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Reason Express |
Welcome to REASON Express, the weekly e-newsletter from REASON magazine. REASON Express is written by Washington-based journalist Jeff A. Taylor and draws on the ideas and resources of the REASON editorial staff. For more information on REASON, visit our Web site at www.reason.com. Send your comments about REASON Express to Jeff A. Taylor (jtaylor@reason.com) and REASON Editor-in-Chief Nick Gillespie (gillespie@reason.com).
REASON Express
September 25, 2001
Vol. 4 No. 39
- - Welcome to the Terrordome - -
The new counter-terrorism
bills floating around Capitol Hill demonstrate that it is always easier to make new laws
than to change old habits. New law just requires stampeding most of 535 scared, forgetful
people in one direction while new habits mean drilling down to thousands and thousands of
behaviors learned over years and years.
Despite all the lip
service paid to not wiping out freedom in order to save it, the counter-terrorism
proposals would rewrite laws on wiretapping, eavesdropping, and immigration violations.
There are also moves afoot to give the National Security Agency's Echelon and the Federal
Bureau of Investigation's Carnivore spy systems much more work, the Fourth Amendment be
damned.
For example, any U.S.
attorney or state attorney general could order the installation of the FBI's Carnivore
Net-surveillance system in emergency situations without obtaining a court order first.
In addition, secret
searches and surveillance would be OK for one year, instead of the current limit of 45 to
90 days. That would allow prosecutors to look through the records of any business, credit
card company, or Internet provider with an "administrative subpoena" that the
judicial branch has no say in.
"We need these tools
to fight the terrorism threat which exists in the United States, and we must meet that
growing threat," Attorney General John Ashcroft said. The changes Ashcroft and others
seek would make federal snooping significantly more powerful inside the United States
thanks to the thick book of info the feds already have on citizens via the tax code.
These new powers, along
with the IRS's ability to monitor and track income (thanks to cooperation with banks that
will only increase), target the average U.S. citizen much more than they target terrorists
who use fake IDs and deal only in cash.
These changes do pick a
fight, but not with terrorism. More like with the Bill of Rights.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,47006,00.html
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- - Train in Vain - -
The most blatant example
of me-tooism undertaken to elbow space on the national stage these days is the claim by
Amtrak that it needs $3 billion for security and service improvements. This, the claim
goes, will make rail travel a better alternative to flying.
As background recall that
Congress has given the railroad until 2003 to end 30 years of government operating
subsidies, or go poof.
But with Reagan National
Airport closed, perhaps forever--a national tragedy all its own--Amtrak should need less
government cash, not more. With easy-to-reach Washington-to-New York shuttles grounded,
the train trip from Union Station to the heart of Manhattan should be very appealing. Add
to that increased security delays at airports that will lengthen air travel time, and the
choo-choos should be sitting pretty.
Convenience and
reliability are grounds Amtrak should be able to fight on. Going off on the security
improvement tangent isn't a good idea when your rolling stock consists of miles and miles
of unguarded track vulnerable to any lunatic with a crowbar.
http://www.charlotte.com/topnews/pub/amtrak.htm
***************************************************
- - Gee Whiz G-Men - -
The FBI remains stuck in
the days of Efrem Zimbalist Jr., when a logical mind, a No. 2 pencil, and a spotless
unmarked car were all the feds needed to tail commies and bust up tripped-out hoodlums.
Despite thousands of wiretaps and net-sniffing devices, the bureau's back office is little
removed from the days when the sensitivity of information was measured in how many steps
it took to get files to J. Edgar Hoover's desk.
The attacks show the
bureau has little to no ability to put existing information together. Its system still
relies on manila and cardboard, not silicon and circuit board.
Beginning in 1996 the FBI
knew that potential terrorists were attending U.S. flight schools. It was also clear soon
after an Osama bin Laden plot fell apart in the Philippines that one of his goals was to
crash an airliner into CIA headquarters in Langley. Yet there seems to be no evidence that
anyone put these two disparate facts together and acted on them.
Add to that the various
bits and pieces of info picked up by the CIA and the NSA and it is entirely possible that
a reasonable picture of what was planned for September 11 existed, albeit scattered into a
thousand parts.
This is the task the new
Homeland defense czar, Tom Ridge, has before him. If he is going to accomplish
anything--besides being a political chest-protector for a shrewd White House--it would be
to develop a threat database that existing police and surveillance powers could fill with
googol-bytes of info.
One of Ridge's first
calls should be to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison to convince him to build it. By appealing to
Ellison's personal sense of manifest destiny--which should take all of five seconds--Ridge
could have Oracle, which started out as a government contractor, building systems that
would reach from the lowliest agent in the field to the National Security Council.
There are, of course,
several big hurdles, not the least of which is that most FBI agents don't even have
laptops. But even bigger is the belief that info must be tightly held to have any
investigative value.
http://www.efremzimbalistjr.com/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14081-2001Sep23.html
REASON'S Jesse Walker
asks What Happens Next? at http://reason.com/hod/jw092101.html
All of REASON’s coverage of the terrorist attacks is available at http://www.reason.com/terror.html
*************************************************************
QUICK HITS
- - Quote of the Week - -
"What happened there is--they all have to rearrange their brains now--is the greatest work of art ever.
That characters can bring about in one act what we in music cannot dream of, that people practice madly for ten years, completely fanatically, for a concert and then die. That is the greatest work of art for the whole cosmos. I could not do that. Against that, we, composers, are nothing." German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, 73, describing the airplane assaults on New York. (Stockhausen has complained he was quoted out of context, and meant that the attack was the greatest work of art of Lucifer, a character in one of his works.)
- - Girls Gone Mild - -
A Florida State University student is suing the makers of the Girls Gone Wild video series, saying they videotaped her without her permission while she was topless on New Orleans' Bourbon Street during last year's Mardi Gras celebration. The woman, known as B.G. in court papers, seeks $15,000 and a court order banning further sales of any videos in which she appears.
http://web.tallahasseedemocrat.com/content/tallahassee/2001/09/18/local/0918.loc.videotape.htm
- - Revolving Door, Smoking Gun - -
A former state attorney
general goes on the payroll of Oracle and AOL Time Warner and starts writing letters for
his former AG buddies to sign. The top
cops of Vermont, Arkansas, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island
"wrote" to Steve Balmer to warn that the new Windows XP operating system
"may involve additional unlawful attempts by Microsoft to maintain its operating
system monopoly." The original author is Jeffrey Modisett, a former Indiana attorney
general who is currently a lawyer for Manatt Phelps & Phillips, which counts Oracle
and AOL Time Warner among its clients.
http://www.charleston.net/pub/archive/biz/stinc0922.htm
- - Naked Justice - -
It's official: Judges and their staffs may not download sexually explicit material, music, or video files on their office computers, U.S. court system administrators ruled. The acceptable use policy dropped language saying that court employees expressly "consent to monitoring" of their computer use, but in reality judges and clerks will be as visible to their sysadmin as anyone else on a computer.
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REASON NEWS
REASON Associate Editor Jesse Walker’s new book, Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America (NYU Press, 2001) is now available! Check it out at:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0814793819/reasonmagazineA/
Sign up for "Reason Foundation Alert" to receive regular updates about the activities of the Reason Foundation, including REASON magazine and the foundation's think tank division, the Reason Public Policy Institute. To subscribe, send an email to reasonalert-subscribe@topica.com.
The Scene! Check out REASON Editor-at-Large Virginia Postrel's frequently updated observations on current events and ideas. Visit The Scene at http://www.dynamist.com/scene.html.
For the latest on media appearances by REASON writers, visit http://www.reason.com/press.html.
If you like REASON Express, you’ll love the print edition of REASON magazine. For more information and to subscribe, please visit: http://www.reason.com/subscribe.html
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