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Americans Not Bothered by NSA Spying
Snap E Tom writes "According to a Washington Post poll, a majority (63%) of Americans 'said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate terrorism.' A slightly higher majority would not be bothered if the NSA collected personal calls that they made. Even though the program has received bi-partisan criticism from Congress, it appears that the public values security over privacy."
Then they'll have neither.
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Benjamin Franklin must be spinning in his grave...
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
We're talking about Americans here. They're much better at rhetoric about how great and free they are than actually getting upset when their leaders turn out to be blatantly trampling rights enshrined in the constitution.
It's been a long time.
"It's might be OK for the NSA to use who you call to establish close ties to a terrorist."
You just said its OK for the government to consider ALL CITIZENS as potential terrorists AT ALL TIMES.
Are you SURE thats "might be OK"?
You just threw presumprion of innocence out the window, without even realising what you did, didn't you?
Scaring Americans into giving up their privacy is really getting old. A large scale terrorism attack is still very much possible today. Mistake after mistake has shown this. It's a dog and pony show. The presentation has changed, but gaping holes still exist. Amercians somehow believe losing their rights is helping terrorism, but in reality its not. Before 9/11 terrorism was almost non-existant in America. After 9/11 it's almost non-existant. Looking at raw numbers, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of things you should be more worried about killing you than a terrorist. Statistically I'd be more worried about being killed by a shark in the US.
And I can't believe people are actually fooled into thinking somehow terrorism is a major threat. If you want to save the most amount of lives with the least amount of effort, fight obesity. It accounts for most of the top killers in America today.
But obesity isn't patriotic. You can't hang a flag outside your house supporting the war on fat.
Get a fucking clue people. Terrorism isn't a threat to your daily lives. If you actually think it is, then you've been emotionally manipulated by people who want your money and/or votes.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
Okay, the NSA is just making correlations between calls. However, if any actor can be tied to Kevin Bacon in 6 steps, and any person to the President in 6 steps, doesn't this mean the NSA can tie any phone user to a terrorist at will in 6 steps or less?
"I called my auto mechanic, who called a customer, who once called a lawyer friend, who represented a terrorist. So now I'm flagged as 'communicating with a terrorist'".
Worse, the only way to weed out such 'spurious connections' is, of course, to get more detailed records of exactly who was called, and why, and what was said. So the concept is inherently flawed and can only be fixed by further privacy violations.
A.
As we all know "terrorism" is the root password to the Constitution. This question asks only about terrorism. I wonder what their answers would be if the question was:
"Do you find the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate drug use?"
or
"Do you find the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate copyright infringment?"
We all know these programs will not be used for only terrorism, but for everyday crimes. Will people care then?
Americans who have given up on caring about anything truthful being discussed in today's world are not bothered by NSA spying.
Seriously, if the NSA will not give security clearances (thereby stopping the investigation) to the Federal Prosecutors trying to investigate this alleged spying on Americans, does the US actually have ANY checks and balances on uncontrolled power?
More importantly, does anyone even care?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
If you think what the NSA is collecting is bad, why not take a look at what you send the IRS every year. (Assuming you're living in America.)
So big whoop....
No, it's not ok at all for the government to double check all my phone calls just in case I was doing something wrong even though I've given them no reason to believe I have been. Why don't I let them check my house every night to make sure I don't have any stolen goods from my neighbor's house in there, too, and perhaps an escort to make sure I really am going to my office every morning and not the local top secret terrorist hideout. I haven't given them any reason to think that I'm doing those things, but they're at least as likely as me calling terrorists from my house to plan an attack.
What you are missing here is the basic concept of our government. The Executive Branch (President) enforces the laws, the Legistative Branch (Congress) makes the laws and the Judicial Branch (Supreme Court) intreprets the laws.
Equal, but Separate. Checks and Balances. Remember those terms from grade school? What you have here is an Executive Branch that has set itself above all the others. We call that a Dictatorship.
Is it beyond redemption? Absolutely not. All that is needed is for Congress to get a spine and conduct some oversight like they are supposed to. Which, unfortunately, will never happen as long as the Party Line is more important than the Nation. I hate to say "I told you so", but the moment the GOP made public their "Contract For America", I could see that the GOP would no longer be able to vote their conscience, but will be required to vote according to some hidden GOP agenda.
In other words, they would no longer be Our Representatives , as was intended.
"I drank what?" - Socrates
Statistics from 2002: * Heart Disease: 696,947
* Cancer: 557,271
* Stroke: 162,672
* Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 124,816
* Accidents (unintentional injuries): 106,742
* Diabetes: 73,249
* Influenza/pneumonia: 65,681
* Alzheimer's disease: 58,866
* Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 40,974
* Septicemia: 33,865
* Suicide: 30,622
* Murder: 16,110
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that our "war on terrorism" has costed us more than we spend on all of these other problems combined... maybe even by an order of magnitude. There's a difference between "We were attacked! Let's do nothing." and "We were attacked! Let's get our intelligence agencies to talk to start talking to each other and let's increase airline security." And there's a huge difference between the latter and "We were attacked! Let's spend close to a trillion dollars on wars and homeland security and allow the government to do unlimited search and seizures without warrants, force protesters into Free Speech Zones because they're (supposedly) a security risk, allow indefinite imprisonment without trial, allow the government to strip anyone of their USA citizenship without trial, and allow the NSA to monitor every single USA citizen when none of the terrorists on 9/11 were actually USA citizens.
You want a definitive change that will make America safer vs. terrorists? Here ya go, this is the only one that will work: switch to biodiesel/ethenol/hydrogen (with a trillion dollars of spending, we COULD make this happen) and tell Israel they're on their own (sucks to be them, but I would have no sympathy for someone who founded a nation in the Antartic and complained when their toes started falling off... similarly, I don't have a lot of sympathy for the all-too-predictable holy war Israel has been drawn into.)
Or, you and the rest of America can grow some fucking balls and realize that freedom isn't free. The price we pay isn't measured in dollars or even in the lives of our soldiers--it's measured by the lives of you, me, and every other civilian. Every day we put our lives on the line, even though our risk vs. terrorism and murder could be lessened if the government took draconian measures such as tagging us, putting cameras in our houses, and monitoring every single call we make. But that's not a fair tradeoff, not when murder and terrorism represent such a tiny tiny percent of our country's problem. We should not be monitored in any way without a warrant, and you're a damn fool for not seeing how this could be abused.
The Founders were very concerned about freedom of assembly--the curtailment of that freedom was one the methods dictators, in this case King George and the Tories, use to suppress dissent. If the 'government' could monitor the revolutionary meetings and find out who attended, they could then quietly round the participants up one by one later. In the modern age, the telephone is used to arrange many meetings. If any government wants to repress freedom of assembly and quash dissent, what better way than to have a list of a dissenter's contacts to round up for questioning? A few police dragnets and stakeouts and the matter is closed. They don't need to know the content of the call--association is 'guilty' and you are on the call list so you are brought in for quesitoning. Sure, there is a remote possibility the NSA _might_ find find some terrorists in this net, but this brute force drift net is going to trap and drown as a 'side kill' our freedom with much more certainty. The fact that this escapes the average American is no surprise--most of them have never read the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution and many don't recognize paragraphs from them when given in a poll. Freedom is too important to be trusted to the uneducated mob.--they won't miss it until they need it and then it will be too late.
There is no such thing as a random telephone poll.
Here's a statistic for you, 100% of people polled by telephone said they were "willing to participate in telephone polls"!
This is especially relevant here, since those that value their privacy are less likely to participate in telephone polls.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
.....and another survey found out that the majority of Europeans don't understand why Americans view them as elitist pricks with a smug sense of superiority
What I've always found curious in these discussions where Europeans start babbling on about the ignorance-filled American dystopia. America, despite the NSA wiretapping and call database, is still eons ahead of most of Europe in terms of government intrusion. The UK, for instance, does incredible stuff that would get people crucified here.
In my industry, we work with people from many countries... and I can see with absolute certainty that if you do not want the government snooping in your life, America is generally a far better place to be than Europe. Omnipresent video surveillance, automatic liscense plate recognition, and a central database of liscense plates, their locations, and the times. That's reality in parts of western Europe. They don't even lie and say it's for terrorism... it's for dealing with normal criminal activity. They are actively trying to acquire face detection/recognition software to start tracking individuals throughout the community, as well.
I have no problem with Europeons mocking America for not living up to their stated values. However, let's not get self-righteous... kettles and pots will reign supreme.
There's a further problem that was seen during the election. Telephone polling is usually limited to landlines, but many young people use a mobile exclusively. So the demographics are screwed even before you start.
The question is too abstract for most Americans. Instead of "do you care if the NSA has access to the numbers you call?" they should do some digging and ask "why did you call 555-6789 six times last week?". Somehow I feel this would generate a completely different emotional response.
After years of the government providing "safety nets" in the form of massive social welfare programs, after years of socialists telling people "Government is the answer," you wonder why this result. After years of the smartest and best making law after law to protect give special protection to each minority group they can pander to, is it any wonder? The lawmakers tell what you can and can not say at work, the lawmakers talk about crimes of hate, the lawmakers make you give them money so they can give old people drugs, social security, etc.
Is it any wonder we fear terrorism. After years of our press telling us we can't understand anything, and hiding truth in euphamisms, is it any wonder we fear it. After years of making criminals into victims, and terrorists into criminals, is there any wonder why we fear we aren't being told the truth?
It's odd to me the same group of people worried about call lists in the NSA database are the same ones who create this massive nanny state.
Ed Barbar, President and General Manager, Furnit USA
The masses almost always value security over freedom until they have so little of either a revolution is born.
This is probably the best phrase I've ever seen. I hadn't thought about this until now, I was just wondering how (since societies apparently eventually seem to self-regulate and converge to some point) it is possible that so many freedoms are continuously chipped away from the people. Now I realise freedom is not a graph that converges somewhere, but one that lowers enough to pass the tolerance threshold, where a revolution brings it back way up, only to get it chipped at again in time.
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That would be the "Lyme Disease - hey, at least it's not AIDS!" argument.
Just because the current political climate in the United States "isn't as bad as ______[insert country]" doesn't make it ok.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -- Thomas Jefferson
To make this like a meeting and have an action item to leave with, this translates into
1) Openly speak out. Yes, Bush should be impeached. Removed from office? Dunno, but impeachment is the first step to figure this stuff out.
2) Join the NRA and learn how to protect yourself and your family _AND_ buy at least 20-30,000 rounds of ammo.
Americans have become such lazy pussies over the years, I guess because they don't think too much, and times have been good for a while, but that is changing, and we need to change in turn.
We need to be outraged about the BS this government is doing nowadays. No, its not OK to tap my phone. Worried about terrorism, protect our borders thank you. You have the personnel and equipment, now go do your job. With the millions of people walking into our country every year, and the tons of "illegal" goods coming by boat, airplane, tunnels, car, and tractor trailer, its trivial to do a substitute on the cargo for "terrorist" goods and services.
We run this country, not the government. The government works for us, remember?
The "Psyops" the government has waged against people in the US and abroad has worked very well on the weak minded people. These manipulations of the government by citing the "War on terror" and the "Save the children" campaigns are clever, and have worked for a while on stupid people, but those days are over.
Also every time this wiretap nonsense gets mentioned, remember that al Queda (according to the 9/11/01 report) got away with the attacks because _they did NOT use any electronic form of communication_.
Tapping phones and all of the other illegal shit the government is doing is only a form of terrorism against the people of this country. None of these current efforts will affect the "bad guys".
You've hit on what I think is the real issue: oversight.
Where is the oversight? It would be one thing if the administration was doing this with congressional and judicial oversight. That would afford us at least a minimal protection of our civil liberties. However, the Bush Administration is determined to increase the power of the Presidency under the cover of post 9/11 security. They effectively wish to suspend the Constitution for the duration of the War on Terror, i.e., forever.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
The people in the US military are hardly volunteers. They're forced via leverage into combat through the realities of class difference.
You're born poor. You get a substandard education because all of the educational dollars and community infrastructure are re-routed to wealthy districts since that's where both the lobbyists and the lawmakers are from since they have the resources to affect policy and ability and access to means to vote while the poor can't even afford to take a day off of work to do so.
Because of this substandard education, you have few prospects in an economy in which labor is moving offshore to line the pockets of the very wealthy through the exploitation of cheap labor. To make things worse, there is NO WORK WHATSOEVER because there is no working economy in your part of town, and you can't afford to commute out of it to the other side of town where the rich people do have a working economy in order to land a job (nevermind the fact that they wouldn't hire you anyway--wrong side of the tracks and all).
But it's a problem to have no prospects, since you live in the inner city and there is no social safety net. There is nowhere for you to grow your own food or improvise shelter, but there is also no social infrastructure to feed you and clothe you, much less provide you and/or your children with basic medical care. You . will . die . prematurely, and so will your children.
BUT... The same Uncle Sam who won't guarantee you BASIC healthcare or fund the security force and investment necessary to help your community to feed itself or jumpstart its economy... comes along and says that if you are willing to carry a gun, he will feed both you *and* your children and provide you medical care and a retirement. Otherwise, you and they will suffer and die young. He promises you that it's safe, you won't die, the numbers are in your favor, our military is ultra-strong and ultra-well-equipped, it's like playing a video game, there's absolutely no risk, plus you'll get to travel and work with computers and get a better education and on-the-job-training and you'll finally have respect instead of being seen as a worthless piece of poor trash, and more to the point your . children . will . eat . and . be . healthy.
What choice do you have? After asking your recruiter again and being promised that it's utterly risk-free, and looking around your dive on the south side and out the window at your graffiti-covered neighborhood with boarded up windows everywhere and drug dealers on every corner, and thinking once more about how you never were able to finish high school because the school was so dangerous you were afraid to go and they didn't actually have any *textbooks* for lack of funding anyway, and you'll never amount to anything and your family has a history of heart disease and cancer and you want to be there for your children... you sign on the dotted line.
And then they send you to Iraq and you die.
And Uncle Sam and his gronies even wealthier thanks to you, a poor person, having been forced into labor at gunpoint to force Iraqis into US service at gunpoint.
And some shmuck posts to Slashdot about how you were happy to do it because you were brave and volunteer-minded.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Here's a statistic for you, 100% of people polled by telephone said they were "willing to participate in telephone polls"!
Here's another statistic for you: 100% of those people were also "willing to have the call recorded"!
So, the only people who were asked if the approved of the NSA recording phone calls were the people who were both willing to have the phone call recorded, and willing to participate in a telephone poll. The people who objected to having the phone call recorded were not asked the third question.
This isn't funny. It is just an abuse of statistics.
I think the bigger story here is that there's been yet another leak of classified information without proper authorization. If these leakers who are sharing classified information with non-credentialed sources for their own personal reasons or political gain (there is a clear mechanism in place if they truly believed that a program was violating American law and leaking to a reporter is not it) continue to do this with such regularity, then they may as well just shut down the CIA and NSA and military intelligence agencies and just throw in the towel.
The people leaking this stuff need to be given medals. What we are seeing now is the intelligence communities response to the Bush administration's attempted takeover of the civilian agencies by the military. (see: nomination of a general to lead the CIA)
I have to say, I am not a fan of all these secret police agencies operating in the US; I think we need to abolish all of them and reconstitute them with real oversight. But, I am overjoyed at the responsibility that these leakers are taking for informing Americans about these horrible programs.
Remember, all, or most, of these people have taken oaths to uphold the constitution; and, it's good to see some people take their oeth seriously.
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