• crybabylu said on Jan 15, 2008....

  Thanks so much for posting this.  I signed a petition just yesterday on this. Ordinarily, one wouldn't think there would be any truth to something like this, but the past 8 yrs. proved me wrong on that one, huh?

• silverwhisper said on Jan 15, 2008....

  well, i haven't seen the periodical in question so i want some kind of confirmation that this story isn't made up of whole cloth--but it's sad to me that it's pretty damned plausible, you know?
  
  ed

• kelly said on Jan 15, 2008....

  What the hell?  This bears extremely close watching.  You might want to keep an eye on http://www.eff.org/ as you can be sure that they'll have something to say about a story of this importance.

• silverwhisper said on Jan 16, 2008....

  kelly: i'm familiar w/ the EFF and the good work that they do, yet it never occurred to me to check with them! thanks for the reminder!
  
  ed

• kelly said on Jan 17, 2008....

  It's all part of the service.  :-)

• silverwhisper said on Jan 18, 2008....

  service, or terms of service? :D
  
  ed

• stopmediabias said on Jan 20, 2008....

  Silver I thought you were smarter than this.  They say several times that this is in draft stage.  Did you read this?  President Bush asked this guy to come up with a policy on cyber-terrorism and this guy in the midst of making a draft is suddenly leading an assault against civil liberties and privacy? 

   

• silverwhisper said on Jan 20, 2008....

  and i thought you were smarter than to think that the president wouldn't ask for such a draft w/out a pretty good reason.
  
  and it's bush who's mounting an assault against civil liberties. remember how bush insists he's perfectly entitled to suspend habeas corpus if he feels like labeling someone a terrorist? i thought that was pretty clear from, you know, the title of this blog entry?
  
  this clown's a flunky, just following his boss's orders.
  
  ed

• stopmediabias said on Jan 21, 2008....

  Silver the thing is President Bush hasn't even seen the final copy to determine if this is what he wants.  How does he assault civil liberties when he hasn't even seen the final draft?

  Like of said many times before, if President Bush believes there is a threat to the American people he has virtually unlimited power.  And please look at this logically, if President Bush wanted to diminish or erase any civil liberties would he have ok'd the immigration law him and Kennedy cooked up?  Would he have Congressional leaders ok everything he does if his intention was to take our rights away?

• silverwhisper said on Jan 21, 2008....

  smb, you're engaged in a very peculiar form of bush apologetics here.
  
  i have to be honest, i'm having some difficulty understanding how you can ask a question like "how does he assault civil liberties when he hasn't even seen the final draft?" in any measure of seriousness.
  
  if you were my employee and i said to you "put together a report for me about the ways in which we could conceal our losses from our shareholders", i don't need to see the report to know that what i'm asking you to do is wrong: that it's wrong is obvious in the instructions of the report itself. so it would be here.
  
  "if president bush believes there is a threat to the american people he has virtually unlimited power."
  
  you're speaking, i trust, of martial law here?
  
  "if president bush wanted to diminish or erase any civil liberties would he have ok'd the immigration law him and kennedy cooked up? would he have congressional leaders ok everything he does if his intention was to take our rights away?"
  
  you don't seem to understand something that i think is very, very simple here, smb. my concern is that every time the power of the president is expanded, it expands the power not only of the current president, but of every future president. if hillary clinton becomes president, would you want her having the kind of power (e.g., rescinding habeas corpus just b/c she thinks someone is a terrorist) that you're so willing to push into bush's hands? really?
  
  ed

• stopmediabias said on Jan 21, 2008....

  Silver: this is an exact quote from your source:  "McConnell is developing a Cyber-Security policy, still in draft stage, which will closely police internet activity."

  From this terribly put together article which said this guy is coming up with security policy, which they mention is in draft stage more than once, you come up with the headline: "bush assault against civil liberties and privacy continues" 

  "i don't need to see the report to know that what i'm asking you to do is wrong"

  So where do you come up with the fact that President Bush is asking this guy to do something wrong?  I just don't see it.

  And what is with this article?  Look at this:

  According to a 2007 conversation in the Oval Office, McConnell told President Bush, “If the 9/11 perpetrators had focused on a single US bank through cyber-attack and it had been successful, it would have an order of magnitude greater impact on the US economy.” Bush turned to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, asking him if it was true; Paulson said that it was. Bush then asked to McConnell to come up with a network security strategy."One proposal of McConnell’s Cyber-Security Policy, which is still in the draft stage, is to reduce the access points between government computers and the Internet from two thousand to fifty," Wright notes. "He claimed that cyber-theft account for as much as a hundred billion dollars in annual losses to the American economy. 'The real problem is the perpetrator who doesn’t care about stealing—he just wants to destroy.'"

  The infrastructure to tap into Americans' email and web search history may already be in place.

  Your a smart person and a very capable writer, does this guy just drift off or something?  How does he transition into the last completly baseless and ridiculous sentence.  Who's email and history are they going to search?  Do you realize the magnitude of just searching people with Arab names?  It's immpossible.

  All these little conspiracy things you guys have come up with other Presidents have done in the past and no-one cared.

  And if Hilliary becomes President she will have the same power.  If we can trust a President to dispatch an armored tank division that is going to wipeout and enemy stronghold and kill hundreds of people we can trust them to determine who is and isn't an enemy combatant.

   

• silverwhisper said on Jan 21, 2008....

  smb:
  
  1. the blog entry title is derived from the following exchange from the article.
  
  

  mcconnell has been an advocate for computer-network defense, which has previously not been the province of any intelligence agency. according to a 2007 conversation in the oval office, mcconnell told president bush, “if the 9/11 perpetrators had focused on a single US bank through cyber-attack and it had been successful, it would have an order of magnitude greater impact on the US economy.” bush turned to treasury secretary henry paulson, asking him if it was true; paulson said that it was. bush then asked to mcconnell to come up with a network security strategy (emphasis mine).

  
  IOW, mcconnell is drafting this document at the explicit instruction of his boss.
  
  2. the transition into that sentence you quoted is based upon the existence of what used to be called carnivore, which was actually replaced w/ something else 3-4 years ago, IIRC.
  
  3. i have to ask what your background is, smb. i ask b/c i strongly suspect you don't do much work with databases. i remember when that AT&T story to which the article refers broke. by definition, you have to tap all telecommunications in order to filter for whatever your parameters are. that's the way filtering for data works. this means that the loss of privacy will be complete, if at least refreshingly democratic in scope, affecting both the mighty and meek: bill gates is just as much a possible victim as, say, some random high school kid.
  
  btw, my thanks for your kind words. :>
  
  ed

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