It happened today and now we have to live with it. The disgraceful Slobodan Milosevic-style “Act to Protect My Peoples” has been signed into U.S. law.

What was once a misguided reaction to 9/11– the elevation of the President to the Decider, the sham trials, the secret kidnapping and torturing, the flaunting of national and international law, ie, all of what should have been put right long ago– has been made legal, prettified as a Congressional Act complete with calligraphy and provisions and sections and fancy signatures at the bottom. It’s a disgrace and it was the lead in exactly one of the nation’s top five newspapers.

You can’t not look at the pdf of the document– it’s full of creepy Halloween gems, the gory bits of this high-speed traffic accident of a document. To generally sum up: (1) the president or sec of defense decides who has rights and who doesn’t; (2) they don’t have to tell anyone why or how they made their decisions; (3) and they also decide for people all over the world when and where the Geneva Conventions apply.

‘‘(ii) a person who, before, on, or after the date of
the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006,
has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant
by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another com-
petent tribunal established under the authority of the
President or the Secretary of Defense.

‘‘(4) CLASSIFIED INFORMATION.—The term ‘classified
information’ means the following:
‘‘(A) Any information or material that has been deter-
mined by the United States Government pursuant to
statute, Executive order, or regulation to require protection
against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national
security.

‘(g) GENEVA CONVENTIONS NOT ESTABLISHING SOURCE OF
RIGHTS.—No alien unlawful enemy combatant subject to trial by
military commission under this chapter may invoke the Geneva
Conventions as a source of rights.

You could be an unlawful enemy combatant. And so could I. And there’s not a whole lot anyone could do about it. How’s that for national security? It’s the sort of thing that could bring the Democrats over to the side of the National Rifle Association.

The internet has long provoked fear and suspicion. It has been accused of everything from promoting child porn to spurring disaffected youth to violence. And now the internet is being named as the latest enemy in the war on terror.

Today’s Reuters story Web could be terror training camp: Chertoff leads with this description of a hyperbolic message from Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff:

“Disaffected people living in the United States may develop radical ideologies and potentially violent skills over the Internet and that could present the next major U.S. security threat.”

The article goes on to quote Chertoff as saying:

“They can train themselves over the Internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination,” Chertoff said. “Those are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to detect with spies and satellites.”

I guess those are the kind of terrorist that can be found with wiretaps? Chertoff is, of course, a major proponent of wiretapping. Here is a video of him arguing for safety by any and all means at the opening of the Joint Regional Intelligence Center in Norwalk, California, in August.

Nothing like fear mongering to get people to give up their civil liberties.