First, brand all the children

[Declan McCullagh]

K-S has the right of it. The only drama left before the Senate votes
on the "anti-terrorism" wiretap bill Thursday is whether the final vote
on this ever-growing, 400KB bill will be 99-1 (Feingold) or 100-1. 

Two weeks ago, the House approved (http://www.politechbot.com/p-02654.html)
the bill by a 339 by 79 vote with a five-year expiration date.

Then the Senate decided to get persnickety and demanded that all these
anti-financial privacy "money laundering" sections must be added, and
insisted that the expiration date be shortened, and so on.

The doughty defenders of liberty in the House reponded by approving the
rewritten, expanded bill today by -- a 357 to 66 vote.
(http://clerkweb.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.exe?year=2001&rollnumber=398)

So making the bill more Draconian, onerous, and nasty convinced
precisely 13 *more* 'critters to vote for the revised version. Right.

With the exception of folks like Ron Paul (who, I'm pleased to say,
voted nay), there seems to be little hope left for our legislative
system.  When you have 99-1 votes in the Senate
(http://www.politechbot.com/p-02651.html), can anyone seriously say
that either the Democrats or Republicans can be trusted to preserve
our privacy and follow the demands of the Constitution?

-Declan


On Wed, Oct 24, 2001 at 04:05:04PM -0700, keyser-soze at hushmail.com wrote:
> Brock,
> 
> You the problem in the cross hairs.  But what's to be done when your elected representative and fellow citizens are either too scared or don't care to discuss a plain reading of the constitution?  These ugly measures may cause some of us to assume that maybe the American revolution isn't over and that the ghost of George III and his Tories now reside in D.C.  Thank God so many of us own firearms and are therefore citizens and not merely subjects.
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------
> http://www.msnbc.com/news/646793.asp
> 
> 
> First, brand all the children
> 
> 
> Cyber-liberties swept away by tidal wave of security concerns
> 
> 
> OPINION
> By Brock N. Meeks
> MSNBC
> 
> 
> WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 - Anthrax, Afghanistan, al-Qaida, Ashcroft and
> anti-terrorism legislation. We aren't even through the first letter of the
> geopolitical alphabet before jumping all the way to "S" as in "screwed" as
> in what's happening to civil liberties in the online world.