“Trust us — we’re from the government.” You’d think that phrase would never (seriously) pass the lips of anyone who considers themselves a conservative or a Republican, but it’s the mantra that the current Administration and its congressional supporters keep uttering when it comes to the War on Terror and the Need to Keep Vewwy Vewwy Quiet about What We’re Doing to Combat It.<\/p>\n
Which wouldn’t be a problem if the government were actually rigorously intelligent, thoughtful, wise, diligent, accurate, dispassionate robots, rather than human beings who make mistakes, act on their own, or work from less-than-savory agendas. <\/p>\n
In which case you get things like this happening<\/a>:<\/p>\n A federal Department of Homeland Security agent passed along information about student protests against military recruiters at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, landing the demonstrations on a database tracking foreign terrorism, according to government documents released Tuesday.<\/p>\n The documents were released by the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a Freedom of Information Act request on behalf of student groups that protested against recruiters who visited their campuses in April 2005.<\/p>\n The students were angry when they turned up in the database of a Pentagon program called Threat and Local Observation Notice, or TALON, which the government started in 2003 as a way to collect data that could help stop terrorist attacks. Officials have acknowledged that the reports on protests should not have been included. <\/p>\n […] NBC News revealed the database in December. The Pentagon acknowledged that the protest reports should not have been included in the database, which now has more than 13,000 entries. The reports “have been removed,” Pentagon spokesman Greg Hicks said Tuesday. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n As far as we know. Since they shouldn’t have been there in the first place, it’s difficult to trust in either the accuracy or the veracity of the reported deletions. And, of course, if not for Treasonous Journalists and Pinko Activists, nobody would have known the names were there in the first place. And what sort of ill effects might that have had for those people down the road — or, on the flip side, what sort of difficulties might it have caused anyone who was legitimately trying to mine Some activities, by their nature, need to be secret. But make too much secret, and remove accountability, and you inevitably allow error and ill-will to turn even the best-intentioned plans into a nightmare.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n (via Les<\/a>)<\/p>\n <\/small><\/p>\n UPDATE: And, in related news the EFF has scored a victory<\/a> as a judge ruled against the government’s and AT&T’s motions to dismiss their case against AT&T<\/a> for assisting the NSA’s spying program. Feel free to support the EFF by sponsoring me for the Blogathon<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Trust us — we’re from the government.” You’d think that phrase would never (seriously) pass the lips of anyone who considers themselves a conservative or a Republican, but it’s the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homeland-security"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":33534,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/05\/be-vewwy-vewwy-quiet-were-h.html","url_meta":{"origin":9361,"position":0},"title":"Be vewwy, vewwy quiet! We’re h…","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 5-May-13 12:35pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Be vewwy, vewwy quiet! We're huntin' podcasts!","rel":"","context":"In "~Tweets"","block_context":{"text":"~Tweets","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/tweets"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":26542,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/20\/in-hunt-of-the-rare-elusive-moderate-republican.html","url_meta":{"origin":9361,"position":1},"title":"In hunt of the rare, elusive Moderate Republican","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 20-Feb-12 2:47pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Be vewwy, vewwy quiet ... #ddtb Embedded Link New Breeding Program Aimed At Keeping Moderate Republicans From Going Extinct WASHINGTON\u2014Saying the now critically endangered species of politician is at high risk for complete extinction within the next 10 years, Beltway-area conservationists announced plans Monday for a new c...","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":24844,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/25\/too-many-secrets-marty.html","url_meta":{"origin":9361,"position":2},"title":"Too many secrets, Marty","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 25-Dec-11 2:00pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Even more than the Cold War, the never-ending War on Terror seems to have turned our government into a house of secrets, where everything is classified, everything has to be kept under wraps because of \"national security,\" and any accountability for same is ... also a tightly-held secret.It's hard to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9066,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/02\/24\/dubaious_object.html","url_meta":{"origin":9361,"position":3},"title":"Dubaious objections","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 24-Feb-06 10:46am","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm sure there's room for nuanced analysis of the security issues related to a Dubai (UAE) government-owned corporation taking over O&M (if not, directly, security) for a number of US...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3410,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/11\/27\/trust_2.html","url_meta":{"origin":9361,"position":4},"title":"Trust","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 27-Nov-02 11:16am","format":false,"excerpt":"Why people don't trust Homeland Security efforts -- or efforts to privatize more work done by the federal government -- because you can't trust them to police themselves, let alone...","rel":"","context":"In "Homeland Security"","block_context":{"text":"Homeland Security","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/homeland-security"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":37768,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/06\/11\/transparency-of-secrecy.html","url_meta":{"origin":9361,"position":5},"title":"Transparency of Secrecy","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 11-Jun-13 9:47am","format":false,"excerpt":"Money graf:_'The U.S. government is on a secrecy binge. It overclassifies more information than ever. And we learn, again and again, that our government regularly classifies things not because they need to be secret, but because their release would be embarrassing.\u00a0Knowing how the government spies on us is important. 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\nthat information to detect and forestall real terrorist threats?<\/p>\n