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Obama's Privacy Reform Panel Will Report To ... the NSA
FuzzNugget writes "No, you didn't just stumble upon The Onion by mistake. Ars Technica reports that Obama's 'reform' panel will report directly to James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence who arguably lied to Congress about whether the NSA conducted dragnet surveillance of Americans' communications. But is anyone really surprised?"
And most of you voted for him. I hope you are proud of yourselves.
Either he did or he didn't, there's no in-between. In actuality he lied, and did it intentionally.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
It's up to us to contact our representatives and let them know that they can't just sweep this under the rug like usual. There has to be consequences.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
I've slowly started to come to the view that representative democracy has basically failed. It's time to try a new system.
What that system should be up for discussion but the idea of voting for representatives who then decide the policy has been tried and failed. It's too easy for corruption to take root and it's too easy for those people to grab power for power's sake.
I refuse to accept that there is no better solution than the status-quo. There must be a way to capture the will of the people, protect minorities, and protect the people from government overreach. There must be a way to have our cake and eat it.
You explain everything with malice in the government, and idiocy in the voters
Sarah Palin is an anti-intellectual spawn of Satan, but it is rather funny how that obnoxious line from one of her red meat rallies - "How's that hopey changey stuff working out for ya?" turned out to be oddly prophetic.
This is a panel to determine if the US "employs its technical collection capabilities in a manner that optimally protects our national security and advances our foreign policy while appropriately accounting for other policy considerations, such as the risk of unauthorized disclosure and our need to maintain the public trust."
This isn't supposed to be oversignt. It's entirely for the NSA's benefit.
You know, at least politicians of yesteryear would *convincingly* lie to us. I really appreciated the time and effort they went to to construct these elaborate castles of "inaccuracies", all in an effort to appease the masses.
These new politicians...I dunno...they don't even *try* anymore. It's like they're too busy screwing us and just phone in the excuses.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
The article doesn't state it, but I heard on CBS News Radio this morning that the panel will also operate in secret, and all records will be classified.
Nothing to see here, move along, citizen. Thank you for your cooperation.
More than anything else, I've been arguing for years that the biggest problem we have in our representative republic is our single-vote system. What we need is an instant runoff voting system to replace our single-vote ballot. I'm tired of the debates over Perot's role in 1992 every time a party needs to drum up support for an unpopular candidate, the debates over how to dethrone current party establishments without splitting the vote and thus forefitting to the other major party among Democrats and Republicans (well, mostly spoken of by Republicans actually), Libertarians and Greens voting for R and D candidates because their own party "can't win", and so on.
The only two ways to dethrone our two same-result-different-rhetoric parties are either to challenge the establishment in primaries (which occasionally works, but more often seems not to work) or to effectively end the monopoly they have on the ballot box by eliminating this idiotic idea that a third-party vote is thrown away. Instant runoff means no vote is wasted, no matter how unlikely a voter's highest-ranked candidate's victory seems.
Example: I know a lot of people who hated Romney and Obama as candidates, and would have liked to have selected someone else, but were so terrified of one or the other that they voted for the one who was most likely to defeat the one who scared them most. That's no way to elect a leader. Similarly, we could have used this process during the primaries to avoid similar problems in candidate selection. Especially states with early primaries, where it could be used to correct for candidates dropping out before the conventions. Though to be fair, most people are unaware that they elect delegates, not candidates.
The whole issue of picking candidates based not on merit but on "electability" is poison to a healthy democratic election.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Is that they live in a world so far removed from our own - in which civil rights, due process and conflicts of interest are active concerns - to such an extent that doing something like this "ain't no thang". Disturbing.
Frankly, they could have at least pretended to give a shit.
Except even that doesn't fully capture what is going on here. More like putting KFC in charge of the henhouse?
the best way to get by is to assume that the internet is a military installation, and you have temporary guest access.
The people investigating wrong-doing will be supervised by the wrong-doers.
Right now a lot of Dems probably feel the same way most republicans felt during Bush's final year or two. Voting face palm in both cases.
> How were we supposed to know he was going to pull this crap
For me, Obama's own radio ads were what convinced me he'd be very bad for the country. Until he started running ads were I lived, I was hopeful he'd be inspiring ala JFK.
I pay attention to people who have managed to get something I want, who have succeeded in something I want to do. I ask them "how did you do that"?
So for me, Obama's message of attacking success was alarming. I see that people who show up ten minutes early, so I TRY to follow their example. Obama's message indicated if he punctual people who dress nice get ahead, he'd put an 80% tax on watches to knock down those selfish punctual people. He SHOULD look at the presidential portraits and ask "what would Kennedy do?". In the campaign, he seemed more likely to look at the Kennedy portrait and flip Kennedy off for doing better than him. So that's how I knew he'd pull a bunch of crap.
Combined with that, about a year before he started his campaign he said it would be "irresponsible" for him to run for president because "I believe in knowing what you're doing when you apply for a job." He was correct in stating that he wouldn't know what to do as president, but that might have been okay IF he'd recognized that and followed the examples of successful presidents.Unfortunately, that's his number one flaw - he doesn't learn from successful people, he envies them and attacks whatever is successful.
> and how would voting for the other asshole have been any better?
It couldn't have been much worse. You might say 2008 was worse, but even awful Bush, in his first six years, looks better than Obama's first six years by most objective measures. That's comparing Obama to one of the worst presidents in history.
Romney at least appeared COMPETENT, though kind of slimy. He really reminds me of Bill Clinton in that way. On the economy, for example, everybody wants
for there to be more jobs. Romney, having something of a clue, would probably create more jobs. He wouldn't be focused on union jobs, if that matters to you, but non-union jobs are better than no jobs.
...the Director of National Intelligence who arguably lied to congress about whether the NSA conducted dragnet surveillance of Americans' communications.
Damn /. editors, you misspelled "arguably". The proper spelling is D-E-F-I-N-I-T-E-L-Y.
"Oh, screw you. How were we supposed to know he was going to pull this crap..."
Are you F***ing serious? He had just been pulling the same bullshit for 4 years. You had 4 years (now 5) to figure out that he was doing all this. We knew. Why didn't you? It isn't like we weren't screaming about it to the heavens for years, eh? Oh, wait... yes, we were. We know more about the specifics now. But big deal. We did see it coming and we did warn you, loudly, for a long time.
"... and how would voting for the other asshole have been any better?"
And as someone else already pointed out, there have always been more than 2 choices. And some of them were actually pretty decent choices. If, that is, you did your own research and did not listen to all the media's attempts to marginalize them.
I'm thinking everyone on the internet is going to stop thinking Obama is a secret muslim and start thinking he's a secret Republican. That's because NOBODY will EVER vote democrat again after like 6 scandals in a row plus this bullshit and then dancing around it. He makes Bush look good by comparison. If you think this NSA nonsense is a nail in the coffin, remember that he didn't do a damn thing about the environment. As soon as that medical care bill takes full effect and everyone's rates triple, there won't be another democrat in office for 5 terms minimum. People don't forget stuff like this. Piles and piles and piles of stuff like this.
Or Common Sense by Tom Paine. Then remember that both sets of documents were originally published anonymously in order to protect the authors.
Still think being Anonymous (especially in this political climate) is a bad idea?
Say whatever you want about how much they may be in the same camp or agree philosophically, but Clapper is the Director of National Intelligence. The NSA is led by General Keith Alexander, the Director of the NSA, who reports to the Director of National Intelligence. If you're going to complain about who reports to who, at least know who reports to who...
But don't worry. Obamacrats will shout down anyone who questions this. All Hail Supreme Leader.