Homeland Security Okays Closed Proceedings 281
CNet is reporting that a newly created branch within the Homeland Security Department that brings together many different federal agency employees and private sector players has been given the go-ahead to disregard a law requiring meetings to be open and proceedings public. From the article: "The 1972 law generally requires such groups to meet in open sessions, make written meeting materials publicly available, and deliver a 15-day notice of any decision to close a meeting to the public. The last is a particular point of concern for Homeland Security officials, who anticipate that private emergency meetings may need to be scheduled on short notice."
Homeland Security Okay's Closed Proceedings (Score:4, Interesting)
But speaking seriously:
The 1972 law generally requires such groups to meet in open sessions, make written meeting materials publicly available, and deliver a 15-day notice of any decision to close a meeting to the public. The last is a particular point of concern for Homeland Security officials, who anticipate that private emergency meetings may need to be scheduled on short notice.
The private sector, fearing that sensitive data will get to the wrong hands, has continued to resist sharing important information with the feds, the Department of Homeland Security said, citing government auditors' findings from late 2003.
Making the meetings public would amount to "giving our nation's enemies information they could use to most effectively attack a particular infrastructure and cause cascading consequences across multiple infrastructures," another departmental advisory council warned in August.
Is this not a valid reason for a group charged with advising on issues dealing with critical public infrastructure?
Also, please note that ANY meetings under FACA [gsa.gov] can already be closed, but a 15-day notice must be given of such closure. The end result, since 1972, is still that the meeting is closed.
The issue here is that the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council may decide it needs to have an emergency meeting, AND that it should be closed, but can't wait 15 days to hold the meeting. The waiting period would seem designed to discourage federal agencies from routinely closing meetings without an announcement period that presumably may allow for recourse, official or otherwise, if such a closure is improper. However, the importance of a critical infrastructure advisory board holding an emergency meeting trumps the waiting period. Remember: being able to hold a closed meeting is NOT new; the only new element is not having to give a 15-day public notice that such a meeting will be closed.
I'd encourage everyone to actually read the article. Of course, if you think nothing should ever be secret and think this is part of another conservative/Republican plot, then you probably won't agree with any reasoning for keeping such critical meetings secret, and/or not having to wait 15 days to hold such meetings.
I'm eno2001. Who the HELL are You? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm eno2001. Who the HELL are You? (Score:5, Insightful)
That might be true of 15 year olds living with Mom, but some of us are adults that do care how a country a governed.
Re:I'm eno2001. Who the HELL are You? (Score:2)
I'm not the original poster, but I must question your assumption that these two types of mind mix. I've got as strong an interest in computers and technology as anyone
Re:I'm eno2001. Who the HELL are You? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I'm eno2001. Who the HELL are You? (Score:4, Insightful)
I recommend that people read all slashdot comments with a large degree of suspicion. In fact, I recommend that people read everything with a large degree of suspicion.
Re:I'm eno2001. Who the HELL are You? (Score:3, Informative)
ROTFLMAO! What a crock! Just because somebody's interested in computers and tech doesn't mean they're not interested in politics and vice versa. Just to show you how possible it is, take a look at Jerry Pournelle, [jerrypournellec.com] a major computer columnist (and SF author) with a PhD in Poly Sci, and another one in Psyc, both earned. He's not the only o
Re:I'm eno2001. Who the HELL are You? (Score:2)
so I'm getting a kick out of a lot of these replies
Re:Homeland Security Okay's Closed Proceedings (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps it is necessary to have an agency such as the NSA or CIA that have operations that are never publicized. But its still something I have the utmost contempt for. How can the public check the government that was meant to serve them, to protect them, if they have no idea what the government is even doing.
Congressmen when given classified information, cannot release to the public that officals or even the President is involved in illegal activities, because their proof is covered in the interest of national security, and they can be arrested for a breach in such protocals.
Ignorance is power... freedom is slavery...
Re:Homeland Security Okay's Closed Proceedings (Score:5, Insightful)
True. But it doesn't have to be real-time, and it shouldn't be. Publishing all a nation's defence strategies is a bad idea in a time of war. Publishing, say, the patrol roster for border patrols would not be a good idea. Informing everyone that a particular power plant is currently unguarded and unprotected is not a good idea.
Groups such as this should be able to hold closed meetings. Otherwise the whole point of the group - to determine what critical infrastructure is vulnerable and to better defend it - is undermined. The proceedings of the meeting should be made available in, say, two years time - if a vulnerable piece of critical infrastructure is still vulnerable after two years, this group isn't doing it's job.
I don't know the law in this case, but I would be surprised if that is not already the way it works. Even top secret information is declassified eventually.
Re:Homeland Security Okay's Closed Proceedings (Score:5, Insightful)
Usually we call this "security through obscurity".
Groups such as this should be able to hold closed meetings. Otherwise the whole point of the group - to determine what critical infrastructure is vulnerable and to better defend it - is undermined. The proceedings of the meeting should be made available in, say, two years time - if a vulnerable piece of critical infrastructure is still vulnerable after two years, this group isn't doing it's job.
If it was better defended in the first place, we wouldn't need to hold closed meetings.
I don't know the law in this case, but I would be surprised if that is not already the way it works. Even top secret information is declassified eventually.
Tell that to Bush and his domestic wiretapping program.
Apologies if this came off as trollish or standoffish.
Re:Homeland Security Okay's Closed Proceedings (Score:2)
In wartime, the most likely result will be to get it bombed before the guards get there.
Re:Homeland Security Okay's Closed Proceedings (Score:2)
If the USA had followed this standard, Europe would not be free, the southern slaves would still be enslaved, and most of North America would still belong to England. Oh, and Saddam Hussein would still be in power.
Re:Homeland Security Okay's Closed Proceedings (Score:5, Insightful)
In the real (ie: non-digital) world, security by obscurity is often the most effective sort. If you don't want your troops bombed, don't let the enemy know where they are. If you don't want your weaknesses exploited, don't let anyone know about them until they are no longer weaknesses.
If a particular power plant is currently unguarded and unprotected, then FIX IT! If there's a security problem, then having it out in the open will get something done about it.
You cannot fix something instantly. Lets say these meetings were open. You discuss at the meeting that a power plant is weakly defended and vulnerable. Because the meeting is open, enemies know this information almost as soon as you do. It then becomes a race to see who gets their units to the power plant first. It would be better to discuss the weakness in a closed meeting, deploy the troops to secure it, and then announce that the plant was vulnerable, and has now been secured. That way you don't announce your weaknesses to your enemy.
If it was better defended in the first place, we wouldn't need to hold closed meetings.
Yeah, if everything was perfect, nothing would need fixing.
Tell that to Bush and his domestic wiretapping program.
What does domestic wiretapping have to do with declassifying information?
Re:Homeland Security Okay's Closed Proceedings (Score:3, Insightful)
Everything down to military blueprints, intelligence and counter-intelligence information, detailed layout plans and reports on critical infrastructure and risk assessments, security clearances and so on? I think you can imagine for yourself that's not going to work. Most scrutiny works the way democracy works, through representation. Even the whole division of power is about the three branches of government scrutinizing each other. I'm not sa
Re:Homeland Security Okay's Closed Proceedings (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not taking into account the neo-con ideology...
Women who willingly, even enthusiastically give the president blow jobs should be part of the public record, because the people have the right to know, but security matters and powerful industrial representatives who meet with the administration in secret should have the meetings, the attendees, the topics and effects of those meetings kept secret, because that would interfer with the ability to the government to conduct the people's business without public scrutiny.
Take that, Osama!
Re:Homeland Security Okay's Closed Proceedings (Score:3, Insightful)
Women who willingly, even enthusiastically give the president blow jobs should be part of the public record, because the people have the right to know,
Just for the record, Repubs didn't give a crap Clinton got a BJ. They *DID* care that he lied while giving testamony during the sexual harassment trial of another woman, Paula Jones. Which the press or NOW didn't seem to care about because she was relatively poor and didn't graduate from Harvard. If you think this was somehow wrong, let me refer you to
Re:Homeland Security Okay's Closed Proceedings (Score:2, Flamebait)
Anyway lying about the whereabouts your cock is very bad, lying about weapons of mass desctruction and then waging war based on that lie is no problem at all. Then continually lying about the war once it's started is fine too. Lying about wiretaps is OK, bypassi
Re:Homeland Security Okay's Closed Proceedings (Score:3, Insightful)
WHich begs the question why were the republicans so facinated with where bill clinton stuck his cock into?
This is an example of a strawman argument. If you don't know what that is look it up in the wikipedia. THE REPUBS DIDN'T CARE. Paula Jones did. She was a state employee who was escorted to Clinton's hotel room like a prostitute by a state trooper. Something that should make your stomach turn whether Clinton was a D or an R.
During depositions Paula wanted to establish that Clinton had a hist
Re:Homeland Security Okay's Closed Proceedings (Score:2)
Re:Homeland Security Okay's Closed Proceedings (Score:2)
Would you extend that to local governments as well? I ask because I'm from California where the Brown Act is quite strict regarding open government, yet many city councils routinely meet before or after their "official" sessions to discuss business in private. It's illegal but they don't care.
Look at it a different way (Score:3, Insightful)
I live in a state in Australia which was governed by an incompetants engaged in criminal activity who imposed draconian laws to limit public scrutiny. Infighting in the cabinet resulted in the leader being isolated from his own party, and only then did events unfold which resulted in the jailing of the police commisionioner and several government ministers. The situation had continued for yea
Re:Homeland Security Okay's Closed Proceedings (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Homeland Security Okay's Closed Proceedings (Score:2, Informative)
minutes; certification; annual report; Federal officer or employee, attendance
(a)(1) Each advisory committee meeting shall be open to the public.
(2) Except when the President determines otherwise for reasons of national security, timely
notice of each such meeting shall be published in the Federal Register, and the Adminis-
trator shall prescribe regulations to provide for other types of public notice to insure t
From painful experience... (Score:2)
Re:Homeland Security Okay's Closed Proceedings (Score:2)
Re:Homeland Security Okay's Closed Proceedings (Score:2)
Re:Homeland Security Okay's Closed Proceedings (Score:4, Funny)
Slashdot headlines make you cringe, hunh? Me too.
Re:Homeland Security Okay's Closed Proceedings (Score:2)
Re:Homeland Security Okay's Closed Proceedings (Score:2)
expediency yes, but within the rule of law (Score:5, Insightful)
Right now we have one safeguard: It's a pain in the ass to wait 15 days so people would mostly rather keep meetings open than close them. Unless absolutely necessary.
And I understand the probable necessity of having a closed meeting on short notice.
Where I have a real issue is the way that DHS has decided to work around this conflict. You can't just up and decide that the law doesn't apply to you. You can't decide to just break the law if it doesn't suit you. If the circumstances under which the law was created have changed, maybe it's time to change the law. Go to Congress, tell them how the law hasn't kept pace with reality and ask for changes. Better yet, suggest some.
Here's my suggestion: keep the 15 days notice the way it has been. However, in the case that the meeting has to be held much sooner than that and be closed, you have to do more than just give notice. You may have to have a counterpart in a different branch of government review an "emergency closure request" or somesuch and OK it. Maybe add a sunset provision in there where after a certain amount of time there will be a review (with a comment period) to decide wether or not the meeting stuff should remain closed. If the review isn't held, the stuff is automatically opened.
See, it isn't that complicated. DHS gets what they need to do their job. There is a check against the power from another branch and we have a mechanism to regain transparency after the fact.
But did DHS even ask Congress or entertain the notion? I don't have the answer to that. What I do know is that the President, DHS, the whole danged government and the general populace don't get to decide which laws do and do not apply to them. They can't selectively choose to obey this law and disobey that law. No matter what the percieved necessity may be.
And this has been happenning at an increasing pace in our executive branch as of late. It's criminal, anAmerican and unacceptable.
Sheesh, DHS... all you have to do is ask. We'll listen. But if you give up on the rule of law... you'll lead us down a path to anarchy or totalitarianism. And you know what... that's a bigger threat to America than Al Qaeda could ever hope to be. Don't do their work for them.
Re:expediency yes, but within the rule of law (Score:2)
You bring up an interesting point here, one that shows something interesting about the way we often think of our checks and balances system.
In theory, all three branches of government are co-equal and enact checks on each other so that any one branch cannot become too powerful. As we've seen in the last few years, this is not the way it works in practice. In practice, if the l
Anonymous Coward Defends Secret Police Meetings (Score:3, Insightful)
Who are you, and where do you get off assuring us that anything isn't part of another "conservative/Republican plot", when our lives are so full of them already, and they always come with the same kind of denial? Lik
Uhuh (Score:4, Funny)
To some extent, it does. (Score:2)
People who know the "secret" will be able to see through the obscurity, while others need to spend time analyzing. It's not that different from "secret passwords", which are what most consumer-level devices and services use. A password is just a stronger "obscurity" than what you have in mind.
Re:To some extent, it does. (Score:2)
for example public key cryptography is not security by obscurity, but Flash DRM media stream is. there is theoretically nothing standing between the potential attacker and the target, merely a bit of debugging and/or traffic sniffing.
Re:Uhuh (Score:5, Funny)
It's not relying on people not knowing where your insecure webserver is.
This sounds a lot more like when the military doesn't say, "Hey, drop your bombs here, our troops are over heeeerrrreeee!" I suppose that, by your argument, the troops should just be well protected enough to survive that bomb blast, but that's not how it works in these scenarios. They like to keep these things secret.
By the way, if you were wondering the password to my computer, it's TYPE_THESE_WORDS_IN.
par for the course (Score:2, Informative)
Sigh...
Re:par for the course (Score:3, Interesting)
-no oversight (I dont care what they say this govt was founded on a system of checks and balances and there should always be an independant form of oversight)
-the mentality we are going to keep this secret not because it is sensitive but because the public is stupid and cant handle the truth (ok some people are stupid, but the govt is suppose to serve us)
-the problem with the fact
The meetings can already be closed (Score:3, Interesting)
The net result, however, is that the meeting is still closed.
This change allows for the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council to have closed meetings in an emergency without giving a 15-day notice that it is going to have a closed meeting.
I think that critical public infrastructure protection outweighs any need for a 15-day notice of a closed meeting.
Re:The meetings can already be closed (Score:2)
Re:The meetings can already be closed (Score:2)
(a)(1) Each advisory committee meeting shall be open to the public.
(2) Except when the President determines otherwise for reasons of national security, timely
notice of each such meeting shall be published in the Federal Register, and the Adminis-
trator shall prescribe regulations to provide for other types of public notice to insure that all
interested persons are notified of such meeting prior thereto.
(3) Interested persons shall be permitted to attend, appea
Re:The meetings can already be closed (Score:2)
(2) Except when the President determines otherwise for reasons of national security, timely
notice of each such meeting shall be published in the Federal Register,
So, if we have these terrorists planning on destroying our phone system, the President can negate the rest of rule 2 by saying it's for national security. No complaints there. They have a legit claim to quickly hold a closed meeting. Otherwise, why the rush? Meetings can be
Re:Heh (Score:3, Informative)
FACA stipulated a reasonable notice to the public when a meeting was to be closed, so as to advise the public where additional information may be obtained, or information about when the results of such a meeting may become public, or when future public meetings may occur.
That was in 1972.
The meetings were still closed.
In 2006, the
Re:Heh (Score:2)
Re:Heh (Score:2)
I'm gonna have to agree with this guy. between the democrats and the republicans there is not a whole hell of a lot of difference. most of them seem to have the exact same things in mind (most of the legislation that gets dragged through the mud (deceivingly) around here are bi-partisan).
for a democracy to work with any kind of real representation of the people, you need more than 2 major parties. up here in canada, we hav
Re:Heh (Score:2)
Re:The meetings can already be closed (Score:3, Insightful)
We live in a society based on rule
Re:The meetings can already be closed (Score:2)
There is a reason there are "sunshine laws" in this nation. This is part of the clearing for those laws. If the administration doesn't like the law then they should do as any other agancy does and petition the legislatu
I for one do NOT welcome our overlords ... (Score:2, Insightful)
I fear the government of the US far more than I fear any terrorist.
Why ?
Because the US government has wasted far more American lives than any terrorist has.
Re:I for one do NOT welcome our overlords ... (Score:2)
Re:I for one do NOT welcome our overlords ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Cars and junk food make huge amounts of money for large corporations. Drugs and terrorism do not - unless we have a War on them, and can then funnel enormous amounts of government money to companies that top politicians have close links with.
Remember, it's not about the People, it's about the Corporations. The principle of 'voting with your dollars' has been taken far further than anybody realises...
Nothing to see here (Score:2)
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:2)
you can make a tooth pick out of a 2x4,,,, (Score:2)
just like what is happening to our freedom...
The more important questions are in regards to why is there such an huge apparent expectation of attacks on the US?
Try a google search on "Trillion dollar bet" and read the transcript.
Re:you can make a tooth pick out of a 2x4,,,, (Score:2)
The more important questions are in regards to why is there such an huge apparent expectation of attacks on the US?
...Especially considering that US is winning that war... Ah, nevermind...
Re:you can make a tooth pick out of a 2x4,,,, (Score:5, Funny)
Whittling [wikipedia.org]
While your statement may be true, I don't think it comes out the way you intended it. And if you did intend it that way, you're a sick little puppy.
Eroding, eroding, eroding (Score:5, Insightful)
This "war on terror" is such an incredibly dangerous witchunt. It struck my mind really hard the other day when I first heard it said that "terrorism is a method, not an identity." Nothing and no law could possibly prevent any free people from being stripped of their creativity when it comes to fighting for what they think is important. To attempt to target a "methodology" is like shooting at ghosts. Instead, they have to target people believed to be capable of using a methodology. It's just an inch or two away from "crimes of thought."
There are other nations that have been dealing with "terrorist activity" in the past and their reaction has been nothing so drastic as what is happening in the US. They treat the activity as they would any crime. This is exactly how the US should be responding. There must be a way to fight crime without taking civil liberties and government transparency further from the public's eye.
The next round of elections will not come soon enough for me. I still have hopes that the damage can be reversed.
Re:Eroding, eroding, eroding (Score:2)
Re:Eroding, eroding, eroding (Score:2)
Re:Eroding, eroding, eroding (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Eroding, eroding, eroding (Score:2)
Do you know if most other nations of openness laws as strict as ours? Without doing a survey, I would suspect most European and Asian leaders would wonder what the big deal is about holding a closed door emergency meeting of this type. While I don't like this particular move, it is hardly drastic.
Re:Eroding, eroding, eroding (Score:3, Interesting)
What they didn't forsee was that the two party system would put party loyalty above the love of country, the devotion to the constitution and anything else. This congress will never impeach or sanction this president even though he clearly has overstepped his bounds and has comitted felonies becuase they care more about the republican
Re:Eroding, eroding, eroding (Score:2)
It seems like (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It seems like (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem, from a security perspective, is that America is a goldfish bowl, and has always been a goldfish bowl. That transparency and openness has always been one of our greatest strengths, and to a certain extent an exploitable weakness. I fear that these ongoing attempts to turn this nation into an a
Re:Theroetically speaking... (Score:2)
5.???
6.Profit!
Re:It seems like (Score:2)
Re:It seems like (Score:2)
Re:It seems like (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Flame Bait (Score:2)
This is semantics. What is the difference between this, and say, Timothy McVeigh's attack on the federal buildings in Oklahoma City? Was that an act of war by himself and his co-conspirators? Would that then not be 'an act of civil war'? (mind boggling)
Or do we have people still claiming that these people were 'unlawful combatants'. How do peopl
Re:It seems like (Score:2)
Why not just suspend that pesky Constitution? (Score:5, Insightful)
There were compelling reasons for secrecy even back in the day the Constituion was originally drafted, yet the framers thought it more important for the government not to operate in secret.
We didn't have the mis-named Patriot Act before 9-11 and the FBI and CIA had ample warning about the 9-11 hijackers. We KNEW about some of them going to flight school and didn't act on it. We had ample intelligence before 9-11 and law enforcement had enough power to pick them up if anyone had bothered to act on the FBI field report about potential terrorists in flight school. So why is it the government needs all these additional secret powers and wire tip authority now?
The real compelling reason for Republicans to want secrecy is because they've all but thrown accountability out the window. When there's no accountability, then you damn sure don't want transparency.
And do not give me any of that bullshit about the Democrats not being any better. All this is happening with a Republican House, Senate and White House and it's been that way since 2000 and you've had Congress since 1994. It's time to admit that if this country is in a bucket of shit it's because of the REPUBLICANS! Not the Democrats, not the liberals...the problem is YOU.
Re:Why not just suspend that pesky Constitution? (Score:2)
The problem is not partisan - it's people.
A reduction in knowledge of what our government is doing, the sabotage of the teaching of critical thinking (outcome based education for one), and an overdose of manufactured paranoia has caused people to become hungry for safety and security at the cost of all their liberties.
Defining this issue as partisan i
Re:Why not just suspend that pesky Constitution? (Score:3, Insightful)
This includes most of the posters bitching in the thread about transparency, without even using the transparency they have to read the act. Nor, I would bet, have any of them any actual desire to challenge the meeting closures. In fact, I'm certain the majority had no knowledge that there was any such statute. This is, for them, nothing more than their two minutes of hate against America, or Bush, or the Man, or whoever they think is keeping them down. They don
Re:Why not just suspend that pesky Constitution? (Score:2)
Re:Why not just suspend that pesky Constitution? (Score:2)
What hypocrisy.
First you accuse people of bitching out of ignorance and then you ADMIT (c.f. "I would bet") that you yourself are bitching out of ignorance about them.
Their ignorance is rationalized by their need to rage against the machine. Shame on the editors for enabling this beha
Re:Why not just suspend that pesky Constitution? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, I would be perfectly fine with suspending the Constitution and its associated rights. In war time. In time of Congressionally-declared war. In areas declared a combat zone.
Because if they declare formal war and declare the homeland a combat zone, it will be so obvious to everyone that they're just imposing martial law on their own citizens, so they wouldn't dare try. However corrupt our government may be, it stills want the perce
Re:Why not just suspend that pesky Constitution? (Score:2)
This is regards to a 1972 law. The Constitution was written almost two hundred years earlier. There is nothing in the Constitution regarding this wholly procedural issue.
Okay (Score:4, Interesting)
Sounds okay to me. Maybe I'll just stop paying my taxes, too. I won't pay for a CD I can't listen to, or a book I can't read, so why pay for a government that won't let me see what it's doing?
If it's none of my business, maybe I shouldn't be paying for it.
hey great more idiots with apostrophes (Score:2)
There IS NO LAW (Score:4, Insightful)
So what do people imagine the current administration cannot do? Obviously there are outrageous things they could do which might affect the loyalty of the military system that keeps them in power, or that could sever the ties to the financial supporters, but they aren't going to do anything of that nature.
The people aren't going to act, at least not in significant numbers, and certainly not with real hostility. Congress isn't going to destroy this government, not even if the House turns over to the opposition party next January. And other countries aren't going to band together to wage war against the US, not to liberate Iraq from the US, and absolutely not in response to US *domestic* policy.
So tell me again, what is it that stops the executive administration from operating precisely as a term-limited dictatorship?
The real fun starts when this administration hands over all this newly asserted power to the next one -- equally likely to be a liberal democrat or a moderate republican. Either way, somebody new gets all this amazing unprecedented power that nobody ever seems to have discovered before Bush.
If Bush has a legacy, that's it: The President of the United States, formerly believed to be under severe constraints, actually has unlimited power as long as he can protect himself from assassinations and as long as he has a strongly aligned partisan majority in both houses of congress. Even when most of the people in the country are vehemently (but not violently) opposed to his government, and even when there is a widespread belief that he should be removed from office, it has no meaning at all, and certainly is no contraint on the president's actions, either in making domestic policy, or in waging wars of aggression.
Even if the money to fight these wars is borrowed from five generations in the future, he gets away with it. Lives another day. Isn't removed from power. Has a military that continues to follow orders from the chain of command, as opposed to turning against it. Faces no military or economic opposition from any other nation. That sort of thing. Get it?
Re:There IS NO LAW (Score:2)
This is the key, isn't it. More often than not here in Australia voters have voted the opposite way in the lower and upper house. The result is that the Government has to negotiate with a hostile Senate.
We are in truoble now because the minority party which used to oppose the government in the senate had a self destruct switch and the PM found how to trigger it, but I expect we will return to normal
Re:There IS NO LAW (Score:2)
Re:There IS NO LAW (Score:2)
I really don't think so. Bush will start a war with iran or syria or north korea in the run up to the election. Either that or Osama will be caught just before the election. Either way the next president and congress will be controlled by the republicans. California has already been rigged thanks to diebold.
WHat could anybody do? Well the
4th (Score:2)
Luckily, the USSR always gave a 15-day warning! (Score:5, Insightful)
As I recall, in 1972, we were in the midst of fighting a Cold War that had, as a very real possible consequence, the end of life on Earth as we know it. We were fighting against a highly organized and well-funded enemy that had thousands of spies at all levels of government and industry, sleeper agents ready to be called on when necessary, and military capabilities that made us legitimately doubt whether we would prevail in any conventional armed conflict. An attack from their formidable stockpiles of intercontinental ballistic missiles would give us less than an hour to pray to the God of our choice before the sun vanished and our component molecules were suddenly and violently redistributed into the ash that would, hopefully, someday support life again.
And yet, even with this Sword of Damocles hanging over our very survival, we had the conscience and foresight to realize that while we cannot control the behavior of those who would be our enemies, we can control ourselves, and refuse to sacrifice the ideals we believe more important than life in the vain hopes that by abdicating oversight of our government we will somehow gain immunity from outside aggressors.
I find it the greatest irony of all that those in power right now, who present themselves so vaingloriously, act with such great cowardice. Their willingness to preemptively sacrifice the ideals we hold dear is an insult to the oaths they took, and the people who trust them with their lives.
No bomb is capable of destroying the historical significance of the Constitution, the concept of modern representative democracy, religious freedom, free speech, or the notion that man has the right and responsibility to govern himself by reason. Yet we find ourselves in the peculiar position of surrendering these, our most valuable possessions, in the vain hope that they will purchase us safety, when we know with certainty that such safety is a chimera, that our lives will always be in danger so long as we espouse such dangerous ideas.
It does not take courage to hide in a shelter, to stifle dissent or cut yourself off from contrary opinions. It does not take courage to meet in secret, to persecute those who are different, to deny the humanity of those who oppose you.
What takes courage is knowing there are people in this world who hate you so much they will kill you, and to still get up in the morning and walk out the front door, refusing to change your life or your beliefs due to fear. We knew this after September 11th, we were even told this at the time by our leaders, but for some reason both they and we have lost sight of such a simple insight.
Nine minutes (Score:2)
It takes ICBM launched from Russia only 9 minutes to reach the US.
Re:Luckily, the USSR always gave a 15-day warning! (Score:2)
So the 1972 crisis is likely what eroded the freedoms the first time and the cu
Re:Luckily, the USSR always gave a 15-day warning! (Score:2)
"In making tactical dispositions, the highest pitch you can attain is to conceal them; conceal your dispositions, and you will be safe from the prying of the subtlest spies, from the machinations of the wisest brains."
In a war of "anything goes", "save my ass first" law comes before "save my constitutional right" law.
OK, I'm going to exercise my "shut my trap" constitutional right, now.
Re:Luckily, the USSR always gave a 15-day warning! (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey, quick question: When will the war be over so I can have my freedom back?
Re:Luckily, the USSR always gave a 15-day warning! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Luckily, the USSR always gave a 15-day warning! (Score:2)
By surrendering to our fears our very own government has done far more damange to this nation than any single group or person wishing us harm could have ever dreamed.
Cheap Shot article (Score:5, Informative)
(a)(1) Each advisory committee meeting shall be open to the public. (2) Except when the President determines otherwise for reasons of national security, timely notice of each such meeting shall be published in the Federal Register, and the Administrator shall prescribe regulations to provide for other types of public notice to insure that all interested persons are notified of such meeting prior thereto. (3) Interested persons shall be permitted to attend, appear before, or file statements with any advisory committee, subject to such reasonable rules or regulations as the Administrator may prescribe. (b) Subject to section 552 of title 5, United States Code, the records, reports, transcripts, minutes, appendixes, working papers, drafts, studies, agenda, or other documents which were made available to or prepared for or by each advisory committee shall be available for public inspection and copying at a single location in the offices of the advisory committee or the agency to which the advisory committee reports until the advisory committee ceases to exist. (c) Detailed minutes of each meeting of each advisory committee shall be kept and shall contain a record of the persons present, a complete and accurate description of matters discussed and conclusions reached, and copies of all reports received, issued, or approved by the advisory committee. The accuracy of all minutes shall be certified to by the chairman of the advisory committee. (d) Subsections (a)(1) and (a)(3) of this section shall not apply to any portion of an advisory committee meeting where the President, or the head of the agency to which the advisory committee reports, determines that such portion of such meeting may be closed to the public in accordance with subsection (c) of section 552b of title 5, United States Code. Any such determination shall be in writing and shall contain the reasons for such determination. If such a determination is made, the advisory committee shall issue a report at least annually setting forth a summary of its activities and such related matters as would be informative to the public consistent with the policy of section 552(b) of title 5, United States Code.
No question: Chertoff's actions are entirely within the scope of the law.
NOW: is all this secrecy a good thing? I doubt it. But anyone who really cares about this ought to do something: join the NSA, put your uber-coding skillz to good use, and find bin Laden.
For what it's worth... (Score:2)
Or to put it another way: Yeah, this option exists already. And yeah, there are times when security trumps transparency. But it's always a dangerous move, the DHS seems congenitally disposed toward excessive secrecy, and if we don't keep our eyes open, we're going to find ourselves in a place most can't imagine we could ever reach.
The Roman Em
Sounds reasonable (Score:2)
Subject (Score:2)
Benjamin Franklin said it first (Score:5, Insightful)
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
It's not 1984 yet, but it's looking more and more like November of 1983. Scarry stuff.
This has nothing to do with real security. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Aren't you guys tired of it? (Score:2)