Crap Throwing Monkey

Operational security. If you file the warrant, you're in effect giving notice that you're investigating someone. You may not want that notice given, because that someone then skips town, and you have no more source of information. Or...you may not get the warrant (your evidence backing the request may be lacking), and it's much easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. Which DOES smack of arrogance, indisputably. Or..the evidence backing the request, if divulged, would reveal methods and means, and the revelation ITSELF would compromise national security (which is possible). The bottom-line, non-arrogant reason, though, is that you're simply operating under constraints that preclude it. Your basis for a potential warrant, for example, is data gleaned from interrogations at Gitmo, which I highly doubt are acceptable in a court of law. (That particular example, of course, just shifts the accusation of arrogance from wiretapping to extra-legal prison camps, so it's not terribly satisfactory. But it's hardly the only example...just the only one I have time for now.) And "arrogance" certainly isn't outside the realm of possibility either. It's just that there's plenty of valid ones, as well. Of which "pay phones are public domain" is NOT one, I hasten to add...

Oh, good God. You should be planted head-first in the ground like a turnip. Holding up a sign at a private event is NOT constitutionally protected. PARTICULARLY when you accept a CONTRACT allowing the event organizers to MONITOR AND CENSOR YOUR SPEECH!!! What part of that do you not understand?

Somebody please ask "What will you be doing this time next year?"

And it doesn't !@#$ing matter, you nitwit! It's a private event!!!

I'm not making that argument. I'm just saying that there's definite national security issues as well as definite constitutional issues that have to be considered here...and anyone who ignores one over the other is a congenital idiot. Nor am I accepting Bush's claim. He took an oath to uphold the Constitution. Ignoring and trashing constitutional protections for the sake of national security is - again - ignoring one consideration over the other, and congenitally idiotic. And furthermore, I've pointed out twice now that there is ample precedent for extra-legal domestic surveillence in war time. No one seems to want to address that simple statement - which is unsurprising, since it's a central consideration to the argument and difficult to accept in a free society. It's much easier to dance around the edges of the issue, and pretend that the partisan politics of the Fourth Amendment Rights of phone booth users is somehow relevant. God forbid anyone outside of me and BiB should try to completely understand an issue rather than throw out knee-jerk reactions. VA apparently mixed a stupid pill in with his Flintstones Vitamins this morning. Note that he was conspicuously absent from my list of "people who try to completely understand an issue".

Technically, they'd need the warrant within 72 hours of setting up the wire tap for the tap to be legal. However, as far as I know that only precludes them from using the information in a legal setting - the issuance of an arrest warrant, the prosecution of someone using the information or anything derived from it. But you could potentially use it in a manner that is non-legal (note: not illegal) - say, issuing warnings and taking appropriate steps when you get credible information that Wall Street's targeted for an attack, or cancelling inbound British Airways flights based on overheard conversations. Both of which have happened (though I'm presuming it resulted from domestic wiretaps - though it's a pretty damned good presumption). And both of which aren't necessarily pure criminal law enforcement applications, but are definite national security applications - though they aren't pure national security applications either. It's that gray area between national security and criminal law again...and the whole reason the gray area exists is because, no matter how much you argue the letter of the law, it simply doesn't provide for a comfortable cross-over between national security and criminal law in these situations.

The internet is. TSW is on the internet. Ergo, SDS should not be able to censor you...by the same logic people are applying to Bills games. And some people's knowledge of our rights is little removed from the back of a CrackerJack box, it seems... Yes, that means you.

Ditto Wade Phillips. And a bunch of other guys, no doubt. It's pretty easy to forget that not every coordinator is cut out to be a head coach, apparently.

We're talking about the punt from the fake FG attempt, right? In that case, Mularkey has surpassed Williams in terms of utter stupidity.

72 hours might not be enough to stop an event. But then, you're mixing your issues here - is this a law enforcement issue, or a national security issue? Law enforcement NEEDS the warrant for reasons of criminal law...the military does not for national security purposes...though the military is also forbidden from operations within the continental US...except in time of war...which this may or may not be... It would be nice if it were a clean, clear-cut issue. It's not. There is a definite gray area between the requirements of law enforcement and the needs of national security organizations...which is why the "quasi-warfare" methods of terrorists and insurgents frequently work so well, operating as they do in said gray area. But everyone can just keep ignoring me and arguing about Katz or the public/private nature of Verizon equipment...

It's rare that you an I agree on any topic...but it's practically a law of nature that, when we do, it involves VABills saying something stupid...

Jesus. Keep digging, man. You should have gone with my earlier advice.

You can't...unless it's a pay phone.

I can't stand Jack Black...but he was actually pretty tolerable in this movie.

The EVENT is a private event, the terms of which you agree to when you purchase the ticket. One of the terms of which is: the event organizers can tell you to shut the !@#$ up. Much like SDS, as the organizer of this private board, can tell you to shut the !@#$ up and ban your ass if he wants, even though the internet infrastructure is in the public domain. Believe it or not, the First Amendment does not grant you the right to do whatever you want, whenever you want.

If you ask me, I think they did it on purpose. Mike = Hank? 536983[/snapback] "Take the sail out of your wind"?

I thought she divorced him?

THAT, on the other hand, might be an exaggeration. There's certainly ample precedent for unilmited wiretapping sans due process by the government in wartime. The real question then becomes: how "real" a war is the war on terrorism? VABills might have had more success had he chosen that argument, rather than the constitutional angle. I suspect, however, that he has more fun trying to argue about things he doesn't understand...

In other words, you do not believe the Constitution protects the rights of the individual.

Actually, given the existing precedents that don't allow one to patent or copyright one's DNA, I would not be surprised if my left nut was in fact legally a public testicle..

I know (see my responses in the First Amendment thread on the football side of the board)...but I didn't want to mention it just yet. Let's clear up the whole public vs. private property issue first, before we get into more complex concepts like fee-based services...

The ninja bow in subservience to the Yakuza and their Russian weather control technology.

Somewhere out there, TracyLee and BF are reading this thread and thinking "See...this PROVES copying a CD is legal!" Well...TracyLee is. BF is reading it and thinking "But somebody threw a cup at Ron Artest!!!"

Why does People Magazine still cover Brittney Spears?

It ain't the government's either. "Public phone booth" does not mean "public" in the governmental sense.