guys. They aren’t looking for “us.” We are The Good Guys and have nothing to fear.

The problem with that argument is this--who's to say what is "wrong?" Is protesting the government "wrong" this week? Because we just got wind that the Governor of Maryland was using his State Police to spy on anti-war protesters. Not "terrorists." American citizens opposed to the war in Iraq. The ability of the Federal government to get out a pair of movable goalposts and change what they define as being "wrong" is what this argument is all about. The moment we gave up our rights in favor of being protected because we believe that the government is only interested in going after some loose affiliation of "bad guys" is the moment when we handed the government a blank check to decide who it can silence. Whistleblowers, protesters, activists, people who don't commit domestic or international terrorism--see where this leads to?

One common and immediate rebuttal to this is that the real Bad Guys are the ones who will find ways to get around these surveillance efforts. They will use “burner” style disposable phones and find ways to disable GPS devices in vehicles. They will disguise their visage in public, which most of us would never do, and most of them probably don’t use computers anyway. As in the case of gun bans, the Good Guys will give up their guns while the Bad Guys keep theirs. (They’re not terribly interested in obeying local statutes in the first place, you see.) In the end, the government will simply wind up spying on and imposing restrictions upon the Good Guys while the Bad Guys flaunt the law.

Already solved that problem--it's called data mining, and it allows US intelligence agencies to sift vast amounts of meta-data to catch exactly those tactics. It's effective, it protects privacy rights because the "hit" generated from a positive match leads into the oversight process if the person that the information is matched to is a US person. The FISA court kicks in and protects the rights of the US person being surveilled, and we should always have some body, some authority, providing oversight.

Disguising their visage? You mean, rubber mask makeup and paste-on moles and shit? The kind with fake hair sticking out of them? Yes, your average "Jihadi" probably did attend drama school and probably aced stage makeup and design.

The gun argument is another fallacy--what does gun control have to do with protecting the privacy rights of Americans? Gun control is a public policy issue for the jurisdiction that you live in--what works in Montana might not work in downtown Chicago for a policy. Yes, the bad guys will always have guns. No one is willing to do what it takes to ensure they are prevented from getting guns and no one is prepared to lock people up in vast numbers for twenty or thirty years at a stretch.

In the end, the privacy protections we enjoy through the Bill of Rights, Miranda and similar guarantees, were never intended to protect the guilty nor make it more challenging for CSI investigators to capture them in dramatic fashion. These assurances were granted to shield the innocent from false accusations and prosecution, be it through either malfeasance or incompetence on the part of the authorities. We didn’t design this system to ensure you can get off on a technicality if you are guilty. We built it to make sure the right person winds up behind bars. This is the final intent of FISA – not to spy on you as long as you remain one of the Good Guys, but to make sure the Bad Guys don’t show up at your door with a palm frond.

Okay, that will leave your head spinning. Last time I checked, "CSI" was a fucking TV show. And that's a fundamental misunderstanding of the rule of law. Our system will sometimes let the guilty go--and that's because the guilty and the innocent have to be afforded the right to a vigorous defense. It's not perfect, but it beats every other system out there. You know, like the one where the government decides what is and what is not "wrong" based on their own whim.

If you're willing to give up your rights to be a little safe, you'll give up all your rights to be completely safe. The problem with that childish thinking is, with all of your rights gone, you have guaranteed yourself a peril that is much worse than anything a terrorist could do to you.

Holy Joe Loses It In Public

Senator Joe Lieberman can't figure out what bothers him more--what's on television, what's going on with Bill Clinton's sex life, who's critisizing John McCain or what's on YouTube:

Searches on YouTube return dozens of videos branded with an icon or logo identifying the videos as the work of one of these Islamist terrorist organizations. A great majority of these videos document horrific attacks on American soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan. Others provide weapons training, speeches by al-Qaeda leadership, and general material intended to radicalize potential recruits.

In other words, Islamist terrorist organizations use YouTube to disseminate their propaganda, enlist followers, and provide weapons training – activities that are all essential to terrorist activity. According to testimony received by our Committee, the online content produced by al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist organizations can play a significant role in the process of radicalization, the end point of which is the planning and execution of a terrorist attack. YouTube also, unwittingly, permits Islamist terrorist groups to maintain an active, pervasive, and amplified voice, despite military setbacks or successful operations by the law enforcement and intelligence communities.

Google told Lieberman to stuff it:

Last week, Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) contacted us to voice his concerns about seeing videos from several Islamic terrorist organizations on YouTube. We appreciated our dialogue with Senator Lieberman and his staff and wanted to explain to the YouTube community how we responded to his concerns.

First, some background: hundreds of thousands of videos are uploaded to YouTube every day. Because it is not possible to pre-screen this much content, we have developed an innovative and reliable community policing system that involves our users in helping us enforce YouTube's standards. Millions of users report potential violations of our Community Guidelines by selecting the "Flag" link while watching videos.

Senator Lieberman's staff identified numerous videos that they believed violated YouTube's Community Guidelines. In response to his concerns, we examined and ended up removing a number of videos from the site, primarily because they depicted gratuitous violence, advocated violence, or used hate speech. Most of the videos, which did not contain violent or hate speech content, were not removed because they do not violate our Community Guidelines.

Senator Lieberman stated his belief, in a letter sent today, that all videos mentioning or featuring these groups should be removed from YouTube -- even legal nonviolent or non-hate speech videos. While we respect and understand his views, YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone's right to express unpopular points of view. We believe that YouTube is a richer and more relevant platform for users precisely because it hosts a diverse range of views, and rather than stifle debate we allow our users to view all acceptable content and make up their own minds. Of course, users are always free to express their disagreement with a particular video on the site, by leaving comments or their own response video. That debate is healthy.

We appreciate Senator Lieberman alerting us to videos that violated our policies -- and encourage our users to continue to do the same through the flagging tool. And while we disagree with him about the details of our policies, we respect his views and thank him for giving us the chance to respond to his concerns.

Senator Lieberman doesn't have to go on the Internet to find this kind of thing--he just needs to go next door, to Fairfax County, Virginia and attend a few classes at the Islamic Saudi Academy:

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent, bipartisan federal agency with a mandate to recommend policies that promote religious freedom in U.S. foreign policy, has recommended that the Secretary of State open diplomatic talks with the Saudi government in order to obtain official Saudi textbooks used at the government-run Islamic Saudi Academy outside Washington. The Academy should be closed until the official Saudi textbooks used at the school are made available for comprehensive public examination and are found to be consistent with Saudi government commitments to revise them to remove intolerant and violent references.

[SNIP]

Significant concerns remain about whether what is being taught at the ISA promotes religious intolerance and may adversely affect the interests of the United States. In December 2003, a former Saudi judge and Saudi journalist presented a study on the state religious curricula in boy's schools in Saudi Arabia at the second National Dialogue forum on religious extremism and moderation. The study found that the approach used in the texts "encourages violence toward others, and misguides the pupils into believing that in order to safeguard their own religion, they must violently repress and even physically eliminate the ‘other'." They cited examples found in the textbooks, such as "the blood and property of the polytheists are permitted" and "there is no prohibition on spilling their [polytheists] blood." Furthermore, one scholar who examined "revised" state religious textbooks concluded that "there are passages in the various Tawhid editions stating that the blood and property of polytheists may be taken by Muslims, and these passages have been contextualized but not removed...What remains then, is a principle of behavior sanctioning the murder of those with whom one disagrees."

Moreover, a 2006 report analyzing some Saudi textbooks from the 2005-2006 school year found that "a ninth grade Saudi textbook on Hadith teaches teenagers in apocalyptic terms that violence towards Jews, Christians and other unbelievers is sanctioned by God." For example, the textbook reads, "the hour [of judgment] will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them." Another example taken from a twelfth grade textbook reads, "Jihad in the path of God - which consists of battling [Arabic, qital] against unbelief, oppression, injustice, and those who perpetrate it - is the summit of Islam." The study concludes that "while, as the text explains, one of the meanings of jihad is self-perfection or ‘wrestling with the spirit', it acknowledges a more militant meaning as well." This state-driven disregard for freedom of religion not only violates international human rights standards, but also serves to embolden radical Islamists who seek to perpetuate acts of terrorism and other violence on Americans and others around the world.

I can find no record of Senator Joe Lieberman commenting on the initial finding in October, 2007, nor can I find any instance where he called a hearing to investigate whether or not the State Department was doing anything about this issue. Time and time again, Republicans and their enablers with links to the Bush Administration talk tough about terrorism--as in, making scurrilous comparisons to the Nazis and using terms like appeasement--but when confronted with the fact that Saudi Arabia is responsible for perpetrating anti-Semitism and anti-American rhetoric, they fall silent. They do nothing.

I can't find any criticism from him of the fact that this same school has been used to train US troops to speak Arabic:

Twenty two soldiers from Fort Belvoir now have a working knowledge of the Arabic language as well as a better understanding of Middle Eastern culture. And, they have the certificates to prove it.

On April 16 they became the second contingent of Fort Belvoir military personnel to graduate from the Islamic Saudi Academy's "Arabic as a Second Language." For the past 10 Saturday mornings they have been voluntarily enrolled in the course taught by Dr. Ibrahim Sakaji, chairperson of the school's Arabic as a Second Language Department.

Nor can I find a single instance where he spoke out in favor of this resolution, in the House, or attempted to sponsor the resolution in the Senate:

At least one congressman hopes to force the State Department to get moving. Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., said he will introduce legislation to require the State Department to begin within 90 days of the law's enactment the process of getting the documents and reporting back findings to Congress another 90 days later.

It was not clear Thursday if there would be any specific consequences in the bill should the State Department fail to meet the requirements.

The legislation may be unnecessary, said Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., suggesting that despite his concerns over Saudi efforts to spread the Wahabbi brand of Islam, which Wolf and a number of critics call "extremist," he thinks the U.S.-Saudi relationship will prevail.

"My sense is that reasonable people will get to the bottom of this," said Wolf, a co-author of the bill that started the commission during the Clinton administration.

Wolf said that if the ISA does have textbooks that promote hate against Jews, Christians or Muslims, "it is unacceptable."

We made that easy for Senator Lieberman--we went to Fox News to get that story. We're not the only ones who want to find out what is really going on at that school. We do not advocate censorship or closing the school--we want to know what they are teaching and whether that is consistent with committing a hate crime that wouldn't be tolerated anywhere, under any circumstances, regardless of whether or not the school has ties to a US ally that won't help us in our time of need. Obviously, someone on his staff must have seen it. It's ironic that he wants to censor YouTube for showing videos, but he is, apparently, clueless to the fact that a school funded by the government of Saudi Arabia is operating in Fairfax County, Virginia, and is essentially teaching what is in those videos.

The people who talk the toughest are usually just all talk--and weak on defending America.

"What I am About to Tell You is Controlled Unclassified Information..."

Walter Pincus writes:

Sometime in the next few years, if a memorandum signed by President Bush this month ever goes into effect, one government official talking to another about information on terrorists will have to begin by saying: "What I am about to tell you is controlled unclassified information enhanced with specified dissemination."

That would mean, according to the memo, that the information requires safeguarding because "the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure would create risk of substantial harm."

Bush's memorandum, signed on the eve of his daughter Jenna's wedding, introduced "Controlled Unclassified Information" as a new government category that will replace "Sensitive but Unclassified."

Such information -- though it does not merit the well-known national security classifications "confidential," "secret" or "top secret" -- is nonetheless "pertinent" to U.S. "national interests" or to "important interests of entities outside the federal government," the memo says.

What that means is this--the information is unclassified. Just because someone designates it "controlled" doesn't change the inherent fact that the information was once considered "unclassified."

It could be the contents of a phone book. It could be the location on a map of a building. It could be the menu at McDonald's. It could be the price of Air Jordans at Footlocker. It could be anything. And when you can classify "anything" you've effectively lost the game of keeping government secrets. You've now entered the silly season of limitless ridiculousness. You might as well hide in a hole and pray to God no one sees your ass sticking up into the air.

The Controlled Unclassified Information designation was the product of a year-long government study of how to replace the "sensitive but unclassified" category. "Among the 20 departments and agencies . . . surveyed, there are at least 107 unique markings and more than 131 different labeling or handling processes and procedures for SBU information," Ted McNamara of the office of the director of national intelligence told the House Homeland Security Committee in April 2007.

In other words, we have a considerable mess on our hands, and we are so terrified of our own shadow, we're just going to classify everything in order to save us from ourselves.

Welcome to the new America. Gone are the days of kicking ass and taking names. Gone are the people who could raise a nation out of the wilderness with their bare hands. Here are the days of hysterical screaming and bloody-eyeball fear.