Mozilla Refuses to Drop Domain Seizure Circumvention App

[Eri]

If the domains are not in the US, Homeland Security has no jurisdiction over them.

You can say that all you want, but that's not going to stop them if they want something down.

YEAH MAN BECAUSE LIKE AMERICA RULES THE WORLD DUDE THEY CAN DO WHATEVER THEY WANT BECAUSE.... AMERICA!

OT:Even if the remove the addon another will get made and even if there isn't there will be plenty of ways of finding the new domains.

I wasn't even siding with them, just stating. And yeah, America can pretty much do whatever it wants, who's going to stop them? No one. Obviously they wouldn't go crazy but if they did, you couldn't do much.

Yeah cause USA is going to start invading other countries just cause we aint their *****. And fun fact do you know what will happen with USA if china & rest of the world would stop buying your stuff?

I guess the same thing that'd happen to the country that stopped trading with us. Their economy would go to shit as well.

 

[TechNoFear]

Well they have Jurisdiction over any Data centers that are in the country, but censorship of this Type is akin to the one used in China, Australia,

The data centers were NOT all in the US.

As an Australian I was wondering exactly what 'censorship' Australia had that was similar to China or the US?

Australia currently does NOT have any internet censorship.

Australia does NOT just allow sites to be taken down without due process or because some big corp complains.

Australia did NOT announce random, illegal web site seizures at Disneys offices.

Australia did NOT censor sporting sites just before the Super Bowl.

Australia did NOT censor 84,000 web sites by mistake.

Try doing some actual research before you post misinformation.

 

[Bon_Clay]

Wow this thread sure is going off on a tangent, but its a pretty good discussion that actually involves thinking and not nonsense about ponies at least.

I don't like the Patriot Act, and I believe that any possible benefits or safety it can/does provide are outweighed by the negative aspects of it. I'd rather worry about terrorist attacks (which it doesn't properly prevent anyway, the whole problem with disorganized random attacks from small groups is the normal preventive measures don't work against it) than a police state and fascist politicians in my own backyard. Terrorists may try and attack you sometimes, but most of their power comes from your fear (aka the whole TERROR part) of these attacks. If you don't give in to that, you shouldn't be giving government huge amounts of power and secrecy. Because an oppressive government won't mess with you on sporadic occasions, it controls your life on a daily basis.

You can't say its un-American though, as you're just making up your own idea of what an American is. All that classifies you as American or not is having legal citizenship there. You can call them ignorant or paranoid or things like that, but appealing to patriotic feelings is the same nonsense that got it passed (look at its silly name, they didn't even try to hide it).

Some people like the other guy in this thread honestly believe its a good idea and will help the country, if that is what he thinks how is that anti-America in any way? Even if you disagree, a world where people cannot openly express their opinions (he's putting thought into what he writes, not saying FUCK YOU THE GOVERNMENT IS ALWAYS RIGHT YOU ARE TERRORIST) will lead to us getting more things wrong and screwing things up. If you can put your thoughts into a proper argument, then you should as it helps people get all the possible facts and opinions that are out there.

To the actual OP: sounds like a good call, big companies getting government bodies to do their dirty work is nonsense. They have much better things to do, stealing music and movies is not a security issue for your home or anyone else. Even if this was their jurisdiction or problem to be looking into, its a bloody waste of time and wouldn't do a damn thing.

If I want to pirate some stuff I can do so effortless no matter how many sites they take down. There will always be a way to find stuff, and they can't even manage to take down the most famous ones like a certain bay for pirates.

 

[Baresark]

Everyone one of those fascists at Homeland Security can die in a fire. I'm glad Mozilla is standing up to them. I support them 100%.

 

[MercurySteam]

You can't control the Net HLS, just bugger off.

 

[gunner1905]

this thread is now just tl;dr
anyway for your information it's not the whole DHS that's working on this
it's actually just the ICE part, DHS is filled with random governmental institution nowadays (even coast guards are in the DHS)
doesn't mean it's right what ICE is doing (using taxpayers money for the MAFIAA's interest)

and the add-on, while controversial, is just a site linker it isn't very sophisticated

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

America doesn't have jurisdiction on the internet, I don't really see how they could legally do this.

They believe they're the world police.

OT: Fuck America, go Mozilla. Someone has to stand up against the US trying to rule the world.

 

[Speakercone]

America doesn't have jurisdiction on the internet, I don't really see how they could legally do this.

They do have it on the sites whose domain is in the US.

But not on, say, TV Shack. The offices are in Sweden and the servers are in Australia. Where is their jurisdiction there?

Not trying to be inflammatory, but this sort of thing seriously irritates me.

I'm no lawyer, but that can't be legal.

snip

I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure the government of Sweden is only allowed to pull down website if it has child porn or is a mather of national security otherwise it has to go to court.

As I said I might be wrong.

As I understand the issue here, a domain exists in Sweden and the US shuts it down. Sweden might take issue with that, but their laws do not apply to the US. The way to solve that problem becomes diplomacy, and that takes time and is often ineffectual in cases like these. Unless the problem is solved domestically by the US, there's not a whole lot anyone else can do about it. As such, a person outside the US circumventing such measures is acting lawfully as the US does not have jurisdiction over the servers/domains it wishes to censor.

I'm not a lawyer, I just like this stuff. Also degree in Political Science.

 

[Omnific One]

This is troll, yes? Cause, if not - must be Kim Jon Ill, Mao, or Stalin in disguise. No AMERICAN - who support the US Constitution would be a fan of the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. A.C.T 2 - unless they're traitors.

Ok, you owe me my sanity, as now I have to defend this guy, even though I dislike hate what he said. You just used the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. There are plenty of Americans who do support the PATRIOT act, which does not make them traitors. It certainly makes me and many others think much less of them, but it doesn't make them traitors.

I have no idea what "No True Scotsman" is...
.
What else would you call any American citizen that thinks its fine and dandy to use the US Constitution, Bill of Rights, Judicial Precedence, The System of Checks & Balances, and 'Common Sense' (get it?) - as toilet paper or a blunt roll...
.
.
....Which is basically what the PATRIOT Act does...
.
.
Unless, you could argue, it just makes them inbreed, ignorant & ill-informed, "Special E.D." types.
Which, I could go ahead and agree with.
.
.
.
However, to me, anyone who claims to be an American but supports polices that go against everything that has made/makes this nation so amazing in the past/present/future...
Well, they're a traitor - maybe not to the American Government - but to the people and spirit that of the 'American Way' we all aspire to.
.
.
.
TL/DR?
Americans should be better than this, it's insulting.

Agreed. Those who support the Patriot Act are traitors to the basis of the US as the Constitution is "the law of the land." Nothing can legally supersede it, no matter how powerful the law may be. Only a legally passed amendment could supersede part of the Constitution, which the Patriot Act certainly is not.

 

[Therumancer]

[
You may have a point in saying that we can't take the time to be as careful as we should be during war-time (which, for this one, I disagree with; It's not nearly as urgent as, say WWII), but some of the people in Gitmo and some of the people put under surveillance had as much business being imprisoned or scrutinized as the Japanese did being relocated. Those were colossal failures on the part of the people managing those situations and should never have happened, and there was a lot more to it than just the haste of wartime. That those imprisoned weren't given real trials for a few years was also excessive, and the reasons given for it were insufficient. If you imprison someone without trial, you better be damn sure that they're guilty. If you merely suspect them, then that's not enough. George Bush said of men later found innocent that they were being held without access to lawyers or other representation, and without trial, while being tortured, because they were "the worst of the worst". War or no war, we've got to do better than this.

The thing your missing is that the whole point of changing the laws is to use differant standards. The standard of "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" and the "right to a fair trial" are not applying. It's not a matter of justifying who gets locked up against who doesn't.

For the record however we didn't just lock up the Japanese, we did it to the germans and such as well, it's just a popular fiction that we singled out the Japanese:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north71.html

http://www.foitimes.com/gasummary.htm

Seriously, look it up. We DID go after the Italians too. People whine about it because they don't like the situation in general, but intentional ignorance in claiming that it was selectively aimed at the Japanese is also a popular political tool.

It generally comes down to war sucking, and people being afraid that one day the group they belong to might be on the receiving end.

I basically feel that things like this are a nessicary evil, with a lot more being at stake than their conveinence. It sucks, but it's one of the reasons why you try and avoid going to war to begin with, and also probably why the US doesn't go to war when it probably should.

It's also why we constantly experiment with various alternatives to full martial law. The imprisonment of people under wartime standards being only one of the things people hate about it. Things like "The Patriot Act" and how we ran Veitnam are examples of the goverment trying to find middle grounds in using only SOME of the war powers, but not others.

 

[Therumancer]

[

The thing is, when, in the last, oh, 100 years, has the US not been in one war or another?
Mostly wars they made up or had nothing to do with in the first place(Korea, Vietnam, Gulf, War on Drugs(and they've pulled some funny crap with that one), etc.)
There's always an excuse...

Yes and no, the only war we actually fought as a war was "World War II", we haven't instituted Martial law fully since. During Veitnam and Korea we pretty much shot ourselves in the foot by not instituting information controls, hence all the outcries about our human rights violations in slaughtering villagers and such. During World War II, especially towards the end, we literally bombed the living crap out of civilians, and during the final hours the fight was building to building against groups like the Volkssturm and Hitler Youth. We committed TONS of atrocities and things that would be considered war crimes, it's just that the media was prevented from covering it until decades after the war (if you look you'll find tons of books with pictures of American and allied war crimes, with our guys standing over corpse piles just as gut wrenching of the ones we show of Germans). Groups like "The Hitler Youth" fought against us in the final days, we know they were out there, but by the official records they just disappeared... because nobody wants to say "we grabbed children, put them against a wall, and shot them" or the equivilent.


People like to argue the above point, but the bottom line is war sucks, there is no such thing as an antiseptic war. "War Criminals" are totally dependant on who happens to win, or who is stupid enough to take accusations seriously.

A good example of mentality in wartime would be this British hero from World War II:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomber_Harris

To put it bluntly this is a guy who fought in a properly managed war, and had a lot to do with demoralizing the germans. He pretty much bombed the living crap out of civilian areas (to be fair, above and beyond him, we dropped more bombs on Germany than the Germans did during The Blitz by many reports). He even killed our own people because a lot of POWS were being forced to work in farms and on factories.

SIR Bomber Harris was knighted, and loaded with commondations, he's a bloody hero to our side. Of course the other side and liberals replace "Bomber" with "Butcher". Had The Axis won World War II he wouldn't be a hero, he'd be a war criminal, as what he did is just as bad as what most German and Japanese war criminals did. This is why information control exists, and what the reality of war is. The winners write the history books, and you keep the civilian media and criticism gagged for th duration and use propaganda to create the reality you need to win.

As far as our general involvement in other wars, Veitnam and Korea were cases where we got involved to defend democratic powers. 'Nam was the less justified of the two, largely because the guys we went in to defend had no real intention of ever becoming a progressive democratic power. It wasn't a war we could have won. What's more in both cases, by not invoking War Powers we pretty much gimped ourselves on The Battlefield, instead of destroying the enemy
we largely took a defensive posture and did very little but react. Even our antics with Agent Orange and Napalm were largely done in a defensive fashion rather than to wipe the enemy out entirely, we pretty much let their largest population centers be, and dealt with massive QQ when we did things like wipe out a village of "civilians"... where during WW II we would have said "Hey Harris, heres a new type of bomb, and thre is a major population center... gogogogo!"

It hasn't gone entirely unnoticed that the US has failed to win every war we've been in where we didn't invoke Martial Law. As a nation we've become too concerned by morality as opposed to winning, and that's going to be our downfall. We cannot pretend we live in an ideal world when we do not. Warfare in many respects comes down to approaching it with the proper state of mind, and being able to destroy the enemy. That's why demonizing your enemy through tight propaganda control is so important. You can't win if you let Hippies run around singing the praises of the enemy, or the media constantly whine about the war, or are going to hold back on a target due to concerns like "collateral damage" when in a real war there is no such thing, your out to break the civilian population and the culture as much as the enemy.

Codes of engagement have generally failed throughout history. They tend to last until the people holding them fight an enemy that doesn't embrace the same rules of engagement, and nobody is willing to adapt to becoming bastards of equal stature. "Chivalry" lasted roughly until the French decided to come rolling into England to take their victory since they couldn't be defeated by the rules on the field of battle, and the Englist pretty much just decided to go "Lol, your stupid, we're going to wipe our butts with the rules in order to win" and massacred the flower of French knighthood with longbows. "Bushido" is another example of moralizing combat, that code lasted until the Samurai Aristocricy was massacred by peasants who didn't follow the rules. Most early Japanese martial arts being largely summarized as "how to fight dirty against some moron who follows Bushido".

The US, and perhaps the western world, is well on it's way to joining the "moral dead guys club" rather than embracing reality. It's just thta instead of Chivalry or Bushido our version is things like "The Geneva Convention".

 

[Therumancer]

A moderate Patriot Act defender? appauled. Althou one thing....

What crisis? a couple of buildings got blown up? thats a crisis? you are very far, as a nation, from understanding what a war crisis is. what you got was a little tiny piece of taste of what a crisis really is. Crisis is having your countries identity nearly destroyed. Crisis is seeing everything you know threatened, really threatened, not some burka dude with a camera in a fucking cave across the world yelling i will kill you all. Since you seem to be a person with a very patriotic personality, you should be suggesting that your country be less intrusive, specially in the Middle East. I might sound very wrong with what im about to say, but you got in 9/11 was a taste of what that area of the world has been getting for a long time. They are poor, desperate, and angry. You make yourselves a target and then just let them hit you.

And are you honestly suggesting that invading Iraq was necessary for national safety?

How things always were and are doesnt make them right. Slavery was around for milennia, it always were, thats how things went. Oh, until we decided THAT IT WASNT RIGHT AT ALL. Or Are you suggesting it too was right? -_-

I hear where youre coming from, but im gonna have to call bullshit on it. sorry

Well, you'd be right if you didn't underplay or misunderstand the 9/11 attacks. See, people tend to think that the 9-11 attacks were the destruction of The World Trade Center. That's only part of it. The 9-11 attacks were a decapitation strike launched against the USA, where our entire goverment was targeted. People tend to forget that The Pentagon was also hit successfully, and survived due to dumb luck since the plane didn't hit correctly, and where it DID hit was an area that was under refurbishment. We also had other planes heading for DC at the time, with the presumbed targets being the Capital Building and/or White House. People like to talk about heroic passenger uprisings, but the reality seems to be that we shot them down with fighter jets before they could reach the target.

The actual damage from the more or less failed attack doesn't change the intent, and what would have happened had the planes hit all of the targets. Simply put there wouldn't be a USA right now. Hitting the WTC caused shockwaves all around the world as it was due to it being a nerve center for global finance and well... trade. If The Pentagon went down it would have done massive damage to not only the US military and command structure (we'd lose a lot of our upper echelon command, logistical coordination, and of course records) but all the other nations that effectively wind up operating under direction from The Pentagon. NATO, UN Peacekeepers, and all of those things would have felt a massive backlash. Had we seen The Capital and/or White House hit, we'd be looking at missing one or two entire sections of our goverment for all intents and purposes.

A lot of the "peace at any price" crowd like to talk down the 9-11 attacks and try and say it was just a couple of buildings... it wasn't, it was an attempt to destroy the USA. The intent is bloody obvious, and everyone knows what it was if they bother to think about it, which they don't.

If anything the US has responded with kid gloves, we didn't institute martial law, and despite the fact that we're dealing with what amounts to a cultural war, we've been insisting on treating the problem as very specific groups of fanatics, rather than acting more effectively and in our best interest by simply accepting that the fanatics are simply a symptom of the overall problem which is the regional culture throughout The Middle East.

Going after Afghanistan was a no-brainer, though we were stupid about it. That's where Bin Ladin was, but we decided to telegraph our moves by trying to deal with guys like Mullah Omar first, due to the hopes that The Taliban would remain our allies after we pretty much gave themn control of Afghanistan. It didn't pan out, and we invaded, but only once Bin Ladin knew we were coming and was able to run. We also made a mistake of being politically correct in the region, after we won, we didn't assert ourselves on their constitution, and as a result we wound up with Afghanistan declaring itself a "Muslim Nation" without even the seeds of them becoming progressive in their new constitution.

Iraq was another obvious target, because while not directly related, Saddam had been thumbing his nose at the US ever since he sold out to the pre-collapse Russians. We however again went in with kid gloves, did the whole "winning the peace" thing, wound up with another "Islamic Nation" costitution with no progressive seeds, and a massive bill to pay.

The concern over Iraq and WMD was well founded, and the funny thing is that while on one hand people like to go off on Bush for not finding any WMD or anything, at the same time we know he did, and nobody wants to flat out admit we did the right thing.

"What are you smoking Therumancer?" you might be thinking, well consider that WMD means more than just nukes, which is the only thing people want to accept. Iraq had a wealth of chemical weapons, and indeed you'll notice one of the victories we scored down there was getting "Chemical Ali" who was guilty of mass murder by deploying chemical weapons on Kurds. Notice nobody exactly protested his innocence as he went down, or denied that he had, or used them. It's just that we were dealing with a sort of unstated "chemical weapons don't count" disclaimer which is kind of silly. Everyone knew about this guy in paticular, they knew he had the weapons, and there was evidence he used them. The guy was also apparently convicted. That right there justifies why we went in, but few people want to give that kind of credit. People know about "Chemical Ali" but nobody wants to actually connect him to WMD. While it was kind of sat on (and is hard to find) there was also a bit for a while about how a lot of poisons were found in the rivers of Iraq because the surrendering Iraqi military units pretty much flushed their chemical weapons so they wouldn't be caught with them. It wasn't nukes, and it wasn't weaponized Anthrax, so people pretty much decided to just let it go.


One of the things with intelligence and counter-intelligence is that by it's very nature people don't tend to know what's been found. The US has been facing a crisis, but the nature of terrorism and counter-intelligence is such that it's impossible for the people to know what has been found, how, and why. See, if a terrorist cell was found that actually had a dirty bomb, and was stopped 2 second away from the counter reaching 0 (like in a movie) we'd never know that happened, it would be classified.

What's more, when it comes to things like gitmo, and the interrogation of suspects, part of the reason why there is special rules is because we can't disclose the information the goverment is operating on. If we have say a spy sitting in a terrorist organization on the other side of the world who tells us that this dude who came to the US is a terrorist and involved in a plot, we can't out the source of that information without losing the contact and whatever else they might provide. Simply by saying we have a mole, could very well get our agent killed, never mind trying to bring him down here to testify. Likewise, we don't nessicarly want a terrorist to be able to communicate with anyone, and give details on how they were nailed, or what we know, because that could provide information on our sources and who we have in the field. It's a good thing if a terrorist organization thinks we are just doing random sweeps and getting lucky.

To a civilian, what looks like maniacs randomly grabbing people, and making them disappear isn't going to be the case. The goverment doesn't have the resources or time to waste on messing with pointless people for fun. If it nails someone, there is going to be a reason, and there are going to be reasons why they can't justify it to civilian standards, hence the need for things like martial law, and special rules in a time of crisis like this. "The Patriot Act" being an attempt to compromise, by putting the police powers into effect, but not otherwise intruding on civilian rights. It failed because the central assumption that American civilians would be smart enough to "get it" proved false, and instead we wound up with a lot of people screaming about violations of civilian law and rights that wouldn't apply under martial law, which were given undue weight because martial law was never actually declared, creating a huge mess with people argueing back and forth about how far "The Patriot Act" should be allowed to go.

See, a lot of people who like to make noise simply don't "get" that the goverment isn't going to cover the bill for some guy to make a Dominos pizza driver disappear because it makes their balls feel big. All of these secret prisons, interrogations, and everything else cost money, the goverment by it's very nature is going to be counting the beans, and if someone is disappeared or sent to Gitmo, you can guarantee someone had to work hard to prove to the guy with his hands on the purse-strings that this was worth the expense.... or simply I can say I trust my goverment here because they are both greedy and cheap. It's just like police work, unlike on TV there are budgets in play, and nobody authorizes all those fancy DNA tests and stuff without some bloody good reasons. Chances are if some guy gets nailed as a terrorist and dragged off by Homeland Security there were probably at least a couple of guys who had to be convinced just to part with the money.

North Korea. WMDs. National Safety. Theres a real threat. Go take care of it. Also, poison? Tons of countries have that. Chem weapons? Tons of rebellious and terrorist groups have that. And they dont like america many of them. You went there for one reason. You got hit, and you wanted to give people satisfaction. Thing is, people who defend American incursions into what is, in the end, and you cannot deny it, a very very very very foreign and weak threat to America in comparison to the TON of other ones out there, ones wich you COULD take out MUCH more easily, tend to forget that what the government plans to do, including its profit, is many times different from the result. Just because the government is capable of planning a massive excuse for invading the middle east, doesnt mean its gonna succeed. The patriotism after 9/11 was probably at its highest ever since the fucking end of World War 2. You can basically ask people to join the army and do shit for you in times like those, wich is what happened when Pearl Harbor got it. IN FACT, SINCE YOU LIKE TO MAKE COMPARISONS TO WW2, the 9/11 situation is almost AN EXACT COPY of what happened with Pearl Harbor. America sees something it wants, but cant participate in it without support, attack on them happens, people start to support, America goes in. Im not saying that America had knowledge of something like 9/11 was gonna happen(god forbid i think that) but it definitly knew what to do after it. And, WTC is overhyped as an important center for economy. It WAS important for organizing trading,and yeah, there was an IMMEDIATE negative effect, but it was a short term effect, a symptom of big, but non vital parts of an economy crashing. but really, you didnt get any consequences in the economy for it. No, that came after, when the Middle East plans utterly failed, and your domestic market PLUMMETED LIKE A ************.

On Gitmo. See, you say that they have to spend money, but really, it doesnt cost them that much. I agree, they have to bring some convincing evidence, i mean, if its a terrorist, they bring him in. But it doesnt partake much work.
And i really dont care about the actions that need to be taken, because in the end, you really were in no threat from Iraq. Its not that i think it was immoral, i just find it unnecessarily immoral. Afghanistan? Sure, it was a stupid idea, but i grant that you wanna go and hit Al Qaeda. i get that. You sent a whole fucking military force to battle guerrillas, wich is the stupidest tactical maneuver thing to do, but at least i get the intention was jutsified. Iraq? Not really. The UN told you not to, everyone told you not to, that it wasnt worth it, YOUR OWN PEOPLE WERE TELLING YOU, that what you found there wasnt worth it, and it really wasnt, but you went in anyway.

FINAL THING, if finding WMDs are such a secret, why was the entire intel investigation undertaken by the US, SHOWN DAILY UPDATES ON NATIONAL TV, EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD. Now, youre gonna say, oh, its counter intel! but really, you didnt have real intel to begin with to provide counter intel....unless of course, you were trying to feed fake intel....ok i mindfucked myself with that last one . :/

PS: im viewing this from a logical point of view. iam not partaking morals into this, only if it was logical to ignore morals. and it wasnt. it was a really stupid plan. or evil. pick your devil.

No, your argueing from a moralistic point of view where your major point is "why pick on these guys!?!?!?!?!" no matter who the US chose to go after, you could always point to someone else and say "why not them?".

The reason why we went after The Middle East and not other groups is very simple, 9/11. The culture of the region was responsible for a decapitation strike aimed at the US. They only got a couple of buildings, but the attack was aimed at taking down our entire goverment. The fact that they missed 3 out of 4 attacks doesn't change the intent. The other nations that are up against the US have by and large done very little except talk shit. Part of our intent here was that we hoped that by making an example out of the guys we were targeting the other enemies we have would chill out. Of course we de-railed ourselves with morality, turned this into a decade-long police action, and can't even see to our own national security without people QQing over morality.

When it comes to North Korea, they keep launching missles at Hawaii to try and prove that they have the missle technology to hit us, and your preaching to the Choir about how we should be going after them. The issue there has largely come down to China, and moral concerns about the collateral damage to South Korea, mostly the former. I myself tend to think we should have long ago thrown a pre-emptive strike out against China, but nobody has wanted to start that war because if you think playing around in this little sandbox is a mess and raises moral questions, fighting China is going to be worse.

As far as arms inspectors go, part of the entire point is that they are irrelevent. We already KNEW he had WMD, Chemical Ali was sent up the creek for using them. There is no question. The WMD inspectors running around giving their updates are lionized by the anti-war crowd, but really the point is that they were nothing but a show, and are used by the anti-war crowd. People got into the mindset that if we don't find nukes it didn't count. Chemical Ali alone provided all the justification we ever needed on that front, and it's nothing that can be denied. The basic arguements come down to "OMG, you should have found MORE WMD, and more examples of Iraq using them", and if more had been found, the people who aren't happy now wouldn't be happy with that either.

The case your making is rational only in of the rational position that war sucks, and like most sane people you don't want to be involved in one, and take the hits on your civil liberties that one requires. As far as the specifics go, you don't have many points. Chances are no matter who we were fighting you'd be against it since you just don't like wars or having your civil libertis messed with (and that simply means your perfectly sane, even if you take it to an unreasonable degree in protesting wars when they are nessicary and actually occur).

Trust me, if we invaded North Korea instead people would be screaming "why invade North Korea, it's the Muslims that actually tried to destroy the US!".

Another big issue is of course wanting to downplay the level of the threat right now. A big issue with The Middle East is how the anti-war crowd wants to portray the problem as being with a tinty fringe of people, rather than a problem with the overwhelming majority of the culture and the actual fighters being something it produces constantly even if they are never a majority at any given time. This is done with the overall objective of preserving human life, and the attitude that no matter how well justified, we should not put the amount of blood on our hands that is needed to win. Of course ironically trying to embrace that mentality and fight an antiseptic war, has meant that we haven't made much progress because as long as the culture stays as it is, more and more groups are just going to appear to replace the ones we defeat, and another terrorist is going to show up to replace every one we take out. We're very much fighting a mentality and a way of life, rather than a specific nation, cause, or fringe group and it's leaders... that gets into another entire discussion however.


That said this will be my last message on the subject. We're waaaay off the topic of Internet security, Homeland Security, and even The Patriot Act (this directed not just at you, but the other people I am debating with as well).

 

[snfonseka]

"The developer of the add-on has stated that he created it because he believes that many of the seizures were illegally done"...huh? what does he mean by "illegally done"?

 

[ThisIsSnake]

Pfft the US are such amateurs at this kind of thing.

"the number of cameras in the U.K. is 1.85 million. The number is based on extrapolating from a comprehensive survey of public and private cameras within the Cheshire Constabulary jurisdiction.This works out as an average of one camera for every 32 people in the U.K., although the density of cameras varies from place to place to such a degree as to make this figure almost meaningless. The Cheshire report also claims that the average person on a typical day would be seen by 70 CCTV cameras, although many of these sightings would be brief glimpses from cameras in shops."

 

[Slick Samurai]

Hehe, it seems like everyone really is fighting for this add-on mainly used for pirating. The "freedom of speech" excuse is a good one, but I can see through it just fine. Lets be honest here, lets quit the denying, there really is only two reasons why you don't want this addon taken down.

1. You're a pirate

2. You a rebellious person who likes to root against the established government.

Not you're fault either way, it's a societal thing.

 

[MrTub]

Hehe, it seems like everyone really is fighting for this add-on mainly used for pirating. The "freedom of speech" excuse is a good one, but I can see through it just fine. Lets be honest here, lets quit the denying, there really is only two reasons why you don't want this addon taken down.

1. You're a pirate

2. You a rebellious person who likes to root against the established government.

Not you're fault either way, it's a societal thing.

3. You are a person that see how corrupt the government is and its only a matter of time before the entire world looks like china. Except it will be owned by the big corporations.