Letters to the Editor
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Obey!
Listen to the government, it knows best. Come on, have the people in charge ever steered us in the wrong direction?
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Shooter:
OTOH just one attack in the US of nearly any size destroys the liberal view that we have nothing to fear.
-- shooter242
If you could be honest for just one sentence, maybe you would give us something to reply to. But nope, you continue to just makes sh*t up, followed by your trademark Bush level smirk of "heh".
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From an old AT&T company memo
http://www.crypto.com/photos/blog/secrecy500.jpg
SECRECY OF COMMUNICATIONS
Secrecy of communications is a basic requirement and important company policy. It includes divulging neither the conversation nor the fact that a call was made between two telephones.
[...] Giving information from work orders or toll tickets regarding where and when calls were placed [...] IS NOT DIFFERENT FROM REPEATING OVERHEARD TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONS. Furthermore, discussions within the central office concerning calls that have been handled and monitoring must be confined absolutely to service requirements.
This important requirement is demanded of every employee in the company, particularly in every testboard room, operating room, accounting office, and commercial office.
THE VIOLATION OF THE SECRECY OF COMMUNICATIONS IS AGAINST STATE AND FEDERAL REGULATIONS AND LAWS.
- - The Mountain States Tel. & Tel. Co.
http://www.crypto.com/blog/wiretap_risks
As someone who began his professional career in the Bell System (and who stayed around through several of its successors), the push for telco immunity represents an especially bitter disillusionment for me. Say what you will about the old Phone Company, but respect for customer privacy was once a deeply rooted point of pride in the corporate ethos. There was no faster way to be fired (or worse) than to snoop into call records or facilitate illegal wiretaps, well intentioned or not. And it was genuinely part of the culture; we believed in it, even those of us ordinarily disposed toward a skeptical view of the official company line.
- - Matt Blaze
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Shooter
OTOH just one attack in the US of nearly any size destroys the liberal view that we have nothing to fear.
It's not that there is absolutely nothing to fear from terrorism, it's that the fear is ludicrously overblown.
The average American is far, far, far more likely to die in an automobile accident than in a terrorist attack, and yet the government spends far, far, far less time warning us of the dangers of dying in an auto accident and far, far, far less money in trying to protect us from auto accident deaths.
The average American does not have an irrational fear of getting into a car and driving or riding, one exercises due caution (well some do sometimes, anyway) and then just accepts the risk as part of life. Yet, most Americans have seen car accidents up close and personal, with their own two eyes and not vicariously over the media.
It's a case of rational risk assessment, to live in constant fear of a very low probability risk is irrational when one does not live in constant fear of far higher probability risks.
Rationality, that is what is missing from the current administration's approach to dealing with terrorism.
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It's so "weird" lately...
I get those blue-screen Dump Warnings:
The computer shuts off. Emergency! O, bad rot dumplings?
Then my usual automatic gold-star membership 'sign-in' would NOT allow me to enter Salon. I had to try repeatedly. And how in the 'heck' I finally got back here as a guest member? Who knows? Hillary?
Glenn? Kitt? shooter242? NASA? heh.
Thus: The reason I'm not bebop-o, now.
What's happening?
Maybe we need to know?
The GOP feeds Poison!
The times? O, misfits.
Gops say, "Go eat rot?"
O, fine, s-~ O, and go feed a nation of adults and children poison and say aloud, "GOPS feed poison to the whole world and they are very bad creeps?"
Yes. O, they are rancid.
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Two points:
1: ATT doesn't yet claim the power to arrest people and detain them indefinitely on the the suspicion of being a "terrorist sympathizer.
2: There's no shortage of people who could read this:
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/05/terrorism/permalink/d0461bb0b8b9cebbeca7212921cbd524.html
and use it to label me a "terrorist sympathizer."
That such people inhabit Free Republic rather than the highest reaches of Government is only a matter of timing and degree. The protections I currently enjoy as a free US Citizen are being deliberately and systematically destroyed and just sitting quietly by and allowing it to happen doesn't strike me as a very good option.
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Aych
It's not that there is absolutely nothing to fear from terrorism, it's that the fear is ludicrously overblown.[snip]
Rationality, that is what is missing from the current administration's approach to dealing with terrorism.
-- Aycharaych
All of that and the fact that what the GOP is asking for, such as immunity for Telo's, has nothing to do with how well FISA works or how well intelligence is used. It in fact clutters the program and makes accountability dangerously impossible. Shooter knows these things but pretends not to. He's really not as stupid as he pretends.
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I am no computer whiz...
But don't try to convince me the nsa
are not poison snakes in the grass.
Overheard @ the nsa latest committee meeting.
The government "leaders" are poison-asp.
And the shameful gang of pit-vipers have,
forked-tongues and hiss. What a snake pit!
boo hoo. I feel dumped. I got dumped again.
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ATT & Rot Knishes.
For Sale: 2-cents each.
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David Byrne
http://www.talking-heads.net/lyrics_fear.html
Life During Wartime
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,
this ain't no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey,
I ain't got time for that nowTrouble in transit, got through the roadblock,
we blended with the crowd
We got computer, we're tapping phone lines,
I know that ain't allowedBurned all my notebooks, what good are
notebooks? They won't help me survive
My chest is aching, burns like a furnace,
the burning keeps me alive
Try to stay healthy, physical fitness,
don't want to catch no disease
Try to be careful, don't take no chances,
you better watch what you say- - Talking Heads