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Patriot Act author warns EU against dragnet response to terror

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Re: Patriot Act author warns EU against dragnet response to terror

#71

Post by sandworm101 »

RobertoG wrote: post #67
sandworm101 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISIS and AlQaeda aren't the ones taking freedom from the west. Similar organizations have existed for hundreds of years without such impact. If it wasn't ISIS it would be something else. The source of erosion is internal. So too is the blame.

"Similar organizations have existed for hundreds of years" So have done the internal source of erosion, is just they now have the technological capacities. In absence of a strong social movement against, this doesn't look well for the future.

Take a look at britain in the 50s, or the US in the 60s. Speech was more heavily stymied then than it is today. It cost more to do so, but governments then still tracked people's activity. If anything, today's technology allows us to recognize and react to such behaviour whereas previous generations remained unaware.

Re: Patriot Act author warns EU against dragnet response to terror

#72

Post by jacquesm »

maxerickson wrote: post #66
jacquesm wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm quite ashamed to see NL on that list. Really, we should know better than this. But then again, we're also still a monarchy so we have a bit of a history of believing fairy tales.

The date of the most recent prosecution would be a little bit more telling about the cultural atmosphere than just having the law on the books. For example, only recently did my state repeal some stupid laws, removing them from the state code: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/20/it-s-almost... Still, it was big news 15 years ago when someone was prosecuted under the swearing law, and the courts eventuall…

May 6th, this year someone was prosecuted for 'insulting the king':

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2015/05/f-the-king-dem...

This case was dropped because of the tremendous backlash but the law is still on the books. I don't recall when was the last time someone was prosecuted for blasphemy.

Re: Patriot Act author warns EU against dragnet response to terror

#73

Post by e40 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #55
mkaziz wrote: post #9

In my mind, the erosion of privacy and freedom - some of the most vaunted principles of the West - is the ultimate triumph of terrorist organizations like ISIS and Al-Qaeda. They can't beat us by strength of arms, so instead they're stunting our culture.

ISIS and AlQaeda aren't the ones taking freedom from the west. Similar organizations have existed for hundreds of years without such impact. If it wasn't ISIS it would be something else. The source of erosion is internal. So too is the blame.

Al Qaeda was the excuse. We did it to ourselves.

Re: Patriot Act author warns EU against dragnet response to terror

#74

Post by DougWebb »

tremon wrote: post #56
mkaziz wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't read the article, but my gut instinct would be that the people this man was held captive by were foot soldiers. They are frequently illiterate people who are fed such "prophecies" as truth. I do contend with your statement about ISIS continuing to exist because of western compassion. If the West had the means to destroy them (without harming millions of innocent civilians), the compassionate thing to do woul…

> If the West had the means to destroy them (without harming millions of innocent civilians) When the GP speaks of compassion, I think (s)he is referring to the millions of civilians there, not the fighters.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant. The cold-hearted decision would be to count those civilians as acceptable losses, and just carpet-bomb the whole area.

Re: Patriot Act author warns EU against dragnet response to terror

#75

Post by DougWebb »

ergothus wrote: post #60
DougWebb wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an article posted here a few weeks ago, written by a man who was held captive by ISIS for a long time. He said that he learned their ultimate goal has nothing to do with our culture or freedom. They believe armageddon is coming, that it is literaly going to be a big battle in a particular town in Syria near the Turkish border, and that the West is the enemy (descendants of the Roman empire) that their Mosle…

I'll also submit that The Powers That Be have learned it sucks to create a power vacuum and deal with the fallout (see: Iraq, Afghanistan for examples) The developed nations' abilities to crush a military opponent doesn't solve all problems, something we've been aware of for a long while and had recent reinforcing lessons. I know the US had strong roles in rebuilding both Japanese and German governments post-WWII, bu…

During WWII, we engaged in all-out war against Japan and Germany, and devastated both countries to the limit of our technical ability. Had the Japanese government not surrendered after the atomic bombs, we would have continued dropping them until there was no one left. We were already fire-bombing cities at that point, despite the huge number of civilian casualties.

After the war, Japan still had a functioning government which the US had a stranglehold on for years during reconstruction. Germany's government was wiped out and replaced with two puppet states for a long time as well. We were truly imperialistic then, having invaded and taken control of those countries until they were stable enough to run themselves. (Or couldn't be held anymore, in the case of East Germany.)

We didn't do it that way in Iraq and Afghanistan. Years of bad outcomes with cold-war-era puppet governments got us away from that approach, and instead we tried to set up locally-run governments that were allies but not subservient. But that didn't work so well either. Maybe we let them go too soon, or maybe the population wasn't beaten down enough by the war, the way Germany and Japan were, to just accept any government so long as it stops the devastation.

Re: Patriot Act author warns EU against dragnet response to terror

#76

Post by sliverstorm »

mkaziz wrote: post #9

In my mind, the erosion of privacy and freedom - some of the most vaunted principles of the West - is the ultimate triumph of terrorist organizations like ISIS and Al-Qaeda. They can't beat us by strength of arms, so instead they're stunting our culture.

I have always found it rather hard to believe that Islamists would dedicate their entire lives to eroding your privacy. It always seemed like #1 an extremely egocentric worldview and #2 completely not in fitting with their style.

Re: Patriot Act author warns EU against dragnet response to terror

#77

Post by ianopolous »

beccasanchez wrote: post #70
ianopolous wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raising the lowest education level and the lowest happiness level would go a long way. i.e. a society that genuinely looks after and educates everyone. Easier said than done though.

But so many of the terrorists were well educated. They don't suffer lack of money or education, they suffer from a lack of meaning in their lives.

I've heard this claim as well, and that's why I say happiness as well. But that's even harder than education to both define and achieve.

Re: Patriot Act author warns EU against dragnet response to terror

#78

Post by csandreasen »

Jim Sensenbrenner is the last person who should be lecturing on dragnet surveillance. He was one of the writers of the PATRIOT Act, then failed to attend any classified briefings where the NSA explained what they were doing with the phone records program. He later went on to admit that he didn't attend them because didn't want to have to deal with the burden of handling classified information[2]. He had at least six opportunities to hear exactly what was going on, voice his dissent and put forth legislation to curtail it. Instead he put the laws into place then shirked his duty to provide any oversight, somehow proud of the fact that he was legislating from a position of willful ignorance. That kind of behavior is exactly what the EU should be warned about.

[1] http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/patriot-act-architect-cries-foul-...

[2] https://www.lawfareblog.com/shameless-revisionism-james-sens...

Re: Patriot Act author warns EU against dragnet response to terror

#79

Post by bzbarsky »

ergothus wrote: post #60
DougWebb wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an article posted here a few weeks ago, written by a man who was held captive by ISIS for a long time. He said that he learned their ultimate goal has nothing to do with our culture or freedom. They believe armageddon is coming, that it is literaly going to be a big battle in a particular town in Syria near the Turkish border, and that the West is the enemy (descendants of the Roman empire) that their Mosle…

I'll also submit that The Powers That Be have learned it sucks to create a power vacuum and deal with the fallout (see: Iraq, Afghanistan for examples) The developed nations' abilities to crush a military opponent doesn't solve all problems, something we've been aware of for a long while and had recent reinforcing lessons. I know the US had strong roles in rebuilding both Japanese and German governments post-WWII, bu…

Just to put numbers to this, sickening as that is...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War estimates between 150k and 1 million dead. That's out of a total population of 32 million or so according to " rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Iraq>, so somewhere between 1 in 200 and 1 in 30 killed.

For comparison, the population of Germany in 1939 was about 70 million according to " rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#Statis.... And according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_War... there were somewhere between 4.3 to 5.3 million military deaths, somewhere between 500k to 2 million civilian deaths due to some of the Soviet end-war and post-war shenanigans, another 350k to 600k civilian deaths due to Allied bombing. Let's call it 5 million all told on the low end. That's 1 in 14. And due to the fraction of this that were military, the resulting demographic distribution has some interesting features. See " rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Germany_sex_by_age_1950_1.... In particular, note the deep notch in the 30-35 demographic that would have been born during World War 1 and the large differences between numbers of males and females in all the 20-30 age group.

So one difference is that a larger fraction of the population was dead, and a significantly larger fraction of the "young male" demographic that tends to do things like fight back against the occupier as opposed to going on with life. People were just _tired_ of fighting, effectively.

Another difference was the massive aid/rebuilding program financed via the Marshall Plan.

And I suspect a final difference was a much smaller feeling of "us vs them" or "we're fundamentally different", on both sides....

Re: Patriot Act author warns EU against dragnet response to terror

#80

Post by crusso »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #44
crusso wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because those freedoms work great when members of a society are seeking freedom as an end goal. When the end goal of significant numbers is despotism, collectivism, or hegemonic religious rule, those very freedoms become exploitable weaknesses. As my mom said, "This is why we can't have nice things."

> When the end goal of significant numbers is despotism, collectivism, or hegemonic religious rule, those very freedoms become exploitable weaknesses Few people hold "despotism, collectivism, or hegemonic religious rule" as end games. Instead, freedom is traded for safety and stability for one's way of life.

You could likewise say that no one holds "freedom" as an endgame, but instead they want things and sexual partners. Freedom is just shorthand for these and many other once-removed concepts.

There very much are people who want hegemonic religious rule as an end game. They spend a lot of time professing that desire and working toward it.

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