Track Animal Cruelty at the FBI

[FrenchKissed]

A little off topic here...but a prime example of stupid laws.

There is a peice of legislation being introduced into Tenn. that if you are fat you will not be allowed to eat in public. Restaraunts caught serving fat people will be stipped of their service liscense. The actual term is "obese" people based on the current medical definition however the current medical definition uses BMI to guage obesity and even thin people who are poorly muscled can be catagorized as "obese" based on that measurement.
Point blank it is another STUPID law.
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/...m-will-be.html

[whackichic]

Originally Posted by FrenchKissed

A little off topic here...but a prime example of stupid laws.

There is a peice of legislation being introduced into Tenn. that if you are fat you will not be allowed to eat in public. Restaraunts caught serving fat people will be stipped of their service liscense. The actual term is "obese" people based on the current medical definition however the current medical definition uses BMI to guage obesity and even thin people who are poorly muscled can be catagorized as "obese" based on that measurement.
Point blank it is another STUPID law.
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/...m-will-be.html

and they say California is weird. Oh wait are you in CA? There are so many deterent laws its crazy. I know they urinating in public is littering here and to me its 10xs worse than throwing something on the ground. There is a 3rd thing that warns as potential serial killer but I forget. Playing with fire and abusing animals are the other 2.
Being chraged is not being convicted. Hopefully the judge and jury would see the difference when it comes to cruelty. I blame the da/prosecuter actually filing on violators. I know the SF DA rarely charges drug cases so I wonder about animal cruelty. We don't get those complaints at my dept so I don't know.

[LittleBigDog]

I checked this out on govtrack and don't see a problem with this bill.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill...bill=s110-2439

So I did contact senators. Here are other ways of contacting if you prefer to write your own letters.
http://www.votesmart.org/search.php?...8366&x=15&y=10

http://www.senate.gov/general/contac...y=state&Sort=A

The bill doesn't increase penalties for animal cruelty or define it.

Not that it is related to this bill, but I think some of those prosecutions against people that shoot a dog in self defense when it is attacking have more to do with a prosecutor that is anti-gun, rather than pro-dog. That happens even when people use a gun to defend themselves from home invasions at times. It can be very political when a gun is involved, unfortunately.

[Lilavati]

Originally Posted by LittleBigDog

I checked this out on govtrack and don't see a problem with this bill.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill...bill=s110-2439

So I did contact senators. Here are other ways of contacting if you prefer to write your own letters.
http://www.votesmart.org/search.php?...8366&x=15&y=10

http://www.senate.gov/general/contac...y=state&Sort=A

The bill doesn't increase penalties for animal cruelty or define it.

Not that it is related to this bill, but I think some of those prosecutions against people that shoot a dog in self defense when it is attacking have more to do with a prosecutor that is anti-gun, rather than pro-dog. That happens even when people use a gun to defend themselves from home invasions at times. It can be very political when a gun is involved, unfortunately.

That's the problem. It doesn't define it. Just like "sex offender" has come to mean, in some states, any crime associated with sex . . . and the definition crosses state lines with you. Thus, there are cases where the 19 year old who sleeps with his sixteen year old girlfriend (statutory rape) is now a "sex offender" for life, labeled with the paedophiles and serial rapists. For a while, before the law was struck down, people convicted of consentual honosexal activity in Texas were "sex offenders" and if they left Texas, carried that label, and had to abide by those restrictions. An apartment complex I used to live in had to turn down an application from a gay man who was just such a Texas "sex offender."

With the definition of "animal cruelty" being just as vague and often just as broad (overfeeding your dog? Ok, sure, its cruel, and perhaps should be punished . . . but does it make you a threat to society?) (shooting a dog, yours or one threating you or your livestock . . . brutal . . . but cruel? Why?) people could end up on the FBI watchlist who either have not done something wrong, or if they have done something wrong, what they have done, is not the sort of act that makes them a future threat to other human beings.

[Renee750il]

Lilavati, I don't know if it's been rectified here or not, but for quite some time, if someone was charged with a sex related offense - even prostitution or soliciting a prostitute, that put them on the list. And they weren't removed, even if the charges were dropped, dismissed or it went to trial and a not guilty verdict came down.

While I can see the practical need for tracking REAL sex offenders, all these lists are one more method of getting closer to being able to "justify" tracking ALL of us.

And you know what I really resent more than anything? That it's come to the point that even I - who have never subscribed to the conspiracy du jour thinking, now have to look at so many things 'through a glass darkly.'

[Lilavati]

Originally Posted by Renee750il

Lilavati, I don't know if it's been rectified here or not, but for quite some time, if someone was charged with a sex related offense - even prostitution or soliciting a prostitute, that put them on the list. And they weren't removed, even if the charges were dropped, dismissed or it went to trial and a not guilty verdict came down.

While I can see the practical need for tracking REAL sex offenders, all these lists are one more method of getting closer to being able to "justify" tracking ALL of us.

And you know what I really resent more than anything? That it's come to the point that even I - who have never subscribed to the conspiracy du jour thinking, now have to look at so many things 'through a glass darkly.'

I didn't know prostitution counted, but that was exactly my point. "Sex offense" and "Violent offense" are now so broad that they have lost all meaning . . . except for giving the government a lot of people to track. Now I didn't know about being on the list even if not convicted . . . I'm pretty sure THAT is outright unconstitutional.

I'm not sure if its a conspiracy . . . I think its more poorly written laws and public hysteria . . . but its stupid, inefficent and, frankly, a violation of the rights of people who are NOT the actual targets of the laws. We don't need to add "cruelty" to the list . . . define cruelty as the intentional torture of an animal (or some such, probably more specific than that) and I'll support the bill. But using what ever definitions the states have? No thanks.

[LittleBigDog]

It's my understanding, (could be wrong), that the data would not be used to track people, but rather to compile statistics that could give a big picture about animal abuse and where to allocate resources. But the point about how will the FBI make sense of all the different local definitions of animal abuse is a good one.

I have fears, too, and I don't think they are unfounded, about the way ALL of us are being tracked even when we are NOT violating any laws. This is off the original topic, but I just saw this article about the new fingerprinting requirements the EU may impose. (Guess we are already doing it to them.)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23120034/page/2/

But the article covers a lot of other ground, too. It says that if you use express mail services, they now keep the sender/receiver/contents in a governement database with no expiration date apparently. What is with that? It just goes on and on and we are not talking about any crimes involved at all.

http://government.zdnet.com/?p=3580
December 24th, 2007
FBI building massive biometric database

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=4629&tag=btxcsim
March 9th, 2007
FBI’s data management headaches escalate with Patriot Act

http://www.gsnmagazine.com/cms/marke...gence/459.html
DHS launches ICEPIC program to identify "non-obvious" relationships
New analytic tool for immigration enforcement and counter-terrorism
By Jacob Goodwin, Editor-in-Chief
Published January 30th, 2008
"DHS plans to establish an immigration enforcement database that will gather personal information on hundreds of thousands of individuals and then use "link analysis tools" to look for what it calls "non-obvious relationship patterns" that could help the department identify illegal aliens, criminals or terrorists. "

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/...oposes-bu.html
FBI Proposes Building Network of U.S. Informants
Share July 25, 2007 1:01 PM

"The FBI is taking cues from the CIA to recruit thousands of covert informants in the United States as part of a sprawling effort to boost its intelligence capabilities...

....The aggressive push for more secret informants appears to be part of a new effort to grow its intelligence and counterterrorism efforts. Other recent proposals include expanding its collection and analysis of data on U.S. persons, retaining years' worth of Americans' phone records and even increasing so-called "black bag" secret entry operations...
-------------------------------------------------------------

So that is why the animal cruelty database didn't worry me too much, other than concerns about usefulness. They seem to have trouble managing all the data they are collecting about law abiding people already.

[Renee750il]

Do they? Or do they want us to THINK they do?

[drmom777]

Big brother is watching you!

[Lilavati]

Originally Posted by Renee750il

Do they? Or do they want us to THINK they do?

Well, they CAN, at least electronically. I once dated someone who worked at the NSA . . . they are perfectly capable of tracking every electronic communication in the US . . . they don't because: its illegal, its expensive, and its pretty pointless.

The truth is, if the government wants to know where you are, and you take advantage of such modern convinces as cell phones, debit cards, the internet, etc, they probably know where you are, or would if they wanted to. They just don't care.

But its different when they are paying attention to YOU.