June 11, 2011

"[I]n case you were wondering where the domestic-surveillance component of Wisconsin's continued slouch toward East Berlin was, there you are."

Anti-Walkerites are disturbed that Wisconsin law enforcement is monitoring social media to learn of plans to for direct action like storming the state Capitol. But I think it would be incompetent not to pay attention to these things.

Hey, people, Twitter and Facebook are public speech — quite visible and searchable. The notion that you have an expectation of privacy there is sheer lunacy.

Ask Anthony Weiner.

49 comments:

Bob said...

Ya think at this point Weiner would answer, or was that more in the line of a rhetorical question?

wv: slumples: the people that Robert Bork condemned in Slouching Toward Gomorrah.

KCFleming said...

Didn't the Democrats in the last Congress and this one support and renew the Patriot act?

AllenS said...

Yes, Pogo, yes they did.

KCFleming said...

We didn't mean the cops should spy on us. They're Union fer chrissake.

ndspinelli said...

Any investigator who doesn't examine social media to assist their investigation is guilty of malpractice. I have been cross examined regarding video surveillance many times. Juries don't like surveillance if they think it's not warranted and/or intrusive. However, they almost all understand the need for it in certain circumstances. And, they do understand the "reasonable expectation of privacy" concept. If I videotape a plaintiff cutting wood in his yard juries understand that he/she had no reasonable expectation that someone couldn't see them. If it's in public then it's NOT private. Social media is by definition public; therefore it's not private. It's really pretty basic when you extract the emotion.

Lincolntf said...

"So we weren's supposed to Tweet our secret plans to everyone in the Phish newsgroup?"

SunnyJ said...

The myopia of the left...we want surveillence, no one has individual rights above the government, the police are our union brothers and sisters and work for us...oh, wait...this can work against us? Oh wait, we want these rules when we're in charge but not for the opposition. This is why the founders were so careful about how laws were written, and stayed away from writing laws like we have now that are designed to control behavior and not protect the right to choose our own behavior, absent of harming others. When you start writing law to stop others from "offending" others...it's down hill the rest of the way. Why are the leftist so afraid of concealed carry? Because it makes it a bit more "iffy" to be pushing and shoving, name calling, crowding in on, attempting to destroy sound equipment and infringing on the right to free speech of others, if you're not sure that only your union police force are the ones equiped to self defend.

Curious George said...

"Ask Anthony Weiner."

But be prepared for a cock shot in your inbox

KCFleming said...

Hey, cool.
I just read a reference to the WI teacher's strike in David Mamet's new book, The Secret Knowledge.

Bet he reads Althouse.

KCFleming said...

Mamet notes that the left rarely seems to grasp that they are voting for vast powers of the State, ensuring the very surveillance they decry.

Synova said...

Some people want a noble conflict so bad it hurts.

edutcher said...

When the lady is right, the lady is right.

What's hysterical is the fact that most people put stuff up on the Internet thinking it's totally invisible, except to the people they want to see it.

windbag said...

So...attention whores are upset when they receive attention?

Mogget said...

Are these the same Dems that blocking the restriction of collective bargaining privileges because the meeting wasn't open enough?

Sal said...

Remember this?: "Are you a Walker plant?"

Fucking idiots.

aronamos said...

The lesson is so simple that my daughter understood it after I explained that posting pictures of yourself and your underage friends doing shots out of a blowup doll on your MySpace page is a big, big mistake.

wv: sednests. Where traitors gather.

deborah said...

You say you want a revolution?

Anonymous said...

"Ask Anthony Weiner."

For God's sake stay the fuck away from Anthony Weiener.

If you open your mouth to ask him anything he'll try to cock-gag you.

Should high schools be taking young girls on field trips to Washington, D.C. to meet with this sex fiend?

Fred4Pres said...

How about a song?

Which reminded me of this.

garage mahal said...

Remember this?: "Are you a Walker plant?"

Fucking idiots.


Remember the fake Koch call where Walker admitted they considered planting troublemakers?

Another nice press release from Walker's Press Secretary though. Was this cross posted at the MacIver Institute Althouse? Or vice versa, it's hard to tell. It was noticed that you, the MacIver Inst. and Vicki McKenna all had the same exact headline on the Special Olympics story. Hmmph.

KCFleming said...

I should think that bullying retards is a more egregious crime than reporting the fact, even with unoriginal headlines.

Alex said...

garage is still convinced he has the smoking gun on Walker.

Tyrone Slothrop said...

Hilarious. This is from people who, in all other respects, don't think Wisconsin is slouching toward East Berlin fast enough.

Lincolntf said...

Garage, we've all seen the transcript, we all know you're lying and we all know why. You can't face the truth, that you're on the side of the most hateful group of Government thugs in recent memory.
Keep lying to yourself, the Right has no use for people with so little strength of character, so you might as well pollute the Left. Help them rot from the inside out.

Christopher said...

The funny thing is a great many of those anti-Walkerites were probably depressed when the Berlin Wall fell.

Scott said...

They meant slouch toward New Berlin, because, of course, East Berlin is in Pennsylvania.

Scott said...

Or slouching toward Gomorron, perhaps.

(My partner is watching Sons of Anarchy reruns on cable. Ick.)

Anonymous said...

"Ask Anthony Weiner." Um,no, no thank you!!

garage mahal said...

Pogo
Odd the organizers with the Special Olympics said the protesters weren't "disruptive", and were "respectful" to the athletes. Source.

Walker called it "appalling" [with a straight face], as he aims to completely dismantle Medicaid and BadgerCare in the state. The courageous thing to have done was to congratulate and honor them, and then talk a little bit about how his cuts will impact the state.

Serial Liars.

Seeing Red said...

GM - Volokh Conspiracy via Instapundit on the beer war:

ADDENDUM: It’s interesting what different types see in this story. For the free market folks at CEI this is just another example of corporate rent seeking to the advantage of larger corporations. For the folks at Think Progress, on the other hand, this is yet the latest example of Gov. Scott Walker’s craven catering to campaign contributors — even though not a single source Think Progress cites links the governor to this proposal. To the contrary, several of the stories mention this provision was slipped in by a legislative committee, and only one of the stories even mentions Gov. Walker by name — and only then to refer generally to the governor’s budget. Gov. Walker may well support this measure — and, if so, shame on him — but I see no evidence of that — certainly nothing to justify blaming him for the “war on craft beer.”



synale? LOLOLOLOL gonna miss those.

Seeing Red said...

People cut their familiy budgets all the time, they understand impact of cuts.


lyings? LOLOLOL

Bayoneteer said...

That's the first time I've read a post here and LOL'ed before I finished reading it. These are the same guys that follow you around with camera everywhere? WTF? There is no privacy any more. If it's privacy that they want they should download PGP and encrypt their email.

Sal said...

Garage, here you can be reminded of the context of the Walker plant accusations. Idiots indeed.

Big Mike said...

The notion that you have an expectation of privacy there is sheer lunacy.

I was going to comment, but then I read what "windbag" wrote. I don't think there's anything anybody can reasonably add.

Let's all dump on garage instead.

SDN said...

"Odd the organizers with the Special Olympics said the protesters weren't "disruptive", and were "respectful" to the athletes."

Yeah, especially since the odds are at least half of them are current members of unions or have to work with them at schools etc...

I'm sure those were completely unbiased opinions...

Unknown said...

Are there actually any people still there??

Joanna said...

Odd the organizers with the Special Olympics said the protesters weren't "disruptive", and were "respectful" to the athletes.

Tomorrow, I'm going to find a wedding, put on my zombie makeup, and stand between the minister and the bride&groom.

That's the proper way to show respect, no?

wv: evilyall

Synova said...

"Remember the fake Koch call where Walker admitted they considered planting troublemakers?"

No.

I remember the fake Koch call where the fake caller suggested planting troublemakers, and Walker said no.

Is that the call you were thinking of, garage?

Alex said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Alex said...

Koch: We’ll back you any way we can. What we were thinking about the crowd was, uh, was planting some troublemakers.

Walker: You know, well, the only problem with that —because we thought about that. The problem—the, my only gut reaction to that is right now the lawmakers I’ve talked to have just completely had it with them, the public is not really fond of this […]


Busted. Walker thought about using plants.

Alex said...

Essentially the fake Koch call will write the recall election against Walker in 2012. You could say Walker punked himself.

Synova said...

Busted? Thought about?

I don't see any indication in your quote, Alex, that anyone ever seriously suggested putting plants in the crowd. It may have been included on a laundry-list of "we could do this" and it's not as though it's a particularly novel idea... of course someone "thought of it." If we're going to hold everything so much as mentioned in a brainstorming session as an *endorsement* we are really and truly screwed.

What isn't even slightly ambiguous in this is that, if it were frivolously suggested or seriously suggested, that Walker disapproved of and rejected entirely the idea of planting troublemakers.

I realize that double standards are the order of the day, but it's pretty pathetic to rely on criticism that someone didn't reject something with the proper amount of offended outrage.

It's like the Palin e-mails... no one did anything wrong and everyone knows it. And since Walker can't be "got" for doing anything wrong, he has to be "got" for failing to clutch his pearls.

mariner said...

I'll bet these shits-for-brains don't see anything wrong with combing through Sarah Palin's emails, though.

Anonymous said...

The morons think what they put online is private? They will make great union/democrats when they grow up.

Martin L. Shoemaker said...

From my current favorite TV show, Leverage: "There are no secrets on the internet. WHEN will people learn this?"

Steven said...

Y'all are missing the headline here. East Berlin? Berlin - full stop - wouldn't have surprised me. Some reference to Bush or - I don't know; who else is worse than Hitler? - Glenn Beck wouldn't have caught my attention so much. But why would someone at Daily Kos pick on the German Democratic Republic? Maybe a fan of "The Lives of Others"? It's well worth seeing, though I thought the end took longer than necessary. I'm still surprised, though, that that would be the first reference that would occur to a Kossack.

Also, did dissenters of East Germany ever occupy the capitol? I've heard of sadly short-lived uprisings in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, but the occupation of the capitol building in East Berlin in response to a reduction in the privileges of state employees missed my history books. Perhaps I need to read more.

Steven said...

Also, +1 to Synova's latest. If that's the worst you have on Walker, and what we've seen since the emails were released the other day are the worst we have on Palin, both are ready for sainthood.

Incidentally, I'm not ready to nominate either for sainthood.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

Sucks when being hip doesn't mean being smart.

Seriously, did they think the police were just too dumb to log onto Facebook?

I guess they are used to underestimating the opposition.

SGT Ted said...

oooh now they are in totalitarian East Berlin, nevermind that East Berlin was governed by the unions and leftwingers intellectual brethren and comrades, the Communists.

More drama queenery from the tax leeches.