US planning to recruit one in 24 Americans as citizen spies

[reds4ever]

i haven't looked at either Act closely, but just calling the Patriot Act, smells fishy to me, it implies if you don't support it, youre unpatriotic.

[drake]

Are people still living the lives they lead in almost identical fashion? Or did we wake up one morning and see our whole world had changed?

I'm talking about real, seeable differences, not just a slight (yes slight), change in mentality.

(My numbers were naturally exaggerrated, though you get the point. We're talking a miniscule change in the big picture)

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by reds4ever
i haven't looked at either Act closely, but just calling the Patriot Act, smells fishy to me, it implies if you don't support it, youre unpatriotic.

Would you rather they have just called it the Prevention of Terrorism Act as thier UK counterparts called thier version of almost the same legislation?

[Victor Galis]

Scared people panic.

-This is a panic response or a deliberate attempt to subvert the American republic.

More level headed times are ahead.

-As soon as we get rid of Bush and his cronies, yes.

I only come to this programs defense because everyone is only seeing the potential negatives. I'd rather try and see the positives.

-With negatives such as these, the positives can not possibly justify it.

If everyone looked at the citizencorps site a little closer, they would see that theres much more to it than "spying on people". Theres programs that are being set up to help educate normal citizens as to what they should do in cases of emergencies, to help local authorities out and help provide assistance to people in medical need.

Those ideas must surely be idiocy as well since Bush supports them too.

Those ideas must surely be idiocy as well since Bush supports them too.

-Exactly.

[reds4ever]

'Slight', you wouldn't say that if you worked in the aircraft industry! i have 5 friends how used to work maintaining aircraft in the US. 2 of them now build cars, one builds trailers and 2 scrape around europe looking for aircraft work, here and there.

[reds4ever]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Would you rather they have just called it the Prevention of Terrorism Act as thier UK counterparts called thier version of almost the same legislation?

they can call it what they want, but i beleive it was called the Patriot Act to help smooth its way through, don't you?

[DinoDoc]

They could have called it the Snoggo Act and it still would have passed just as quickly given the politcal pressure to be seen as "doing something."

[drake]

So Bush is the root to all of Americas problems, is what you're saying basically Victor?

You can play what ifs all day and night, though I don't believe any other president would have handled this situation that much differently than Bush. Would have Clinton? Bush Sr? Reagan? Carter? Ford? JFK? Washington? Jefferson? Who?

You act as though theres such thing as a "perfect" president who can please everyone and get a 100% approval rating. It's not going to happen. Ever.

Oh, but president bashing is so fun and easy isn't it? You don't have to actually think about why things are certain ways, you just simple blame Bush! Sounds good to me.

[reds4ever]

Dino,maybe, maybe not, we'll just have to disagree on that.

IMO the fact remains that it was called the Patriot Act, to squash any dissent as unpatriotic

[Q Classic]

see, i think this is all very funny. we have people on one side who are terrified that america's time as the greatest country in the world will end because of this (wrong-- it'll end for some other stupid/silly reason in the future), and those who seem to have no problem with this, because they have faith that such things won't be abused, and that security is important (too much faith in their fellow man, if you ask me).

let's step back from this now, just for a moment. i want to know some things about this TIPS program; and i want us to lay out a groundwork for debate.

1. what will we define as "suspcious behaviour"? some of us are arguing that this isn't an infringement on rights because all the program is planning to do is have people keep their eyes and ears open for "suspicious behaviour".
what qualifies as suspicious behavior? is it being a bad american and having a japanese car in your garage? is it a letter from your father who lives and works in saudi arabia? maybe receiving a package/mail-order bride from russia? or, loading up a lot of boxes into your truck that at a university lab? or maybe just not flying the flag on four july?
what's "suspicious behaviour"? if we know what exactly it is that's suspcious, and what the government is sees as "suspicious", we'd be more able form a debate around that, and decide whether or not the government is as evil as it might seem.

2. what manner will this TIPS system be implemented? according to ashcroft (pity he went to uchicago... give all the rest of us good uchicago grads a bad name~), TIPS will not grant its informants access to private homes and what not. but if citizens are to be involved in scoping out "suspicious behaviour", how will they go about doing so? without entering homes, it'd probably be rather difficult to know what the private individual is doing-- no terrorist, no matter how brazen his plan, is going to make his preparations on his front lawn. is it going to involve phone taps? video surveillance? mail filtering? how is TIPS planning on circumventing court decisions on such matters? and how are they going to find trustworthy people to actually put this stuff into this vast database they want to set up? there are already problems with things like "married credit reports", in which two people with similar names/social security numbers have their credit ruined because the two different people have the same credit file-- would this be a potential issue in this new electronic database (is there any other kind these days?)?

see, honestly, this debate right now sounds like two different groups of people arguing over something they both don't know much about...

let's try to hammer out those things before we go onto whether TIPS is evil or not.

[drake]

Reds, people get laid off for all sorts of reasons. Downsizing has been in effect a long time before anything like this happened. It's just a different industry thats being effected.

These guys are still employed. They're obviously not that bad off.

[reds4ever]

Drake, they are contract workers, they were laid off 9/13, direct cause and effect.

These are skilled guys they don't want to work in car factories etc but there are still no aircfaft jobs nearly a year later, and as for being not that badly off, do you know what a contract aircraft fitter can earn in a year???

[reds4ever]

i just called one, he recons, $65-75 grand a year for a 50 hour week, and because there all registered as limited companies they get all sorts a tax breaks

[DinoDoc]

reds4ever: Are your friends unable to find work from a defense contractor? I would have thought that they at least would be hiring people to work on and build aircraft.

[drake]

Well, cubed, though you're certainly right about both sides not knowing exactly what they're talking about, I'd offer that suspicious most likely means "different".

The people they are recruiting have jobs that follow the same routine day to day. After awhile, these people are able to pick up on when things are out of place or different, much better than the normal person.

Though as I concede, I'm not actually sure. None of us are.

Just another pointless poly discussion