Author, 'We Meant Well' and the upcoming 'The People on the Bus: A Story of the #99Percent'
Posted: 06/07/2013 2:33 pm
True, as was slavery in the U.S., the Holocaust under Nazi Germany,
Apartheid in South Africa and so forth. Laws mean very little when they
are manipulated for evil.
I'm not doing anything wrong, so why should I care? If you're doing nothing wrong, then you've got nothing to hide!
See above. The definition of "wrong" can change very quickly.
I trust Obama on this.
All of your personal data is in the hands of the same people that run
the TSA, the IRS and likely the DMV. Do you trust all of them all the
time to never make mistakes or act on personal grudges or political
biases? Do you believe none of them would ever sell your data for
personal profit ever? In fact, the NSA is already sharing your data
with, at minimum,
British intelligence. That's a foreign government that your American government is informing on you to, FYI.
I really trust Obama on this.
OK, let's stipulate that Obama will never do anything bad with the
data. But once collected, your personal data exists forever, and is
available to whomever in the future can access it, using whatever
technologies come to exist. Trusting anyone with such power is foolish.
Well, there are checks and balances in the system to protect us.
See above. Also, the king of all checks and balances in this case, the
Fourth Amendment,
has been treated by the government like a used Kleenex. As for the
Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Court (FISA), set up to review
government requests for wiretapping, it
approved all 1,789 requests submitted to it in 2012. The FBI made
15,229 National Security Letter requests in 2012 on Americans. None of those even require FISA rubber-stamping.
There are 300 million Americans, producing a gazillion emails and
Skype chats and Instagrams every day. Nobody cares about my boring
stuff.
Mining all that data is just a matter of how many computers are
devoted to the task today, and using better technology in the future
will make it even easier.
Distasteful as this all is, it is necessary to keep us safe. It's for our own good.
The United States, upholding to our beautiful Bill of Rights, has
survived (albeit on a sometimes bumpy road) two world wars, the Cold War
and innumerable challenges without a massive, all-inclusive destruction
of our civil rights. Keep in mind that the Founders created the Bill of
Rights, point-by-point, specifically to address the abuses of power
(look up the never-heard-from-again
Third Amendment)
they experienced under an oppressive British government. A bunch of
angry jihadis, real and imagined, seems a poor reason to change that
system. Prior to 9/11 we did not have a mass-scale terror act (by
foreigners; American Citizen
Timothy McVeigh
pulled one off.) Since 9/11 we have not had a mass-scale terror attack.
We can say 9/11 was a one-off, an aberration, and cannot be a
justification for everything the government wishes to do. There is also
the question of why, if the NSA is vacuuming up everything, and even
sharing that collection abroad, this all needs to be kept secret from
the American people. If it is for our own good, the government should be
proud to tell us what they are doing for us, instead of being
embarrassed when it leaks. If you're not doing anything wrong then
you've got nothing to hide, right?
Terrorist are everywhere.
Doubtful. No suicide bombers in shopping malls, no hijackings. How
many Americans have died in the past twelve years due to terrorism in
the U.S.? At the same time, despite all this intrusion into our lives
and violations of the Fourth Amendment, the system completely missed the
Boston bombers, two of the dumbest, least sophisticated bro' terrorists
in the world. Those two practiced no tradecraft at all. Maybe all this
surveillance isn't really about stopping terrorists and is more about
generic spying on us all? At the same time, we do have a problem with
gun nuts committing mass shootings that have mowed down Americans in
numbers far beyond terrorism since 9/11, but no one seems concerned
about using tech to stop that. So much has been justified (torture,
spying) by the so-called
ticking time bomb scenario but there has never been shown an actual ticking time bomb scenario in real life.
Protecting America comes first.
Agreed. But protecting what from what is the question. If instead of
spending trillions and trillions of dollars on spying and domestic
surveillance we spent that same money on repairing our infrastructure
and improving our schools, wouldn't that more directly create a stronger
America?
I just don't care.
Fine, enjoy your television. Just don't be surprised when you're woken from your deep sleep one night by a knock on the door.
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