Grimis
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| #1 Posted on 17.8.04 0712.57 Reposted on: 17.8.11 0714.22 | A long article from Reason concerning John Kerry's position on digital liberties and copyright protection is an interesting read:
Originally posted by John Berlau in Reason from 7/26/04 This isn't the first time Kerry and Ashcroft have been at odds over civil liberties. In the 1990s, government proposals to restrict encryption inspired a national debate. Then as now, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and electronic privacy groups locked horns with the DOJ and law enforcement agencies. Then as now, Kerry and Ashcroft were on opposite sides.
But there was noteworthy difference in those days. Then it was Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.) who argued alongside the ACLU in favor of the individual's right to encrypt messages and export encryption software. Ashcroft "was kind of the go-to guy for all of us on the Republican side of the Senate," recalls David Sobel, general counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
And in what now seems like a bizarre parallel universe, it was John Kerry who was on the side of the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the DOJ. Ashcroft's predecessor at the Justice Department, Janet Reno, wanted to force companies to create a "clipper chip" for the government—a chip that could "unlock" the encryption codes individuals use to keep their messages private. When that wouldn't fly in Congress, the DOJ pushed for a "key escrow" system in which a third-party agency would have a "backdoor" key to read encrypted messages.....
.....Proponents such as McCain and Kerry claimed that law enforcement could not get the key from any third-party agency without a court order. Critics responded that there were loopholes in the law, that it opened the door to abuses, and that it punished a technology rather than wrongdoers who used that technology. Some opponents argued that the idea was equivalent to giving the government an electronic key to everyone's home. "To date, we have heard a great deal about the needs of law enforcement and not enough about the privacy needs of the rest of us," said then-Sen. Ashcroft in a 1997 speech to the Computer and Communications Industry Association. "While we need to revise our laws to reflect the digital age, one thing that does not need revision is the Fourth Amendment... Now, more than ever, we must protect citizens' privacy from the excesses of an arrogant, overly powerful government."
But John Kerry would have none of this. He had just written The New War, a book about the threat of transnational criminal organizations, and he was singing a different tune on civil liberties. Responding directly to a column in Wired on encryption that said "trusting the government with your privacy is like having a Peeping Tom install your window blinds," Kerry invoked the Americans killed in 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. "[O]ne would be hard-pressed," he wrote, "to find a single grieving relative of those killed in the bombings of the World Trade Center in New York or the federal building in Oklahoma City who would not have gladly sacrificed a measure of personal privacy if it could have saved a loved one." Change a few words, and the passage could easily fit into Attorney General Ashcroft's infamous speech to the Senate Judiciary Committee in late 2001—the one where he declared, "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberties, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists—for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve."
Apparently, this also went over to asset forfeiture too:
Originally posted by Reason In the mid-1990s, a bipartisan movement arose to reform the forfeiture laws, with conservative Republican Reps. Henry Hyde of Illinois and Bob Barr of Georgia joining with such liberal Democrats as Reps. John Conyers of Michigan and Barney Frank of Massachusetts. They wanted to increase the burden of proof on the government when it seized property. As with encryption, there was stiff opposition to reform from Janet Reno's Justice Department.
What was Kerry's position? He thought U.S. asset forfeiture laws were working so well that he wanted to export them. "We absolutely must push for asset forfeiture laws all over the planet," Kerry wrote in The New War. "In the words of one plainspoken lawman, 'Get their ass and get their assets.'" There was, tellingly, no discussion at all of civil liberties issues....
....Kerry then expressed his belief that bank customers are entitled to essentially zero privacy. "The technology is already available to monitor all electronic money transfers," he wrote (emphasis added). "We need the will to make sure it is put in place."
Another absolutely disingenous filp-flop courtesy of John Forbes Kerry. (ESPECIALLY the Know Your Customer law, the kind of anti-liberty law that the anti-Clinton crowd, including myself, latched onto).
What is funny though is the fact that the left-leaning side of civil-liberties crowd actually embraces him despite his sordid anti-libery past. Promote this thread! | | DrDirt
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| #2 Posted on 17.8.04 0727.11 Reposted on: 17.8.11 0728.53 | Short and sweet. A true liberal should be fighting tooth and nail to protect the civil liberties of all US citizens. We are much too eager to give up our rights out of fear. It started with the war on drugs and has accelerated with the war on terrorism. | EddieBurkett
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| #3 Posted on 17.8.04 2006.01 Reposted on: 17.8.11 2010.12 | I think the bigger news here is Ashcroft's turn. Surely his 180 on privacy can't wholly be attributed to 9/11, can it? | Grimis
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| #4 Posted on 18.8.04 0636.16 Reposted on: 18.8.11 0636.38 | Originally posted by EddieBurkett I think the bigger news here is Ashcroft's turn. Surely his 180 on privacy can't wholly be attributed to 9/11, can it?
I would say Kerry is bigger news because he is the Democratic nominee, but Ashcroft's switcheroo is notable too. And I do think that 9/11 had a lot to do with his change in attitutde because he picked up the ball and ran with a lot of the Clinton-era proposals in the PATRIOT Act.
(And I don't mean Clinton-era like its his fault, but these were a lot of proposals that had their generation after Oklahoma City) | EddieBurkett
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| #5 Posted on 18.8.04 1906.25 Reposted on: 18.8.11 1907.09 | Originally posted by Grimis I would say Kerry is bigger news because he is the Democratic nominee, but Ashcroft's switcheroo is notable too.
Only notable??? Ashcroft is arguably the number one opponent of individual privacy at the moment. To find out that someone like that was previously a defender??? I'll concede that anything concerning Kerry is more relevant, but for Ashcroft not just to turn, but to turn so sharply is more astounding. Its alot like finding out Darth Vader was once a jedi. | ALL ORIGINAL POSTS IN THIS THREAD ARE NOW AVAILABLE |
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