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Show 4 Thursday January 23, 2014 OPINION www.dailyutahchronicle.cor ► Exec. order damaging to Americans' privacy rights Columnist I grew up believing that "We the People" reflected the diamond standard of the United States. I thought the majority of "we" had a voice in the expenditure of our taxes, the operations of our military and the scrutiny of executive orders. That was then. This is now While we were sleeping, corporations have commandeered our government, consolidated its vital branches and pulled the drapes on legislative transparency. Executive Order 12333, also known as the order that extends the powers of U.S. intelligence agencies and directed leaders of federal agencies to comply with CIA orders, is a modern disgrace to our Constitution. The Reagan administration delivered a lot of bad things to average middle-class Americans. President Ronald Reagan slashed taxes for the wealthy while overtaxing the rest of us. He brought on the hobnob with terrorists, paved the way for overseas sweatshops, tripled the national debt and opened the door to food manipulation, essentially unblocking the patenting of life, as a gateway for monsters like Monsanto. But even worse than all of those things, he signed Executive Order 12333 in 1981, which sent the U.S. Constitution spiraling downward. Reagan's corporate-influenced signature began as an intelligence espial on foreign leaders and people in countries that we were and were not at war or conflict with, primarily to prosper business deals, using Iran and the Cold War as an excuse. The CIA worked closely with the National Security Agency, secretly gathering information for reasons that have not been disclosed to the public that paid for it. One thing we do know is that the wealthy have gotten immensely more wealthy each year since. On July 31, 2008, the infection of Executive Order 12333 evoked further constitutional decay when President George W. Bush added his own unconstitutional amendments authorizing more "United States intelligence activities." Suddenly, every U.S. citizen fell victim to attack on their privacy for doing nothing wrong or illegal. Bush allowed his bulldog intelligence agencies to spy on any American who had phone or electronic communications with anyone outside of the U.S., again making the false claims of national security. The Bush step took away our right to privacy and eroded our right against illegal search and seizure. It wasn't until whistleblower Edward Snowden released the NSA documents showing the depth of the spying on U.S. citizens that we got an idea of just how much our government has crossed the constitutional red line. Furthermore, the only ones benefitting from the worst governmental violation of its citizens' rights are the corporations. There is no proof that any of the clandestine dragnet system of lawless spy operations, and theft of our privacy, even since Reagan, has thwarted or warned of any attacks against the United States. What it has done is force taxpayers to fund illegal and atrocious killing around the world, the seating of killer dictators and unjustified and reprehensible torture, black sites and years of brutal detention of innocent people. There is no accountability from our government about this, either. All Watkins of McClatchy reports, "Neither the office of Attorney General Eric Holder nor that of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper would comment about 12333•" And Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said all "programs are under the executive branch entirely." That means there are no congressional or judicial checks and balances. The ACLU and the Media Freedom Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government on Dec. 3o, 2013, for violation of the Freedom of Information Act. They are demanding to know the activities that have been perpetrated under the guise of Executive Order 12333, as well as the ramifications. We all have a right to know everything that has been, and continues to be unjustly collected from our private lives. Moreover, the original writing of 12333 still requires a warrant, or probable cause, to tap into private information. Executive Order 12333 has not secured our country. It has given us hundreds of thousands of enemies. What began in 1947 as a clandestine Cold War enormity (read: the CIA) from an overreaction to communism has grown into the aberration of an unconstitutional spy order that is destroying the very principles and constitution that has until now set this grand country apart. letters@chronicle.utah.edu RORY PENMAN/The Daily Utah Chronicle Tethering settlement won't end net neutrality JACKSON HANNON T Columnist he recent ruling on the case between the Federal Communications Cornmission and Verizon is in many ways unfortunate, in many ways expected and not that bad. But the issue of net neutrality is still an issue that we, as consumers and constituents of the United States government, ought to make our voices heard on. A number of lamenting opinion pieces have shown up arguing that the net as we know it is dead and the consumer will pay a heavy price. I myself argued almost that exact idea previously. But the ruling by the court does not bar the FCC from regulating the broadband providers. It merely forces them to either classify broadband providers as common carriers, or regulate them in a different manner. This may be the very ruling needed to get better, more nuanced rules from the FCC and allow for the sort of innovative market Internet service providers claim to be working towards. I don't agree with claims such as Verizon's that this ruling will allow "broadband providers to offer new and innovative services to their customers," especially given that Verizon and the other major ISPs haven't been apparently interested in "new and innovative services." Take, for example, Google Fiber, a brilliant utopian dream for all of those who love their Internet — or at least, so the news tells you. It's a nice idea — if financially unfeasible — of bringing good, steady Internet connections and fast speeds to consumers. Rather than meet it with actual efforts to develop a comparable service, the entrenched ISPs have chosen to meet it with press releases. AT&T said "it is prepared to build an advanced fiber optic infrastructure ... capable of delivering speeds up to one gigabit per second." Which is nice, because my Internet from Comcast is capable of delivering 5o megabits per second. I've never seen that, of course. I saw it once hit ro Mbps on a speed test, but it's nice to know it's capable of reaching such impressive speeds. The ruling from the court does let stand the new FCC rules on transparency, requiring providers to disclose information on their network management, according to ArsTechnica, and more specifically, returned the rules to the FCC "for further proceedings consistent with this opinion." The ruling has not broken the FCC, and it allows for the American consumer to see how their Internet service provider is managing their resources. Whether a company chooses to throttle connection speeds to Netflix because it competes with their video-on-demand service or chooses to slow Internet to a crawl because of websites owned by their competitors, we as consumers can still know about it. While we wait for the FCC to decide whether they will appeal the decision, let us not be too concerned about the state of our Internet (unless you're concerned about the government spying on you). Net neutrality will rise again, and in due time, we can expect to see a balanced sort of Internet arise, where we can see "new and innovative" services, as well as fair and balanced access to all sites. letters@chronicle.utah.edu Only politicians claim global warming is a hoax A Columnist few weeks ago, there was a polar vortex that caused record lows in the Midwest and Southern United States, sparking debate on both sides of the global warming dispute. Despite both the fact that surveyed scientists agree climate change is happening, and the overwhelming evidence, global warming is still a controversy. First of all, a cold winter is not proof against global warming. The cold winter was caused by a polar vortex coming down from the North Pole. The polar vortex is cold air that swirls above either of the geographical polar vertices and usually stays there. Sometimes, the cold air from the poles dips down, which is what happened a few weeks ago. The phenomenon that triggered the polar vortex to dip down into North America is called a sudden stratospheric warming. In layman's terms, higher than average temperatures at the poles disrupt the atmosphere which sends down the cold air. The cold weather was a consequence of warmer weather elsewhere. Global warming does not mean there will never be cold weather, but rather the average temperature of the Earth is rising, and there will be more extreme weather events because of disruptions in the atmosphere. -f[A_STRALIA 125°F SALLY YOO/The Daily Utah Chronicle The area of the Earth affected by the polar vortex was very small. While Wisconsin was in a deep freeze, Australia was experiencing record highs, up to 125 degrees Fahrenheit. The people who say record-cold weather negates the idea of climate change are focusing only on a tiny corner of the world. Most of the people who speak out against global warming are politicians or pundits, such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, claiming it's an elaborate hoax. However, not one scientific paper has been published providing evidence that climate change isn't happening or that it's all a scam. Science supports the evidence, but the politicians are louder and more outspoken and know how to interact convincingly with the public. Despite their lower numbers, they have the upper hand. And that is why global warming is still a controversy. Let's say there's no such thing as global warming. What advantage would anyone have by saying there is? It would be great if we could do whatever we wanted without having to worry about the environmental consequences. Global warming is a huge inconvenience. The benefits of denying it are great. If there is no global warming, there are fewer pesky environmental regulations and less money has to go into research for cleaner fuel. People only perpetuate a hoax when there's some benefit to it. If anything's a hoax without evidence, it's the idea that global warming isn't happening at all. letters@chronicle.utah.edu |