Last time people were looking forward to a meaningful conflict, it plunged the whole world into 4 years of war, followed by another 7. Be careful what you wish for.
We need a peaceful solution for this. Vote these people away. Replace them by better people. Educate those who think they have nothing to hide.
The scary thing is this: these people were already voted away. People voted for Obama when he promised the end of warrantless wiretapping, the closing down of Guantanamo, etc. Why should voters believe the next guy who promises these things? It feels hopeless.
Welcome to democracy (or rather the facade)! Does the US president actually have that much individual power anyway? I wish it was more like the film Dave, inasmuch as that the president on his first day questions all the wrongs, and suggests to put them all right!
People love a figurehead to moan and blame, but it's not ever as simple as that. I'm not making excuses for Obama, but he's also up against the establishment.
The weird thing is, I'd read about Prism a few weeks back, and like others have just been under the assumption that my electronic data isn't secure. That's not to say I'm happy about it. If the NSA wasn't doing it, then someone else would be. I know that's a pretty crappy line, but it's the normal diatribe for the advocation of defence policies.
I'm totally disillusioned with British politics, so have the same sinking feeling, along with others to the point of apathy - which is really quite sad. I think the expression is 'don't let the bastards grind you down', I feel ground down. Our current government is a sad mishmash of nearly theres, and we haven't even got a viable opposition at the moment. Good times. That along with media lies, and the average Joe paying the price for corporate crimes - is all pretty shitty.
The worst thing about all of this, is that you end up questioning whether this is legitimate or not, is the US just bigging up their capabilities - is this all just disinfo?
Either way, the hot pot of data that a silo like Facebook has, is just gagging to get into the hands of the wrong doers, and that's probably a tough force to be reckoned with.
"I'm not making excuses for Obama, but he's also up against the establishment."
Obama's not 'up against' the establishment. He is the establishment. After everything he's done, how on earth are people still ascribing good intentions to this guy?
No, he is one small part of the establishment that will be gone in < 4 years. There are senators who have been there decades, there are senior management at government agencies who have been there decades. The president isn't powerless but he is very temporary and fighting against large entrenched organizations. Consider how hard it would be to be the CEO of Microsoft or IBM if everyone under you knew you were going to be in charge for at most 8 years.
Focusing on the president (small p, for the actual person) is the wrong conversation. The debate should focus on the President and the role and scope of the Executive. That requires more than educating the average voting citizen. It requires a public discussion of the moral and ethical pitfalls of a powerful Executive in context of world history. Even then, it misses the bulk of the issue. The masses elect and re-elect a legislature with <15% approval rating.
If you look at the 2012 presidential debate topics, it is mostly devoid of any real substantive insights into the candidates world view or ethics. This leaves the citizens to deduce disparate idealized versions of the candidate based on mostly trivial or momentary current event topics. Combined with the two party system, you get a citizenry with black and white goggles. The average person never has to think philosophically about how elected officials might steer the moral and ethical direction of the country.
He still could have chosen to use the bully pulpit to try to improve the situation. Instead he chose to maintain the status quo, specifically breaking a campaign promise. Worse, having been called out on it, he now whines, "But Congress said it was OK" as if that were some kind of justification. It's true that Obama doesn't have the power to singlehandedly change the situation. But he does have more influence than any other individual.
You make it seem as if keeping promises and good intentions are the same thing. How many lives is a promise worth?
I'd much rather have a politician that bas his plans on the latest known evidence, rather than blindly adhering to promises made. This isn't to suggest that this is what happened here, but frankly, it's too early to tell. Information is still being spilled day by day.
And for many of this, it isn't news. It's stuff we've known was going on for a long time. But shit, some whistleblower comes out and everyone suddenly becomes all for privacy, forgetting that countless times scaremongers and conspiracy theorists were shouted down.
This is what the American people voted for many times, not just in the presidential elections. And it didn't start with Obama.
So, until you can answer "How many lives is a promise worth?" you're simply playing arm chair politics. It's easy to get indignant and out of sorts when you don't have any responsibility.
That's not what I was getting at. I was suggesting that pointing the finger of blame at one person, and placing the onus on them - and asking them to resign is a little shortsighted. Expecting the problem to just vanish is merely wishful thinking.
Is he or is he not the establishment, that's probably another debate in itself.
I'm over the pond here, so I can't quite grok the American reaction to the recent news over this Prism stuff. I'd expect the Hacker news community to be pissed, but what's the general feeling over there?
There are all kinds of intellectual arguments against the "I have nothing to hide" excuse, but the argument itself is emotional - "I am a good person, bad things do not happen to good people."
We need examples, emotional heart-string tugging examples of good people who had something to hide and suffered because it was exposed. I don't have any off the top of my head, but perhaps someone has already realized this and started collecting them somewhere on the web?
One nice point raised in that article is the feeling of encroachment on personal space.
Going somewhat OT, sorry no concrete examples for you...
Like other's have said the thought that you are being watched is like being in a panopticon, or having God looking over your shoulder. Which might of course curb some people from doing wrong, but could stifle exploration and expression of our multiple personas on the web.
Some laws are easy to get on board with, others are not. You could kill your career with something like the exposure of drug taking.
There's the possibility of smear campaigns (if the data falls into the wrong hands). Did anyone hear about the news of the world police bribing scandal in the UK?
You might loose your job, if you are found to have certain political or organisational leanings.
You could find yourself the target of ethnic cleansing.
Those that have nothing to hide, probably feel right now that they are on the right side of the law. Perhaps you could identify 'criminals' by asking for a show of hands for those that 'have nothing to hide', and lock up the rest.
We all have a few skeletons in our closet, it might be nice to get these out there and seek repentence, but sadly some people are just not so tolerant, forgiving, or able to not pass judgment. And sometimes it's best to just bury these things.
what was the excuse for voting for him again in 2012?
really I fail to understand people here, One day they bitch about invasion of privacy the next day they want the same people to have every bit of control over their health care. Well guess what, you cannot have it both ways.
Granted he had help from a major government agency interfering with groups opposed to his reelection from gathering funds. So perhaps you didn't have a choice in who won.
> One day they bitch about invasion of privacy the next day they want the same people to have every bit of control over their health care. Well guess what, you cannot have it both ways.
This is just as flawed as the arguments that giving the government access to your email is no big deal because you gave access to Google, and they're a massive organization too, right?
I have no problem with Medicare having access to the health records of every American. Single-payer healthcare is a great system. This is completely tangential to giving the NSA/FBI similar access to information.
Comparatively speaking, it might actually be more difficult for the NSA to get unwarranted access to government medical records, since we have extensive laws on the books protecting such data. Your argument is an absolute red herring.
Not sure why you're getting the downvote. This is obviously true.
It's also important to consider not just the size of the organization, but the nature and extent of its powers. For instance, Google - no matter how big - cannot arrest you, try you, convict you, or imprison you. Your health insurer isn't going to send the Marines to attack another nation, no matter how many doctors they have in their network. I could go on, but the point should be clear: military and law enforcement have a unique - and uniquely dangerous - set of powers. Accordingly, they operate under structures for accountability unlike those that exist anywhere else. The extraordinary trust they're given in some areas is balanced by a distinctly high and formalized level of distrust in others (e.g. actions that are subject to prior judicial review and approval).
So contrary to what you insist, we can give some powers to some organizations, withhold the same power from others. And we can base those organization's ability exist and operate legally on the degree to which they respect and abide by these divisions, and the rule of law.
When it turns out that (a) they don't and (b) we can't respond to these violations, it's a signal that the most basic arrangement keeping our society viable is coming undone. That's a problem that needs to be solves. But thanks to the principle of divided power, it doesn't mean we have to give up intelligent arrangements for sending email or handling health care data in order to keep the police and military in line.
> what was the excuse for voting for him again in 2012?
It probably depends on which person you're talking about and how they decide to allocate votes: some people vote to signal some measure of approval of a candidate, some people vote to send one kind of message or another, some people just vote to select one of the available candidates.
> One day they bitch about invasion of privacy the next day they want the same people to have every bit of control over their health care.
I don't know what your level of familiarity with the various threats to civil liberties is, but after reading this, one could be forgiven for thinking that you don't know very much about the recent health care legislation if your working summary is that it provides for the government to have "every bit of control" over each individual's health care.
Sr. got an airport named after him? Reminds me when they renamed National to Reagan National. I thought Nixon National would be catchier if the bar's that low.
The time voting would help was gone years and years ago. If you want to make peaceful change now you're going to need to get involved in politics directly (e.g. "The pirate party" but don't call your party that in the US. In fact, I'd call them "democrats" or "republicans", which ever is more popular). Until enough of us do this, things will just continue to get worse. There is no politician out there who truly has your interests at heart. Even if there is, they're alone (e.g. Ron Paul and I don't even agree with the majority of his platform).
I'd say that culture is a much more powerful agent of change than traditional political work
could ever be.
Politicians can act as scribes and put down into legislation a part of the cultural ethos,
but they don't do much in the way of inspiring that ethos in the first place.
Practice what you preach, call bullshit by its' name.
I don't know about you, but I remember a time where calling your representative could affect change. In the last ~10 years politicians have shown that they no longer care. Studies in Canada and various places have shown that simply advertising changes enough people's behavior to be effective. So now politicians feel ok simply ignoring their constituent so long as they get enough advertising money to secure a win. Culture of the "plebs" is irrelevant to the 1% so long as the plebs aren't armed with a mind to do something with those arms.
If you want to change the system at this state the only option is to be the system.
But the system is not the government. It is an emergent system created by the interaction of people. You don't have to accept the government as the primary authority that determines how you live your life. If enough people do that the culture changes and so will the "system".
I mean look at how inefficient governments are… Have you ever seen one make a solid economic plus? Those archaic structures are pretty much already crumbling.
I hope and think that the kind of shit these systems are doing right now are just the death throes of an obsolete institution desperately trying not to fade into irrelevance.
That make a huge assumption, that you can work within the constraints of the Institution and not become institutionalised in the process.
The reason that governments (I'm in the UK) keep on doing this is that by its nature institutions will naturally gravitate towards this kind of behaviour, so it becomes self reinforcing.
Is it enough to just vote? Possibly not. Those peers of yours, the people you grew up with, one day they might be in Government, but don't expect them to be different from the last lot.
We need more radical action to re-establish a new relationship between a government and its people; What we have now works in many ways, but clearly it has its limits that need to be addressed.
I didn't mean to make it sound as if I want violence. I hate violence. But they've been lying and building weird information weapons for years. We need something other than that to start happening soon.
> Sadly those votes don't mean a thing when there's lobbyists involved.
I honestly think this might be the most important insight in the modern political landscape -- though I think it's incompletely expressed in the language on display here.
The central truth is that voting on its own is a pretty limited form of civic interaction, and as long as it's the only one, officials and citizens will tend to be pretty isolated from one another.
Lobbyists close the loop. Of course, as long as that means hired lobbying, it only closes the loop for people who can afford to hire people to lobby for them.
The question I think this analysis brings up is whether we have too many lobbyists or too few.
It's the American obsession with the apocalypse. Conflict is "fun" and "cool" and gives people a way to amplify their voice disproportionately. Blow up a government building and you'll get more attention than someone who works peacefully a whole lifetime.
It's not a modern or uniquely American concept. Consider the story of the prodigal son, for example. The wayward son received all the attention, even if the faithful son had a bigger inheritance left in the end.
We need a peaceful solution for this. Vote these people away. Replace them by better people. Educate those who think they have nothing to hide.