Jihad needs scientists
in [Design]
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From: Eeyore on 13 Jan 2007 01:02 unsettled wrote: > T Wake wrote: > > "unsettled" <unsettled(a)nonsense.com> wrote in message > > > >>I'm open to hearing about some other model. There's no one to > >>negotiate with, so what's left? > > > Criminalise the terrorists and allow police forces to carry out their > > actions. Encourage people to not "fear" the actions of the criminals and > > life their lives as if it wasn't happening. Eventually the terrorists become > > starved of the supplies their cause needs and are forced to negotiate. The > > end result may not be a black and white we won, they lost result, which is > > why (IMHO) the US will not go down that route. > > Didn't work with Northern Ireland, What didn't work ? How do you think the Good Friday Agreement came about ? Graham
From: Eeyore on 13 Jan 2007 01:04 unsettled wrote: > T Wake wrote: > > > > How do you declare war on any criminal organisation? Is this not a sign that > > "declaring war" on such organisations is little more than soundbites at > > work? > > We also declared war on drugs Which has failed and you have no hope of ever 'winning'. > so this must be a cultural issue. On > this side of the pond we seem to understand what it means. Maybe because your intellectual faculties are more accepting of daft ideas ? Graham
From: T Wake on 13 Jan 2007 07:04 "unsettled" <unsettled(a)nonsense.com> wrote in message news:eb56f$45a84e41$49ecf47$20821(a)DIALUPUSA.NET... >T Wake wrote: > >> "unsettled" <unsettled(a)nonsense.com> wrote in message >> news:f40fb$45a7ae0d$4fe7610$13513(a)DIALUPUSA.NET... >> >>>T Wake wrote: > >> <snips> > >>>>No, this is not the same thing as sampling every single conversation for >>>>"key phrases." > >>>That depends. Busy street, undercover narcotics cop who has >>>a specific reason for being there. > >> There is still a limit to the number of conversations he can over hear >> and, in UK law at least, there is no presumption of privacy which >> surrounds conversations in a public place. In UK law, if you walk in to a >> room where there are only two of you, you gain the protection of a >> presumption of privacy. > > I am not certain of precisely how our "reasonable expectation of > privacy" has been defined, because that's scattered through a > bunch of SCOTUS opinions. > >> In 2001 this was extended to grant people the presumption of privacy over >> telephone calls > > So you're 34 years behind our "Katz v. US" of 1967 which established > the telephone expectations. Maybe so. I have no idea what "Katz v. US" stated other than what a quick scan on Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katz_v._United_States) produced. With this, I am now at a loss as to the nature of your argument here. Previously you appeared to be arguing that telephone calls should not carry the assumption of privacy as they can all be electronically monitored and sampled for key words. I said that in the UK this was illegal, and the debate seemed to wander down the road of should it / shouldn't it be criminalised. The reason why the amendments in 2001 (mainly IOCA) were brought in were simply to clarify a previously held assumption. To the best of my knowledge no one previously was brought to court under a wiretap like that in the Katz vs United States case. In the UK telephone surveillance isn't utilised by the security forces anywhere near as much as in the UK. >>>>A democratic government is ultimately accountable to the electorate. A >>>>government official (in the UK at least) who authorises an illegal >>>>activity are themselves subject to the rule of law when the illegal >>>>activity is brought to light. > >>>It is a rare instance that a head of state is taken to task >>>for illegal behaviors. Perhaps a handful in the past century? > >> Sadly true - but maybe this simply means they are not carrying out >> illegal activities. > > We had Nixon. That was terrible mishandled by government > operatives. We can never know how many incidents were better > managed, on both sides of the pond. Nope, so the number may as well be zero as a million. >> In the UK we have had a few senior civil servants prosecuted for illegal >> activities in the last fifty or so years, not many I'll admit. > >> Comes to the question of how many should be prosecuted? I have worked >> with members of the UK security apparatus and I actually do think they >> would not carry out illegal activities. > > If you thought they were capable of it, and they had to, they > wouldn't be very effective, would they? The main feature any > good spy has is that no one would ever believe they're a spy. Spy is not a term normally applied to UK security service personnel. The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) are the ones people call spies and their remit is soley external to the UK. I have no doubt that the SIS operatives are carrying out activites which are illegal in the countries they are in. It is the nature of their job. The police and security service have undercover or covert officers which is very different and have a very different mindset. I suspect this is heading down a semantic argument trap though so all I can say is, I have met no covert officers of either the police forces or security service who I think would be willing to break the law to catch a criminal. This doesn't mean none will, but I do think on the balance of things, covert operations are carried out in accordance with the law of this land. The PCC investigations seem to confirm this and the furore around the John Charles De Menendez shooting highlights that each detail can be looked over. >> The point I was trying to make is that if a government of the day carry >> out illegal searches / taps etc., the subsequent government is very >> likely to discover this and make it public (as happened over the Security >> Service surveillance of Labour party MPs under Thatcher). While not a >> solution for the person while they are suffering, the threat of this >> actually goes some lengths to curtailing the excesses of government. > > Our American branch of the Mafia had a solution. They tried > to make it a practice to set up someone who already had a > significant health problem with the likelihood of a very > short future in order to do their will when it was likely > the wrongdoer might be caught. They would reward them with > funds for wrongdoer's family, college education for the > kids, and so forth. > > We've seen US law enforcement use civilian operatives and > informants to do all sorts of questionable things. It is a shame. Your law enforcement needs to be come more transparent to regain public faith. Without public faith, the police can never fully function in accordance with the will of the people. >>>When an agency monitors a data stream looking for certain >>>patterns they have no idea whose discussion has raised the >>>warning flag. > >> Yes they do. When I monitor data passing through a router, the data tells >> me where it has come from and where it is going. > > The data is there. If you program to look only for certain > patterns in the data stream, record the pertinent block of > data but not identify the originating and terminating nodes > and you don't look till you have a warrant in hand then? Yes, it is possible but I personally feel it would be an unlikely thing for the security service to do. Given your descriptions of the US law enforcement apparatus, I think it would be even less likely that they could be relied upon to not peek. In the UK, keywords are not considered enough and context is required. That context only becomes apparent when you know who is talking to who. I suppose some terrorists actually do say things like "the bomb is ready" but they are surely in a minority. How many phone calls will carry the message "your parcel is ready for delivery" - without knowing that one end is a suspected terrorist it carries no useable intelligence and when you know one end is a suspected terrorist, doesn't that require a warrant? >>>How about then going to court and asking to dissect the data >>>stream to discover who is the subject of this attentions by >>>warrant? > >> It may happen in the US but it is not allowed in the UK (as a result of >> RIPA / IOCA). Here the requirement is surveillance is targetted - be it >> electronic or physical. > > In this case we're probably behind your laws, perhaps intentionally. Who knows. >>>>No, but without laws nothing else means anything. > >>>We invariably depend on the benovalence of the leadership. > >> This is an area in which I think we will continue to disagree. > > I don't know why. It is the benovalent attitude of government > which keeps the government obeying the laws. There's nobody > holding a gun to your PM's head along with his underlings as > it was with the Commissars in the SU days of Stalin. Very true, but we could try to brainstorm what would happen if (for example) the PM decided not to allow the next general election to take place but become a "Prime Minister For Life." A government without popular support can not govern. In the UK it goes a stage further in theoretical terms as the Armed Forces, the Police and the Security Service swear allegience to the Crown and the Nation not the government of the day. The PM could "disband" the Army but then he still would not have the strong men to take control. I am not trying to be deliberately obtuse here, but I fail to see how a malevolent government can retain control under the current legal systems in place. [*] >> It is interesting that one of the worries "I" have about the increased >> legal options being made available to governments is the risk of a >> malevolent leadership at some point in the future. > > That's realistically a universal risk at all times, no more so > in the future than at any given present moment. Governmental changes are rarely instantaneous which in my mind puts the risk as something which may happen in the future. >> It seems we may actually agree on that. > > I'm even more a "realist" about this than you seem to be. Recognizing > a possibility does not equal a paranoid fear that things like that > are actually happening. Is this meant to imply I have a paranoid fear things like that are happening while you are a realist about it? >>>Think about how the entire system of laws developed to >>>today's "enlightenment." Police, arrests, jails, are still >>>pretty barbaric. > >> Again, this is not something I agree with. > > Most of our police will handcuff anyone arrested. Pretty > barbaric IMO. Yes. It is a shame the US allows this to happen. In the UK you are not routinely handcuffed. >> I can not pass judgement of the US system, but in the UK prisoners are >> not treated in anything I would think of as a barbaric manner. > > All arrests in the US are defined as a battery. It is legal > under certain circumstances. I know some readers are going to > jump on this, but they only need to dig through the litany of > caselaw to find this description. I can not pass any comment on this but in the UK arrests are not normally violent offences. >> Once in jail it may be different but that is a whole different debate. > > You may be taking a much narrower definition of the word than > I am using. Definition of jail or barbaric? >>>The "courts" retain significant vestiges >>>of religious trappings and customs, especially things like >>>judicial immunity. > >> Do you think judical immunity is a religious trapping? > > Very much so. Realistic and reasonable judges usually wouldn't > have any fear of suit against them. The entire immunity thing > descends from the "anointed by God" mentality. Fair one, and I can see some logic in that argument. >> For many years, the UK legal system was dominated by the church but that >> is, I suspect, a thing of the past now. While there is ritual around a >> trial, there is certainly no blind obedience to the final decree. > > Even the word decree smacks of the religious trappings. Here in the > US SCOTUS issues "opinions." Sometimes a court will issue an "order". > > We seem to still use the word "decree" in case of divorce, however. Decree may have religious trappings but it does not carry the weight of religious obedience. British courts also issue orders, and decree may have been more a term I used, than the court used. >>>Now read Hayek, as I suggested to BAH. The reason for having >>>and implementing laws is so that individuals living in a >>>society can plan their lives and business while understanding >>>in advance what coercive powers the state will bring to bear >>>in the event some law is breached. We've also, to varying >>>degrees, managed to constrain the powers of the state. > >>>Try this one on for size. The fact that your conversations >>>might be subject to being overheard does not infringe on any >>>legal business you wish to conduct. > >> This brings to mind two immediate responses: > >> The first is a "so what?" The lack of impact on my legal business does >> not make a law acceptable. > > Hayek speaks to principles, the underpinnings of the laws. Don't > forget that your take on the acceptability of laws and the ideas > of legislative bodies don't always align as nicely as you might > hope. I am sure they dont and would not for one second demand they did. However in this instance my idea of acceptable does align with the ideas of the UK legistlative bodies. However, when laws are unacceptable to the public they are flouted. When laws are routinely broken the government and legistlators need to decide what action to take. Sometimes the action is to "decriminalise" the unpopular law to avoid criminalising a large proportion of the population. In theUK canabis is a recent example of this and police actions against "crimes" such as prostitution, underage smoking, underage drinking etc., reflect the current societal wishes. Laws are not formed in isolation of the wishes of the people. > I think you might enjoy reading one of your own guys about > constitutions and such issues, Dicey. > >> The second is that sentence should carry the word "currently." There is >> no way I can predict what future governments will want to do with the >> data intercepted. I have no way of verifing that the government are not >> going to allow the information to fall into to my competitors hands. >> (etc). > > Generally speaking a government will not have a stake in your > business. However if it ever does it is not very likely that > "the law" will be enough to protect your interests as you'd > hope. However in this instance it would. For example if the government monitored a private meeting I had with a client and that information was somehow passed to a competitor then I would be able to take legal action against the government. In the US, are prisoners meetings with their attorneys subjected to police surveillance? This is the same concept. The police may not mind what is said, but if something of "Interest" is said, they would want to take action. The routine surveillance would not impact the legal business taking place - other than violating confidentiality legislation. The same confidentiallity (in regards to surveillance) applies (in the UK at least) to all private meetings. >> If I choose to have a private meeting with some one, then my "choice" to >> meet in private should be respected by law. > > We need to get back to the first principle of secrecy. The only > secret is one known by only one person who doesn't talk in their > sleep and doesn't pray aloud. LOL > > The instant a second person knows, your secrecy is compromised. > You depend extensively on benovalence, honesty, and honorability. Very true but this is not a debate about secrecy it is about privacy. A private meeting is just that. The risk the other party may breach any confidentiality is an accepted risk which is (subconciously or otherwise) accepted by taking part in the meeting. For example, when I sit in my bedroom talking to my wife, it is not "secret" conversation but it is private. It is conversation that I have _chosen_ not to have in the presence of others. I do not really care if my wife then goes and repeats it all verbatim the next day. >> Would a law demanding all meetings of two or more people were carried out >> in the presence of a police officer be acceptable to you? > > No. This brings to mind the paranoia of Soviet style governing > which prohibited gatherings. As does legislation which would allow the government to monitor my business dealings without prior reason and warrant. > Larger families which were > celebrating grandmother's birthday left in dribs and dabs > spaced out by 10 to 15 minutes per departure. > > We're not nearly there, nor do I expect we ever will be. > > The fact is that in most instances your legitimate and > legal business would not actually be compromised by some > random government employee overhearing your plans because, > unless you're violating some law, they don't care. I disagree with the "only criminals mind" argument. The government official may not care what my plans are, but fundamentally why should s/he be able to listen in to my plans? I am not a criminal. The assumption of innocence is considered basic in the UK, even to the extent that law enforcement have to abide by it, gathering evidence in a legal manner which respects the rights of the suspect. To allow the government to monitor everything I did (or even random acts I carry out) to ensure my "non-criminality" certainly brings to mind Soviet paranoia. > Besides > there's just so much information out there that yours would > simply disappear in the overwhelming morass of data. The > government would have to have as many people doing > surveillance as there are people to spy on in order to > make sense of it all. > > No government has a budget that big. As technology improves the capability to monitor more and more becomes possible. Fifty years ago mass telephone surveillance would have been challenging, but now it is trivial. With blanket CCTV coverage and facial recognition software it becomes possible to scan crowds for faces. In the UK roadside surveillance is able to check your vehicle details and see if your car is insured and properly taxed. The ability to crunch this data becomes easier and cheaper as technology progresses. Legislation like RIPA / IOCA and PACE were actually quite ahead of their time. Critically, the "right" or "wrong" of the surveillance does not depend on the governments ability to process the data. - - [*] as mentioned in other posts, this is one of the main reasons I am concerned by governments chipping away at the legislation which empowers the people to question their actions. Detention without access to a lawyer is one of them, which can easily be used by the government to make dissenting factions struggle to be heard. Legislation which prohibits people's freedom to criticise government / religion / culture is another. Most of the _new_ prevention of terrorism legislation is worrying.
From: jmfbahciv on 13 Jan 2007 07:57 In article <eo8dbl$69v$2(a)leto.cc.emory.edu>, lparker(a)emory.edu (Lloyd Parker) wrote: >In article <qe6eq25v7vr2l8gqjagd38781phaa5v4kq(a)4ax.com>, > MassiveProng <MassiveProng(a)thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org> wrote: >>On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 00:15:18 +0000, Eeyore >><rabbitsfriendsandrelations(a)hotmail.com> Gave us: >> >>> >>>The simple answer is that the terrorists are criminals and what's required >is >>>international *police* action to stop it. >> >> >> There is. It's called the Worldwide Struggle Against Terrorism, >> >> AND IT IS A WAR. > >The US didn't call it a war when it took on the Barbary Coast pirates. This >is analogous. According to the book I have here, _The History of the Navy_, Fletcher Pratt, 1941, Congress declared war on Algiers, page 219. /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 13 Jan 2007 07:58
In article <eo87us$nji$3(a)blue.rahul.net>, kensmith(a)green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote: >In article <eo85rh$8qk_007(a)s788.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>, > <jmfbahciv(a)aol.com> wrote: >[...] >>Sheesh. The invention of ink didn't change the words used. > >Actually it did. The printing press did it even more so. How words were >spelled, the ones used and to some degree how they were pronounced were >all changed by the fact that the written word can be transported over long >distances. I said "the words used". /BAH |