Glenn Greenwald, writing for the Guardian, reported on a FISA court order that Verizon provide the NSA access to all of its telephone call records.
I didn’t much care for this sort of thing in 2005 when the Washington Post reported on the resignation of a FISA court judge who disagreed with President Bush conducting warrantless wiretaps on U.S. Citizens. I was also unimpressed when the House, including our current governor, shut down a hearing on the PATRIOT ACT while witnesses opposed to the act were in the midst of testifying.
I didn’t much care for it in 2006 when the Electronic Frontier Foundation was trying to file a class action pertaining to AT&T’s Room 641A where the NSA was allegedly using AT&T facilities to wiretap and data-mine massive amounts of information passing through there. That suit was dismissed based on the State’s Secret Privilege.
In 2007, I was mad at Hoosier Democrats for voting to increase the government’s wiretapping authority.
However, as the years passed, and few people seemed to care, I have sort of lapsed into apathy. Now I’m supposed to care? If lawmakers shut down this kind of authority for the government, I’m all for it. But, I’m not going to act as if this is some sort of new outrage.
And, in fact, my apathy is also based on a sense of inevitability. I think we’re in the Panopticon now. Maybe the idea of privacy is a relatively short lived concept for humans. In the days of the tribe and the village, I can’t imagine humans had much in the way of privacy. Everybody basically knew everything about everyone. Perhaps that’s where we’re headed again. The real danger comes from lack of parity in information. Maybe it’s less important to restrict the access of the government to data about us and increase our access to data about the government.
And this new view comports with the U.S. Constitution, which the last I checked, has not been amended to permit such unwarranted, search and seizure of the most private of information of private citizens by the government without the least bit showing of probable cause? It’s quite predictable, Doug, that you would dismiss the latest revelations in such a cavalier fashion. What you really want to say is that you can’t bring yourself to admit that Barack Obama is as bad, if not worse, than George W. Bush when it comes to protecting and defending our civil liberties. Perhaps that’s because the people who pull their strings are one and the same. The Democrat versus Republican paradigm of political rule is merely a fiction of our imagination thrown up to confuse and divide us. Your statements reveal what our masters knew they could conquer- eternal vigilance in the pursuit of liberty. Your views, my views and the vast majority of the people’s views are irrelevant. We are now nothing more than slaves to a ruling elite. The Republic, as defined by the U.S. Constitution, is officially dead.
I don’t know who is worse. I know this continued NSA crap means neither is good. But, I’m skeptical of anyone ringing the bell now who hasn’t been too concerned for the past 7 or 8 years.
Also, I’ve heard the Republic declared dead so many times, it’s kind of lost its sting.
Your panopticon analogy is a good one. But really, what is there to watch. Facebook, twitter, banal and vapid. We vomit so much of our personal information everywhere and are shocked to find that it is being sucked up by anyone with a bigger server.
I tell Kroger;s everything I eat for two heads of lettuce for the price of one.
Excellent point about Krogers. We are concerned about the government gathering data, as we should be, but the government also has some prescribed boundaries. Meanwhile, almost daily we willingly sign over our private information to businesses that make up the rules about how it will be used and who will use it, and then relentlessly and professionally mine that data to determine our needs before we know that we have them and then sell stuff with half-truths and outrageous claims. While the public focuses on the government, business is picking its pocket. The government can’t hold a candle to that beam.
You don’t find Gary’s newfound emotional reaction to be hysterical?
As someone who was outraged when we first heard about this and then watched as the American people continued to elect Representatives and Senators who were all for abdicating on controlling this power, it’s just amazing to find conservatives discover this 6 years later and blame Obama.
Hell, most of these people actually defended this when Bush was doing it.
The sad thing for people like me (not the funny reaction of American’s mentally deficient class, i.e., conservatives, is that no politician risks anything by allowing this stuff to continue. Obama left no votes on the table when he voted to immunize AT&T in 2008. The Romney administration never argued we should devolve Executive power to snoop (only to help). There is no constituency for being terrible on Civil Liberties. It is my this former Obama donor refused to give any money or put an Obama yard sign out, but I doubt my $25 was missed
The HuffPost has a video showing Sean Hannity defending the Bush administration for the NSA spying, and then beating up the Obama administration for exactly the same behavior. The HuffPost aptly calls it a display of “hypocrisy”. Concrete demonstration of your point, timb.
I suspect that the expertise of our government in its implementation, use of data and ability to find offenders is overstated and that if Hollywood portrayed these surveillance activities in a less triumphal and more truthful way, they would be closer to comedy than serious drama. After all, these guys can’t even share the data they know is there! Many of those folks seem to be less than bright yet take themselves very seriously which probably results in a lot of misses and false positives. But if you scare enough people, you can get permission to do almost any fool thing and let the chips fall where they may. Then advertise the one guy who was caught by accident by a news stand operator. Panopticon is a lousy and scary idea, but what is really scary are the characters behind the glass.
Obama has proven himself nothing less than an outright tyrant and traitor to the Constitution. He is easily the worst president the country has ever seen. He makes GWBush look like the head of the ACLU.
The Left has permanently proven itself unfit to govern with this group of attacks by its leaders.
Wow. How does your head hold so much hyperbole?
Greg Garrison, stop posting anonymously.
By the way, since when did wingnuts think the ACLU was a good organizaton?
Perhaps you could offer some evidence for that, unless this is just a rant. In that case, I hope you feel better.
The far right and the left punked again.
http://thedailybanter.com/2013/06/nsa-story-falling-apart-under-scrutiny-key-facts-turning-out-to-be-inaccurate/
Give the public bread and circuses, histrionics and reaction to fear over thoughtful debate anytime. The debate and job of thinking about stuff just bores them. We have politicians who seem to be better at reacting to and provoking public fears than they do thinking through and discussing issues in a thoughtful manner, so when you have to deal with tricky stuff like this, clever pronouncements just don’t do the trick unless people start showing some real thought. Reminds me of the epigram, “When I works, I works hard. When I sits, I sits deep. When I thinks, I falls asleep.”
Reminds me of the Adlai Stevenson story. When told by a supporter that he had the vote of every thinking person, he reportedly responded, “That’s not enough, madam, we need a majority!”
Good one, Dog. I have heard that one, also.
If nothing else, maybe view it as an allocation of resources issue, Doug. Do you really prioritize spending on personnel & equipment for poring over emails & phone records rather than, say, extending unemployment benefits? Or, maybe fixing bridges? &c.
No arguments there. I’m a Henry Clay “American System” infrastructure man from way back.