Well, attorneys I know (including my brother) have been telling me for years that this country has long since passed into the “everyone’s a felon” stage of things. In other words, it is nearly impossible for the average citizen these days not to be guilty of a felony that could justify their arrest, search of their property and seizure of their assets.
Glenn Reynolds (the Instapundit) comments on this from time to time (I think he had a short blurb on this just a few days ago in fact).
Back in the Clinton days, when Clinton approved the government’s largest data mining project and introduced the monitoring of electronic traffic in our largest telecommunication companies, there was a lot of noise from the right about how this exposed individual citizens to retaliatory or pernicious prosecution by anyone in the government who wanted to teach them a lesson. During the Bush administration, lefties who had pooh-poohed such notions under THEIR guy started screaming about the potential abuse under the guy they hated.
So, if you’ve ever downloaded a song, movie, book or TV show without explicit permission or payment, if you’ve ever visited a porn site that blasted an image of a seemingly too-young girl on your screen, if you’ve ever posted messages on a blog or bulletin board that runs afoul of “hate speech” laws, if you’ve ever purchased (or worse, SOLD) a product (even at a garage sale) that is on the government’s “banned list”, if you’ve ever made a phone call to a number on the government’s list of suspect phone numbers, if you’ve ever used a drug that was purchased for someone else’s prescription, if you’ve ever altered your car, boat or motorcycle to avoid performance loss from “green” regulatory items, if you’ve ever installed a shower head that deliverse more than 2.5 gallons/minute water flow, if you’ve ever poured used oil or used fertilizer into your gutters…. etc. etc.. etc…
Any of these things will make you a felon.
Welcome to the United States of Felonia.
Some would say that this is deliberate because it gives the government the power to arrest, detain and quiet any person that is making life uncomfortable for the power elite.
Others would say it is the unintended consequences of a runaway nanny state.
I will tell you that however we got to this point, it is now to a point that your individual liberties are at serious risk if any particular administration ever wants to target you for your views. Whether any administration WOULD do that or not, is certainly debatable. The fact remains that they CAN do it.
You’re right. It’s all about increment until, one day, you find yourself on the wrong side of an issue and your life is torn apart.
Dean seems to pooh-pooh this. And he mocks those that say, “Ummm, wait a sec…” The fact that the erosion is incremental is to make it look harmless. The masses are supposed to pooh-pooh it. It’s by design.
I just wish people would wake up.
I blinded myself from the overstepping of the Bush Administration. The left blasted him with so much noise that I turned off hearing legitimate complaints – from both the left and the right. I was just sick of hearing it.
Dean, and people like him, all seem to think everything is noise (or simply noise from the sore losers). That this nation will always be free. This is an opinion not supported by fact or history. I wish they’d see this.
Governments takes power. They takes freedoms. They doesn’t give them.
Cosmic never said “every keystroke is recorded”. However, I do suspect strongly based on working in the Telecom industry for over a decade that the government has significant amounts of data on individuals and the websites they visit, the products they buy and the messages they have sent, including email messages. However, I also know, from having worked in both the telecom and the information technology world, that there’s still a certain amount of anonymity that the sheer volume and uncertainty of the data provides. But that’s getting less and less every day. Pretty soon if you buy a copy of “Huckleberry Finn” from Amazon.com, your name is likely to appear on a “watch for racism” list.
Agree mostly with CC and Kevin. The only thing that really sits between any of us and a felony conviction is probable cause. I’m sure everyone knows 1 or 2 people that have fallen victim to the state in this way.
I know someone who was being stalked and their stalker came calling at their house one night. Never turned out to be a very dangerous guy, but certainly scary. They called the police. They came and did their thing, but while invited into their home, hey look, that’s a joint in the ashtray. And off to jail she went (at least for that night). Obviously not anything serious, but eventually she lost her teaching job as a result.
All stemming from the ridiculous notion that the government has any legitimate interest in what I put in my body – let alone simply a weed that grows out of the ground with no human intervention. Well, unless its a government taxed and sanctioned drug, that is. But that’s for another day.
Either way it’s not a Democrat or Republican thing, it’s a big government’s massive, never-ending, creeping expansion thing. And regardless of whether you think any politician of either party will ever use that authority, we should all be opposed in principal to the creeping nanny state that lays the foundation for possible offense. And I would not hesitate to put 1000 page health care reform bills in that category.
Lesson 1: Never invite the police into your house while you have a joint in the ashtray.
I remember someone posted a photo they found on flickr or facebook or something where a couple were posed and smiling on their bed, completely oblivious to the tub of “anal lube” on the nightstand next to them.
I mean come on people, use SOME common sense! I’d almost argue that a person who would invite the police into their house with a joint in the ashtray SHOULD be arrested AND be fired from teaching for sheer boneheaded stupidity.
Here’s a vid about a cop who: took some pot off a suspect, took it home and baked it into brownies which he and his wife ate. Then, in a panic, called 911 and admitted to all of the above because he thought he was dying. I know, off topic, but it made me think of the above.
Of course, to find it I had to type “marijuana” and “cop” into my search engine. Now I’m never getting another job…
So many horrible crimes out there actually hurting and destroying people and the government wants to focus scarce resources on what people put into their bodies and type into their computers. Yes Dean, it is a conservative position to oppose police powers such as those.
Dean seems to pooh-pooh this. And he mocks those that say, “Ummm, wait a sec…” The fact that the erosion is incremental is to make it look harmless. The masses are supposed to pooh-pooh it. It’s by design.
Only to people who haven’t really closely read Dean and don’t really know what he stands for.
Dean actually agrees 100% with Cosmic Conservative’s statement. Dean merely notes that everything Cosmic describes has been slowly happening for decades, and that Barack Obama had almost nothing to do with any of this.
If someone wants to tell me that we are slowly letting our freedoms erode, I’m all ears. But I want to know where, and how. Because it’s very clear to me that in many areas, we have more freedom than we used to, not less. In many areas, we have less government than we used to, not more. So when someone starts telling me there’s been an erosion, I want specifics. And they’d better not have huge gaping holes in those specifics, like, not knowing how things were just 5 or 10 or 20 or 50 years ago.
I am infinitely more concerned with the felonization of Americans for minor and petty crimes than I am with so-called “warrantless wiretapping” for terrorist surveillance purposes (which we’re still doing under Obama by the way). I am infinitely more concerned about the sick and demented drug war and its horrible perversions and destructions than I am about whether or not the Democrats allowed outside consultants to help them draft a bill.
In short, I’m more interested in knowledge and reason and common sense than ignorance-based hysteria, and I’m more interested in specific policy proposals than just scattershot blasting at the current temporary occupant of the White House. If you’re going to complain about an erosion, be specific, and have an alternative proposal and make sure it’s not just all about demonizing the current President. Which was apparently too much to ask of the Left when Bush was in office, and is now too much to ask of the Right now that Obama is in office.
Barak isn’t pulling it back (which would be real “Hope & Change” for Americans of all political stripes), he isn’t just letting it sit where it is; he’s pushing it aggressively forward. If you doubt the “aggressively” part check out the database on emails people receive containing information Barak doesn’t think is true.
I go back and forth on that one. In truth, I do not believe that it is a violation of your civil liberties to surveil you. I really don’t. I don’t object to government listening in on phone calls either, so long as the information can’t be disclosed to the public or used in a criminal prosecution.
So. WHICH civil liberties is Barack Obama working to curtail? Making a list of people is not curtailing anyone’s civil liberties. So what other civil liberties are they encroaching upon?
Dean:
I suspect you are missing the key part of my message. I am not suggesting the the government is embarking on a mass campaign of “curtailing civil liberties.” They don’t have to. The concern I have is of a much more specific, and potentially sinister nature. That concern is that the government can use the information they gather to target specific individuals they consider to be some “threat” to their goals. The “felonization” of America means that they won’t HAVE to “curtail civil liberties” because they will have legitimate evidence of wrongdoing they can use to prosecute. That’s the threat of making everyone a felon with the government holding the evidence.
In my post I think I made it quite clear that this process goes back decades. In fact I would argue that as soon as computer technology became widespread both Republicans and Democrats recognized what a valuable tool information about the behavior of citizens could be, and within a few years of the capability to surveil and store information, they were busily at work doing so. It just happened to be during the Clinton administration that the first serious data mining effort was undertaken (by the way, Tony Blair was doing a very similar thing in Britain at the time). It’s the natural tendency of government to do this sort of thing, and the harm isn’t in COLLECTING data, the harm is in selectively applying it to protect the power elite or to promote a singular ideology.
Is Obama worse than Bush in this regard? Well, I think the evidence is pretty clear that he is. How much worse? I guess that depends on your perspective. I don’t like any of it, I didn’t like it when Bush did it either. But I find myself far more concerned about it now that I am so firmly opposed to the man who sits in the White House and who pulls the strings on these things.
Do I think Obama is capable of abusing his power in this area? Well, I have to be honest and say that based on the tactics I’ve seen him wield already, and his tendency to lie with conviction, and his willingness to publicly demagogue and trash his political opponents… Yeah, I think Obama is more disposed to abuse this ability than most Presidents.
so long as the information can’t be disclosed to the public or used in a criminal prosecution.
so let me get this straight. You’re OK with the government collecting any and all data on you and your fellow citizens as long as you are offered the fig leaf of protection of a law “forbidding” release to the public? Yeah, a law is solid, concrete, 100% protection against abuse by a politician. Nope, we’ve never seen leaks by politicians or government officials of information on political enemies. Not. gonna. happen.
Please, it has and will happen. It’s why in the Census was strictly limited in what information they can collect.
{ 13 comments }
Well, attorneys I know (including my brother) have been telling me for years that this country has long since passed into the “everyone’s a felon” stage of things. In other words, it is nearly impossible for the average citizen these days not to be guilty of a felony that could justify their arrest, search of their property and seizure of their assets.
Glenn Reynolds (the Instapundit) comments on this from time to time (I think he had a short blurb on this just a few days ago in fact).
Back in the Clinton days, when Clinton approved the government’s largest data mining project and introduced the monitoring of electronic traffic in our largest telecommunication companies, there was a lot of noise from the right about how this exposed individual citizens to retaliatory or pernicious prosecution by anyone in the government who wanted to teach them a lesson. During the Bush administration, lefties who had pooh-poohed such notions under THEIR guy started screaming about the potential abuse under the guy they hated.
So, if you’ve ever downloaded a song, movie, book or TV show without explicit permission or payment, if you’ve ever visited a porn site that blasted an image of a seemingly too-young girl on your screen, if you’ve ever posted messages on a blog or bulletin board that runs afoul of “hate speech” laws, if you’ve ever purchased (or worse, SOLD) a product (even at a garage sale) that is on the government’s “banned list”, if you’ve ever made a phone call to a number on the government’s list of suspect phone numbers, if you’ve ever used a drug that was purchased for someone else’s prescription, if you’ve ever altered your car, boat or motorcycle to avoid performance loss from “green” regulatory items, if you’ve ever installed a shower head that deliverse more than 2.5 gallons/minute water flow, if you’ve ever poured used oil or used fertilizer into your gutters…. etc. etc.. etc…
Any of these things will make you a felon.
Welcome to the United States of Felonia.
Some would say that this is deliberate because it gives the government the power to arrest, detain and quiet any person that is making life uncomfortable for the power elite.
Others would say it is the unintended consequences of a runaway nanny state.
I will tell you that however we got to this point, it is now to a point that your individual liberties are at serious risk if any particular administration ever wants to target you for your views. Whether any administration WOULD do that or not, is certainly debatable. The fact remains that they CAN do it.
You’re right. It’s all about increment until, one day, you find yourself on the wrong side of an issue and your life is torn apart.
Dean seems to pooh-pooh this. And he mocks those that say, “Ummm, wait a sec…” The fact that the erosion is incremental is to make it look harmless. The masses are supposed to pooh-pooh it. It’s by design.
I just wish people would wake up.
I blinded myself from the overstepping of the Bush Administration. The left blasted him with so much noise that I turned off hearing legitimate complaints – from both the left and the right. I was just sick of hearing it.
Dean, and people like him, all seem to think everything is noise (or simply noise from the sore losers). That this nation will always be free. This is an opinion not supported by fact or history. I wish they’d see this.
Governments takes power. They takes freedoms. They doesn’t give them.
Naomi mis-spoke.
Military commissions are based on Bushhitler’s People’s Courts.
Kevin is right, Dean is way soft on Obama and his it’s just business as usual.
Cosmic is right, every keystroke is recorded and THEY know WHO you are.
This stuff is scary. Hitler never would have imagined what WE have become.
Thank the Lord, Senator Al Franken sits on the Judiciary committee of the US Senate.
The biggest nazi in the bunch may be Bill Gates.
Cosmic never said “every keystroke is recorded”. However, I do suspect strongly based on working in the Telecom industry for over a decade that the government has significant amounts of data on individuals and the websites they visit, the products they buy and the messages they have sent, including email messages. However, I also know, from having worked in both the telecom and the information technology world, that there’s still a certain amount of anonymity that the sheer volume and uncertainty of the data provides. But that’s getting less and less every day. Pretty soon if you buy a copy of “Huckleberry Finn” from Amazon.com, your name is likely to appear on a “watch for racism” list.
Seriously.
Agree mostly with CC and Kevin. The only thing that really sits between any of us and a felony conviction is probable cause. I’m sure everyone knows 1 or 2 people that have fallen victim to the state in this way.
I know someone who was being stalked and their stalker came calling at their house one night. Never turned out to be a very dangerous guy, but certainly scary. They called the police. They came and did their thing, but while invited into their home, hey look, that’s a joint in the ashtray. And off to jail she went (at least for that night). Obviously not anything serious, but eventually she lost her teaching job as a result.
All stemming from the ridiculous notion that the government has any legitimate interest in what I put in my body – let alone simply a weed that grows out of the ground with no human intervention. Well, unless its a government taxed and sanctioned drug, that is. But that’s for another day.
Either way it’s not a Democrat or Republican thing, it’s a big government’s massive, never-ending, creeping expansion thing. And regardless of whether you think any politician of either party will ever use that authority, we should all be opposed in principal to the creeping nanny state that lays the foundation for possible offense. And I would not hesitate to put 1000 page health care reform bills in that category.
Lesson 1: Never invite the police into your house while you have a joint in the ashtray.
I remember someone posted a photo they found on flickr or facebook or something where a couple were posed and smiling on their bed, completely oblivious to the tub of “anal lube” on the nightstand next to them.
I mean come on people, use SOME common sense! I’d almost argue that a person who would invite the police into their house with a joint in the ashtray SHOULD be arrested AND be fired from teaching for sheer boneheaded stupidity.
Following up on the “joint in the house the police found” stupidity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnZb5wi_jsU
Here’s a vid about a cop who: took some pot off a suspect, took it home and baked it into brownies which he and his wife ate. Then, in a panic, called 911 and admitted to all of the above because he thought he was dying. I know, off topic, but it made me think of the above.
Of course, to find it I had to type “marijuana” and “cop” into my search engine. Now I’m never getting another job…
So many horrible crimes out there actually hurting and destroying people and the government wants to focus scarce resources on what people put into their bodies and type into their computers. Yes Dean, it is a conservative position to oppose police powers such as those.
Kevin:
Dean seems to pooh-pooh this. And he mocks those that say, “Ummm, wait a sec…” The fact that the erosion is incremental is to make it look harmless. The masses are supposed to pooh-pooh it. It’s by design.
Only to people who haven’t really closely read Dean and don’t really know what he stands for.
Dean actually agrees 100% with Cosmic Conservative’s statement. Dean merely notes that everything Cosmic describes has been slowly happening for decades, and that Barack Obama had almost nothing to do with any of this.
If someone wants to tell me that we are slowly letting our freedoms erode, I’m all ears. But I want to know where, and how. Because it’s very clear to me that in many areas, we have more freedom than we used to, not less. In many areas, we have less government than we used to, not more. So when someone starts telling me there’s been an erosion, I want specifics. And they’d better not have huge gaping holes in those specifics, like, not knowing how things were just 5 or 10 or 20 or 50 years ago.
I am infinitely more concerned with the felonization of Americans for minor and petty crimes than I am with so-called “warrantless wiretapping” for terrorist surveillance purposes (which we’re still doing under Obama by the way). I am infinitely more concerned about the sick and demented drug war and its horrible perversions and destructions than I am about whether or not the Democrats allowed outside consultants to help them draft a bill.
In short, I’m more interested in knowledge and reason and common sense than ignorance-based hysteria, and I’m more interested in specific policy proposals than just scattershot blasting at the current temporary occupant of the White House. If you’re going to complain about an erosion, be specific, and have an alternative proposal and make sure it’s not just all about demonizing the current President. Which was apparently too much to ask of the Left when Bush was in office, and is now too much to ask of the Right now that Obama is in office.
Yes, but Dean,
Barak isn’t pulling it back (which would be real “Hope & Change” for Americans of all political stripes), he isn’t just letting it sit where it is; he’s pushing it aggressively forward. If you doubt the “aggressively” part check out the database on emails people receive containing information Barak doesn’t think is true.
By “it” I mean loss of civil liberties.
I go back and forth on that one. In truth, I do not believe that it is a violation of your civil liberties to surveil you. I really don’t. I don’t object to government listening in on phone calls either, so long as the information can’t be disclosed to the public or used in a criminal prosecution.
So. WHICH civil liberties is Barack Obama working to curtail? Making a list of people is not curtailing anyone’s civil liberties. So what other civil liberties are they encroaching upon?
Dean:
I suspect you are missing the key part of my message. I am not suggesting the the government is embarking on a mass campaign of “curtailing civil liberties.” They don’t have to. The concern I have is of a much more specific, and potentially sinister nature. That concern is that the government can use the information they gather to target specific individuals they consider to be some “threat” to their goals. The “felonization” of America means that they won’t HAVE to “curtail civil liberties” because they will have legitimate evidence of wrongdoing they can use to prosecute. That’s the threat of making everyone a felon with the government holding the evidence.
In my post I think I made it quite clear that this process goes back decades. In fact I would argue that as soon as computer technology became widespread both Republicans and Democrats recognized what a valuable tool information about the behavior of citizens could be, and within a few years of the capability to surveil and store information, they were busily at work doing so. It just happened to be during the Clinton administration that the first serious data mining effort was undertaken (by the way, Tony Blair was doing a very similar thing in Britain at the time). It’s the natural tendency of government to do this sort of thing, and the harm isn’t in COLLECTING data, the harm is in selectively applying it to protect the power elite or to promote a singular ideology.
Is Obama worse than Bush in this regard? Well, I think the evidence is pretty clear that he is. How much worse? I guess that depends on your perspective. I don’t like any of it, I didn’t like it when Bush did it either. But I find myself far more concerned about it now that I am so firmly opposed to the man who sits in the White House and who pulls the strings on these things.
Do I think Obama is capable of abusing his power in this area? Well, I have to be honest and say that based on the tactics I’ve seen him wield already, and his tendency to lie with conviction, and his willingness to publicly demagogue and trash his political opponents… Yeah, I think Obama is more disposed to abuse this ability than most Presidents.
so long as the information can’t be disclosed to the public or used in a criminal prosecution.
so let me get this straight. You’re OK with the government collecting any and all data on you and your fellow citizens as long as you are offered the fig leaf of protection of a law “forbidding” release to the public? Yeah, a law is solid, concrete, 100% protection against abuse by a politician. Nope, we’ve never seen leaks by politicians or government officials of information on political enemies. Not. gonna. happen.
Please, it has and will happen. It’s why in the Census was strictly limited in what information they can collect.
More appropriate to the notion of everyone being a felon under the current mishmash of laws both state and federal, we need only look at this travesty to see how it can happen to anyone.
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