Comment by shingen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shingen | Hacker News Reader

It should be ringing alarm bells?

The President of the United States recently suspended habeas corpus with the NDAA bill, realistically declaring an early form of martial law, and very few people noticed or cared. Then he decided to use the Espionage Act to viciously attack and suppress whistle blowers; even less people noticed. Apparently we've also lately codified that it's ok for the US Government to murder US citizens through assassination per Obama's talking points on the subject. In the same time frame, extraordinary rendition has also basically become codified into acceptable practice by the US Government - what was previously intensely argued against a few years ago, is now policy.

Clearly the bar has been raised into a whole 'nother universe for what it takes to set off the alarm bells. You're dealing with a confused, bewildered, tired, numb, scared, and extremely divided American people at this point. TechDirt, and everybody else, can expect things to get radically worse yet.

As a non-American I just have to ask, as I see his name thrown around a lot, is Obama really the one making these decisions? Are there not people on a lower level signing some of these? It seems to me, essentially impossible for one man to be able to handle all things brought up recently, not to mention all the non-tech questions I'm sure are debated just as much in other places.

Bills passed by Congress and enacted into law are literally signed by the President; somewhere there is a physical piece of paper that Obama marked with a pen -- except in a few cases where it was a robotic pen: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/11...

And the other decisions mentioned above come directly out of the office of the president, which is to say Obama and his cabinet and staff. The executive branch is the president's instrument to wield; I think everyone would agree that the president has responsibility for the actions of his appointees and White House staffers. And the key documents like executive orders are, again, literally signed by Obama's hand.

Or, as the sign on President Harry S. Truman's desk famously proclaimed: "The buck stops here."

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Buck_Stops_Here)

And it's the President's decision to allow or encourage his Justice Department to pursue the idea that email left on a server after six months is considered abandoned and therefore free game for the government to warrantlessly peruse. Like, you know, that 7G of email you have on gmail. Not his law, but he's using it, and certainly not trying to turn it back.

I wonder how many of his campaign supporters feel betrayed, and how many just give him a pass like Apple gets for Foxconn.

Do you have a link for this? I have not heard of this provision before.

Justice Dept. to Congress: Don’t Saddle 4th Amendment on Us

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/04/fourth-amendment-em...

> As a non-American I just have to ask, as I see his name thrown around a lot, is Obama really the one making these decisions?

Would you have asked that question while Bush was president or if McCain had won?

FWIW, Obama campaigned against some of those things. (McCain also campaigned against some of these things, albeit different ones in some cases.)

The ndaa is not the bill that suspended habeas corpus. it merely built upon and amended earlier laws.

The NDAA bill is absolutely what wiped out habeas corpus. Until that was enshrined the US military had no right to domestic policing, and was in fact for most of US history specifically banned from such (except for eg the civil war). As you know, habeas corpus protects against unlawful detention; the NDAA bill is designed to enable permanent unlawful detention of US citizens.

The NDAA bill gave the US military the ability to black bag you without any civilian judicial oversight. The FBI, Pentagon, CIA, among others came out strongly against the NDAA bill and warned Congress and the President not to do it. They know what it can lead to.

You are now guaranteed absolutely zero protections as a US citizen. There is nobody except the President, as commander in chief, that can retrieve you once they've decided to make you disappear. Your liberty rests in the hands of one person at that point.

You are not entitled to due process. You have no rights. There's no lawyer call. There's no jury. You may be detained forever without a hearing, and without having any accusations levied against you.

Martial law is precisely what it was intended to enable. They're about to start a war with Iran, it's pretty obvious why they'd want to be able to disappear some US citizens without due process when the shit hits the fan.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com