First of all, I know most of you will laugh at me, and call me retarded, so please only post if you have something to actually contribute to the conversation, I already know most people in these forums disagree with me, that is alright, but the purpose of this thread is to get people to understand what and who is behind the Patriot Act, My sister was/is listening to calls so I am not just bullshitting. that being said, First of all one of the biggest misunderstandings about the Patriot Act is what calls can be listened to, the call has to be dialed directly to a KNOWN terrorist, not a suspected terrorist, or overseas civilian, so the government cannot REACT to any call they want (they've been listening to almost all of our calls since the mid 80's anyways, so it's nothing new) The wire tap the wire tap is another misunderstood device, it doesn't allow outside parties to listen to a phone conversation (they can already), the wire tap only confirms who's talking The Bush administration is NOT abusing the Patriot Act, I can't say the same about future administrations (Hillary), and I don't like the fact that the government can listen to our calls, but it is a fact of life, the only major difference now is that it was confirmed that the government can listen to our calls. As I said, my sister is a former Marine, when her enlistment ended a few years ago, she was looking for a job, and was hired by the government as an intelligence analyst. Now some background on my sister, she graduated high school with a GPA above 4.0, and qualified for early graduation, and she is the only one of my older sisters that admitted to me that she tried weed, she also said that if the government became oppressive, and tyrannical that she would help any attempt to overthrow them. These is the kind of people you think are listening to your calls. last year my sister heard a call to a cocaine smuggler off the coast of Florida within 50 miles of Miami, she reported it to her commanding officer, he asked if their intention was solely to indiscriminately kill American civilians, and my sister said it wasn't, and she was ordered to finish monitoring the call and to ignore it if it was unrelated to terrorism, it was about cocaine, and had to was ignored. now obviously she isn't allowed to talk about it, so I left out a lot of details about her life that I won't answer, for the sake of her job, (she makes more than the rest of our immediate family combined) now it is more than clear that the Patriot Act has more potential for abuse than I'm comfortable with, but would one pothead (George Bush, yes he does enjoy an occasional bowl) really go after all other potheads? he did allow that bill that cut federal funding for the war on drugs to pass didn't he? besides how many people do you know of that where prosecuted because of the Patriot Act that where prosecuted for something unrelated to indiscriminate murdered of American civilians?
Isnt that suppose to be confidential if your sister is high enough in rank to listen to calls??? Or maybe im too stoned to understand that
Interesting perspective. But in my honest opinion, about this subject in general .. not your post specifically, this topic is beat like a dead horse. Most of the people complaining are those whose lives are least affected. Sure, it's infringement upon our "rights" (if you want to call them that). But as the great Bob Dylan once said, "The Times They Are A-Changin'." EDIT: +rep
Even if the Bush Administration weren't abusing the Patriot Act, which...wow, I'm not even going to go there...but assuming that were true, it still sets a horrifying precedent for the future. You think Hillary wouldn't abuse such a power? McCrazy? They sure as hell would. The bottom line is that, as I stated before, enacting such a policy is already an act of abuse in itself. It's such a flagrant violation of our liberties - not rights, LIBERTIES, I can't stress enough just how important it is to make note of the difference between the two terms, but I digress - that once you've crossed that line, all bets are off. If not right now, certainly close within our lifetimes, it's going to be turned against the general populace. Slippery-slopey though I know my statements are, you need only look at history to know that I'm correct. At that, I want you to imagine for a moment what it would have been like if the Roman Empire, The British Empire, various middle age monarchies, the Puritans, the Spanish Inquisition, or Nazi Germany had the Patriot Act and the technology to go along with. I shouldn't have to elaborate on what they would have done with such a brilliant piece of legislation. Now, bearing that in mind, put it into the context of the current state of things - the vast number of similarities between modern day USA/Britain and the Roman/British empires, as well as their vast array of war crimes with religious underpinnings, and the trap this legislation is going to invariably lead us to should be obvious. Even take the name, "The Patriot Act"; even the most hardened, gung-ho neoconservative/neoliberal understands the motives behind the namesake in their own perverse sort of logic. This could easily lead us into an extensive thesis on how colloquial language is manipulated by jingoism, but my insurmountable stack of creative writing homework is pleading with me to stop ranting on forums. Basically, it's the exact sort of thing that Orwell prophecized when he came up with the concepts of Newspeak and Doublethink. And finally, the shittiest, saddest point of all, is that this entire problem is circular! If it weren't for our "aggressive foreign policy" - state sponsored terrorism which is never actually referred to as terrorism because in the minds of the general populace the term terrorism can only be linked to scraggly-bearded googly-eyed brown ted kazcinskys who are so low on resources and manpower that they're left to resort to constructing makeshift bombs out of nail-polish and dingleberries and yet are somehow involved in a massive worldwide cabal to overthrow modern civilization as we know it despite the fact that they've never been able to gain so much as a foot in the door in their own fucking countries to begin with *deep breath* - there would never have been any "need" to enact domestic spying in the first place. And therein lies the key to this whole operation. Unnecessary brutality eventually awakens fanatical rebel groups, who then can be used to terrify the population into supporting totalitarian policies.