Santorum says....

[Griff]

Originally Posted by richlevy

So far the vast majority of people in 'free speech' zones and ejected from events have been those confronting conservatives.

I think that is a function of which outfit is running the government and which outfit is pissed off. We should remember that Clinton started this nonsense.

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by Griff

We should remember that Clinton started this nonsense.

Bruce seems to have a lot of trouble remembering Clintonian nonsense. "What's a Clipper Chip?" :-)

[xoxoxoBruce]

"Clintonian nonsense" doesn't compare to Bush oppression.

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

"Clintonian nonsense" doesn't compare to Bush oppression.

Well, if you can't remeber it, I guess not.

[MrVisible]

Originally Posted by MaggieL

Well, if you can't remeber it, I guess not.

Oh, this is one of those "If you don't know why I'm mad, I'm certainly not going to tell you" games, isn't it?

I hate those.

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by MrVisible

Oh, this is one of those "If you don't know why I'm mad, I'm certainly not going to tell you" games, isn't it?

No, I specifically referred to the Clipper Chip--since folks are citing interception of overseas calls to terrorist suspects and mass-procssing of CDR data as evidence of the impending imposition of a police state by the Bush administraion over in this thread.

Those who do not remeber history may not be condemned to repeat it, but they can certainly be sentenced to look it up.

[MrVisible]

Well, since I take sentencings seriously, I scampered off and looked it up. After all, I thought, MaggieL certainly couldn't be excusing the behavior of an administration that's been eavesdropping on anyone who's suspected of having any connection with terrorism without easily-obtainable warrants, that's been coercing telcos into gathering data on all U.S. phone calls in order to build an enormous database with which to track us, by comparing it to a defunct proposal by a previous administration that didn't end up tapping a single phone call warrantlessly, could she?

But, as it turns out, that's exactly the case. The Clipper Chip was a failed proposal to encourage manufacturers to include encryption devices in their telecommunications products while giving the cipher keys to the government to hold 'in escrow' in order to be able to intercept calls when necessary. Nothing was said about doing so without warrants. I suppose they wanted to leave that for the next guys.

The end result? Widely available free cryptography like PGP made the Clipper Chip irrelevant. Nothing was produced using it, the idea was bad to start with, and within three years of the proposal being introduced, it was history.

This was an attempt at making sure that the government had the means to tap people's phone calls as needed, using the then-popular warranted search methods, which never tapped a single phone call.

This compares to or excuses, the Bush administrations actions in what way, exactly?