Nick. I share your outrage--was just on the phone to an old pal who
used to be John Kerry's legislative director. Those supine Democrats!
I hate to give up my right to vote in a primary, but I'm appalled by
both parties right now, and certainly don't feel I belong to the
Democrats, who not only gave away my civil protections, but also my
money to agri-biz, while my own senator is giving it away to the hedge
fund boys. This isn't any party I want to be part of.
My pal explained it as "inside the Beltway thinking," which is to say,
"we can't hand the Republicans this issue right before an election..."
Why not? Why not explain to Americans just what got handed where?
I don't want to turn FRIAM into a political bulletin board, so perhaps
I should simply say that yes, I agree that data mining presents very
different issues, and needs some imaginative ideas for privacy
protection.
P.
On Aug 8, 2007, at 2:09 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
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
hav! e 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
law—or, 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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"Where words prevail not, violence reigns..."
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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