posted 09-19-2003 01:11 PM            

NBC WAVE-3

Before John Ashcroft spoke to law enforcement officials Thursday, he was greeted outside by a large group of protestors. And they were not shy about showing him their opposition to the Patriot Act. WAVE 3's Shannon Davidson reports.

As the United States Attorney General pulled up to the Louisville International Conventional Center, protestors shouted out, exercising their civil rights to challenge the Patriot Act and the idea that law enforcement may obtain information about citizens without their knowledge.

Clare Gervasi says she finds "rather disturbing that John Ashcroft is touting a bill that's supposed to protect us, and yet, we're not allowed to know anything about it."

Ashcroft and the FBI say the power that comes with the Patriot Act is rarely used, but critics say, if that power is used just once, that's one time too many.

Jeroma Lomonaco doesn't like the idea of federal agents monitoring his reading habits. "If you read something that is contrary to popular belief, it does not mean you hold that particular belief, it just means that you want to be informed."

While Ashcroft asks for "public confidence in law enforcement," the drums of protest beat on. "The fact that the government has the freedom, without a court order, to come into our privacy, to monitor our e-mails, without a court order, or any kind of accountability, is an outrage to our civil liberties."

posted 09-19-2003 07:11 PM            

There are some people here at CT Central that ascertain that to demand privacy is to declare that you have something to hide. To say such exhibits a chronic lack of the very essence of freedom. [this one's mine ]

Frederic Bastiat Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame and danger that their acts would otherwise involve... But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to the other persons to whom it doesn't belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish that law without delay ... No legal plunder; this is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony and logic.


Justice Louis D. Brandeis Ways may someday be developed by which the government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home.


Zbigniew Brezhinsky Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen...


Edmund Burke No government ought to exist for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people or to allow such a principle in its policy.


John Casey The growth of drug-related crime is a far greater evil to society as a whole than drug taking. Even so, because we have been seduced by the idea that governments should legislate for our own good, very few people can see how dangerously absurd the present policy is.


Justice William O. Douglas The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.


Justice William O. Douglas The privacy and dignity of our citizens [are] being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen -- a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a [person's] life.


Jimmy Durante Why doesn't everybody leave everybody else the hell alone?


Victor Ferkiss Complete and accurate surveillance as a means of control is probably a practical impossibility. What is much more likely is a loss of privacy and constant inconvenience as the wrong people gain access to information, as one wastes time convincing the inquisitors that one is in fact innocent, or as one struggles to untangle the errors of the errant machine.


Erich Fromm If you want a Big Brother, you get all that comes with it.


Katherine Graham We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know, and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.


Billie Holiday I never hurt nobody but myself and that's nobody business but by own.


Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought -- not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.


H. L. Mencken I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the point where free speech begins to collide with the right to privacy. I don't think there are any other conditions to free speech. I've got a right to say and believe anything I please, but I haven't got a right to press it on anybody else. .... Nobody's got a right to be a nuisance to his neighbors.


Lance Morrow The busybodies have begun to infect American society with a nasty intolerance -- a zeal to police the private lives of others and hammer them into standard forms -- A Nation of Finger Pointers.


William Pitt The poorest man may in his cottage, bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter; the rain may enter; but the King of England may not enter; all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.


Jackson Eli Reynolds Drug offenses ... may be regarded as the prototypes of non-victim crimes today. The private nature of the sale and use of these drugs has led the police to resort to methods of detection and surveillance that intrude upon our privacy, including illegal search, eavesdropping, and entrapment. Indeed, the successful prosecution of such cases often requires police infringement of the constitutional protections that safeguard the privacy of individuals.


George Bernard Shaw The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.


Mark Twain Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.


U. S. Army Training Manual No. 2000-25 Democracy, n.: A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic... negating property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. Result is demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, [chaos].


Richard A. Viguerie The first duty of government is to protect the citizen from assault. Unless it does this, all the civil rights and civil liberties in the world aren't worth a dime.


Alan Watts But when no risk is taken there is no freedom. It is thus that, in an industrial society, the plethora of laws made for our personal safety convert the land into a nursery, and policemen hired to protect us become selfserving busybodies.


Daniel Webster Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint; the more restraint on others to keep off from us, the more liberty we have.


Hank Williams If you mind your own business, you won't be minding mine.

Quote from U. S. Army Training Manual No. 2000-25

"Democracy, n.:
A government of the masses.

Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of direct expression.
Results in mobocracy.
Attitude toward property is communistic... negating property rights.
Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.
Result is demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, [chaos]."

By: U. S. Army Training Manual No. 2000-25 (click for more quotes by U. S. Army Training Manual No. 2000-25 or books by/about U. S. Army Training Manual No. 2000-25)
Date: (1928-1932)
Courtesy of: Juror's Handbook
Keywords: Democracy
Categories: Democracy, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, Politics, Privacy, Property, Republic, Civil Rights