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Originally Posted by DeepIron
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As a US citizen, I don't feel that any of my civil liberties have been infringed here in the US due to the war on terror.
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You don't consider illegal wiretapping an infringement? Do you believe that by taking the Judiciary Branch out of the chain as an overseer to this kind of survellience, that your personal and civil liberties aren't being compromised? Let's say, for example, that YOUR position at the financial institution you work for comes under scrutiny due to "faulty intelligence" (it happens, look at WMDs) and you're suspected of co-operating with a "terrorist cell". Your phone is tapped, your workplace is brought under survellience, and one night, you're whisked away to Gitmo and held as a "terrorist sympathizer".
The very same system that is being put in place to "protect" you, is revoking your personal and civil liberites. Your recourse to legal counsel and representation vaporizes under the guise of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act.
Intelligence has seldom been 100% accurate. Ask some of those who lost years of their lives at Gitmo due to inaccurate intelligence and faulty accusations...
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I have already witnessed financial transactions and loans stopped by the Pat act because the folks doing it were dirty, or were tied to terrorist organizations.
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We didn't need the Patriot Act to freeze or stop "illicit or illegal" transactions before. Why does it need to happen now?
There is a much larger and more sinister picture... This system, Homeland Security and the Patriot Act aren't just for the here and now, it's for the future. And anyone who thinks it's "protecting them" is being deluded...
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I personally would like to see more in the way of profiling and what should be common sense types of things that aren't allowed due to political correctness.
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Be careful what you wish for... |
Wiretapping? The government has been wiretapping the same way it has since Clinton and Project Echelon. Bush didn't change anything about it. Further, the wiretapping they were doing were outbound calls to overseas nations, not some crazy NY Times dreamt up bullocks story they came up with. These conspiracy people really need to calm down with all this CIA and Dick Cheney listening into your phone calls and your insane hypothetical situations. Do you sit in your basement all day and dream this crap up? Whisked away to Gitmo....you've been watching too many Hollywood movies pal. The day I worry is when the cops come knocking on doors to take peoples guns away. The day they do that is the day you should start worrying, not about all this other silly nonsense.
Further, hell yes I want profiling. If statistics show that muslim men between the ages of 17-45 are most likely to be terrorist then the TSA or the airport security should put more emphasis on them then an 85 year old grandmother. That is just common sense.
I also question your expertise in financial transactions. Do you work in a financial institution? Do you have any experience in that or running the patriot act or seeing the types of things it has stopped? I would wager your answer is no but everyone in this forum is an expert. As part of federal regulation, I, along with all the other folks I work with, each year have to take a course on the Pat Act, money laudering, CCAP, etc. You want to talk about overbearing legislation, lets talk about Sarbanes/Oxley that the morons in congress gave us.