Slashdot Mirror
The Privacy Candidate
Alsee writes "Wired News reports 'electronic civil libertarians' hearts are a-twitter' over US Presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton's bold stance on the right to privacy. Wired quotes Clinton: 'At all levels, the privacy protections for ordinary citizens are broken, inadequate and out of date.' Clinton gave a speech last June to the American Constitution Society (text, WMF) in which she addressed electronic surveillance, consumer opt-in vs. opt-out, cyber-security, commercial and government handling of personal data, data offshoring, data leaks, and even genetic discrimination." Would you consider a candidate's stand on privacy important enough to sway your vote?
Not only would it sway my vote, but a positive stance on privacy would damn-near guarantee it. Over the years, the U.S. government has eroded its citizens' rights to the point of absurdity. This latest president has only made a bad situation worse.
There are other issues at stake, of course, but none quite as dear as those that hit close to home. I'm tired of watching my privacy dwindle away, and I want it to stop.
The real question is, did she say what she did because she wanted to preach to the choir, or because she actually believes in privacy?
It was the American Constitution Society after all...
Not bashing her just beacuse, but her history does not support her intent to protect privacy. This is just poliical rhetoric to get elected. ( typical of *all* candidates as they ramp up towards an election )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I've already seen her stance on video games, that's all I needed to know.
Hillary Clinton's idea of "privacy" is about the same as that behind the "Medical Privacy Act". This made it a Federal offense to disclose medical records, standardized the records keeping, and made it all available to the government upon request. To her "privacy" is that between civilians; the government and its employees are a whole 'nother matter.
Not hers. She's a US Senator, former First Lady, and the democratic front-runner for the presidential nomination in 2008. She's been in the public eye for years, she's wielded real power for years, is perhaps the most influential woman in the US after Oprah (seriously...); and yet our privacy has continued to be diminished on her watch without so much as a peep. You apparently have to go back to a talk she gave to the American Constitution Society to even know what her stance on personal privacy is, and I had to go to Wikipedia to find out who they are. Where's the public outrage if you care about privacy so much, Hillary? Lord knows you don't have a hard time getting in front of a TV camera with a chance to express it.
Will I support a candidate who's serious about protecting personal privacy? Hell yes. It's the most important issue I can think of. Hillary Clinton isn't that person, and neither is any other mainstream candidate. Pretty fucking sad.
Game... blouses.
...that even among other such politicians, Hillary is one of the most blatant, shameless populists ever to have walked the Earth. Her perspectives, her very mind itself in its' entirety is completely for sale, for the purpose of gaining votes.
She might be making noises about the "right to privacy," right now, but please try and remember that when Jack Thompson and the other usual suspects were screeching and crying about violence in video games, she supported that, too. She tries to determine which way the wind is blowing, and when she suspects that she has, then jumps on what she feels is the dominant voter bandwagon at any given point in time. But she is not the archetypical Slashbot's friend...or really anyone else's, for that matter.
So since ab initio you declare all politicians equal (-ly corrupt) and the differences to be merely a matter of taste, there is no point in actually doing the work and comparing what they actually have to say, or their actual programs, thereby letting them get away with not even having real solid programs anymore even more easily. Well done. Very convenient for you, very lazy. And on top of it all you can even look down on those stupid suckers who actually care about the political process!
Your attitude is a real threat to democracy, and stupid, and self-fulfilling. Thank you for doing your part in killing honest political and social discourse on the issues that matter. Yes, such discourse is difficult and tiring. It involves questioning whether Clinton was, as another poster put it, preaching to the choir or actually serious. But this discourse is the core political process of democracy. As long as you don't actively participate in it and try to get others engaged as well you have no right whatsoever to complain about the state of politics.
...stand on the First Amendment? Remember Hillary was the Senator leading the charge against Take2/Rockstar over Hot Coffee.
Someone neglected to include our current president on that memo. He's made plenty of pseudo-law with his ongoing abuse of signing statements.
I'm sure few people here actually read this. I can hardly blame you -- it's long, and it's mostly just bland generalities, with the details both rare and disappointing.
There's nothing new in the speech. She talks a lot about data breaches. Those are devastating, sure, but they're hardly an "issue." Being against data breaches offends no constituency (who *isn't* against them?) -- it's like being "tough on crime." She seems to be against a lot of things that nobody is for.
However, she spends very little time on what most of us think of when we talk about "privacy" -- that is, the government's prohibition, under the fourth amendment, against searching us without probable cause, and without a warrant. In fact, she comes to the conclusion that the warrantless searches the Bush administration are doing are probably fine. She believes in the same odious calculation that defines rights and security as mutually exclusive constraints, that have to be "balanced."
Rather, she only takes Bush to task for not letting congress in on the action. That is, had only Bush asked congress for "authorization" -- which would surely have been forthcoming -- everything would have been okay. "Let is in on the action," she seems to say, "and we'll make sure you get the warrants so your policies will be easier to sell to the masses." Instead of real criticism of a policy that's both illegal and that actually makes us less safe, we get criticism over tactics, and parochial self-interest.
The title and blurb for this are completely misleading.
So she supports privacy when it suits her agenda, just like everyone else in DC.