NSA
 

So, should I go out and buy prepaid cellphones for my entire family so I can talk anonymously with them?

Big Brother, indeed.

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S'matter, you lefty? Got anything to hide?

Americans don't care. We don't care. The Administration will do what it thinks necessary to maximize security against the terrorist horde. If it's not "permitted" by "laws" protecting "civil liberties" of Americans, well, then so be it.

And Americans will applaud.

NSA
 

I watched an old episode of Miami Vice a couple of weeks ago. (they're being rerun on TVLand). The basic plot was that some IRA guy was trying to buy arms in Miami, and someone from Scotland Yard was pursuing him with the help of Crockett and Tubbs.

At some point, the Yard guy says "why don't we just go bring him in--we know he's bad" And Crockett responds "that's not the way we do things in America". And the Yard guy responds back "well, see how America feels when women and children are getting blown up on the streets and in shopping malls."

Anyway, I digress. But it was prescient in 1986.

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I still feel that's not the way we do things in America.

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I think I will inform on people I don't like so that the police can pick them up in secret and ship them off to, uh, whatever the American equivalent of Siberia is. We need some corrective labor camps here for people like that reporter who clearly are on the side of the terrorists. Anyway, our dear Druzhkov has said that despite the fact that "document[ing] who talks to whom* in personal and business calls, whether local or long distance, by tracking which numbers are called," is not "mining or trolling through the personal lives of innocent Americans."

*tens of millions of whos and whoms

ETA is the language I italicized a Rush quote?

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You see, here is the problem. If you talk to the unAmerican free-speech loving reporter in New York, the American Siberia is Nebraska.

If you talk to the Flag Waving Xenophobic Nebraskan, his view of the American Siberia is that wasteland called New York City.

So, you see, whereever they are, they're already there.

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I think the US equivalent of Siberia is the offshore prisons/torture centers we have.

ETA where's sunnybunny? I think she'd like a vacation in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Tajikistan or whatever.

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the only one we know of is in Guantanamo bay.

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F Nash Bridges.

God Save the Queen.

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From what I hear, providing a rest for Less's laptop while he posts at 3 am from Bratislava.

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I didn't think her ass was big enough.

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Typical TV bullshit. Everyone knows that in 1986 the guns were coming from Libya. And the "IRA guy" was probably just some poor innocent bastard on his way to Orlando on a package tour. Free the Miami One!

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Plus, they had that whole pastel thing going.

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Evidently you, like a majority of Americans, are happy to be her bitch.

NSA
 

Speaking of US v. UK investigative methodology, there was an interesting story on NPR this morning about DNA testing. In the UK, if there's a very close, but not exact match to DNA evidence, the investigators start looking at close family members of the person who matched. Apparently, this has led to some arrests and convictions.

In the US, the practice hasnt' become particularly widespread, because we're uncomfortable about putting people who've never done anything wrong under surveillance simply because their relative at some point submitted evidence for DNA testing.

Part of the issue is that a lot of databases are out there, especially in light of 9/11 and Katrina, and part of it is that investigators in crime labs in the US have been known to skew test toward particular results that match police theories on the case. I'm so proud to be a Houstonian...