Phone tapping....Discuss!

Damn straight it's unconstitutional! This isn't a communist state, we have laws and rights for a reason, and I don;t give a damn if they think it's terrorists they're hunting.. it will set precedent and they will start to abuse it and soon enough we will lose our rights. Good to see someone is standing up for them.

yeah I agree totaly ... I'm glad i don't use the phone

Thought this would be the start of a good debate, but so far, we are all in agreement with the court ruling.

Well, I doubt anyone see's the violation of their civil liberties as a good thing. We need to maintain what we are, not become what we're fighting against.

If the government needs to violate a civil liberty of a few to protect all the civil liberties of the rest of us, I'm 100% for it. It's not like they're randomly tapping phones. It's going to be people they strongly suspect of threatening lives and freedom in the United States. As far as I'm concerned, if the government wants to tap your phone they're going to tap your phone. They actually tried to take the high road for once and I sorta respect it. ANYTHING that can be done to thwart another September 11th I'm all for.

So as long as you are not in the group of people they are violating, its ok? What about next time when you are part of that "few"?

I have to disagree with you on this one. I believe it was Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson that said anyone willing to give up some of their freedom for secruity deserve neither. That's my take on it, as well.

We inheritantly give up civil liberties the moment we stop being an anarchy state. We already give up many for the justice system we have in place. The big question isn't whether or not we are giving up liberties for safety, but rather how far is to far, and at what point do we draw the line.

wow I basically just called Thomas Jefferson a lying pig fucker =x

LOL, yeah you did!

How far is too far and who gets to decide?

If the government wants to listen to me talk about fantasy football and getting drunk, then by all means. I have absolutely no problem with it, but at the same time I'm fairly sure I'm not a suspected terrorist. Anyone that they actually tap has given them reason to be tapped.

True, but at the same time you don't want to have to worry that if you are joking around about blowing something up to a friend on the phone that your account is getting flagged, and after the next big diaster you're ass is sitting in a cell being questioned for a few weeks.

I'm ok with it as long as it sticks to the form it is currently - which is towards those that have shown good reason to be targets. I just hope that it doesn't slowly turn into something worse, which I won't be ok with. There is no way for me to know really so I don't really know what my opinion is =/

Our government did something very similiar during and after the second world war. They asked people to turn over people to the government that were suspected of socialism. It got to a point that if you uttered anything even remotely un-American you found yourself facing a jail cell and unless you gave up the names of your cronies, you found yourself facing the gallows.

I don't agree with the governments rationalization that they are "only targetting people suspected of terrorism." It makes me afraid to do research for some of the roll play and writing I do. The government does not want you looking up information about bombs, even if it's just to write about a vampire that builds them.

It worries me that if they can rationalize this away...what will they rationalize next?

I think George Orwell was just a few years off on his vision, but I think he still had a good idea as to how things are going to turn out eventually, if we continue as we are.

The government has legitimate reasons to do some things, but like ROz and Vulash say, do we really trust them to make the decision as to what is legitimate and what isn't, or how far is too far?

The state of California passed a law that says it is against the law to smoke cigarettes inside restaurants, and bars. Now, because these are public places, and cigarette smoking has been found to be unhealthy, I thought that was a great law. However, there is a bill up now, that would make it illegal to smoke in your own car, if you have a child under the age of six in it with you.

First off, this now goes beyond the publics life, and into a person's private life. There is no allowance being made for the fact that the person may hold their cigarette out the window, or have the vents open and blowing the smoke out through the sunroof...nothing. But besides that, what about seven year olds? Are they not entitled to the same protection? Or twelve year olds...are they not effected? In addition, if the government can step in and tell you what you can and can't do in this instance, when will they be stepping in to say that you can't punish your child by sending them to bed without dinner, or you can't spank them, or you can't allow them to stay up till midnight to watch an R rated movie? I may sound silly, but it just takes a few of these seemingly innocuous laws to pass, before more will be attempted...and pretty soon its 2084!

It frustrates me to no end, because I can't come up with a solution. I must believe there is one, and hope that someone voices it though, because if we don't do something soon, it may be too late to matter.

Who's going to regulate the regulators? There is no end. An entire geographical race has been targeted. Sure it's just some extremist muslim now, some day...maybe soon, it'll be ALL muslims. ALL arabs. ALL residents from the middle east. ALL descedants of middle eastern countries. We're talking US citizens here, not just foreigners.

Give an inch, take a nation. Give up one civil liberty, give up all rights. It will escalate if we allow our government certain leeway. Eventually it'll be them protecting us from ourselves. But again, who will regulate the regulators?

What many people fail to see is that the goal of terrorists is not simply to kill people, but to have those deaths cause the survivors to change their way of life. In that regard they have had tremendous success. Even though there has not been a terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11, the terrorists are still gaining ground. The liberties and freedoms that made me so proud to be American are being taken away more and more every day. That is their goal, and we are letting them achieve it.

O.o

I have little to say on the topic except Im glad they were doing and not too happy about that carter appointed pos judge.

S

Men and women in the military have given their lives to protect our basic rights. So to protect our lives we will selfishly give up a few rights to protect our selves. Have we as American's become so self absorbed, that we are no longer willing to make sacrifices (or the ultimate sacrifice) to protect what this country was founded on? I personally think this facist bullshit needs to go. George Bush and his administration, have on multiple occassions, stomped on the constitution (wire tapping for example), violated the law ( the outting of valerie plaim (sp?)), and otherwise ruined our diplomatic reputation (Guatinmo bay).

The fact the current administration has used terrorism as an excuse to lose focus on some basic core values which are going to set this country back 10-20 years. Our energy policy has failed. Ethanol based engines (so far the best proposal on the table) can't be put into place until the infrastructure is improved, and cellusitic ethanol plants are on line. Thats 5-10 years off. 5 years if the goverment pushes it with a ton of cash. Battery powered cars aren't even in mass production yet, so thats a pipe dream atm.

Our educational system is failing. Believe me, I am on the front lines taking work applications from highschoolers. Its bad. I have been highering that demographic for the last 4 years, and it gets progressivly worse each year. No Child Left behind, left them all behind. The answer is simple, more teachers, more schools, more books. When the US educational system was really producing, thats what it relied on. And I hate to say it, but small class sizes, accurate text books, and qualified teachers simply work. Multimedia displays and computers are not what we need in the class room right now. Teach them how to read and write, then we can talk about typing skills later. 8 years of misguided policy, takes a whole generation with it.

Medical science. Don't get me started here. Check your insurance premiums, how are you doing there? How about all those new generic drugs coming to market to lower costs? How about better funding of medical research like stem cells? Yeah there is a reason why those things aren't happening. We've lost the last 8 year so far.

As an American citizen, I am outraged at the last 8 years. I voted both times, against Bush. (And yes Kerry and Gore would have sucked too, so lets not get into that). However Bush and his administration have policies that range from misguided, to illegal, and the fact is in any other era he would have been impeached. I guess that cable TV has made us all too complicant to do something about that.

And btw to all the military folks who are fighting to defend the freedoms of their loved ones. How exactly does it feel to come home and find out your government is taping your phones, after you just put your life on the line to keep that from happening? I personally think its disrespectful.


Sorry about the long rank, just a bleak political landscape out there right now.

Oh the ironing