All,
I feel like "WE" (by which I mean you-all) have something to contribute to the
current discussion on warrantless wire taps. Note the Washington Post,
below. Does anybody else agree that Data Mining needs an entirely different
structure of civil rights protections then investigations of person? Should
somebody ( by which I mean you-all) TELL the washington post that? I mean I
assume we would approve of a universal search for "bomb-making materials
--frequent holidays in Pakistan") but not for "sexual indescretions FRIAM
members". The problem is, of course, that civil rights law is designed to
protect individuals and we dont know what individuals are involved until we get
a hit. Some judicial agency has to pass on the SEARCHES. What worries me
more than national security data mining from a civil rights point of view is
the complete freedom taht law enforcement seems to have for searching in more
personal areas. I think we need an ITJ ... i.e., an Information Technology
Judiciary.
The Democratic-led Congress, more concerned with protecting its political
backside than with safeguarding the privacy of American citizens, left town
early yesterday after caving in to administration demands that it allow
warrantless surveillance of the phone calls and e-mails of American citizens,
with scant judicial supervision and no reporting to Congress about how many
communications are being intercepted. To call this legislation ill-considered
is to give it too much credit: It was scarcely considered at all. Instead, it
was strong-armed through both chambers by an administration that seized the
opportunity to write its warrantless wiretapping program into lawor, more
precisely, to write it out from under any real legal restrictions."
Which of us is going to write the Washington Post?????
Not me. I am just a psychologist.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Research Associate, Redfish Group, Santa Fe, NM ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
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