[Volokh] New post at The Volokh Conspiracy

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Posted by Juan Non-Volokh:
Nazi Germany = McCarthy Era = America Today?
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_06_19-2005_06_25.shtml#1119296350


   At the end of a [1]long post on whether President Bush can be
   impeached (in which he labels UNC Prof. Michael Gerhardt a shill for
   the Bush Administration for his contribution to [2]this Salon
   symposium) Brain Leiter offers this somewhat tangential comment:

 in every society of which I'm aware the vast majority of the
 preeminent academic figures were, in general, cowards when it came
 to their own regimes, and apologists for what later generations
 would see clearly as inhumanity and illegality. This was clear in
 Germany in the 1930s, as it was in America in the 1950s. There is
 no reason to think the United States today is any different.
 (Emphases in original).

   While this statement might not equate Nazi Germany with the current
   regime, it certainly suggests an equivalence between those who failed
   to oppose Nazism, those who failed to oppose McCarthyism, and those
   who do not oppose the Bush Administration. Haven't we had enough of
   these sorts of comparisons?

References

   1. http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/06/can_bush_be_con_1.html
   2. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2005/06/09/impeachment/index_np.html

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[Volokh] New post at The Volokh Conspiracy

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Posted by Orin Kerr:
Skeptical About Alleged DOJ Data Retention Plan:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_06_19-2005_06_25.shtml#1119308361


   A few days ago, over at [1]news.com, Declan McCullagh made a troubling
   but very probably false claim:

   The Department of Justice is quietly shopping around the
 explosive idea of requiring Internet service providers to retain
 records of their customers' online activities.
   Data retention rules could permit police to obtain records of
 e-mail chatter, Web browsing or chat-room activity months after
 Internet providers ordinarily would have deleted the logs--that is,
 if logs were ever kept in the first place. No U.S. law currently
 mandates that such logs be kept.

 It is quite unlikely that this claim is true. Privacy advocates have
   been expressing concern for years that there are secret DOJ plans to
   mandate ISP data retention. When asked, however, DOJ officials
   repeatedly have made clear that such a proposal is out of the
   question.
 What is the evidence that times have changed, and that now DOJ is
   quietly shopping around this explosive idea? As best I can tell
   from Declan's story, it is this and only this: A few weeks ago, at a
   Holiday Inn in Alexandria, Virginia, unnamed Department of Justice
   employees, apparently from DOJ's Child Exploitation and Obscenity
   Section (CEOS), mentioned the possibility of mandatory data retention
   requirements in a meeting with some ISP representatives.
 Who are these DOJ employees, though? CEOS does not have any
   high-level policy makers, as far as I know. It is a section
   consistening entirely of career prosecutors. No one at CEOS has the
   authority to opine on such a enormous and controversial question
   except entirely in his personal capacity. And the chances that DOJ
   would decide to shop around such a high-profile proposal using
   career lawyers meeting at a Holiday Inn seems a bit far-fetched.
 If I had to guess, I would imagine all that happened in this meeting
   was that a random career lawyer at DOJ had been wondering about data
   retention, and decided to discuss it as a possibility in a meeting
   despite DOJ policy to the contrary. Or perhaps the lawyer foolishly
   tried to raise the possibilitz as a threat to push ISP representatives
   to think more seriously about voluntary data retention. Either way,
   DOJ has not changed its policy at all. Is it possible that there is
   more to the story than that? Yes, but on the whole it is quite
   unlikely.
 I have enabled comments. As always, civil and respectful comments
   only. Thanks to Ran Barton for the link.

References

   1. http://news.com.com/Your+ISP+as+Net+watchdog/2100-1028_3-5748649.html

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