I am now numb to these revelations, as I suspect are most of the technology community. The only thing that will make the rest of the general populace wake up is if someone on TV says they are vehemently opposed to it. Someone who has trotted out the, "I have nothing to hide, so I am not worried." I believe the only way this will happen is if Edward Snowden specifically targeted one of those people and created a file of some seriously embarrassing (or, better yet, incriminating) private business that will be released. I seriously hope that he has verifiable proof that Glenn Beck is having cocaine-fueled sex parties with Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Joe Liebermann, Diane Feinstein and the corpse of Strom Thurmond.
That, or something to keep football from being televised on Sunday.
Please, Edward. Tell me there is something up your sleeve that will get people to realize that this is actually a really fucking big thing and that it needs to stop right away.
I do not support this level of spying, period. However, the ignition of any real movement would certainly be helped by the personal embarrassment of anybody with a large enough mouthpiece. s/Glenn Beck/Rachel Maddow if you want, the point still stands. Somebody has to get really, really worked up over this.
EDIT: As it so happens, Glenn Beck is actually not in favor of this type of surveillance. I would have never guessed. I thought I was pretty safe in that assumption.
He is, but I made the assumption that due to his other markedly hawk-ish opinions that he might have suspended liberty in favor of security. I do not say this often, but it seems like Glenn Beck and I are on the same page on this issue.
I agree, and my sphere of influence is most certainly incensed already, but there is so much inertia in the population that it needs a jump start.
For instance, this should be front-page news everywhere. Full stop. Instead, the front page of www.cnn.com is currently populated by yet another Paul Walker death story, www.msnbc.com does not have any reference to it on its home page, and www.foxnews.com is devoid of this bombshell as well.
It really looks like the American populace at large is perfectly okay with being spied on and tracked everywhere. For all of the talk there is about wanting a smaller government, there sure ain't a hell of a lot of action. I cannot think of a government that is bigger than one that tracks your every move, forever.
This is stupid, targeting individuals at 'random' is pointless and won't help anything. There is no way to tell whether or not a Character even holds a specific view that they portray. It's called acting for a reason, and this is why "faking it until you make it" is so popular.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KwEDgpSWxohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWf2LLaHkM0
All that matters post Snowden Revelations is Game Theory - as if this isn't how it's always been. It doesn't even matter what he says now, he has established himself as a Character. Whether he's even a legitimate individual is irrelevant. The fact that he and WikiLeaks both choose to release their documents over time instead of in a single dump gives them the advantage of having or following a script. The only ones who don't know what's on those documents are the public. There honestly doesn't seem to be a reason to trust either party and I doubt either will ever be in any real danger unless they so choose so, because that's all people seem to want in life is to be remembered after death.
The only thing that could ever work is individuals in power promoting a strictly decentralized or public society. Yet, this will never happen because High School never ends, and someone always wants to run the show. So, if the whole worlds a stage how come you aren't looking at the stars?
>The fact that he and WikiLeaks both choose to release their documents over time instead of in a single dump gives them the advantage of having or following a script
The downside of this is that the public/media have a short attention span - 'oh look, the 3rd NSA story this week', and then what probably should've been front page material gets hidden away
The DNC is doing their annual "survey fund raiser" respond to it if you have one. I'm certain the RNC is doing something too. Write letters to you representatives, call them. I know this will shock and sound sacrilege to many here, give your sitting representatives $100 and share your opinion. Make defunding NSA your number one issue. We can play the game and it's not that expensive to be heard.
It won't stop right away, it could take time but it's closer than you think. Let the people in power know it's your biggest issue and put some campaign funds in to the mix to let the know this is for real. Moreover, I'd hope facebook, ms, google, etc would pony up some serious lobbyists, we need to beat that drum too.
> The NSA does not target Americans’ location data by design, but the agency acquires a substantial amount of information on the whereabouts of domestic cellphones “incidentally,” a legal term that connotes a foreseeable but not deliberate result.
The implication that Americans being "incidentally" caught in the dragnet is the only aspect that makes this egregious is absolutely fucking disgusting. This is a habit endemic in the American media that persistently differentiates between Americans and mere humans, as if the former is sacred and the latter mere fodder. I try to avoid swearing in comments, but damn it that's how angry this attitude makes me (and pretty much every non-American, I'm sure).
The Declaration of Independence says "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
This would mean that trespassing on these unalienable rights of 'all men' (citizen, foreigner, or not) would be hypocritical.
I understand your contempt but this distinction is important in this specific discussion, because the NSA charter specifically restricts its actions against Americans. Thus, if the NSA is spying on Americans often enough for it not to be a "mistake", then the NSA is flagrantly violating the scope it has been given. If this is not occurring, the NSA is operating within its (ridiculously loose) legal bounds.
Don't the instances of "parallel construction" already uncovered mean that the whole "restricts actions against Americans" thing has been blown wide open?
I suspect the answer to whether this was been written into law lies in secret interpretations of secret passages of the PATRIOT Acts, and that our rights have been, in secret, broadly abridged if not suspended.
Simply put, no. Parallel construction is a process by which otherwise inadmissible evidence can be used in court by obtaining it through an alternative lawful method. i.e. DEA trailing a specific car until it leads to a drug dealer based on a tip from the NSA.
The NSA charter restricts directly targeting Americans unless related to an international threat. i.e. FISA warrants ("Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act").
Instances of parallel construction emerge when evidence potentially useful for a domestic investigation is incidentally uncovered. Were it to be directly targeted when the individual has had no foreign communication, it would exceed the (very broad) scope of the NSA.
So it hasn't been "blown wide open". It is just that many people don't seem to particularly care about the nuances of either the NSA's charter or "Parallel construction" and throw terms around.
Your argument that everyone who is against it doesn't care about nuances doesn't hold any water.
Your language is curious for someone who claims a nuanced understanding:
"otherwise inadmissible evidence can be used in court"[1], "alternative lawful method"[2].
[1] is wrong because the evidence the NSA use for the tip, however legally or illegally it was acquired, is not used in court. Exhonerating evidence they acquired is not seen by the court.
[2] if the initial acquisition is inadmissible because it's illegally acquired then the alternative evidence acquisition is fruit of the poisoned tree, and any cover up probably illegal.
[1] and [2] imply the evidence acquired by the NSA and the DEA are the same evidence, and this is not the case.
The DOJ are investigating "Parallel Construction". If it was obviously legitimate, they would not be.
> * It is just that many people don't seem to particularly care about the nuances of either the NSA's charter or "Parallel construction" and throw terms around.*
Alternatively, "people" could be skeptical of whether parallel construction isn't about "tips" "nuances" and observing a "charter." Rather that it amounts to getting a pre-cooked investigation that you just color-by-numbers to launder domestic spying.
So the deal modern man was presented with was this: we'll give you instant global communication for pennies, but in return governments and corporations will closely monitor everyone on the planet: where they are, who they call, how long the call is, their texts, messages, and other communications -- basically their thoughts. We'll record this forever to use as we choose. Trust us.
As a global population, we seem to have made this deal, but I'm not aware of ever being consciously offered the choice. Can I change my mind now?
Yes; but it's equivalent to taking the Red Pill. Beforehand, you live in one of the most powerful and richest countries that ever was, a beacon of hope and freedom to the rest of the world. Afterwards you live in a country in which the government seems increasingly disconnected from human needs, sends robot assassins to bomb civilians half a world away and watches everyone with a myopically panoptic and punitive gaze.
Oh, and your closest allies will be marginalized, smelly and opinionated; and on the lam.
Ah, err, ehm; I would have thought that I no longer do, if ever I did would be quite clear from the context.
I do think that our government took a serious wrong turn after 9/11, and that our collective self-image ("beacon of democracy" and all that jazz) is increasingly at odds with our behavior. More and more the US government seems to be driven by non-human motives. Non-human in that even the people at the very top seem cognitively overwhelmed and more as if they were being acted upon by unseen forces whose existence can be inferred by the traces they leave behind; but whose intent and motivation are obscure.
You were offered this choice virtually through the official representative you or majority had chosen.
You changing your mind is irrelevant to global agenda and the way things will be executed. Most people "change" their mind by stopping to vote for one party (D) and changing to another (R). Example of spying on its citizens is a great example when your change of choice does not make a dent; it is President Bush (R) who signed Patroit Act/NSA spying into law, its is then President Obama (D) who said he will stop this only to continue and expand while elected. And people have short memory so now they will vote again on R. Nothing will change at the end and you can be sure those who come in place with continue or extend the abuse up to the point when system entirely collapse.
> You can even still use a cell phone, if you want - just buy a prepaid mobile with cash.
Actually this is exactly the kind of thing this data would sniff out. It would capture whichever cell towers you interact with (home, work, etc) and paired with data from your friends & their call logs could easily pinpoint who you are. Kind of amazing from an analytical standpoint but pretty scary for privacy.
Citation needed on the 20% of the population of the US that doesn't use the internet. Is there even 20% of the US population outside of 100 miles from the shore?
Also, you can't use a cellphone without them knowing who you are with high certainty. It only takes 3 points of location data to identify a person the vast majority of the time[1]. Using a cell phone that you paid for with cash is insufficient.
What that has to do with anything, god only knows, unless you meant something like '100 miles away from the border', and even then I'm at a loss.
Go visit a flyover state sometime. Most of the country's very different than SV/the northeast corridor/other modern urbanized area, and I wouldn't live there if you paid me.
I was going on the assumption that most people in population centers use or have used the internet; and that the number of people that were not in population centers was less than 20%; and I mental-gymnastics'd myself to thinking that those population centers tend to be on the shore, so I said it that way.
You're right; but I figured 95-99% in population centers and much more than 50% everywhere else, which ends up being more like at least 86% of the people in the United States used the internet in the last year.
You had better keep the battery outside of that phone until you are away from your home and not traveling along your commonly traveled routes, or your possession of it will be inferred by location.
i think if this kind of thing is inevitable, then it should be the case that this kind of information should be completely public to all, not just to governments. similar to what David Brin argues (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society)
I understand that if this information is available solely to government agents, a rouge one can potentially do anything they want with it; but if it is available to all, does that not make me even more vulnerable because now anyone who doesn't like me can get a clear overview of my daily routes, or my address, etc?
I completely agree. I am really tired of that Brin story being constantly cited by people without thinking through the consequences - of which there are many.
One of the biggest is the destruction of creativity. When people know that their actions are under constant surveillance it creates an enormous cognitive load. They have to constantly evaluate everything they do as to how it might appear to a critical observer. The end result is that people will simply stop doing anything that might have a social risk associated with it.
A panopticon society will be a dull, stagnant and repressed society. Think of every little backwards town where everybody knows everybody's business and anyone who steps out of line is ostracized. That is what our entire society will turn into with total surveillance.
i think @daveid's point is common, and i haven't actually read anything by Brin on the matter so i don't know what counterpoint he might make. maybe tracking itself would be tracked? maybe person X is watching you watch person Y? i think in general, however, with that much information, people will simply not care what everyone else is doing. part of what makes "private" information interesting is its rarity.
and i don't think anyone claims it wouldn't be a different culture, or that we should throw away core privacy like being able to sleep in our own beds without someone watching
with that much information, people will simply not care what everyone else is doing. part of what makes "private" information interesting is its rarity.
That's basically Brin's theory and it is a bad one because it assumes, against all evidence to the contrary, that people will just simply stop looking for ways to judge other people as being inferior.
We need an Internet that is secure by default. The Application layer security is a mess, and has a vast number of ways to attack and break that encryption level. We need to encrypt every packet on the web at the Transport layer or even the IP layer.
What about any of the other infinite number of unforseen attack vectors?
It is a misunderstanding that it is the communication infrastructure and technology under attack here. It is not.
It is the abstract idea of Freedom that is under attack, and so a technology based solution is not the answer. More than powerful technology, we need powerful new ideas about Freedom.
New technology implementations that fix existing attack vectors would still be most welcome, but not a cure all.
Wiretaps have existed for thousands of years in one way or another. They've existed in America since the Civil War when they tapped the Confederates telegraph lines. You either control the stage or you're a slave.
Isn't this one of the big reveals that we've been waiting for-- that they are attempting to track our physical movement? With this geographical information history, their ability to smash dissent without physical force is unparalleled, given that nearly everyone has visited a sketchy location at one time or another.
Doesn't this revelation prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the USA is even worse than the imagined world of 1984?
But they're quite clear that they were not ATTEMPTING to track us. It's just a side effect of something else, a benefit they may be profoundly happy about, but can claim that is was not the goal of the program.
Posts with NSA in the title are heavily penalized here. Keep that in mind when submitting an important story.
2. Have I been pwned? Check if your email has been...
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3. NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide, ...
266 points by 001sky 2 hours ago
NSA responses generally imply that any sort of surveillance is ok, as long as it's of non-Americans.
While it may largely be legally true, I think the presumption that that is a valid defense needs to be challenged more often.
Phrases like "intended strictly to develop intelligence about foreign targets" seems to be regularly used by reporters in such a way as to imply that, if true, the surveillance would be a-ok.
The difference between the rights of Americans vs non-Americans, with regard to US intelligence services, is an interesting one. Certainly non-Americans are deserving of at least some protections. I would hope that we could provide most of the world with the same level of respect as we do each other.
Worse yet, this sort of programs provides both justification and technology (which inevitably trickles down from NSA-sponsored R&D) for other governments to spy on their citizens.
Meta topic, but it seems kind of rude to link to the print page. The washington post is already a very readable site, If i don't want ads, i'll use adblock.
He's saying it's rude (not despicable or forbidden) to link to this page when putting it in front of a big crowd (not e.g. when viewing it on your own). Your comment is therefore entirely beside the point.
It's rude to link to an ugly site when you could link to a better, more readable one. It's rude to lie and manipulate people for money, when you could easily avoid doing so. Advertising should not be encouraged, ever.
When you have the opportunity to show someone an ad-free, single page, uncluttered version of a piece of literature, do it. Please. Always.
Advertising is basically all manipulation and lies. If it isn't, we just call it "information".
Look at what they call "underwriting" on nonprofit independent or public radio stations. "This production is brought to you by Bill's Shoes, 123 Main Street, Saginaw. Selling Men's and Women's shoes, boots and sandals since 1982."
Advertising goes beyond that, using false superlatives, misleading copy, calls to action, and peer pressure, at best. At worst it's just lies. There is nothing free about "buy one get one free", for instance. It's a lie. Sales, "deals", "limited time only" -- these are psychological games. Manipulation. Often, the "everyday" price the sale prices is marked down from, is a lie. Misleading propaganda at best. Straight up fraud at worst. This is the everyday "harmless" content we allow our children and politicians to watch.
And that's just traditional television, radio and print advertising. What passes for advertising on the internet is uniformly awful. I'd call most of it malware.
We all know that's not swalsh's point. WaPo is doing us a public service by reporting on all of this, we should encourage such reporting by giving them the ad-revenue from out views.
Pointless in what sense? In that the Washington Post needs to make money or that you want quality journalism, no ads, to pay nothing for it, and golden unicorns to ride on?
Also, the original page has a single page, no pagination:
My point is that, journalism is free because they are subsidized by advertisements. If you as an individual want to go directly to the print page... of course that's fine. It's great that you have that option.
However, when posting a link on a site that will likely generate hundreds of hits (3% of which might click the ad), its only fair to THE COMPANY to post to their main site.
I dint get how this is rude, it would be trivial for THE COMPANY to add a few lines to their server configuration to redirect all incoming traffic from anywhere (or even just HN or Reddit) to redirect seamlessly to the non-print page that has both the ads and a print button....but this site hasn't done that (yet).
I don't think it's really that big of a deal. If it was a subscription service we were all bypassing without paying that's one thing, but this is just another page on their public website like anything else.
If you don't want people to see it, don't publish it online.
That doesn't really go far enough: If people don't buy more of the products being advertised as a result of the ad then the advertisers will stop running the ads and WaPo will lose revenue. That's not fair to WaPo.
Everyone should promise to buy whatever product is being advertised or at least convince themselves that their brain patterns have been changed so that they are more likely to buy the product in the future.
Every time I read something NSA/FBI/CIA/KGB/Interpol/MI5/Stasi related I get this instinctive feeling of angriness and sadness at the same time.
We were given the “internet”, pretty much for free, and we believed it would be a fair deal? That there would be nothing in for them? When was the last time you were give something for free, can you even remember?
They are breaking encryption? Really?! Didn’t we learn that it’s not feasible to break encryption? Ah, but they are using quantum computers, right. Should we even believe Snowden and Assange and Schneier, or anyone really? My father even thinks they are watching him through the cable set. Am I supposed to argue with him about the opposite?
Worldwide, governments and agencies and individuals control whatever they want, however they want, whenever they want. And we are just siting and watching them. Individuals are profiting from illegal activities? Who cares? NSA is breaking an amendment? Who cares? Governments are saying A and doing B? Who cares?All these are breaking the law? They are the law. We let them become the law. Because we don’t care.
Damon Albarn (songwriter of the virtual music group Gorillaz) was once asked about X-Factor (a music reality show) and his answer applies not only to it but to a lot of things in our lives too: Every time you do even a little thing that harms your privacy or your freedom or even your dignity, it might not do a lot of harm because it is little but what’s actually happening is that you are moving the privacy/freedom/dignity barrier away from where it should be. And all these times, all these “littles”, they sum up and next time you do something very bad it looks little again but it’s very very big.
Because you don’t realise how much the barrier has moved.
We didn’t care when we had to pay unreasonable taxes last year. We don’t care when politicians lie to us in front of our sad faces, time after time, election after election. We don’t care about other any other person’s rights. We don’t care about unfairness all over around us. We don’t care about any kind of oppression, anywhere in the world. So we won’t care when we find out that someone is scrapping this page and is adding data to our profiles on a database. Of course we won’t. We don’t care that in 2014 we can send rockets to the space but haven’t evolved our culture to to the point where it would be our collective duty as the human race to make sure that everybody on this planet can have all the water and the food they need and access to an amazing education and an incredible health system for their whole life.
We have lost the war, and we don’t even care. We should expect the worst, really.
Now, please, save the “if you really cared you would actually do something” comments. Because the truth is, I can’t do anything. Not alone. I can’t make anyone care. Most of us can’t. We don’t have access to them, we don’t have the mediums to stimulate them, we don’t have nothing. I didn’t want to become a politician or a media baron or a general or anything that involves that sort of authority over other people anyway. I wanted to become a sports writer, then a columnist, then an academic and then a software developer. And I am not even a talented software developer that can hack for good or build software that will help liberate the world. And I believe that protests and occupying and rioting and any sort of such action is just expansion and nothing else, so I don’t do it. But this fact, that I haven’t found a way to “fight”, doesn’t mean I can not be heartedly disappointed by our collective indifference. Maybe that’s what I can offer, these typed words.
I shouldn’t be writing this.
I should be working on my personal project that will help me get a job and make money instead. I shouldn’t even care as much to talk about it.
But all that is left is our ideas and voices, really, and I just can’t give up without even saying a few things — even to an online community where I know nobody. Not to change anything, probably, but at least to say I tried.
I shouldn’t be writing this. But I care. And I hope you start caring too.
> We were given the “internet”, pretty much for free, and we believed it would be a fair deal?
I have to pay to get to the internet. The internet where people willingly create content. People with private information create content to be seen without additional payments. Companies create content to advertise and sell their products and so on.
I see this as a fair deal. Why not?
I agree with the rest of you posting but I don't see this as a price for the Internet. I see it more of a result of the greed that accompanies this economic system. It is something that may bring more money in. Thats why they do it and thats why they advertised and sold it pretty so good. People are happy today to give away their privacy. Happy customer, happy industry.
Governments just profit from the advertisements and their effect. Thats why this NSA thing will pass and in the end there will be no solution for the masses.
But I see a way. There will always be those who find ways to improve security. If those develop tools easy enough that the usual internet surfer can use you just need to make this "cool".
This already happens. Recently there was a TV show here in Germany where the host confronted some individuals in the audience with "private" information from their social networks. The people were shocked. Some were even angry. Those people will think about it twice. The angry one will defintly start making their facebook page at least private (or friends only).
"Personal-Leaks" could create this effect for huge ammounts of people and they may be a thing in the future.
That's why I said "pretty much": You may have to pay but the value for money deal is one of the best deals we ever got for anything, worldwide. We can do so many things online with a minimal cost.
The industry can do whatever it wants as long as it is legal. But it's not only about the industry, it's about the bigger picture. It's about a few guys with cameras around you recording every single thing you do and say (yes, yes, only while you are online and only while you are carrying a cellphone). I don't know what exactly they are doing with this information and I don't need to know in order to have the right to say that I don't like it.
I have hope too, but things are currently heading in a very wrong direction.
Can we stop pushing these lines everywhere, everytime there is a topic on the NSA ? It's really starting to get boring, and the OP was saying more than that anyway.
Poetry is appropriate at funerals, and I too share a grim outlook for this country. That said, I would argue even further back than recently.
The federal government has been exceeding its authority since its inception, hell, if not before. James Madison, as president, couldn't figure out how to reconcile his responsibility to build a system of highways (which he thought was a fantastic idea) with the constraints on the federal government imposed by the Constitution.
Since that time, we've gone well beyond highways; We've implemented social security, medicare, medicaid, Obamacare. We've ratified the Constitution to allow for a federal income tax to support it all. We've banned alcohol, pissed everybody off, and unbanned it again. We've attempted to curtail the first, second, fourth, fifth amendments, etc.
We've got a nation full of people who voted in the last guy largely because they thought he'd give them affordable health care, ignoring that, at least in my interpretation of a limited federal government and separation of powers, our government should never have been allowed to grow large enough to be that way.
We've demanded that the government fix this thing, that thing, the other thing; clean our waters, enforce minimum wages, keep us safe from drug companies, fight our wars -- then we wonder how we've gotten to exist in a nanny state?
As a parent, it's always been hard to reconcile the notion of freedom with parenthood. In an ideal world, my child would be free to take drugs recreationally, sacrifice education for an early entry to the work force (or vice versa), prostitute herself for pay (literally, not figuratively)... but as her parent, I want none of those things for her, so I disallow them. In that same vain, if we treat our government like the father whose duty it is to protect us, it should not surprise us that the father bans us from potentially harmful activities, reads our diary, looks through our phones and follows us around in his car -- to keep us safe.
These are the things parents do. I don't know of a time it's occurred specifically, but I'm sure that I've unjustly grounded my child at least once. I'm sure that I've disallowed her from doing something that I would cheer on if done by an adult peer. I'm sure that I've invaded her privacy, and if she were an adult, possibly even violated her civil liberties. On three occasions in her 12 years of life, I've assaulted her by spanking.
Make no mistake -- I'm not advocating the government's actions, or excusing them... not in any way. I am very dumbstruck that so many share my condemnation of these actions, because so many people are those that voted for health care, for social security, for national defense, for the EPA, the FCC, the TSA, etc., for the safety that only a government all-father can provide. We've allowed this to go on for decades, perhaps most of the time we've been a nation, really. Our founding fathers warned us (well, most of them) that this would happen if we weren't vigilantly watching our government, and it has happened, precisely because we weren't vigilantly watching our government.
Or perhaps it's always been this way, with approximately half of our electorate desperately wishing our government would do far more, with the other half desperately wishing our government would do far less.
Either way, fixing it may be too far gone. As near as I've mapped back to, the idea of federal constraint hasn't really existed since the mid-30s, possibly even earlier than that. I try to vote Libertarian, but at a federal level, that's hard to do, and comes with its own baggage. Rand Paul, whom I agree with on a great many issues, has some views that perplex me, as did his father. I'm also not convinced that he isn't a consummate politician.
I disagree with many of Obama's political choices, but I did sincerely believe that he would try to live up to more of his election promises, promises that now seem like nothing more than the pre-election fodder that we get from every politician in recent memory. I worry that Rand Paul is no better, or that if there are forces controlling Obama's hand, that they won't similarly control his.
What's even worse than that is that I don't even know if our country can exist under the style of government that I want for it. It might well be that we're all better off in a socialist nation, where the government is indeed the caretaker for all, and that in order to have a nation that works, we should just succumb to that. It's not Constitutional, and I would pray that if we were in fact headed that direction, we'd at least try to ratify the Constitution, or abolish it altogether in lieu of its replacement.
Surely, the minarchist type of federal government the Constitution prescribes would lead to a far harsher nation with fewer large infrastructure problems, fewer social programs... but with it, we would indeed get far more freedom. And at least for me, sitting in the comfort of my living room, typing on the DARPA supplied internet, on the Macbook borne of foreign labor, paid for with the government's wage protections, fair and equitable treatment, and contract enforcement, that price is worth paying... but I fear it would be too high for too many, and the end result is a loop back around to exactly where we are.
Anyway, apologies for the rant. I don't intend to make a point, or convert anyone's political beliefs, or even elucidate anyone to my own political beliefs, which I have little confidence in at the moment -- but your reply resonated with me, and I felt it deserved a sincere response, even if it amounts to very little.
To clear any possible misunderstandings, I am not from and I don't live in the US. I was not talking about US-specific governments, agencies or individuals as I believe such phenomena have no nationality.
The "father" example you are giving has been the very exact argument people have against this kind of situations: We don't want any structure to act like it is our father or mother while your daughter (and most daughters and sons) will probably start crying if you tell them you are going to go away from their life.
As a society we have agreed (actively or passively) to a certain set of laws, that should be it. No Uncle Sam or Brother Jonathan.
I get that this answer might seem overly terse, but there are a group of unnamed prisoners in Guantanamo Bay sitting there, not getting the benefit of due process that they are obligated.
Under the NDAA, the president has the authority to enshrine anyone he wishes, subject to zero oversight, to a similar fate.
Under the PATRIOT Act, we've bombed American Citizens suspected of possibly committing a crime in the future without the benefit of oversight, due process, or any of the Constitutional protections ordinarily afforded to American citizens.
Aside from that, there are far more instances throughout history, but those are the (IMO) most egregious offenses under the current administration at least.
I apologise for the quality of the sources of information. I can't find alternatives. It's interesting to note Obama's speech on NSL's from 2005 five minutes in to the first youtube video. As an authority on such issues he should be held in high enough regard for you.
"Then they came for the blah, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a blah."
In responding to the above, you said: "What group is no longer here because the CIA/NSA have decided they shouldn't exist?"
The absence of voices contesting this apparatus is used as a defence for the NSL's and a similar mechanism used under FISA.
200,000 is a huge number. Their dissenting voices don't exist legally, they cannot speak out.
Imagine this: "I didn't speak out for the blah because I got a national security letter."
I see no mention of blackmail, who were you talking to about blackmail?
I guess you're getting down voted because it's an emotional issue. But you're right, so far, the number of people targeted by the NSA/CIA with extreme methods (i.e. drone strikes, imprisonment without trial, rendition, warrantless spying, blackmail) seems relatively small, and it seems to be mostly restricted to non-Americans or people that the American public don't really care about.
That doesn't mean it's okay. Think about what's going on here. The USA has basically created for itself a secret police with powers that, in practise, are very close to those of an agency like the KGB or the Stasi. Sure, as you point out, these new powers are not being used to cart people away wholesale. But you should still be very nervous.
Even now, we might be past the point of no return. That's not just hyperbole on my part. The way I see it, it's very easy to get into in a kind of ratchet situation where powers and abuses can only increase over time.
We may already be there. It's politically very difficult to reduce powers for any agency, let one that pushes both military and law enforcement buttons. Even if calls for reform get taken seriously, they may be dealt with by sacrificing a scapegoat and making superficial changes. Even if there was a strong serious concerted political effort to reform the NSA and CIA do you really trust them not to interfere with it? Do you strongly believe, without any doubt, that the NSA and CIA are above blackmailing their own politicians?
> seems relatively small, and it seems to be mostly restricted to non-Americans or people that the American public don't really care about.
For what it's worth - that's the very point of the poem, that it always starts with the undesirables, minorities, or peoples to whom the population wouldn't object to. The tacit implication there is that those people were all portrayed as evil first, allowing public acceptance of their abuse.
For the most part, even after Hitler started murdering Jews, he was still enjoyed pretty strong popularity.
The poem is one massive slippery-slope fallacy, and it's also a poem, not reality. It's fiction. Just like 1984, Brave New World, or any other literary piece that gets bandied about these days. Absolutely zero anchor in reality.
And "Jews" isn't the same as "terrorists". The US isn't going after people based on what they look like or who their parents are, they're going after people based on what they do and say. I know, it's shocking, that when you try to enter into violent combat with a nation-state, that nation-state is going to kill you. Those assholes.
According to who, exactly? Who's to say that it isn't simply a placeholder for 'arab', or 'sheikh'?
It's worth noting that I don't think it actually is, and I don't know of any specific abuses of the powers enumerated by the aforementioned acts -- but the point isn't what they're doing is wrong (though it is), it's that we've allowed the government to grant itself the authority powerful enough that, if they wanted to start killing Jews, or Arabs, or Sheikhs, or whomever, they could. The NDAA and Patriot Act give them the authority to do so.
That is a very, very scary proposition to me. That we have abused such power in the past only lends further credence that we will again in the future, and while I don't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities in suggesting that our current administration is evil, there is literally nothing in place now to prevent us from electing a Hitleresque tyrant and him getting away with committing the slaughter of millions.
"Slippery slope fallacy" is an odd accusation as well, considering that somewhat accurately synopsizes many distinct periods in our world's history leading up to genocide, politicide and democide.
I'm sorry that you're so cavalier about the subject, but there's a very real argument that this is exactly the kind of authority the Constitution was designed to limit any single branch of the government from having with its separation of powers. If the executive branch has the power to detain or kill anyone it wishes with no Legislative or Judicial oversight, and the executive branch controls the US military, then there is literally no power that we can pretend it doesn't have.
That's an entirely meritless accusation. I wouldn't want the power if it were handed to me, and frankly, if I were "in charge" of everything, the very first thing I would do is repeal any and every law that places anyone above, outside of, or beyond the purview of the law.
Our nation was founded on the concept that nobody is exempt from the law, and the NDAA, Patriot Act and laws of their ilk are antithetical to that core tenet. They destroy the fifth amendment entirely, and do severe harm to other rights.
That said, on the quality of your reply, I'll end this conversation here. Regards.
Our nation was not founded on the concept that nobody is exempt from the law (see: Presidential pardons). That's an intellectually dishonest thing to say. What you suggest is quite simply stupid - should every enemy combatant be given the chance to take the lives of US citizens, just in the effort to give that combatant a trial? Hold trials on the battlefield?
Your problem boils down to the fact that there are people out there in this world who have power, and you do not. This bothers you. The NDAA and the Patriot Act weren't created in a bubble, and if you actually want to understand what caused them to be written other than malice (seriously?), you ought to read more about the history surrounding the times, as well as current events today.
Sometimes the US government goes too far, but not nearly as often, or nearly as extreme as you keep saying, and frankly it's just sad that someone like you can have even an infinitesimally small sway in how this country is run.
I'll respond to the little bit of your post that isn't a baseless ad hominem.
Presidential pardons have legal validity for purposes of righting wrongdoings, travesties of justice, and for preventing excessive punishment of those unjustly sentenced for political crimes, etc. It's stated intent is to correct injustice, not perpetrate it.
I'm not suggesting that every enemy combatant deserves trial -- in an active war, it is ridiculous to suggest that bullets are halted mid-air to conduct court. It is equally naive to suggest that the government is justified in the slaughter of everyone who might ever do us harm.
Has it been abused, certainly. Show me a law that hasn't. The difference between pardon and NDAA-type of laws is that the latter has no redeeming characteristic. Its sole purpose is to vest a single person with the power to do literally whatever he wishes, without oversight, without scrutiny, without potential for remediation. There is no justice to be found in its exertion, even when used for noble intent.
There are, or at least were, procedures in place that would have prevented such atrocity from occurring, but those procedures were nullified by the NDAA. There is no need for government oversight whatsoever, nor any reason to suggest that whomever happens to be president cannot simply murder whomever he wants under the guise of national interest.
I understand that the NDAA and PATRIOT Act weren't created in a bubble, but as you have implored me to "study the history" (which I am well aware of, and don't understand what I might have said to convince you of my ignorance of an era that I was actively involved in), I would implore you to study the documents that led up to our nation's independence.
Overwhelmingly, they point to the foulness of this sort of unchecked power, and the founding fathers literally made every effort to ensure that this sort of abuse never came to pass.
Whether or not the NDAA or PATRIOT Act is ever used is irrelevant, their very existence negates the tenets of our central foundation of governance.
> Sometimes the US government goes too far, but not nearly as often, or nearly as extreme as you keep saying
The federal government goes beyond its Constitutional authority literally every single day in this nation. The government exerts federal control in California to arrest the proprietors of legal marijuana dispensaries. They do this by abusing the Interstate Commerce Clause. The Commerce Clause grants Congress the power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes" -- and by abusing the 'among', have defined that to mean that they can control any action within a state, whether or not that action may extend beyond a state's borders.
The federal government further abuses the 'Necessary and Proper' clause to extend its powers beyond their section 8 enumerated powers.
There are literally countless examples of federal overreach, some of which are gaining ground in recent times, like the overturning of DOMA (Thanks Obama). I'm sorry you don't see them, or don't see them as the overreach I so strongly believe them to be.
Either way, I won't further engage in a conversation predicated on your baseless attacks due to a relatively minor disagreement on merits. I would encourage you to learn how to converse with others without resorting to ad hominem attacks. Your views aren't invalid just because I disagree with them, however strongly I might, and you'd do well to acknowledge as much.
There's so much wrong with what you've written (I've listed some of them below), I honestly don't know what to do. I think I might just have to accept people like you exist, but are in no way capable of impacting me.
* Ad hominems would require I disqualify your argument based on who you are. Considering I don't know anything about you, that'd literally be impossible for me to do.
* Presidential pardons don't have any stated intents.
* The NDAA's sole purpose is not to vest a single person with the power to do literally whatever he wishes, whoever not whomever/
* Documents written over 200 years ago would have to be abstracted to the point of mootness to be relevant in the world we live in today.
* The Interstate Commerce Clause is part of the Constitution, so any usage of it is by definition constitutional.
* Same goes with the elastic clause. You're just repeating ancient complaints - people have been bitching about what you're complaining about here (abuse of these two clauses) since the dawn of the US, and yet somehow the US is still here today.
I'll say what I said before: you're not in power, and that scares you. Your reaction (a natural one) is to lash out at those who are in power, and come up with some kind of conspiratorial explanation of why the world is the way it is. Why? Because at least, if SOMEONE is in charge, then there's a plan, even if that plan is nefarious. To you, and people like you, the idea that events aren't being planned or orchestrated is a terrifying thought. No one in charge?! So you come up with these crackpot, "The US government is out of control!" theories to help sleep at night.
But that doesn't make them true.
It's no longer an ad hominem to say you're full of shit and don't know what you're talking about, as I've demonstrated that fact. It's merely a conclusion based on observation, at this point.
> Considering I don't know anything about you, that'd literally be impossible for me to do.
Let's compare and contrast those, for a moment, shall we?
> The Interstate Commerce Clause is part of the Constitution, so any usage of it is by definition constitutional.
The Interstate Commerce Clause has a definition, and whatever its definitions where, judicial precedence precludes it from trumping a right enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Also, just because something is "in" the Constitution does not mean that one can apply any contrived definition of its terms as justification for an action.
> people have been bitching about what you're complaining about here (abuse of these two clauses) since the dawn of the US, and yet somehow the US is still here today.
False. There is document stare decisis on record indicating a massive shift in these interpretations under FDR's reign. While I can't factually defend against the assertion that I'm rehashing old business (which I'll agree that I am), I can factually assert that it has not in fact 'always been this way', which falsifies your argument.
> It's no longer an ad hominem to say you're full of shit and don't know what you're talking about, as I've demonstrated that fact. It's merely a conclusion based on observation, at this point.
You haven't actually illustrated any points that are supported by fact. You've levied accusations, which you've supported with more accusations, none of which are provable.
In short, I shouldn't have responded to this post, but for some odd reason, I took poorly to being referred to as "full of shit" on a subject I've studied a good portion of my life by someone who is literally countering factual arguments with untruth.
This is the last topic I'll post on the matter, and I apologize to you and everyone else on HN for not having quit some time ago.
> Also, just because something is "in" the Constitution does not mean that one can apply any contrived definition of its terms as justification for an action.
> While I can't factually defend against the assertion that I'm rehashing old business (which I'll agree that I am), I can factually assert that it has not in fact 'always been this way', which falsifies your argument.
> You've levied accusations, which you've supported with more accusations, none of which are provable.
> I took poorly to being referred to as "full of shit" on a subject I've studied a good portion of my life by someone who is literally countering factual arguments with untruth.
The first quote is in response to me saying, "The Constitution is, by definition, constitutional."
The second quote is you saying, "I could prove this but I won't." It reminds me of the schoolyard habit of claiming to know what a big word means, but then saying, "I'm not telling you!"
The third quote is exactly the kind of thing you've been railing against in our correspondence - that is, the focus on self rather than content.
The fourth quote is functionally an appeal to authority ("I've studied this for a long time, therefore I must know what I'm talking about!"). In reality, you may just a) suck at studying, or b) have caught yourself up in a feedback loop where your confirmation bias prevents you from actually learning anything.
Are you proud of yourself here? Have you presented the best form of your argument? What do you think I believe, at this point? I know your argument, but what is mine?
I just don't understand how a human being who thinks as much as you apparently do on this topic can write so little about it when asked explicitly to elaborate.
Fine. You win, because I can't let this go on as being seen as possibly true.
> The first quote is in response to me saying, "The Constitution is, by definition, constitutional."
False equivalency. What you said was, in fact:
> The Interstate Commerce Clause is part of the Constitution, so any usage of it is by definition constitutional.
Because today is repeal day... The 18th amendment is part of the Constitution, so any usage of it is by definition constitutional, right? Clearly, wrong. Judicial precedence supersedes it. The 18th amendment, and resultant Volstead act, was repealed by the 21st amendment. Per your assertion, the 18th amendment still holds Constitutional weight because it is part of the Constitution, despite the notion that it was expressly repealed.
Whether or not the 18th had been expressly repealed, it wouldn't even necessarily matter. If the 21st amendment did not expressly repeal the 18th, but instead stated less explicitly that "the sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors is not prohibited", then it would still supersede the provisions of the 18th amendment on the grounds of judicial precedence.
Judicial precedence applies to amendments, contracts, compacts, stare decisis and other forms of precedent. As such, the 21st amendment would, with that pithy statement, _de_ _facto_ have repealed the 18th amendment on grounds of simply being newer. The newer law, where contradictory to the older law, takes precedence.
The Commerce Clause, on those grounds, cannot infringe either states' rights or any of the amendments enumerated within the Bill of Rights, as each were ratified into the Constitution ex post facto which, under judicial precedence, prohibits its effect being interpreted as you've stated.
Beyond that, I also stated this:
> Also, just because something is "in" the Constitution does not mean that one can apply any contrived definition of its terms as justification for an action.
In the New Deal interpretation of the Commerce Clause, the Supreme Court, under much political pressure, having recently denied Constitutional rewrites to FDR, who threatened to replace the whole lot, had to bend language to make the written word match the intent. "Regulate", which had always been interpreted to mean "make regular" was now being interpreted as "to prohibit", despite almost 150 years of precedent to the contrary. "Commerce", which had previously been interpreted in the same way one might interpret "trade", as in bulk transactions, had to be construed into a far broader term, indicating "any possible economic transaction", and "among", as in "among the several states" had to be construed to mean "within any state", despite, again, ~100+ years of contrary guidance, much of which is also codified by founder intent.
Common Sense, the Federalist Papers and even Hamilton's (the more expansionist founder of the day) papers all collect to codify the intent of the day that trade regulatory authority should be non-interventionist, and act as a bulwark against trade exploitation -- you see, in the day, the common maliase of organized trade was the lack of a central authority to settle extra-state disputes. I could order a truckload of ale from a manufacturer in Virginia, have it shipped to Maryland, and then simply refuse to pay. The state courts of Maryland would be beholden to me, as a local business, so the Virginian would not get a fair trial in Maryland, and vice versa.
The power "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States" was expressly solicited as protection from mass exploitation in commerce.
> I just don't understand how a human being who thinks as much as you apparently do on this topic can write so little about it when asked explicitly to elaborate.
For the same reason I won't expound further on the other points, because I believe you're intractable on the subject. I haven't made attempts to impugn your character, or called you names, and it genuinely confuses me that you think resorting to such tactics improves _your_ position.
Because I believe you are unswayable, I only correct this point here in the event that some unfortunate reader might stumble upon your points, and actually believe that the Commerce clause has the intent that you suggest. It doesn't frankly, and your assertion that it does exposes more than a single fault in your logic, rather, it exposes the very foundation upon which your logic is predicated. You've illustrated an ignorance of several of the core legal principles upon which the Constitution relies, and dismissed them in favor of false equivalency and name-calling, while accusing me of failing to make the best form of the argument.
Now, with that out of the way, I may later return to respond to the other points on which you're factually incorrect, but I will not engage you further in any other regard.
Again, My sincere apologies to anyone on HN who might be reading this tripe.
Alright, Jesus. It's like you took a vocabulary word-jumble and decided to throw meaning to the wind. Here we go down the rabbit hole:
> False equivalency. What you said was, in fact:
That's not a false equivalency, it's an actual equivalency. In your example, you go on to mention the 18th amendment, which is part of the constitution, and is therefore constitutional. And it is. But so is the 21st amendment.
> blah blah blah judicial precedence (you say it a bunch)
You missed this concept entirely. In no way does judicial precedence rewrite the Constitution whatsoever. It provides an interpretation of the Constitution, as that's the formal function of the judicial branch - to judge the laws of the land. Crazy, I know, but you don't say "judicial precedence has repealed law x y and z". That's not how the term is used, and so no, judicial precedence has not repealed the 18th amendment. No one says that, as that's not how the term is used.
Furthermore, you go on to mention the time in which a law was passed. That has absolutely nothing to do with judicial precedence whatsoever. Judicial precedence is when a judge sets a standard for how a law is interpreted. It's got absolutely nothing to do with the novelty of the law. So, this is not true:
> The Commerce Clause, on those grounds, cannot infringe either states' rights or any of the amendments enumerated within the Bill of Rights, as each were ratified into the Constitution ex post facto which, under judicial precedence, prohibits its effect being interpreted as you've stated.
It's actually kind of laughable that you think this is true, because of your massive beef with the PATRIOT act. Weren't you just saying how unconstitutional the PATRIOT act is, and how it steps on all kinds of other laws?
You're not even internally consistent.
> For the same reason I won't expound further on the other points, because I believe you're intractable on the subject.
It's fairly ironic you say that, given how similarly I feel towards you. I'm fairly certain you've built up a bubble of ignorance, and anyone who challenges that bubble is, well, treated as you've been treating me. You pretend like I've been insulting your character (I don't know you character, so that's literally impossible). The little I've been able to discern about you has been based on my observations of what you've been writing, and how offended you get when I've challenged your opinion.
It will be readily apparent to any poor soul who decides to read your text how little you know of the topic at hand, and this is not what you call an "insult". It's an observation. You think the commerce clause has been rendered moot by other constitutional amendments, you think the Federalist Papers are worth reading beyond their historical significance, you think "judicial precedence" is when new laws supersede (the word I suspect you're looking for in the first place) old, and you get super offended on the Internet over what amounts to normal conversation.
But please, we'll continue this until you tire, because I'm going to break your bubble of ignorance - I'm determined to. I want you to have to come to terms with the fact that you don't actually know very much on this topic, and to admit that you aren't nearly educated enough to say what's wrong with this country.
We'll start simple - what is it exactly you think I'm intractable on? I suspect you haven't the faintest idea anymore, if you ever actually did understand my viewpoint (again, this is an observation and not an insult - I can't believe I have to label these things for you).
To keep things simple, I'll again refute the factual errors alone.
> That's not a false equivalency, it's an actual equivalency.
Wrong again. "This interpretation of this part of the Constitution" != "The Constitution is Constitutional". It isn't true generally, it isn't true practically, and it definitely is not true in this instance. Beyond that, the deliberate misconstruing of its meaning, a meaning for which we have clear precedent and case law, is simply farcical. You are wrong here, I've explained why, and your refusal to accept that isn't a rebuttal.
> In no way does judicial precedence rewrite the Constitution whatsoever.
Yes, it does. Ratifications to the Constitution, and in fact any contract, defer in authority to the more recent amendment wherever terms are equally asserted. The term for it is "leges posteriores priores contrarias abrogant", which states, as I asserted, that subsequent laws repeal predecessors that disagree with them. The recency of precedent matters, whether you care to accede that it does or not.
> It's actually kind of laughable that you think this is true, because of your massive beef with the PATRIOT act. Weren't you just saying how unconstitutional the PATRIOT act is, and how it steps on all kinds of other laws?
I assume the point you're making here is that I'm being inconsistent by asserting that recency reigns supreme, so the PATRIOT act, being newer than the Constitution, should be most current legal interpretation? Because that is easily falsifiable.
16 American Jurisprudence 2d, Sec 177 late 2d, Sec 256 states the following:
A void act cannot be legally consistent with a valid one. An unconstitutional law
cannot operate to supersede any existing valid law. Indeed, insofar as a statute
runs counter to the fundamental law of the lend, it is superseded thereby.
No one Is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it.
Since the passage of the 21st amendment, Congress cannot pass a law that prohibits the sale or transport of intoxicating liquors, because it would be unconstitutional. The most recent stance, in the Constitution, states that the sale and/or transport of liquor is allowed, so if Congress were to pass a law prohibiting that, it would be void. It would not, under Constitution scrutiny, _even be a law at all_, despite it being on the books and in the Congressional register. No citizen would be obligated to uphold it, no police bound to uphold it, no courts, etc.
For this reason, where the PATRIOT act infringes the Constitution, it is null, void. The language comprising the PATRIOT act, specifically as referring to the 'secret lists' that lack oversight have been found unconstitutional on no less than two occasions, and predecessors to the PATRIOT act were struck down on grounds of unconstitutionality. Regardless, Congress passed it again, with minor tweaks to confuse the issue, which was found unconstitutional as well, for which the mitigation was the insertion of the FISA court, to provide oversight, which is currently what's being challenged in various places as well.
If the PATRIOT act wishes to supersede portions of the Constitution, there's a Constitutionally prescribed process for that, and it's ratification. The process of ratification is not the same as simply "passing a new law" through Congress, but I'll leave the procedure as an exercise for you to Google, as it isn't terribly relevant to this discussion.
> You pretend like I've been insulting your character
> you're not in power, and that scares you.
> you're full of shit and don't know what you're talking about
> I might just have to accept people like you exist, but are in no way capable of impacting me
> you come up with these crackpot, "The US government is out of control!" theories to help sleep at night
> it's just sad that someone like you can have even an infinitesimally small sway in how this country is run
Those are character evaluations, that you claim not to be doing. Well, actually, they're character judgements, and one of them is a self-affirmation of your own intractability, which is something you're apparently trying to push onto me.
> I want you to have to come to terms with the fact that you don't actually know very much on this topic
You have no idea how much I know on the subject. As every counter you've offered is literally riddled with falsifiability, I don't know how you can continue to make the assertion that I'm under informed here. Regardless, I don't wish to impugn your character as baselessly as you have mine, so I demur, but saying things like "[when a law was enacted] has absolutely nothing to do with judicial precedence whatsoever" and then expect one to take you seriously as you insult their intelligence... it's a bit of a tough sell.
> and how offended you get when I've challenged your opinion.
I'm not offended that you've challenged my opinions. You really haven't. To suggest that you've challenged my opinions is to suggest that by asserting that 2+2=42, you've challenged math.
As for answering your questions, I confess, I really don't desire to continue this conversation any further, and haven't for some time. This thread is a disgrace to HN, as has been both of our conduct. I've tried, and failed, to conduct the argument civilly. I'll concede that if you're trolling, as I suspect, you've won. I've been trolled into violating my own stop-loss on three separate occasions, but of course, there's an XKCD for that, and I'm as human as the next guy who argues on the internet.
You do this thing, when you write, where you take what you're trying to argue, and presuppose it as correct. You've done this in a number of places.
First, you start by presupposing I even said "This interpretation of this part of the Constitution", which isn't actually what I said at all. Had I actually written something like that, you'd be correct, but I didn't. The disagreement we're having revolves around that fact, but instead of actually arguing the point, you simply assumed it to be what you said, and then continued to draw conclusions. Every conclusion you've made on that topic after you presupposed what I said as something I didn't actually say is therefore incorrect. If you want to argue, then the point you'd be arguing is whether or not I said "This interpretation of this part of the Constitution". The rest of your argument hinges on it, and I don't believe I said that at all.
Then, you begin talking about "judicial precedence". I don't think you know what this phrase means, because you keep using it interchangeably with the word "law". A judicial precedence is, as far as these [0][1][2][3][4] sources tell me, is more or less when a judge hands down a ruling on a section of law that stands as a guideline for future judges to rule against that law. This is not, as you keep saying, a "rewriting" of any kind of law - constitutional or otherwise. This topic has nothing whatsoever to do with the ratification of constitutional amendments. A ruling may interpret a particular part of a law or the Constitution in a certain way, but it doesn't literally or figuratively "rewrite" said law. Furthermore, judicial precedence can change over time, or be superseded by a higher court's ruling. THIS is where time matters, not in the laws as written themselves.
Which brings me to my third point, your misunderstanding of how laws are written. There aren't "revisions" of laws, where you have to know which law was passed when. There is one set of laws. This set of laws gets changed over time - rewritten, modified, redacted, etc. There is, at any given time, only one body of text that constitutes federal law[5], and one body of text that constitutes state law[6]. Again, when a law is appended to these bodies of text, this has nothing to do with how or when rulings on these laws are passed down. When a law is passed, and when it's first ruled on (setting precedence, as in judicial precedence), are completely irrelevant.
Then you start getting confused, and go on a bit of a rant. You're in the middle of talking about judicial precedence, and you seem to kind of mold that in with Jurisprudence, which deals with the constitutionality of laws. It seems to me you think they're related? They're not, just to be clear. You also don't seem clear on what happens to a law when it's found unconstitutional. You say, "It would not even be a law at all" which isn't true. It'd be a law. Just an unconstitutional one, at least until a higher court rules, or another court of equal level rules differently.
And then we get to the part of the comment where you act like my observations are without cause or justification.
Here's the thing - you seem to believe, with a high (very high) level of certainty, that you're educated on this topic. It's that very certainty that undermines your credibility, however. People who are actually educated on the topic of constitutional law don't have your confidence. It's not a very consensus-oriented topic, even among experts. I think you know where I'm going with this, but in case you don't, here are some links: [7][8][9]. Suffice it to say, you share all the hallmarks of a fanatic. And I know you think this is a personal attack, and not relevant, but I just urge you to do more than you usually do for this specific belief.
Edit: I can't reply any further (no 'reply' message appears), but it genuinely frightens me that you've written laws. I'm going to live on the assumption that you've just lied about that.
> you start by presupposing I even said "This interpretation of this part of the Constitution", which isn't actually what I said at all.
> The Interstate Commerce Clause is part of the Constitution, so any usage of it is by definition constitutional.
The second quoted statement there is an interpretation of a part of the Constitution. "Any usage" of a part of the Constitution is not necessarily Constitutional. The Commerce Clause has a meaning, but we should be able to agree that "any usage" of the text is not necessarily valid. I could use the text to suggest that the federal government, for example, has authority over interstate that are not in the United States. I could apply the law to apply to any solid state hard drives that happen to be on an interstate by contorting the statement "among the several states."
So, am I wrong in suggesting that your interpretation is an interpretation? Am I wrong in suggesting that the Commerce Clause is part of the Constitution?
That you later change the statement to the broader "The Constitution is Constitutional" is a false dichotomy. The narrower does not agree with the broad, despite your suggestion that they are equal. They are not.
> I don't think you know what this phrase means, because you keep using it interchangeably with the word "law"
No, I'm not. I am admittedly watering it down for your benefit though.
> A judicial precedence is, as far as these \sources tell me, is more or less when a judge hands down a ruling on a section of law that stands as a guideline for future judges to rule against that law.
That is correct, but far from complete.
> This is not, as you keep saying, a "rewriting" of any kind of law - constitutional or otherwise.
That is incorrect, and I've already explained how, but I'll expound. The federal register lists every law on the books, whether valid or invalid, constitutional or unconstitutional. The register, as a result, has many contradictory laws, and statutory interpretation must be used to divine which has bearing over which ones do not. A first principal of statutory interpretation is leges posteriores priores contrarias abrogant, which uses recency as the proverbial 'tie-breaker' against otherwise co-equal provisions. The newer law invalidates the older one. I'll concede that it does not in fact rewrite it, in the sense that the original law is not physically altered, but for all practical purposes, it loses any gravity in lieu of the newer, and is considered all but re-written, invalidated, nulled, or whatever way you'd like to put it that doesn't require further arguing of semantics.
> This topic has nothing whatsoever to do with the ratification of constitutional amendments.
The applicability of the Commerce Clause toward the constraint of the Bill of Rights has everything to do with the ratification of Constitutional amendments. On what grounds do you suggest that they do not?
> Furthermore, judicial precedence can change over time, or be superseded by a higher court's ruling.
This is correct.
> THIS is where time matters, not in the laws as written themselves.
This is incorrect. If a law is passed on Tuesday that allows for the theft of sandwiches, and a law is passed on Wednesday that prohibits the theft of sandwiches, the theft of sandwiches is illegal. I don't know why this concept is so baffling to you, but this is established law. The latter may not specifically repeal the former, though it does supersede it. The result is that there would be two laws in the register, one allowing for the theft of sandwiches, and the other disallowing the theft of sandwiches. Only one of those laws has any teeth. I'll leave is as an exercise to the reader over which one it is.
> Which brings me to my third point, your misunderstanding of how laws are written.
While not attempting to invoke deference, I have authored or co-authored parts of laws and amendments that have been enacted within the state of Maryland, and have been involved (though as more of a support role than active) in research and construction of legal arguments successfully employed in the MD circuit courts, the MD Supreme Court, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court.
I'm not claiming to be an expert on the subject, but this really isn't as complicated as you're making it out to be. That I've had to explain the concept of implied repeal no less than three times tells me that you're not arguing from a solid foundation. Saying it doesn't exist doesn't mean that it doesn't.
> Here's the thing - you seem to believe, with a high (very high) level of certainty, that you're educated on this topic.
Well, by comparison, I can speak with a high (very high) degree of certainty that you are wrong.
You say things like 'time has no bearing on precedent', which is patently, provably false. You say things like 'there aren't "revisions" of laws' as easily as saying that trees don't have leaves. You go on to say that because those statements are true, that they have no bearing on the ratification of the Constitution, which is, again, provably false; That exact argument has been made before the Supreme Court, and won. In short, if I'm wrong, then so is every judge and justice.
You assert that Congress can pass a law that supersedes the Constitution, and while, as a practical matter, I concede that in practice they often do, and then you misconstrue the timeliness of judicial preference to assert that any law that Congress passes supersedes the Constitution because it's more recent.
That really, really isn't how it works, and despite how well-written and confidently stated your arguments are, they are built upon a foundation of exactly nothing. It's like we're writing an application here but refusing to accept that 'scope' exists, or that it has any bearing on whether a variable is available within a given method.
You go on to assert that I'm intractable, despite a demonstrable history of acknowledging when I'm wrong. You go on to assert that you're not intractable, despite having previously admitted to being so. This argument is entirely fruitless, and I honestly can't imagine how continuing it isn't just feeding the trolls, so if your intent is to keep dragging me back in, which I admit that I'm vulnerable to, you'll have to try quite a bit harder next time.
Aside from those prisoners in Gitmo, the drone-struck Americans, anyone who happened to be near them, and the thousands of others we've killed with drones, you're right -- absolutely no one.
First they came for the terrorists, and I didn't speak because I wasn't a terrorist.
Then they came for the enemy combatants, and I didn't speak because I wasn't an enemy combatant.
Then they came for the traitors, and I didn't speak because I wasn't a traitor.
? I'm just trying to see which part of this is not 200+ years old. Was there ever a time in the history of the US where the US government wasn't "coming" for terrorists, enemy combatants, and traitors? If that's the case, then how do you build a bridge from "terrorists" to "random law-abiding citizen", which is the point of the poem.
> Was there ever a time in the history of the US where the US government wasn't "coming" for terrorists, enemy combatants, and traitors?
There were a couple hundred years in our nation's history where we weren't drone striking American citizens without due process for crimes they might have committed in the future.
Drone strikes may be new, but killing "Americans" isn't.
See: Trail of Tears, Civil War, and many, many, many other instances where the US government sponsored the killing of "Americans" (citizenship hasn't always been this cut/dry thing it is today).
Can you stop begging the question for just one moment so we can have a real conversation, instead of you just shoving platitudes down my throat?
A) drone strikes are just a means to an end, the end being "attack our enemies".
B) The people being attacked are classified as "enemy combatants". Do you realize what this means, as far as a "due process" conversation goes? We're not about to start trying enemy soldiers on the battlefield for breaking laws they're not even bound by (our laws). It's a perfectly reasonable conversation to talk about whether or not the people being attacked are actually "enemy combatants", but can we have that conversation, instead of you just ignoring the implications of what you're saying?
It's immensely hard to talk to people who speak in your terms, do you know that? Your cause is hurt by this behavior, not helped. If someone like me can't stand it, just imagine the feelings of someone in actual power, capable of doing something about it.
Some of those killed were designated enemy combatants. Many of those killed by drone strikes were not, and were simply nearby.
Regardless, the protocol for declaring someone enemy combatant should not be opaque to all but the executive branch. I don't necessarily have a problem with our government interceding to prevent a terrorist attack, but the taking of a life that might be innocent should be more informed than just adding a name to a list -- we've seen the efficacy of that with the No Fly List, where someone whose name was only similar to an actual terrorist was disallowed the ability to fly (to hilarious results).
The ability of a single person to add someone's name to a kill list that will be carried out with zero Congressional oversight is a cessation of ultimate power to the Executive Branch. There is simply no arguing that point whatsoever. The only 'check' on that power is that we trust the Executive to be forthright. Perhaps that's good enough for the current administration, perhaps it isn't, but it certainly bodes poorly for the future.
> If someone like me can't stand it, just imagine the feelings of someone in actual power, capable of doing something about it.
I interact with people in power, and demagoguery is the norm, even behind closed doors. That I happen to actually believe the points that I'm making is probably the only distinction between what I'm saying here and the words of the average politician.
That you, in particular, find it infuriating isn't terribly surprising. Having looked through your comment profile, the pattern I've noticed isn't one terribly indicative of someone tolerant or especially well-mannered.
In the interest of community preservation, I'm happy to just agree to disagree, and suggest that we should discontinue further conversation.
> The ability of a single person to add someone's name to a kill list that will be carried out with zero Congressional oversight is a cessation of ultimate power to the Executive Branch.
According to the Constitution, that's how it works. Congress can pass laws to require the executive branch pass these lists through congress, but they haven't, so the executive branch doesn't have to. That's how the Constitution was designed.
Want to change it? Petition your congressman/woman.
In a generation or two, those positions will be staffed by completely different people, as the "THEY" of today retire.
When the "THEY" of tomorrow are handed the keys to this vast panopticon that they didn't have to build themselves, how will "THEY" behave. No one can be sure.
Consider the men that inherited the ash heap of Europe after WWI. What did those men do?
I don't think parent was equating current times with post-WWI era Europe in the least. He was simply saying that people who inherited a challenging/dangerous geo-political landscape went on to create an unimaginably worse geo-political landscape.
The current challenge is global terrorism, but the swing towards authoritarianism by Western governments may end up being FAR worse than the threat of terrorism.
Then what he was saying is immensely broad and basically useless as guidance for today. "Bad thing happened at some point in history" is worthless, as a sentence.
And we're not swinging towards authoritarianism. That's absolutely a lie. Want to know the irony in you saying that? That you can say that, and not fear your door being knocked down and you being questioned. You don't know authoritarianism if you think the US is headed that way. Authoritarianism is not being able to criticize the government. Authoritarianism is the inability to change the government. Authoritarianism is a very loaded word, and your misuse of it only clouds the real problems the US government has, of which there are undeniably many.
People like you who go chicken-little constantly by bandying about words like "authoritarianism" create huge political blockage, which causes government standstills like what we're seeing in congress today. Lawmakers are afraid to do anything, because every time they try, it ends with some lawmaker or another being portrayed as eating children under a bridge somewhere, and his/her constituents buy it enough to oust him/her, despite just trying to make this country a better place.
Well, just because I can say what I want today, doesn't mean the same will be true tomorrow. We're already past the point that people are beginning to self-censor out of fear of the surveillance state. We already have indefinite detentions, torture, secret laws with secret interpretations, and state-sanctioned kidnappings.
Looking across the pond at England, they went from filtering the internet to block child porn, to filtering the internet to block extremists in less than one year. You have UK law enforcement harassing and intimidating legitimate journalism about the out of control surveillance state.
Maybe none of that is alarming to you, and maybe you don't think any of those things are along the road that leads to an authoritarian state, but I and many others feel differently. Either way, just because my perception of events is different that yours doesn't make my perception a lie.
> We already have indefinite detentions, torture, secret laws with secret interpretations, and state-sanctioned kidnappings.
And have had them for many many years. Nothing new. We committed a genocide against a people in the 1900s, and enslaved another people in the 1800s, both of which I think are much worse things to do to people than where we are now. If you chart the kinds of freedoms people living in the US have throughout the US's existence, would you really try to say the average person is less free today? Obviously we're not done working on being better at that, and absolutely we slip, but I'm so sick and tired of this attitude that we're moving into a totalitarian state, when we only in the last 100ish years LEFT what amounted to one.
And a small point of order but obviously no, my perception isn't any more valid than yours, but there is an objective perception, and if your perception is not aligned with that objective flagpost, then yes, your perception is a lie.
If you know anything about neurology or psychology, you'll know that there is no "objective perception". There is science, but that's about repeatability, and the complexity of geopolitics makes situations difficult to reproduce in exactitude. We make assessment based on different sets of experiences and knowledge, and our perception is influenced by our past and present.
No two people have the same life experience.
The very rawest form of perceptual subjectivity can be demonstrated by the interference of vision and sound caused by the McGurk effect. Search youtube for an example.
Your argument is invalid. That there are features of "authoritarianism" currently missing doesn't in any way show that we're not "swinging towards authoritarianism", any more than not seeing redwoods outside your car windows means you're not driving towards California.
Being in a place where "authoritarianism" is one bad actor away is not a good place to be. If you feel that we 1) are not in that such a place, and 2) are not likely to be any time soon, then feel free to make that case.
Which bad actor would it take to put us into an authoritarian state? The president? No, congress would impeach him. Congressional leaders? No, the supreme court would overrule them. The chief justice? No, congress would constitutionalize a law if it's important enough. Checks and balances still exist.
I don't see any position of power that could act in such a way so as to gain unilateral control of the US government.
I'm not confident that we are in such a position, but I think we're closer than I am comfortable with. Imagine J. Edgar Hoover heading the NSA, "under" a weak president.
I don't think the NSA is an inherently powerful organization.
If they actually were doing all the awful things people keep saying they could do, e.g. congressional blackmail, the person doing those things would be shut down in a heartbeat. Do you honestly think the head of ANY government organization couldn't be dealt with if they went legitimately rogue?
There's plenty of evidence to suggest that, in the sense of things we would be more likely to see if it were the case than if it weren't. Many things from the Snowden docs; parallel construction; statements of congresspeople and courts that they were unaware or misinformed; Clapper flat out lying to Congress and not facing any charges... Nevertheless, I actually don't think it is the case that we are currently in that position; I am just nowhere near as confident of that as I would prefer to be.
I wouldn't have considered many actions over the course of years by a well positioned bad actor "one step", but if you would then I grant you that wording - I may have been thinking you meant smaller "steps" than you did. I would be tremendously surprised if we were a single action away (though "single precipitating action", less surprised).
I really don't see how you can assert that the things I listed aren't more likely in an environment where those holding power in secret are extending and exercising that power, than in an environment where they are not, which is what it means to be evidence.
The view presented before the last line is counterproductive on so many levels. There's a nice name for it: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/defeatismAcceptance of defeat without struggle.
The problem with the writing style where only the last line brings the change in mood is that a lot of people don't read everything.
The direct call to action is always a better approach.
Don't make the text full with wrong arguments and end it with "but." Just write the good arguments.
If you stand to your "But I care. And I hope you start caring too" then writing the big wall of defeat acceptances ending with "but I care" will bring the opposite result to the one for which you claim that "you care." If you claim that you can't do anything you're certainly wrong. Your actions influence others too, otherwise your post wouldn't be on the top here.
Actually, you can do something. You can run a tor node (from your home mostly for free). You can also set up a bridge in 10 minutes via https://cloud.torproject.org/ for just $3 per month.
You might not directly see the good that you do, but you would be doing a significant amount of good! That tor node will push a lot of freedom bytes, and that bridge will help circumvent Iranian, Syrian and Chinese censorship.
I think this is a lie (but I share your feelings). All the oppression is driven by the greed. Me myself and I is the norm. Not only in politics but a lot of people are turning to the believe that the world is all about self.
The selfish world doesn't care about others. But I can tell you from my own experience that if you care about others (everyone included without exception) people will change little by little.
Some things I have to remind myself all the time to achieve this:
* Separate what people do from who they are
* First blame yourself then others
* Don't put yourself above others
People at the top are standing on the foundation of people at the bottom. I think both the people at the top and the bottom don't realize this all the time. This means that the top position is as strong as its foundation. And that the foundation can change what's happening at the top.
But people at the top can act selfishly while people at the bottom need to establish a culture of also caring about each other. So at one side you have individuals with a lot of resources that don't need that much of help from others and at the other side you have individuals with no resources that also need to rely on others. Makes the game quite hard to win right from its beginning, no?
The idea being that if you place frogs in a pool of water and raise the water temperature ever so slowly, the frogs will never notice that they are eventually being boiled alive, so they'll relax in the boiling water with complacency, as they are slowly cooked to death.
>Because you don’t realise how much the barrier has moved. We didn’t care when we had to pay unreasonable taxes last year. We don’t care when politicians lie to us in front of our sad faces, time after time, election after election. We don’t care about other any other person’s rights. We don’t care about unfairness all over around us. We don’t care about any kind of oppression, anywhere in the world.
Hey, you arrogant ass. You're speaking for yourself. You may not care about them, but some of us do. Some of us are very angry at all the things you listed, and some of us try to do things about it. So while you're complacent, and you're okay with politicians lying to your sad little face, I strongly resent you projecting that same complacency onto me.
WP ddoes not appear to have released the source documents. That makes it hard to trust that these reports are complete w.r.t. what the documents reveal.
Metadata surveillance is the backbone of drone assassinations. Without it, they wouldn't be possible. They first find out when the person to be assassinated is located, and then send the drone.
"The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, ..."
"The records feed a vast database that stores information about the locations of at least hundreds of millions of devices, ..."
Why are there only 5 billion geolocation records ingested daily? Using a conservative estimate of 200 million devices, that yields an average daily ingestion rate of 25 records for each device. This seems really low.
It sounds like NSA may be culling the data aggressively, or the definition of a record may constitute more than just a single polling event. Perhaps both.
Keep in mind that the Bluffdale, Utah facility was not operational at the time the documents referenced in the article were created. It's possible ingestion of gelocation data has since ramped up.
Dear rest of the world, we (our US gov) are tracking as much of everything that we (our US gov) find relevant. When we don't, we encourage fund companies who do.
Dear US citizens, can we also stop being surprised that we are doing such things? We have a long history of doing this.
it is called doctrine of Total/Global (like in the Globe of the planet Earth) Awareness. Started somewhen 20+ years ago in Pentagon and now has been adapted from military into anti-terrorism [which incidentally covers _everything_]
...it collects locations in bulk because its most powerful analytic tools — known collectively as CO-TRAVELER — allow it to look for unknown associates of known intelligence targets by tracking people whose movements intersect.
Better change your bus route if you notice the same terrorist rides the same bus as you every day.
You have to do more than turning it off (unless you can pop the battery). The FBI can bug a phone and have it send audio even while turned off, I'm guessing go the NSA can pretty much so what it wants.
> I think putting in Airplane Mode should be a good idea.
And then you still would have to trust this Airplane Mode.
Honestly, I have absolutely no idea what is happening in my phone.
Is it maybe still collecting data while it is in Airplane Mode and sending it somewhere once it is set back to regular mode? Or is it even sending data all the time, because the NSA knows that never a single plane has crashed because of active cellphones? Probably some smart people out there are checking their phone's internals and activities more than I do...
Anytime something bad happens I'm going to ask why the NSA didn't stop it. Paul Walkers death... why didn't the NSA stop it? PS4 DOA orders...why didn't the NSA stop it? Psychboo finding Prezi's source code... why didn't the NSA stop it?
You say this in jest, but they may have opened a can of worms here. Some defendant in a criminal case in Florida subpoenaed his NSA file in his defense. It would sure be interesting to see if this location data can be used as exculpatory evidence to acquit somebody, or if it would even be available. It would be very hard to stomach if that type of information is only available to convict, not exonerate.
The defendant was Terrance Brown, the gvt responded and said they did not have location data for him. Filed two different responses, one public with a ton of [REDACTED] and a private one.
The authorities regularly withhold information that could assist defendants so it would be business as usual I'm sure. But yeah, that's one giant can of worms!
Theoretically, they are not allowed to do that. If it is evidence that would affect the outcome of the case, they are obligated to disclose it. While it seems like due process and the rule of law is being eroded daily, I really hope that the below case still applies...
Anyone know the details of accuracy and penetration of network-side positioning? Client-side could in principle be detected but network-side would be undetectable.
AFAIK no one ever asked Clapper (or any other NSA representative) to give a precise operational definition of the term "metadata". I don't want to hear what someone else thinks "metadata" is, I want to know how NSA operationally defines "metadata" internally and precisely when and where the usage(s) are made.
Voice:
I am on the telephone with you. My actual voice is the data. Is the digitization of my voice not metadata? After all, natural voice =/= digitized voice. So it seems that digitized voice could be, to the NSA, metadata and therefore subject to capture.
I know the NSA has software/hardware to translate digitized voice to text. Suppose all phone conversations are converted to text. Then is that text therefore not data but metadata? Once again, it seems that the text of all phone conversations could be, to the NSA, metadata and therefore subject to capture.
Fax:
I send a fax to you. What's on the sheet of paper is data. But is the digitized and compressed sequence of bits sent to you not metadata? It certainly is not the same as the original data. So it seems that the digitized fax could be, to the NSA, metadata and therefore subject to capture.
Still, were that not so, the NSA has OCR that can read handwritten or typed text from a fax and convert it to text. Is the converted text not metadata? It is certainly different from the original data. So it seems that the converted text from the fax could be, to the NSA, metadata and therefore subject to capture.
E-mail:
I e-mail you. The text I see before me is data. Once I press the send key, it is compressed through various software/hardware for rapid transmission as it passes over the TCP/IP/phone network. Is not that compressed text also metadata? Therefore it seems that e-mail content could be, to the NSA, metadata and therefore subject to capture.
IOW once data is processed through any transformation whatsoever then it could be defined as "metadata". Again I don't know NSA's exact definition (used internally) of what metadata is. There may be many different definitions. But since NSA's representatives raised the use of the term w/o defining it (and then used the metaphor of a library to draw questioners off track) I believe that they should be questioned again about precisely what "metadata" means when and where. Furthermore the question of what precisely the NSA captures should be driven to ground thoroughly.
Personal belief:
NSA considers the product of any transformation of data to be metadata. The NSA captures all voice, fax, e-mail, chat, sms, etc. and maintains it in digitized form. Regardless of origin, all communications end up in text format (with pointers back to the original digitized form) which is then subjected to semantic/content analysis (scanning for naughty words), and optionally (under control of an analyst) to social network analysis and AI software that analyzes events, objects, actors, their intentions, and possible variations in interpretation of the text.
Your request to have them explicitly define what they are designating as metadata is wise. They may have a completely distorted concept of metadata that represents a drastic departure from any sane definition.
But the definitions you've put forth are completely off target, with respect to the layman's ordinary, rational concept of metadata. Conceptually, metadata forms a map of relationships between actual examples of data, in the sense that the wires between the lightbulbs are the metadata, while the lightbulbs are the data. Your hypothesis is that someone might propose that only the light emitted from the bulb is the data, and that all other phenomena beyond that are the metadata, so, if you take a picture of the lightbulb while it's switched on, and mark the time, the timestamped photo is the metadata, only because it recorded measurements of the intensity of the photons emanating from the bulb, and did not capture and retain the actual photons themselves (all else, aside from the photons being fair game). No one in their right mind would ever build such an absurd mental model.
The reality is that anyone proposing concepts like the ones you mention, is simply lying through their teeth. Thus, why would you want anyone like that to speak a single word?
If that's their version of the truth, and they seriously believe that's a representation of honesty, it's not worth listening to them.
If they know it's a lie and try to sell the lie anyway, it's not worth listening to them.
If they know what the reality is, but lie and provide the rational definition of metadata, regardless of how inaccurately it aligns with the truth, it's not worth listening to them.
The only thing you'd gain from hearing them speak to their belief of how metadata is defined, would be if you compare what they say to the actually evidence that proves the reality, and assess how warped they are, and how much they lied.
I don't believe the layman has an "ordinary, rational concept of metadata".
The NSA's library metaphor was well-chosen: loose enough to possibly explain but complex enough to mislead. It derailed the conversation.
But I see no utility in the light bulb metaphor you present, except possibly to mislead as most metaphors can do. I would never use it in this context.
The point is to eliminate the metaphors. "Just the facts, ma'am." as Dragnet's Sgt. Friday (didn't exactly) always says.
"why would you want anyone like that to speak a single word?"
To find the truth. If not, to reveal those who lie under oath. To eliminate the metaphors and replace them with facts.
NSA Director Keith Alexander disclosed in Senate testimony in October that the NSA had run a pilot project in 2010 and 2011 to collect “samples” of U.S. cellphone location data. The data collected were never available for intelligence analysis purposes, and the project was discontinued because it had no “operational value,” he said.
Alexander allowed that a broader collection of such data “may be something that is a future requirement for the country, but it is not right now.”
And for all this, I'm not going to lie--that'd be a fun dataset to hack on.
And that, folks, is why we as engineers and hackers have a moral duty to be very selective in the types of work we take on and for whom.
> And that, folks, is why we as engineers and hackers have a moral duty to be very selective in the types of work we take on and for whom.
Computer yechnology work is still a wild west. Other fields which have similar ethical considerations - medicine, chemistry, engineering - have ethics courses which make it clear to the graduates that their professional decisions have consequences.
There is no such standard for computer people. It still baffles me that people would voluntarily work at implementing something like PRISM - I would literally quit my job over something like this; similar considerations have popped up in the research I do for my Masters thesis - but ethics is definitely something we would talk more about.
Yet there is no shortage of doctors willing to assist in torture of prisoners at Guantanamo, assist in executions of prisoners, or conduct non-consensual and medically unnecessary procedures (inserting catheters, rectal examinations, etc.) upon demand of the police. The problem isn't lack of ethics courses but a fundamental flaw in human nature, which is that people easily forget all their personal ethics when someone in authority (whether their boss or the police) tells them to do something.
> people easily forget all their personal ethics when someone in authority (whether their boss or the police) tells them to do something.
I don't know whether you're aware of this or not, but you just described a famous experiment which essentially arrived at the same conclusion. It's worth a read for those not familiar with it.
I know of no better or more accessible review of the psychology of evil than "The Lucifer effect" (2007) by Philip Zimbardo, a psychologist who, in spite of a long and illustrious career, probably is still best known for the infamous Stanford prison study.
The companion website to the book is still up on http://www.lucifereffect.com/
Zimbardo has stated that he is still pained at the memories of the Stanford prison study, which had to be aborted prematurely because the vile characteristics it exposed in normal, healthy participants was going out of control. He reluctantly revisited the study in detail because he saw striking parallels to the torture and humiliation in the Abu Ghraib prison under US occupation. While he's at it he also reviews much other research into the psychology of authoritarianism, obedience, dehumanization and other facets of social psychology that add up to what may very reasonably be called Evil.
I might add that organizations like the CIA are well aware of these principles, and appears to have been working on ways of weaponizing them.
It is my opinion that they are using them to corrupt individuals and whole social environments when that suits their ends. In fact, in spite of "The Lucifer Effect" being a fascinating read from beginning to end, one of the parts I found most interesting was the evidence indicating that US intelligence actively created the psychological conditions for the abuses at Abu Ghraib.
Highly recommended reading, and very relevant for much of the potential consequences of mass surveillance.
I haven't looked into it myself, but I did hear that there is an alternative interpretation of that experiment. Apparently the test subjects did as they were asked, up until the very last prompt used, which was the strongest. Less a request and more a demand. As soon as the prompts stopped appealing to the test subjects desire to further science or not fuck up the experiment, but began making demands, the test subjects almost universally balked.
This interpretation isn't really any less disturbing, since it suggests that people will commit atrocities and simultaneously believe that they are doing the right thing. Perhaps it also says something about the general public's trust of, not necessarily authority figures, but rather scientists.
Reading up on this has been on my back-burner for a while, this interpretation might be well considered and discarded, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
> people easily forget all their personal ethics when someone in authority (whether their boss or the police) tells them to do something.
Now if we could get some prominent figures in tech with some authority to get more involved in these matters, but no - they're all a bit too comfortable in their well-paid, US-based jobs to risk anything.
PRISM people thought they were doing right. All NSA - based on all the official and unofficial responses - think they are doing right. That they help building a safer America. That they have to sacrifice privacy for safety. Etc, etc.
I don't think NSA people are evil. They believe that the things they do are for good.
I don't think NSA people are evil. They believe that the things they do are for good.
Evil like in the movies doesn't exist. In the real-world evil is simply a lack of perspective (some would call it empathy instead).
No one ever wakes up and decides they want to be a villain. They always have some sort of logic that rationalizes their actions as being reasonable if not outright good. The more they act on that lack of perspective the greater the evil they perpetrate.
"There is no conspiracy. Nobody is in charge. It's a headless blunder operating under the illusion of a master plan."
"It's all the same machine, right? The Pentagon, multinational corporations, the police. If you do one little job, you build a widget in Saskatoon, and the next thing you know, it's two miles under the desert, the essential component of a death machine."
Quentin: But why put people in it?
Worth: Because it's here. You have to use it, or you admit that it's pointless.
Ok, if ever there was a time to bring out this particularly good industrial/ebm album, it is right now. In particular, this track, which includes samples of the above quotes:
I agree that normal people are generally not evil, but sociopaths can very much be indistinguishable from some particularly evil movie-characters.
I worked with a sociopath in the past and have studied it in literature, and a sociopath by definition sees meeting their own needs as a priority. Regardless of the effect on those around them.
A sociopath is willing to inflict suffering on others for even minor gains of their own. Sociopaths seek out high-power positions and often thrive in them, and those working with them often suffer as a consequence.
You know, people talk about sociopaths a lot, and I get why, but I have a problem with the definition. The idea is that a sociopath is someone who lacks empathy (or, so I've read, is able to switch off their empathy) and prioritises their own needs. The behaviour is characterised as selfish, as in putting themselves first. This doesn't really make sense to me, because there's an implicit assumption about what actually benefits the sociopath.
Taking a step back, as far as I can see, a sociopath is someone who (either by choice or by nature) prioritises certain social drives over other social drives. The drives to be empathic and obey social expectations, norms and rules get ignored. However, the drives for status, money and power are prioritised above all others. These drives are still social in nature. They don't actually convey a fundamental biological advantage.
I personally choose to aim to be a warm and caring human being, and, as a consequence of that, I have a really great relationship with my girlfriend. When we have kids, our kids will grow up in a loving supportive environment and so will have a good chance of growing up strong and well balanced. Being a sociopath would probably get me more material possessions, but I would have had to settle for an emotionally weaker partner (who I could dominate) and I would end up with messed up kids with a lower chance of success and survival.
From my own personal experience, people who fit the sociopathic archetype aren't really like evil villains. They're more like computer game addicts, fixated on goals that don't bring them happiness, and that get in the way of forming genuine connections with other human beings. I can see why people who are the victims of their behaviour characterise it as selfish, because they see the world as a competition for money, status and power and they think they are losing out. However, that competition is just a game, and the grand prize is not happiness.
I would be very curious to see a study of what you point out. Are some people exhibiting negative sociopathic traits simply because of their upbringing or social context?
Although I find these points interesting, it does seem to me like this leads us into the age-old philosophy discussion on ethics. It seems like ethics can be argued to be based on intention, effect, something else, or all. I have read about sociopaths that are experienced by others as good people. However, a sociopath seem to have a stunted emotional life and I am sure this disability will always have numerous subtle negative effects on people that have an emotional relationship with them (e.g wife, kids, friends).
That's not entirely true. Like 4% of people are sociopaths with an inability to feel empathy for others or feel guilt for their actions. There really are evil people who know what they are doing is wrong and just don't care.
You are the second person to bring up sociopaths as if they don't match the definition of evil I wrote above. The thing is, they are the very personification of lacking empathy. They believe that their own welfare is more important than anyone else's. They don't see that as evil, they see it as the way of the world.
The point is they don't rationalize or justify what they do, they simply don't care. They know it's wrong (by societies/normal people's) standards, but it doesn't violate their own.
This is what I consider evil, and I think it's important to separate it from people who think what they are doing is ok. I.e. "Someone else would have done it anyways", a thief who steals from a bank because "they have insurance" or "they are rich assholes who don't deserve it", or a dictator who tries to do what he thinks is best for the country even though his policies are bad.
Indeed. But also imagine that as an engineer on any secret NSA project, being shown real information regarding atrocities that have never been publicised and knowing that you can help to make the world a better place. You would have the passion and motivations to do these things and have meaning in your life and work.
Evil in this case is an aggregation of actions by many parties, not individuals and is rarely committed by the tool makers. However, it's always justified by the perpetrators.
imagine that as an engineer on any secret NSA project, being shown real information regarding atrocities that have never been publicised and knowing that you can help to make the world a better place.
Yep. Of course if that engineer had perspective he would have to wonder if there was more to the story than just what he was being shown. It is easy to doubt the people we already think are wrong, the hard thing is to doubt the people we agree with.
Thanks for pointing out "ambiguous". I believe it is very important to look at the situation and social pressures in addition to personal character.
I also believe you are to significant extent wrong about the people at NSA believing they're doing good, however.
Bill Binney, Jesselyn Radack and Thomas Drake all have personal experience with the matter, and here's what they had to say about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBp-1Br_OEs&t=1h37m59s
I would add that I think much of the material Ed Snowden released, to the extent that it shows personal expressions, to me points more to these people viewing the Intelligence organization as the new "we", and /everybody/ outside, US citizen or not, as a bit less than fully human.
That cheeky smiley on the sketches detailing how they broke Google's SSL?
"TOR Stinks" and similar flippant expressions in the documents about attacking the integrity of TOR?
And so on.
To me that isn't the look of someone who thinks they're making difficult, serious choices to protect the greater good. It's the look of someone who thinks they're better than everyone else out there and they can do whatever they want, including having "a little fun" toying with those other inferior creatures, because they think no one can touch them.
That, I think, is the general mindset we're dealing with. Allow for a fair deal of individual variation of course.
I get a very icky feeling when I read academic papers that explore how to mine network traffic for information on how to discover terrorists. And sure enough, when reading the funding information, the money for the projects came straight from the DHS. This icky feeling was there long before I heard about Prism.
You don't need an ethical guidebook to consider the implications of the work you're doing. I don't think lack of explicit instructions is an excuse. I don't want to invoke Godwin just yet...but suffice to say, a lot of bad things have been done in the name of good. And there were people in the loop who had the ability to see what was going on.
"Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate — and quickly." -Heinlein
Indeed. There's also a huge spectrum of ethical issues in computing, from black hat hacking to mundane issues that many may not even recognize as having an ethical dimension. For example, I turned down an offer from a major company (won't name here) to work on analytics for their advertising platform. It was a difficult decision and involved multiple factors, but part of it had to do with my discomfort regarding the ethical issues of search-engine advertising. I found it hard to garner support for my viewpoint when discussing my decision with others, and it was striking to see how many people consider search advertising to be relatively benign and not worth turning down a job over. I learned an important lesson about how much moral views/priorities can differ, even amongst people whose worldviews largely overlap.
So, the standards exist but people choose to ignore them. Which, I guess since you're not forced to be a member of either professional society as a "computer person", isn't all that unreasonable. But personal ethics should win out in these situations without someone else having to tell you that it's wrong.
I took a look at the ACM Code of Ethics, and I don't see anything that would be violated by working on PRISM. Specifically:
1.7 Respect the privacy of others.
..
User data observed during the normal duties of system operation and maintenance must be treated with strictest confidentiality, except in cases where it is evidence for the violation of law, organizational regulations, or this Code. In these cases, the nature or contents of that information must be disclosed only to proper authorities.
That specifically allows the kind of work done by PRISM.
2.7 Improve public understanding of computing and its consequences.
Computing professionals have a responsibility to share technical knowledge with the public by encouraging understanding of computing, including the impacts of computer systems and their limitations. This imperative implies an obligation to counter any false views related to computing.
3.1 Articulate social responsibilities of members of an organizational unit and encourage full acceptance of those responsibilities.
Because organizations of all kinds have impacts on the public, they must accept responsibilities to society. Organizational procedures and attitudes oriented toward quality and the welfare of society will reduce harm to members of the public, thereby serving public interest and fulfilling social responsibility. Therefore,organizational leaders must encourage full participation in meeting social responsibilities as well as quality performance.
Or number one on IEEE?
1. to accept responsibility in making decisions consistent with the safety, health, and welfare of the public, and to disclose promptly factors that might endanger the public or the environment;
Given, what's "best for the public" is up for debate (at least according to the people doing the collecting).
Prism may have been built by people holding their noses for the paycheck, but it could also have been built by people who genuinely believe that its social benefits outweigh its costs. Even if only 0.1% of software professionals believe this, it's enough to staff the project.
I agree. Just look at who Palantir hires. I imagine its a pretty small number of nose-holders and more often people who think they are doing good and people who think spying is a necessary evil so lets put fine grained controls on it.
I'm pretty sure there's also a good number of people who actually enjoy the craft. How many geeks do you know who wouldn't enjoy the power-trip? From LOVEINT to immature Googlers, there's an abundance of literature on the joys of doing evil.
Slightly OT, but I remember feeling QUITE shocked when I found that one of my favorite bloggers, Rands (aka Michael Lopp), was some sort of honcho over at Palantir. He's written some good stuff on management of 'geeks' and high-performance people in general, it was a sad day when I found out about his employer and removed him from my RSS feed.
While in school for Computer Engineering (2002-2007 or so), I actually had two ethics classes, one specifically for Engineering and one for Information ethics. I dont know how standard that is, but all the engineering disciplines had to take the Engineering one and computer scienc-y students had to take Info ethics.
The extent of computer ethics to me was "here is therac-25, you have an ethical responsibility to do your job well. here are various laws, don't break them." There was never talk of "consider the ramifications of your project, assuming it works".
I took a couple engineering ethics classes at the University of Virginia (class of '06), and found them valuable and thought-provoking. The curriculum was called "Science, Technology, and Society". More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science,_technology_and_society
Dayton, Ohio. We talked about a lot of interesting topics, like Whistleblowing (particularly relevant nowadays) and what sort of ethical obligations you have, in addition to stuff like "dont cut corners, dont be lazy, etc", the normal engineering things.
I graduated with a degree in Computer Science in 1997, and we also had to take an ethics class. However, it was more along the lines of knowingly creating software or hardware that would cause harm. To be honest, the majority of the tests we had were common sense..I didn't even have to even look over the material.
That does not make our decisions inconsequential. And yes, we should talk a lot more about ethics in compsci courses.
As for people who work on things like PRISM, it often happen in small steps, one ethical shade of gray at a time. When you get to a PRISM, your worldview is so completely distorted, you think it's a natural thing to do.
I'll never forget when I was taking CS in high school and we were forced out of the lab for a week and had class in the library. Our teacher spent the week teaching computer programming ethics. We talked about a lot of stuff, as you can probably imagine, but I was glad to have someone show me what he believed a good path to take with development was. In the end we all had to write a paper that he graded pretty damn aggressively for a cs class. Thats the only time in all my cs education that computer programming ethics in this context came up. Definitely agree it deserves more conversation.
Is it possible that the development of these technologies is compartmentalized? And the single engineers only know the part that they are supposed to work on but don't really understand what is the larger project that their slice will be a part of? It would probably be hard to pull this development methodology off.
And that, folks, is why we as engineers and hackers have a moral duty to be very selective in the types of work we take on and for whom.
Thank you. I was going to make the same point, you've done it well.
Moreover: this is why the Snowden, PRISM, NSA/FBI, surveillance, privacy, and other stories matter on HN.
Many of those working for startups are contributing directly (and occasionally indirectly) to the datastreams which are being harvested. I've never felt comfortable with Facebook and the ethics of its leadership, and I've been increasingly concerned about Google (I consider it to have lost rather than sold its soul). Both are far too actively carrying the NSA's water (as I've pointedly told Google multiple times).
How to answer the challenge ... I really don't know, I'm at a loss here.
I'm not sure how much you can really blame Facebook or Google here. My understanding is that a corporation is legally compelled to comply with a National Security Letter if it receives one, which is far from voluntary collusion.
Maybe I am missing something, but I don't see where your dissatisfaction is coming from.
I'm not sure how much you can really blame Facebook or Google
By creating an infrastructure in which the data are collected, centralized, individually identified, unencrypted, and specifically associated with vast trails of other nominally unassociated online information (search history, logins to other sites, analytics on other sites, etc.).
This is in the sense of Lawrence Lessig's Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. The architectures of Facebook, Google, and other social networks, advertising networks, mobile phone systems, phone apps, PC-based snooping (inclusive of Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, and other systems), etc., etc.
These systems are designed in ways which maximize their utility to a national surveillance network, despite alternative architectures being available. As an example of alternatives, Twitter and Reddit, at the very least, don't demand / promote "real names", or (mostly) track information across third-party sites, at least not to the extent Facebook and Google are doing.
Do those glasses have no benefit? They're marketed to gamers as reducing eye strain [0]. I step away from the monitor often enough that I don't get overly bothered by it, even if I'm programming for an extended period of time. I do also run f.lux as well, though.
I can say I own two of those gunnars, but you're better off looking for a cheaper alternative.
What they provide is an f.lux experience, with a +1 magnification. their optics are quite clear, but no where near the marketing hype they claim.
When I compared a $10 pair of sunglasses to a pair of +$100 Oakley's I was like wowzered by the optics. It actually provided me with better contrast across the range, in all but rainy weather.
Always wanted to try one out after i saw that movie. So one day I got a tax benefit and could get them for free.
They shipped out the wrong model first time, so I got two.
They seemed really overpriced to me, but do help. Keep them on long enough and you'll see blue. I had clear benefits when for a year long I was doing online poker zombie shifts.
But on one without a frame, the legs came of fairly easily.
They were plastic and glued into the glasses. I still have to re-glue them, but never bothered. I might fix them and give them another go.
But for $100+ I'm getting a solid yet lightweight frame from Oakley, and a crappy plastic frame holding not-so-impressive optics together.
Yeah, and the soldiers don't make the orders, the generals don't make the politics, the politicians just try to keep the military industrial complex fat and snugly and the citizens happy, the citizens just crave security because that's what the media says is what citizens crave while the military industrial complex just seeks profit because it's required to by stockholders and everyone else involved, who are just trying to put food and/or yachts on their family.
"Just doing my job" has been deprecated in 1945. For a reason, and finding out why the hard way is considered harmful.
So why is that in polite company, even those that are opposed to our various wars are obliged to toe the line, "we support our troops"?
Even in 21st century America, we continue to fool ourselves, thinking that somehow soldiers can be noble, heroes even, all the while being engaged something that is immoral.
I have wondered the same thing privately numerous times. I believe it is a reflexive reaction because they can easily be killed doing their jobs, which they signed up for. It is some kind of bizarre "patriotic" requirement, likely borne of the significant derision heaped upon returning Vietnam veterans. Perhaps it is a generation of people who never want to see that happen again that have created this sacred cow?
Heaping derision on people who were victims themselves, drafted into a war they did not believe in, is one thing. I totally understand why people might recoil from that.
With an all-volunteer army though? No way, it is on them as much as it is on anybody. I don't care if they joined for the GI Bill (doing it for the [college] money is a pretty fucking flimsy ethical justification), I don't care if they joined the reserves before war broke out for the GI Bill (agreeing to the possibility of a war, before you know the circumstances of that war, for the [college] money, is still a flimsy argument).
The "support the troops [bring them home]" stuff seems like it is likely backlash against the derision that we gave Vietnam veterans, but it should be re-evaluated because the situations are not equivalent.
There is the issue though that as young people, they may well not have the maturity or information to fully understand and comprehend the decision they are making.
I was going to detail this as a possible excuse - but considering this reasoning and the consequences has made me reconsider: You've made a bad choice [morally / ethically]. Now you have to live with the consequences.
Can be seen as a tough stance, but then again, so's life. Didn't really mean to fall of that cliff? Oh, here's your life back again.
There is also the "smoothtalking recruiter managed to talk a teenager into doing something dumb" angle, but that only goes so far with me.
Still, I don't hate people who join or anything... call it a very strong disapprove. However I do find it hard to associate with people who try to assure me that they're one of the good ones because "Oh, I'm not really the patriotic type, I just joined so I could go to college" line. That impresses me far less than "I joined [for my country|it was the right thing to do|for the innocent civilians over there|war is a necessary evil|I was young and naive when the recruiter came to my school|911 HUURAH!]". I don't believe people when they say the former, but if I did, I don't think I could consider them anything but mercenaries.
Here is a combat veteran discussing what it is actually like. This sentiment is basically echoed among the friends that I have who have served in the military.
Perhaps because many of them are friends and family of said polite company who may have been persuaded to join with incomplete information, or lacked the economic resources to refuse to join when recruiters came calling.
Anything that's totally vacuous and diverts, after all what does it mean to be in favor of .. suppose somebody asks, do you support the people in Iowa, can you say I support them or no I don't support them. It's not even a question it doesn't even mean anything. And that's the point of public relations slogans like support our troops is that they don't mean anything, they mean as much as whether you support the people in Iowa.
Of course there was an Issue -- the issue was do you support our policy but you don't want people to think about the issue that's the whole point of good propaganda, you want to create a slogan that nobody is gonna be against and I suppose everybody will be for because nobody knows what it means because it doesn't mean anything, but it's crucial value is it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something. Do you support our policy and that's the one you're not allowed to talk about.
Incidentally, this passage is within a larger context of public relations. A while back I was looking at terms and phrases on Google's Ngram viewer and noted something really odd: "democracy" wasn't a term in broad use until World War I, with a second major uptick during WWII.
I noted that and didn't think much more of it for a few months until I ran across a reference to Edward Louis Berneys, father of modern public relations.
Really interesting coot. Double nephew of Sigmund Freud (oh yeah: Berneys popularized Freud too -- and married advertising to psychology while he was at it), convinced women to smoke ("Torches of Freedom"), and though it's hard to believe it had to be sold, promoted bacon.
One of his first campaigns? A WWI "support the troops" message commissioned by the US government. To popularize democracy.
That's right: the principle American Value was brought to you as a marketing campaign.
(Ngram viewer is fascinating for studying the emergence / rise / fall in the popularity of words and phrases).
The nonsense message of American democracy is another one that's always bothered me, so it's enlightening to see how these are connected.
FWIW, despite all the propaganda and even our school history books, democracy never was a core value of America. There is virtually nothing democratic about the design of the federal government, and even those aspects that are democratic were nothing new at the time the Constitution was written. America was not a bold experiment in democracy. That was old hat: the Dutch were already doing it, and heck, the Greeks did it a couple thousand years earlier. What was a bold experiment, seemingly entirely forgotten in today's discourse on Capitol Hill, was a limited government that wielded only a small set of powers that were explicitly ceded to it by the people.
I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call it "nonsense", but it definitely wasn't emphasized prior to WWI. I'd have to do some more digging through history to see what issues were driving the nation prior to that. I do think that freedom and liberty were there. Initially it was just getting things off the ground and fighting off the Brits (1776, 1812), then westward expansion, then early industrialization, then slavery, them more industrialization.
By the time of WWI there'd been some big questions raised over equity and equality (railroads, robber barrons, oil trusts), and national cohesion was somewhat at stake, more so with the Great Depression and WWII.
My study of all of this is still pretty thin, but it's a fascinating period.
My opinion isn't the question here. I'm observing first that there are many people who profess that one or more of our multiple wars are immoral; and second, that they simultaneously profess that the soldiers fighting deserve our support rather than scorn for supporting the putatively unjust war.
If you believe that the war is unjust, and you believe that it's the duty of a soldier (or any person) to refuse to perform immoral acts, then consistency dictates that you should condemn the soldiers fighting in those wars, not revere them.
That's a pretty black-and-white world you're trying to impose on folks.
I've spoken with a lot of Iraq war veterans. Every one of them has qualms with how the war was conducted, and many have doubts about the reasons for invading. But the things they have in common are an underlying desire to to "protect" their country in some sense, and the willingness to die for that cause.
There's plenty of room there for both disagreement and respect.
I think you're still misunderstanding. This doesn't have anything to do with the motivations of the soldiers.
I have friends who are absolutist peacenik liberals, who thing that GWB should burn in hell for all eternity for inveigling us in Iraq, because of "war for oil", "Halliburton will destroy the country", etc. From the point of view of one of these people, there is no moral authority to wage the war; to them, it IS black and white. Yet these very same people utter the "support our heroic troops" mantra.
Given that someone is such an extremist in their opposition to the war, it's impossible to square that person's professed beliefs with their support of the soldiers waging that war.
That is, unless we're willing to discard the idea that all people are morally bound to refuse to execute immoral commands.
Since the disclosure of the Downing Street Memorandum it has been clear that the war in Iraq was a war without a legitimate cause, where the US and UK acted as aggressors toward goals that were withheld from the public.
Aggressive wars and war profiteering (not saying US soldiers themselves benefit from it, but that's what they're being used for). The US is not alone in this, but it's in it, too.
"Despite their overlapping “orbits” in Yemen, the CIA and JSOC employ different surveillance equipment on their drone fleets. They also rely on separate and sometimes incompatible communications networks to transmit video feeds and assemble intelligence from multiple streams in the moments before a strike."
"Keeping the drones with the CIA also offers legal cover for drone strikes, former officials argued. By law, the military is not supposed to conduct hostile actions outside a declared war zone, although special forces do so on occasion acting at the CIA's behest."
The first article is an anonymous source for a website's blog.
Some other choice headlines on the site's homepage:
Birth-Control Battle - Liberals are the agressors
Chait-Crime: Stop assuming conservatives are racist
Corporations Are People: The idea goes back to the Founding.
The Return of the Queue: O'care: just like any other liberal program.
Five Food-Stamp Myths: Does the program even work?
The Test-Score Gap: Race and class are not to blame.
Not exactly a fantastic citation, I think you'll agree. In any event, your quote specifically refers to intelligence drones, not strike drones. I'm not actually 100% sure about this, but I'm guessing they're different, just based on the different payloads required to perform each activity. In any event, the CIA here isn't admitting to anything. It's an anonymous inside source. Right. Hyperconservative blog has high-level inside source in the intelligence community in a post-Snowden world. Got it.
As for the second article, that's exactly what I'm saying. Special forces do so, "Acting at the CIA's behest". CIA provides intel, special forces conducts the operation. That's an important distinction.
Now you're just being lazy :) The articles above are simply the first that popped up. Look around a bit and I'm sure you can find the same stories on sites that better suit your particular political bent.
If you're intent on nitpicking, then I think the likely answer to your question is that the CIA openly runs a large and mature weaponized drone program using vehicles that are outfitted by the CIA but owned (in a procurement sense) by the USAF, with the weapon triggers actually pulled (per law) by USAF service members.
If the CIA wanted to keep this program secret then they're doing a shitty job. For example, look up the things that Lean Panetta has said about his program over the last few years.
Not directly. Google is bound by the statutes enforced by the federal and state governments who are empowered by the Constitution to govern. That is why Google can censor its index to clear it of things it does not like, if it so desired. Additionally, it could establish that the official religion of Google is from here forth Pastafarianism and while that might run afoul of some workplace regulations in certain jurisdictions, there is nothing in the Constitution that prevents Google from doing so.
If Google deletes your comments on a YouTube video, it's not a violation of the 1st Amendment. If Google employees take a good, long look at your email or the documents you have in Drive, it's not a violation of the Fourth.
Not Google nor any other person is granted rights under the Constitution. Given the Natural Rights philosophy subscribed to by many of the founders, as described by John Locke and others, the rights of the people pre-exist, simply by virtue of their being people.
The Constitution comes later. It describes a set of enumerated powers that the people have decided to cede to the government that they're creating. The way you describe it is the other way around from this.
And therein lies the the big difference. I can opt out of Google's tracking in a number of ways. Secret tracking from the NSA? I will likely not even know it is happening, and if I do, opting out is likely to be slightly more difficult. This, of course, does not even touch upon what that tracking data may then be used for.
> I can opt out of Google's tracking in a number of ways.
At face value, yes. But with the news that companies are tracking web users via browser fingerprints and other methods (even when users have "do not track" enabled), it seems that it is difficult to avoid being secretly tracked by corporations.
Within GSM any interconnected network can query at least the country of any other network's customers' handsets. It's needed for routing roaming calls, but the data is generally quite easy accessible.
There are many commercial services offering lookups (google "HLR lookup")
That, or something to keep football from being televised on Sunday.
Please, Edward. Tell me there is something up your sleeve that will get people to realize that this is actually a really fucking big thing and that it needs to stop right away.