Slashdot Mirror
Unintended Consequences: How NSA Revelations May Lead To Even More Surveillance
Lauren Weinstein writes with a slightly depressing end-of-year prediction. An excerpt: "This then may be the ultimate irony in this surveillance saga. Despite the current flood of protests, recriminations, and embarrassments — and even a bit of legal jeopardy — intelligence services around the world (including especially NSA) may come to find that Edward Snowden's actions, by pushing into the sunlight the programs whose very existence had long been dim, dark, or denied — may turn out over time to be the greatest boost to domestic surveillance since the invention of the transistor."
It seems more like the arrogance of the freedom-loving libertarian.
The problem with freedom-loving libertarians is that you define society in terms of "me me me!"
Unfortunately, the last thing the rest of society cares about is you.
The freedom-loving libertarians have never explained why freedom is a good thing.
Who cares how I get my things, whether it be through the state or myself, as long as I get everything I want out of life. I am not interested in the theory of loving freedom, I am only interested in practice of getting the things I want.
This ties into the net surveillance - what privacy am I losing if the state knows my communications metadata? The courts have routinely stated that metadata collection by the state is perfectly fine, since that is not private communications, but public communications.
What practical benefit am I actually losing when the NSA collects metadata? Again, I do not care about theory. I only care about practice. The freedom-loving libertarians could never explain that part.
Of course metadata should never be treated as private communications, since metadata is never secret as your IP headers needs to be readable by any router it travels through on the internet. In fact, treating metadata as private is a security flaw in the first place, since you started off with the wrong assumptions. Besides, how the hell do you expect routers to communicate if the IP headers are supposed to be private? .
This all comes down to the narcissism of the all the freedom-loving libertarians. Freedom-loving libertarians LOVE doing whatever they want for themselves. They can never socialize with other members of society. Freedom-loving libertarians never figured out that you actually are supposed to think about others before yourself in society if you want to gain any power. They never got the memo that they actually aren't supposed to do whatever they want in life, which means they never knew that they can only do whatever the state allows them to do. (some libertarians even think they own personal property.. LOL!)
Sucks that individuals actually don't have any power over the state, but that has how life has always been: the state will always rule over the individual. We statists know this, and we attach our strength to the state, which gains us more power.
That is why we get things for free, like health care, because we make freedom-loving libertarians pay for it with the power of the state. If you don't like it you will have to find another state to go to, as our state is not interested in your own desires.
Again, I cannot emphasize enough how little power you actually have in society. That is because freedom-loving individuals are always fighting against us statists, which will obviously cause the individual to lose.
It is not even theoretically possible for the freedom-loving individual to win against us statists.
Of course, every now and then we statists might give you freedom-loving libertarians a few breadcrumbs to give you the illusion that you have freedom, such as the right to bear arms (lol, so cute, so sweet, so innocent =^D ), but we all know who actually controls who in society.