Uh, I have some questions:

Do we have to use our full names when we post from now on?

Does it just involve posts or both posts and comments?

Should Les update his Comment Guidelines to cover himself?

Have I ever NOT annoyed someone with a post I made?

Is Specter a dick or what and does anybody have his email address?

Here’s a question, Eric: If all the freedom has been gobbled up by the Bush Regime, why is that you haven’t been jailed yet?

Could be a big problem in cases like Bitch, PhD’s conflict with a commenter that appears headed for a lawsuit.

Lyndon Johnson said (and he sould know) that one should consider how a law will be misused more carefully than its intended purpose.  This one will be misused all over the place.  Not to say that we don’t need some way of dealing with stalkers, cyber and otherwise.

(Interesting that when I tried to post this comment with a link to Pharyngula’s story about Bitch, PhD, the link kicked back as ‘blacklisted’)

Before everyone gets too bent out of shape here the folks over at Boing Boing have had several lawyer types responding to this same story saying it’s not what it seems.

Reader comment: A government lawyer intimately familiar with the subject who requests anonymity (but whose identity is legit, and known to Boing Boing) sez,

Your latest reader comment has it exactly right. The anonymous harassment provision ( Link ) is the old telephone-annoyance statute that has been on the books for decades. It was updated in the widely (and in many respects deservedly) ridiculed Communications Decency Act to include new technologies, and the cases make clear its applicability to Internet communications. See, e.g., ACLU v. Reno, 929 F. Supp. 824, 829 n.5 (E.D. Pa. 1996) (text here), aff’d, 521 U.S. 824 (1997). Unlike the indecency provisions of the CDA, this scope update was not invalidated in the courts and remains fully effective.

In other words, the latest amendment, which supposedly adds Internet communications devices to the scope of the law, is meaningless surplusage.

There’s additional lawyerly type comments more or less saying the same thing, but that pretty much sums it up right there.

I dunno, Les… some other law-thinkin’-types are concerned.  Dispatches from the Culture Wars, “Frightening Legislation”.  Anyone have any doubt this can be misused in lots of new ways?  You can’t monitor phone systems quite the way you can IP routers.

Doh!  I screwed up the link

DOF:

Les has it right.  Sometimes folks on the left are so prone to paranoia that they whip their heads around looking for the Republicans to screw them so violently they inadvertantly end up with their heads up their ass. 

What’s next, making fun of nicknames becomes an offense?

Women aren’t the only ones being stalked on the internet.  Children get stalked more, if you don’t believe me, ask Michael.

Phew, my mind is at ease. I’m sure everything will have the proper oversight, what was I thinking? Surely nobody has ever abused overly broad executive powers recently that I can think of.

I mean while my head was whipping around imagining all of the absurd possibilities that could NEVER happen, I thought for the briefest of seconds about how a President could use the Patriot Act to justify an end run around the FISA court. But then I was whipping my head around when it came to that bit of legislation passing too imagining things like torture, indefinite incarceration, loss of civil liberties, spying on citizens, kidnapping for rendition to name a few. Well that WAS crazy wasn’t it? I’m glad none of that happened. Thank god there are grounded Republicans like Consigliere to talk me back down.

Don’t worry a bit folks. I’m sure everything will be coming up roses if we just keep our eyes and mouths shut.

Thanks for straightening me out, Eric.  I, too, was worried about the possible abuse of power.  Good thing we’ve got God in the White House.

Sometimes folks on the left are so prone to paranoia that they whip their heads around looking for the Republicans to screw them

It’s called ‘learned behavior’ Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

Watching Faux News the other day about DeLay’s stepping down as majority leader, I saw him and several Republicans say ‘it was best for the party’ and ‘doing what was good for the party’ over and over.  Conspicuously absent was what was good for the country.  But they did refer to several Democrats as their ‘enemies’.

...I saw him and several Republicans say ‘it was best for the party’ and ‘doing what was good for the party’ over and over.  Conspicuously absent was what was good for the country.  But they did refer to several Democrats as their ‘enemies’.

Wow - excellent notice, DoF.  I think that pretty much says it all about the nature of politics these days.  From either side of the aisle, though the republicans do seem to be the worst offenders.

glad I’m Canadian, and just happen to keep a livejournal and have posted on Frappr and - oh wait, everyone already knows how to find me . Don’t count on me stopping balls-to-the-wall comments even if that law migrated north as the snow clears.

Sometimes folks on the left are so prone to paranoia that they whip their heads around looking for the Republicans to screw them so violently they inadvertantly end up with their heads up their ass. 

Whereas people on the right are never prone to paranoia or irrational fear-mongering at all.

It is not only my analysis that says you were being silly Eric.  Try this one which saves me the time:

Seems pretty broad, doesn’t it? Well, there’s a hook. It turns out that the statute can only be used when prohibiting the speech would not violate the First Amendment. If speech is protected by the First Amendment, the statute is unconstitutional as applied and the indictment must be dismissed. An example of this is United States v. Popa, 187 F.3d 672 (D.C. Cir. 1999). In Popa, the defendant called the U.S. Attorney for D.C on the telephone several times, and each time would hurl insults at the U.S. Attorney without identifying himself. He was charged under 47 U.S.C. 223(a)(1)(C), and raised a First Amendment defense. Writing for a unanimous panel, Judge Ginsburg reversed the conviction: punishing the speech violated the Supreme Court’s First Amendment test in United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367 (1968), he reasoned, such that the statute was unconstitutional as applied to those facts.

Under cases like Popa, 47 U.S.C. 223(a)(1)(C) is broad on its face but narrow in practice. That is, the text looks really broad, but prosecutors know that they can’t bring a prosecution unless doing so would comply with the Supreme Court’s First Amendment cases.

That brings us to the new law. The new law simply expands the old law so that it applies to the Internet as well as the telephone network. It does this by taking the old definition of “telecommunications device” from 47 U.S.C. 223(h), which used to be telephone-specific, and expanding it in this context to include “any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet.”

Now I suppose you can criticize Congress for being lazy. They haven’t rewritten the old 1934 statute in light of the modern First Amendment, and that has resulted in a criminal statute that looks much broader than it actually is. The new law expands the preexisting law by amending the definition of “telecommunications device,” which maintains the same gap between the law on the books and the law in practice. The formulation is a bit awkward. But the key point for our purposes is that the law is not the “ridiculous” provision Declan imagines. It looks funny if you don’t know the relevant caselaw, but in practice it simply takes the telephone harassment statute we’ve had for decades and applies it to the Internet.

Taken from Orrin Kerr’s post.  His bona fides are known and you can check them out yourself if you like. 

I also think that you have misstated FISA violations.  To my knowledge the NYT has not reported any within its story, nor is there enough information for any objective person to conclusively state so.  There is much speculation about the NSA program, but frankly, I don’t know enough about the actual details of the program to even be able to do the analysis.  Nor do those with much keener legal minds than mine.  Only those who want to flame are claiming FISA violations.

Since I post as ‘The Super’ at my blog and use my real name in comments, can I be accused of annoying someone when I post something critical on my blog?

Well, free speech notwithstanding, the way I view this administration, I can be called a terrorist by George Bush, wiretapped, detained without trial, tortured or extraordinarily renditioned, deported to countries where ancestors came from, and audited by the IRS, who can attach my wages and grab property from me. I can also have my kids forced into the military - even without a draft - to fight illegal wars anywhere in the world. And if anyone suspects any oil in my body could be used as energy, they can drill my most private areas in pursuit of it, killing me if they must.

As a result, the specifics of laws do not bother me at all, because Bush has the authority to break all laws and Christian Commandments simply because he said so, and no one has blocked him from doing so.

Civil protections? Rights? Hah! Don’t make me laugh. In the Divided States of America (DSA), since the bloodless coup of 2000 eliminated the USA, there are no protections from state-sponsored attacks on me.

Standing in front of a Bush tank on Tianemen Square means we’re likely to become pancakes. Whether they roll over me legally or illegally is thus irrelevant. The only way to proceed is with the conviction that enough of us have to stand up in the way to clog the tank treads with our protoplasm and halt the advance of the tyrants inside.

Well Consigliere, if it is such an absurd law then I expect that it will be removed from the books right? I mean if it is unenforceable then surely we don’t need it on the books. Otherwise it’s like leaving a loaded gun around for the first monkey who decides to grab it.

Why pass a law nobody is ever going to use?

I didn’t mean to diminish the point you made. Of course, it’s important to notice such laws and fight them.

I just meant to say that laws won’t stop the lawless. And bad laws do give tools to the lawless that they’ll likely misuse.

Well Consigliere, if it is such an absurd law then I expect that it will be removed from the books right? I mean if it is unenforceable then surely we don’t need it on the books. Otherwise it’s like leaving a loaded gun around for the first monkey who decides to grab it.

Why pass a law nobody is ever going to use?

Congress does lots of silly things.  So do city councils, county commissioners, school boards, and administrative agencies.  Any arm of the government that can write legislation or has the power to write regulations to enact the legislation will do the inane. 

My point is mainly that we should ridicule them for not writing good laws that are consitutional en toto.  They deserve such cajoling.  Stupidity does not equal a black heart though.

On the by and by, I noticed that you edited the initial post to retract the FISA statements in the comments section.  Had you let it stand, it would allow the readers to more fully understand my comments.  By retracting them in the initial post, you allow for quite a bit of ambiguity to exist in the reader’s minds as to what the hell I am talking about.  Nonetheless, I don’t abscribe that to you as your intent.  I view it as you wanting your post to not contain any misstatements. So I say simply, thank you.

Since I lack the ability to edit my posts the following change should be made above:

On the by and by, I noticed that you edited the initial post to retract the FISA statements in the comments section.

Should read as:

On the by and by, I noticed that you edited the initial post to retract the FISA statements.

Congress certainly does do a lot of silly things, but it does not automatically follow that we should not occasionally pay attention when it enacts questionable legislation, even when said legislation is unenforceable. If nothing else, it may simply be another symptom of Bush’s displaying what he considers to be his balls (i.e. calls for increased executive authority); I, for one, find this continuing behavior from our Commander and Chief to be at least frustrating and irritating, if not an outright call for alarm.

Sadie, I agree with the premise of your post-Pay attention.  However, that is not what Eric said.  Eric started screaming “WOLF!!! WOLF!!!” As I pointed out, and am in damn good company, screaming wolf doesn’t make sense when one knows the backdrop for how this was enacted and the existing case law.  Eric knew neither. 

What he did was something that gets my ire up when either conservatives or liberals do it. He took something he read on the internet and ran with it spinning wildly about how this makes his point.  There was no analysis of the actual law.  There was absolutely nothing of substance there.  Nothing. Just Eric spinning, and spinning, and spinning.  Not only that, but I doubt Eric could do the legal analysis for it if we asked him to. So, he is not only spinning in circles, he is spinning in an area that he knows very little about.

When someone is being silly, as Eric was, I thought that the whole purpose of this blog was to call them on it and ask: What the fuck is wrong with you people?  So I did.

If nothing else, it may simply be another symptom of Bush’s displaying what he considers to be his balls (i.e. calls for increased executive authority); I, for one, find this continuing behavior from our Commander and Chief to be at least frustrating and irritating, if not an outright call for alarm.

I would take issue with Congress myself.  I would do this primarily because under our Constitution it is vested with, oh say such things as writing this piece of legislation.

Consi, your comments about Wolf-crying and such are well-taken.  I do take issue with one thing you said, though:

Stupidity does not equal a black heart though.

Any sufficiently advance stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.  At the very least, stupidity opens opportunities for those who do have bad intentions.

On the by and by, I noticed that you edited the initial post to retract the FISA statements. - Consigliere

I am confused because I did no such thing. I only EVER edit my posts for spelling or grammar, believe me when I say that there is one post attributed to me on this site that I wanted to remove because I was repeating an urban legend (Les caught it to my chagrin). I left it alone to remind myself to check my sources, and not to get too full of myself. I am not seeing the edit but I assure you that I do not and will not edit a post to change the meaning of it.

Not only that, but I doubt Eric could do the legal analysis for it if we asked him to. - Consigliere

Well you would win that bet, I’m no lawyer. But you don’t have to be a meteoroligist to know that rain is wet either. For you to say that only a lawyer can speak to or be concerned about the direction of the law seems to me to be like saying that only snowmen can have an opinion regarding the right consistency for packing snow used in their construction. While you almost certainly have a deeper understanding of the law than I do the one thing you have yet to assuage is my suspicion that a law written will become a law used. It is laziness to just wave a dismissive hand and say that there are LOTS of bad laws on the books like that is some kind of talisman against abuse. I refer you to my monkey/loaded gun analogy in an earlier post.

If an infinite number of litigators scrutinize an infinite number of laws looking for a valid reason to sue someone, ultimately even a bad law will be used.

I am confused because I did no such thing.

Eric, I owe you an apology for making the statement about the edit. I thought I read the FISA allegation in the initial post, and when I reread your initial post today it was not there.  I thought you edited your initial post.  The fact is, it was your second post when you made the FISA allegation. 

I was wrong to not have double checked your other posts before making such a statement. My deepest apologies for the misstatement.