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Majority of Americans OK With Warrantless Internet Surveillance (ap.org)
An anonymous reader writes: A new poll conducted by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research gathered opinions on the U.S. government's surveillance of internet communications. The poll found that a majority of Americans, 56%, were in favor of warrantless surveillance. 28% explicitly opposed it. 67% of Republicans and 55% of Democrats supported the warrantless surveillance, while only 40% of Independents supported it. Americans under 30 supported warrantless surveillance much less than older Americans. Further, "The poll finds that for most Americans, safety concerns trump civil liberties at least some of the time. More than half — 54 percent — say it's sometimes necessary for the government to sacrifice freedoms to fight terrorism, while 45 percent think that's not necessary. On a more general level, 42 percent say it's more important for the government to ensure Americans' safety than to protect citizens' rights, while 27 percent think rights are more important and 31 percent rate both equally."
Still very, very true...
oddly appropriate in this thread.
I suppose "technically" 54% is a majority, but it's not a landslide. Also, I wonder if wording of the questions and / or scenarios might change this number? Sure, most people want to fight "terrorists", but get into more detail about the invasiveness of the surveillance, and people might have different ideas.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
This is just another lie by the establishment to get people to accept our rights being taken away from us.
Be seeing you...
Security expert Bruce Schneier has been explaining for years that the "tradeoff" between security and liberty is a false one.
It's put out there by politicians to justify a war on liberties.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/...
Any "survey" or "poll" that requires comparing the two or claiming you must give up one to have the other has begged this question and is already false.
E
If only the US had some set of rules, encoded in a founding and fundamental document of some-sort, that limited the ability of the majority to commit tyranny on the minority through unfair legislation or otherwise.
The fact that Trump is even a candidate has made me give up hope on that country for the forseeable future.
*Everyone must have a job even if the things you're good at have been replaced by bots or outsourced to the Chinese. If you don't have a job you are derided as a scumbag
*Tremendous poverty, everyone brushes it under the table because everybody is so opposed to the idea of people getting a free lunch
*Nobody wants to give up driving their big automatic pickup to work, even if it can be proven they are causing global warming.
*Nobody wants to give up their silly pea-shooter in case of Government aggression even if the government has much better toys that would make very light work of someone toting the said pea-shooter
*Nobody complains about the government pissing away trillions of the aforementioned toys while people starve and die of curable illnesses.
The poll found that a majority of Americans, 56%, were in favor of warrantless surveillance.
56%? Wow, that's 180,748,960 stupid people.
I don't think that you can make any deductions based on a sampling of 1,042 people. You could sample another 1,042 people and get a completely different result.
I actually read the article and it is missing some key details, such as what is meant exactly by "Internet Surveillance". Do they mean simply looking at what's on the public Internet for suspicious activity, etc., or do they mean the power to compel service providers, ISPs, etc., to turn over private customer information or private data? There's a difference between looking at someone's public tweets, and reading their private e-mail messages. Was this distinction made clear in the poll questions when the surveys were taken? It's possible that the people who responded to the polling questions didn't really know what they were answering.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Cattle.
Yes, I agree the government - at least if it's not nefariously self-serving, which I doubt, but let's assume... - WOULD have an easier time finding bad guys by violating fundamental rights. But they should NEVER have the right to do so, because fundamental rights are the last line of defense against tyranny and dictatorship,
If the government has a hard time fighting crime and terrorism because they have to preserve individual rights, well, tough titties. That's their problem. People should never accept any debasing of their rights for the promise that their government will have an easier time keeping them safe. Those who think it's an acceptable tradeoff deserve to be carted off to the sheep pen.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Liberty and Safety are not at two ends of a zero-sum sliding scale, wherein one must be sacrificed in discrete and equal units for the other. We can and should have a good measure of both, and it is government's charge to provide for the latter, while protecting (or, depending on your view, not infringing upon) the former. To say nothing of the fact that our very existence has been an exercise in the sacrifice of "liberty" for an orderly civil society governed by the rule of law, except in the fantasies of internet tech-libertarians.
And what a worthless survey: "warrantless surveillance" of what? Of who? Foreign intelligence targets do not require and never have required a warrant.
Gone are the days where the US targeted foreign communications on distant shores, or cracked codes used only by our enemies. No one would have questioned the legitimacy of the US and its allies breaking the German or Japanese codes or exploiting enemy communications equipment during WWII. The difference today is that US adversaries -- from terrorists to nation-states -- use many of the same systems, services, networks, operating systems, devices, software, hardware, cloud services, encryption standards, and so on, as Americans and much of the rest of the world. They use iPhones, Windows, Dell servers, Android tablets, Cisco routers, Netgear wireless access points, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Gmail, and so on.
The distinction is no longer the technology or the place, but the person(s) using a capability: the target. In a free society based on the rule of law, it is not the capability, but the law, that is paramount.
US adversaries use the very same technologies we use. The fact that Americans or others also use them does not suddenly or magically mean that no element of the US Intelligence Community should ever target them. When a terrorist in foreign country is using Hotmail or an iPhone instead of a walkie-talkie, that cannot mean we pack our bags and go home. That means that, within clear and specific legal authorities and duly authorized missions of the Intelligence Community, we aggressively pursue any and all possible avenues, within the law, that allow us to intercept and exploit the communications of foreign intelligence targets.
If they are using hand couriers, we target them. If they are using walkie-talkies, we target them. If they are using their own custom methods for protecting their communications, we target them. If they are using HF radios, VSATs, satellite phones, or smoke signals, we target them. If they are using Gmail, Facebook, iPhones, Android, SSL, web forums running on Amazon Web Services, etc., we target them -- within clear and specific legal frameworks that govern the way our intelligence agencies operate, including with regard to US Persons.
That doesn't mean it's always perfect; that doesn't mean things are not up for debate; that doesn't mean everyone will agree with every possible legal interpretation; that doesn't mean that some may fundamentally disagree with the US approach to, e.g., counterterrorism. But the intelligence agencies do not make the rules, and while we may inform issues, we do not define national policy or priorities.
And on backdoors, we don't need "backdoors".
What we do need is this:
A clear acknowledgment that what increasingly exists essentially amounts to a virtual fortress impenetrable by the legal mechanisms of free society, that many of those systems are developed and employed by US companies, and that US adversaries use those systems -- sometimes specifically and deliberately because they are in the US -- against the US and our allies, and for a discussion to start from that point.
The US has a clear and compelling interest in strong encryption, and especially in protecting US encryption systems used by our government, our citizens, and people around the world, from defeat. But the assumption that the only alternatives are either universal strong encryption, or wholesale and deliberate weakening of encryption systems and/o
By giving up privacy, you gain the ILLUSION of safety.
could have said 54 percent of Americans are stupid mfkrs and would basically be the same thing. As far as inalienable rights being taken away - that is not possible. Someone can for certain actions upon you but it does not take away the inalienable rights; you still have them. I also believe security is a unicorn that will never be found though many have tried. An example of this is how do you secure against a drunk driver or a bolt of lightning or a sinkhole that just happens to open underneath your house. I believe it is not possible to protect against every threat. Living in an area that is not earthquake prone does not necessarily protect you from other issues. Due to the fact that absolute security cannot be achieved, I feel chasing it maniacally is a waste of time and resources. Chasing Liberty is a much more rewarding goal in my experience.
People who don't understand a medium and who don't use it don't give a shit about it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I wonder how many of that 56% have convinced themselves that they're not the ones being watched: "Oh it's ok, they're not watching me, they're just watching the bad guys!" ?
How to get the point to sink in that the watchers consider everyone as the bad guy?
I am not a sig.
I wonder how many of them are the same people who feel the first amendment should be repealed because free speech can hurt some peoples feelings or hear opinions/information that doesn't conform to how they want the world to be.
there is zero reason to ever trust the authenticity of crap like this. im sure nazi germany had "polls" where most people favored genocide and north korea has polls where most people favor starving to death. most people favor getting spied on? use your fucking brain. of course they don't.
More like land of the flea, home of the slave!
"Do you think that putting suspicious elements under surveillance to combat terrorism is acceptable?"
It's all in the wording. Seriously, part of my degree required lots of statistics, I could probably come up with a question worded in such a way to prove that the people in the US want a Communist Regime badly.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
According to TFA, the poll was conducted Dec. 10-13, approximately just 1 month after the Paris attacks. Just one month of solid media coverage about terrorism, refugees, and politicians using both issues for scoring political points and hits. Not really surprising that the general populace is still edgy even after 1 month since the last significant terrorist attack in the West.
A new poll conducted by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research gathered opinions on the U.S. government's surveillance of internet communications.
Warrantless surveillance of internet communications requires more than poll propaganda.
propagandadot?
shill deez nuts
The founding principles of the United States were intended to prevent the government from encroaching on our freedoms.
When we voluntarily allow the government to encroach on our freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism, we are handing victory to the terrorists (and to the government, which is also a terrorist organization as it also gains power by fostering fear).
I hope within the next few generations, when we collectively realize that we threw away our freedoms, that we can summon the same courage to fight and sacrifice as our forefathers to get them back.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Majority of Americans OK With Warrantless Internet Surveillance
We didn't ask them. We just... well, we just know, okay?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
A majority of Americans don't care about anything until it directly causes problems for them... then they stomp and scream like everyone should care about how they've been handled unjustly.
A poll has nothing to do with the constitutionality or legality of and endeavor.
I'll bet some of those same geezers would scream if they came after their 2nd Amendment rights.
Have gnu, will travel.
First, these fucking retards are willing to give up fundamental privacy and freedom TO POTENTIALLY MAYBE SAVE A FEW DOZEN PEOPLE THAT MIGHT OCCASIONALLY BE KILLED... but they're not willing to GIVE UP CARS to save MILLIONS OF PEOPLE from dying in car accidents?! Are you fucking retarded?!
Second, SO FUCKING WHAT IF IT WILL MAKE US MORE SECURE?! Who cares?! Freedom and privacy is so fundamentally important and valuable that you maintain it no matter what. So what if some people sometimes die? I don't give a shit. What the fuck is the point of freedom and privacy if the occasional death makes you say "oh shit, no, I'd rather be a slave because we can't stomach a dead person occasionally".
I mean, they act like you absolutely can't have one of these things. Bullshit. Have freedom. Grow up and deal with the fact that sometimes you're still gonna have terrorism.
I'm not for it, fuck the rest of ya
When was the last time you participated in a phone survey? Who do you think takes the time to participate in these surveys? They do not reflect the general population. They reflect the opinion of a minority subgroup that has a great deal of free time and is very lonely.
Indeed. Its no suprise that people who agree to talk about personal things to strangers in phone surveys also agree to strangers from the government collecting information about their personal habits and even the tiniest aspects of their lives.
Honestly, people in general are panicky dangerous animals.
Most people would sell their neighbor to the FBI as terrorists if they though they could get money from it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You guys give the alphabet soup agencies far too much credit. They are the real life version of Dumb & Dumber.
That sounds very... opportunistic of you.
I doubt this the respondents were most likely picked for their political beliefs. More crap suitable for the litterbox.
Who has a jabber account? On a server with fewer than 1000 users? Whose email isn't at least partially hosted by Google? See, you're not better than the people who are "OK with warrantless internet surveillance". You were given the internet and you hand it over to corporations. Nobody cares about a free and open internet, not even the vast majority of the people who live most of their lives on it, because any personal inconvenience is too much. Look in the mirror. It's not they who are sheep. It's everybody.
are easily-led fools - in many cases, intentionally so. I'm not really sure the lofty, albeit for most only hypothetical, goals of what the US should be is worth trying to save. Save it for who? The misogynists? The racists? The mouth-breathing open-carry folk? The greed-is-good crowd? The pants-wetting helicopter parents that want their offspring to remain weak, vulnerable, and dependent for all their lives? I think I'll just be an Internal ex-pat from here on out.
The NSA were regularly skipping the FBI and sending ICE a bucket list of profiles from online communications showing non-citizens engaging in support for anti-American activities. Unfortunately, they have no intention of using these powers to streamline the removal of hostile, foreign elements from our soil. Their focus is primarily on domestic malcontents and criminals, all of whom are having their constitutional rights trampled to not upset foreigners. And when the feds aren't trampling theirs, they are stepping on ours in the name of protecting the "open society."
Here's a little fact the elites and chattering classes hate. Anti-terrorism is not that hard intellectually. It involves a few basic premises:
1. Control your effing borders.
2. Control who you allow to enter legally at ports of entry.
3. Keep tabs on the people you let into the country.
4. When a foreigner starts showing any meaningful hostility, kick them the hell out of your country. They're not a citizen, they have absolutely no right to speak quasi-seditious rhetoric and expect to be treated like a citizen railing against their government.
5. If anyone, citizen or non-citizen, starts doing stuff like taking to the pulpit to exhort the believers to wage acts of violence, arrest them, charge them with sedition and lock their ass up in a dungeon. If they're a foreigner, deport them no matter what will happen to them on their voyage home. It's not our problem. If they didn't want to spend the next five years being used as a training dummy by Syrian interrogators, then they should have had some basic courtesy in dealing with the host society that let them take refuge.
American majorities have never stood for anything intelligent or positive afaik.
Loss of ones liberties starts small and then you wake up and find they are gone. Sadly to get them back requires blood..
(.)-(.)
Assuming for the moment that it's legit: What we see is the end effect of a comprehensive campaign by the government and by corporate America to indoctrinate the younger generation from birth to accept the idea that 'privacy' is wrong and bad and only bad people seek it. From an early age they've had it pounded into them that they have to 'share' everything or they're not being nice. Then when they're old enough social media takes over, further reinforcing the idea that you should share every aspect of your life, even with people you really don't know. Once thoroughly primed, it's not much of a jump from that to the idea that America has to be protected against the Big Bad Terrorists, and the only way to do that is to watch everything that everyone does 24/7/365. Of course Corporate America loves this too, because they can datamine the living fuck out of every single citizen that way, cradle to grave, sell the data to the highest bidder, and then target products at individuals based on the personal profile they generate from the data. The only thing left is Minority Report-style 'pre-crime' arrests, and Big Religion getting a hold of all your surveillance data, too, so they can use their millenniums-old terror techniques to keep citizens in line and behaving the way they want them to, under fear of burning in Hell for all eternity. Thanks so much, American citizenry, you're doing a great job of fucking up everything for everyone and destroying what this country was supposed to be about in the first place.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
It's just a matter of time before another US President-for-life wannabe enlists the aid of yet another sloppy (or nefarious) FBI director to spy on the opposition and abuse the info they gather on their many enemies and their families. But this time they'll be a lot harder to catch at it, since they can whisper TOP SECRET then jail all whistleblowers while gagging anyone they missed within TOP SECRET kangaroo courts Like FISA.
As I recall, this kind of willful disregard for the intent and letter of the law by government has precedent, one that led to world war and the enabling of two systematic exterminations of over 100 million people -- all in the name of defending the Fatherland.
Or perhaps I'm just not being naive^H^H^H^H^H patriotic enough?
The problem is the question assumes makes it seem like they're spying on others, not spying on *everyone*:
"According to the new poll, 56 percent of Americans favor and 28 percent oppose the ability of the government to conduct surveillance on Internet communications without needing to get a warrant. That includes such surveillance on U.S. citizens."
So the heart of the matter isn't that they listen in on some terrorists talking to some other terrorist. The heart of the matter is they record EVERYONES private conversations for all manner of reasons.
Now this is the Jeremy Clarkson effect:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7174760.stm
"The Top Gear host revealed his account numbers after rubbishing the furore over the loss of 25 million people's personal details on two computer discs....All you'll be able to do with them is put money into my account. Not take it out. Honestly, I've never known such a palaver about nothing," he told readers.
"But he was proved wrong...I opened my bank statement this morning to find out that someone has set up a direct debit which automatically takes £500 from my account," he said.
They don't know the damage they're doing to themselves till they are targetted and then its too late.
Have you ever ingested cocaine or sugar? YES/NO
The one thing they never ask in these surveys is if they would mind if the government looked at their internet history. People are okay with giving up freedom because they assume it is other people's freedom. It's easy to say the government should look through people's internet traffic because you assume you are a good person so the government would never have a reason to look through your internet traffic. But when you ask them specifically if they are okay with it happening to them they have to actually think about it. They never consider that the government gets it wrong. They never consider that someone from the government may have something against them. Forcing them to think about that means some people will suddenly have a problem with it. It is the same thing when lawmakers suddenly find out they are the ones that are being looked at. All those laws they voted for were for other people, not for them.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
I would like to see real results of real options of real questions. Survey results can be lead based on questions. 99.9% think extraordinary actions can be used to fight extreme terrorists. Therefore they are OK with doing anything all the time!
I wonder if it's the same wingnuts who spout the Constitution as the reason why we can't have better gun safety laws that are apparently so willing to give up our other rights.
They're all "Constitution, constitution, constitution" when it's about their guns. But as soon as it's about our other rights, they're "meh, I have nothing to hide."
I expect we'll continue have a problem until someone has enough cajones to prosecute people like the director of the NSA, or the chairman of the Intelligence Committee for treason, and throw them in jail to rot; after reminding them that they swore an oath to uphold the Constitution.
"I was just following orders" is not an excuse.
Wow. Have a happy 2016, but maybe make a resolution to get outside more.
Sometimes the truth can be unpleasant. Deal with it... There is a global socio-economic shitstorm of biblical proportions brewing on the horizon. Feel free to keep your head buried in the sand.
Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
Credit to John Oliver and staff:
Americans don't want the government to be able to access an individual's dick pics all willy-nilly.
There is a global socio-economic shitstorm of biblical proportions brewing on the horizon.
I don't know if you've noticed it, but people say that EVERY SINGLE YEAR. Including some with impressive credentials who should know better.
I've yet to meet anyone with these opinions, over or under 30....I have a feeling the people that said yes probably didn't understand the question....its the only thing I can think of, people can't be this freaking stupid...
The majority of Americans are morons.
(although I am sure the same apathy exists in many countries currently under wide-scale surveillance)
"If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about." *facepalm*
it takes a powerful govt to be facist
why education is slacking.
When the majority of your citizens give the rocks a run for their money in the smarts department, it's far easier to do what you want.
Only the techie / geeky types even have a clue what the dangers even are. While we'll hear from one trying to warn everyone from time to time, the uneducated vastly outnumber the rest and the voice of reason is lost amid a sea of ignorance.
Voting works the same way. Until the informed and intelligent outnumber the idiots, our government is going to reflect the same stupidity that voted them in.
NORC at the University of Chicago collaborates with government agencies... Yeah, I think they certainly do. What a great and perfect word used. Collaborating with the gov to reduce your freedoms since 1941. I also think that this is another bogus pol generated by the us government via a front. "What would you like our pol to say today sirs?"
becareful about stereotyping
Also, the question isn't whether they approve of it--it's whether it's *reasonable* under the Constitution.
The thing that pisses me off about the view of "I've got nothing to hide, spy away", is that it isn't about you, or me. The problem with domestic spying is that it provides a secret police tool to whomever is in power at the moment. Watergate was wrong legally, and also violated our sense of fair election practices. People knew there was a principle close to democracy which was being violated by Richard Nixon and his pals when they intended to secretly tape record a meeting of Democrats. Any secret spy apparatus can be abused by someone in power to remain in power. Just imagine if the opposition's moves, information and political strategy are always known to the group in power. It provides a huge strategic advantage to the group having access to this information. By the very nature of the spy activity, the use of it for political advantage never need be reported. There are two pillars to a free and democratic society. One is the freedom to vote based on your views. The other is the fairness of the political system, which includes open access to media, no tampering with the vote, etc. The spy powers in the hand of one ruling party destroys the fairness of the political system.
That's because they feel they need to walk around with their open-carry guns (Texas allows it as of the 1st) to feel safe when they go to the store, or just walking around ... because you never know when you might run into another gun nut.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
"As a way of responding to terrorist threats, do you favor, oppose, or neither favor nor oppose government analysis of internet activities and communications, including those involving U.S. citizens, without a warrant, to watch for suspicious activity that might be connected to terrorism?"
Worse than that, at least some of the questions are clearly a combination of being primed (using "terrorist threats" and "terrorism") and worded badly ("internet activities and communications", "without a warrant", and "to watch for suspicious activity" is vague). I mean, consider a similar question I can trivially come up with:
"As a way of responding to the issues of domestic violence, do you favor, oppose, or neither favor nor oppose police analysis of public (leading to private) activities and communications, including those involving U.S. citizens, without a warrant, to watch for suspicious activity that might be connected to domestic abuse?" I think there's lot of people who would support that because they'd believe that a warrant wouldn't be necessary anyways.
This isn't all the equivalent to omnipresent surveillance of all internet communications, public or private, with retroactive warranted or unwarranted searches for terrorism or other crimes. There's heavily a belief that the government would have to get a warrant to read your "private" Facebook posts, but they'd think it stupid to require a warrant to read your "public" Facebook posts or really any other posts they'd expect any other member of the public could read. It just doesn't occur to them that the government is monitoring the links, can or does man-in-the-middle attacks to circumvent encryption, etc. There's a belief that if any of that were happening, we'd see people going to jail regularly for thought crimes.
Seriously, until we actually do see things turn that way, people just don't care. The terrorist, few as they are, might be stopped. But as creepy as it is that there's perverts in government looking at all your naked pictures, that's tolerable enough (regardless of John Oliver's whole "Dick pic" segment) if that's all it amounts to. I mean, they've got to worry about perverts not in government just as much or more and they're just as unaccountable. It's all a nebulous mess of "bad people" and the lack of "real world" consequences really does leave people to accept a lot of abuse.
Seriously, does every conversation have to be about Trump? ;-)
Question: Which are you in favour of, eating babies or Warrantless Internet Surveillance?
It's the younger generation that is calling bullshit on this so it doesn't exactly fit with your "these millennial kids are idiots" theme.
"Do you think that putting suspicious elements under surveillance to combat terrorism is acceptable?"
Asked like that, I'm ok with it. Suspicious people should be watched.
The problem comes when you are watching people for political purposes, or for "love" purposes. There need to be safeguards against abuse (for example, warrants). Because we've already seen abuses like that.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The spam is finally on topic!
Not that this surveillance actually offers any safety whatsoever.
All it is is the terrorists winning. They shoot a few people or threaten a couple of places, and in exchange we get rid of all the things that make us different from their strict, religious, no-fun-allowed kill-the-heretic regimes.
Thus, using fear, they help those who wish to lord over us to enact the government and societal changes that they wish for.
The terrorists win every time.
Islam is a religion; communism and NAZIism (fascism) are political ideologies.... and while you seem to disparage the NAZI's, you are certainly wanting to use the tactics they did against the Jews. So, why does an ignorant NAZI wanna-be like you hate the Constitution of the United States of America so much?
What we need is to recognize there are some people simply too fucking stupid, and their stupidity is having negative effects on our country. Right now, it's those people who are the biggest threat to this country.... and you've given a perfect example of their idiocy.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Just leave the middle east alone. The smug people who think they're so smart with the nuke 'em all attitude don't even know that the motto of all the Islamic factions is "We will make you feel what we have felt." The French, British and Americans have meddled, tried to colonize or control almost every country in the middle east for generations.
When the Beruit Marine barracks was bombed and over 270 people killed, Reagan pulled the US military out of Lebanon so no one would be killed again. It worked. He could not get a good answer why the US was in Lebanon.
If politicians want to bring up Reagan, bring that up.
We've also seen that every single abuse we're assured will not occur inevitably turns out to not only *ALREADY* be occurring, but also that those abuses invariably turn out to be the entire goal/design/sole-purpose/point of what's being done in the first place.
When caught? They just make it retroactively legal for themselves, or, being the ones with the authority to prosecute the offenders for warcrimes, crimes against humanity or just plain deliberate breaches of the constitution and both spirit and letter of law, end up "determining" that everything done was A-OK.
None of those creating or putting these surveillance programs to use could ever give a flying f**k about stopping any sort of terrorism. Nor would they ever accept any of it being stopped save when it directly personally threatens them personally. And why would they? Terrorism is what puts all that money in their pockets and all that power at their fingertips!
Suspicious people should be watched.
Watched by whom? Watched for how long? Who or what determines whether they are "suspicious?"
It sucks that I served for liberty and freedom only to see people hand it over willingly.
Here is the actual link to the survey: http://www.apnorc.org/PDFs/Sec...
Question: As a way of responding to terrorist threats, do you favor, oppose, or neither favor nor oppose government analysis of
internet activities and communications, including those involving U.S. citizens, without a warrant, to watch for suspicious activity
that might be connected to terrorism?
I don't understand this. What exactly is a respondent supposed to make of the term warrentless surveillance? I wholeheartedly support the government to analyze people's public twitter posts, and public facebook posts, and forums (including those that require subscription), and youtube channels. None of these searches require a warrant. So I would answer "yes I do support government analysis, without a warrant". Even though I strongly oppose government analysis of private communication.
I wonder if they picked a deliberately ambiguous question here?
Questions: How concerned are you about the chance that you or your family might be a victim of a terrorist attack? Would you say a
great deal, somewhat, not too much, or not at all?
Questions: How concerned are you about the chance that you or your family might be a victim of a terrorist attack? Would you say a
great deal, somewhat, not too much, or not at all? How concerned are you about the chance that you or your family might be a victim
of an attack by Islamic extremists in the United States? Would you say a great deal, somewhat, not too much, or not at all? How
concerned are you about the chance that you or your family might be a victim of domestic terrorism committed by American
citizens? Would you say a great deal, somewhat, not too much, or not at all?
Question: How important do you think it is that each of the following groups is allowed to practice their religion freely in the United
States?
Question: The following are some examples of rights and freedoms listed in the Bill of Rights or that are protected under various
American laws and court rulings. For each one, please tell me if you think the U.S. government is doing a good job, poor job, or neither
a good nor poor job of protecting that right or freedom.
Here, 60% of respondents think the government is not doing a good job of protecting the right to "freedom from unreasonable search and seizure". This probably guides us on how the ambiguous earlier question was interpreted by poll respondents.
Conventional wisdom is warrantless wiretapping is expected by the ilk of Cheney.
If conservatives were in the administration, the NEWS would be pissed. The wailing would not stop.
Instead, we are ostensibly being coached to accept warrantless wiretapping
through the Associated Press and poll results from ordinary americans
We are in bizarro world
I think most people expect the government to know everything that happens online - seeing as all the hackers and Russian mafia and so on do. The thing to remember is that warrantless searches are not allowed in court - even as a reason to get a warrant on someone. So unless their surveillance gives them a way to catch you in the act - to arrange for a witness to be there when you commit a crime, a witness who doesn't know about the surveillance - then it doesn't really matter, does it?
It's not unimaginable, given some of the incindinerary talk about Muslims/liberals/homos/SJW's. We did it to 100,000+ Japanese-Americans during WW2, and we did it various Native American tribes before that (despite declarations from the Supreme Court, in the case of the Cherokees). You can object that these were not instances of full-on, permanent tyranny (like North Korea), but they were brutal events for the targeted populations, prosecuted without objection from the majority of this supposedly freedom-loving populace. Remember that Rome itself transitioned to a dictatorship with the support of her people. Caeser treated his army well and the senate was increasingly seen as helpless to address the problems of empire. There are plenty in the US who would support arbitrarily trampling it the Constitution and democratic principles so longed as it helped their cause it made them feel a little safer from a handful of bad actors. This article merely reflects how naieve we are about the dynamics of power (especially our children, who grow surrounded by surveillance). Unfortunately, it looks like the continue continuous expansion of federal (and corporate) powers that's been occurring for there past ~90 years will keep accelerating upwards, with near unilateral support from across the political spectrum. The consequences will be severe.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
with meaningless lives of ignorance and stupidity.
From the bottom of TFA.
But that is exactly the sort of wording that you'd expect the privacy-haters to use. "You're being paranoid." :P
Most Americans also believe in angels, fuck them they're idiots.
I have a hard time believing that they're actually THAT dumb.
As such, I feel that whatever study did this either was badly planned, executed and processed. Or they just happened to pick up a exceptionally rare pocket of dumbness in their sample group.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
1042 people were surveyed.
300+ million people live in the U.S.
"Majority of Americans OK With Warrantless Internet Surveillance"
and then the world is back to where it was less than 90 years ago. Some people remembering it are still alive.
Come on, it's not THAT hard! =p
What might be missing is the discussion of warrantless surveillance. Surveillance on communication is probably needed to prove a crime or prevent an terrorist attack. Some very wise people saw the dangers of it as well and invited the idea that you need a warrant, an independent check by an independent authority, to prevent unnecessary intrusions on privacy or abuse of these privileges.
I see the need for surveillance, but not the need for 'warrantless'. In defense of the people who filled in the polls, what the questions were asked and did they make this distinction clear?
Well the majority of morons already approve this by using a plethora of services like Facebook.
I know that this will be modded down by the 'Slit-my-throat-if-you-must-but-please-don't-call-me-a-bigot' crowd, but what the heck....
[...]
If they are American born or converts to Islam, send them on a one way Haj, and strike a deal w/ our 'Saudi friends'.
Do all that, and you won't need ANY Internet surveillance.
Well, the "remove everybody with the wrong faith from among our midst" solutions are why we are having most terrorism and wars and genocide in the first place. It's not the solution propagated by Jesus Christ, so while you are at it, remove all Christians as well.
It's light that defeats darkness. Not darkness. Maybe you missed the Age of Enlightenment that ended the Dark Ages. As long as you refuse learning your history lessons, things will get worse.
Islam is a religion; communism and NAZIism (fascism) are political ideologies.... and while you seem to disparage the NAZI's, you are certainly wanting to use the tactics they did against the Jews. So, why does an ignorant NAZI wanna-be like you hate the Constitution of the United States of America so much?
What we need is to recognize there are some people simply too fucking stupid, and their stupidity is having negative effects on our country. Right now, it's those people who are the biggest threat to this country.... and you've given a perfect example of their idiocy.
Well, but it's the dangerous idiots who win the primaries.
"Do you think that putting suspicious elements under surveillance to combat terrorism is acceptable?"
Asked like that, I'm ok with it. Suspicious people should be watched. The problem comes when you are watching people for political purposes, or for "love" purposes. There need to be safeguards against abuse (for example, warrants). Because we've already seen abuses like that.
The sheer amount of people on the NO FLY list, and the battle that some take just to clear there name (few and far between), show you how messed the system is... you are possibly on a list, just for commenting on this thread :p
This comment will get modded to hell...what the hell, all good comments do... What I hear from the comments section: blah blah blah US Sux blah blah blah something about trump blah blah blah XYZ country does it so much better blah blah blah What is actually happening in the US: We have the most free country on the planet. Every country has it's problems, but hell, at least our (*cough* UK *cough*) country isn't censoring the internet (like china) or worse. Come on guys...your arguments are weak. Every country has it's faults obviously, at least ours aren't compromising on our freedom of speech and ability to make decisions on a daily basis (and don't bring up the NSA, despite controversy, name one single case where the NSA metadata has ever been used to successfully convict a US citizen on US soil.) I especially love how foreigners claim to be following Trump in the US. That practically makes me orgasm since, the US itself doesn't even have that much Trump coverage. I mean really...shouldn't you guys be focused on...I don't know, independence?
I'm serious, how are they defining "warrantless surveillance"? Are the people answering this poll thinking that that means having a cop sit around all day doing nothing but reading all the public comments on Facebook? Or do they think it means the government "asking" Facebook to provide all of the private communications?
Scared shitless by Faux news.
Only explanation for suddenly wanting government intrusion.
Stop trying to convince us otherwise. Simply slapping it on a headline does not make it so. And lack of high profile rejection is not the same as approval.
Islam is a religion by virtue of having been established in the 7th century. Had someone like Mohammed lived even in the 19th century, he'd have been executed as a criminal. A close look at its various texts - the Quran, Hadiths, Tafseer and Sira - reveal an agenda very similar to Mein Kamph. Instead of Germans, it's the Arabs who are the master race. Islam is to be promoted until Islamic law - Shariah - reigns supreme worldwide. While any religion's laws apply only to ITS adherents, that's not true about Islam: Islamic law applies to EVERYBODY - you, me and everybody else, whether Muslim or not. And the real halal meat in all of this - Islamic law trumps any other law, and there is NO separation b/w Mosque and State.
The 'fucking stupid' people you are referring to didn't exist before 9/11. Nor do they exist in much of the non-Muslim world. There are Muslim insurrections in Mindanao, South Thailand, Uzbekistan, Xinxiang, Mali, Nigeria, and of course, you have those Muslim ghettos all over Europe. Those are not due to any 'fucking stupid' people there: they are due to Muslims believing - as their texts tell them - to fight the Infidels and not stop until disbelief (in Islamic rule) is no more and all religion is for allah (Quran 8:39, 2:193)
Summary says "27 percent think rights are more important and 31 percent rate both equally." So why isn't the headline "58% think rights are equally important or more important than 'security'"? Clickbait.
to say that a majority DOESN'T support warrentless surveilance
Nice try, but the Muslims are not just at war w/ Christians. In Thailand, Myanmar & Bangladesh, they are at war w/ the Buddhists, in Bangladesh & India, they are at war w/ the Hindus, in Pakistan, they are at war w/ Hindus & Christians, in Iran, they are at war w/ the Bahai, in Iraq, they are at war w/ the Assyrians and Chaldeans, in Syria, they are at war w/ the Melkites, in Lebanon, the Maronites, in Israel, the Jews, in Judea & Samaria, Jews & Christians, in Egypt, the Copts, in Libya, Tunisia & Algeria, again all Christians. Oh, and in Arab countries, non Arabs are considered less Islamic even if they are Muslim, and hence, the genocide against both the Kurds as well as the Black Muslims of Darfur.
People particularly in the West extrapolate what happened in Christianity to other religions and assume that the same thing will happen there. The Age of Enlightenment that ended the dark ages was b'cos Christianity was tolerant of a lot of philosophy that reinterpreted a lot of what is in their scriptures to make it more compatible w/ what is recognized as humanity. Islam not only never had it but explicitly BANS it. In Islam, Bida, or innovation, is explicitly forbidden. In the 9th & 10th century, a number of Islamic scholars in the major centers of Islam - Baghdad & Boqhara - put together the pieces of whatever makes sense in the Quran. The bottom line in Islam is to obey allah, and the way to obey allah is following the example of Mohammed, who is known as uswa hasana, the perfect model for all time. So if Mohammed consummated his marriage w/ a 9 year old girl, that is considered legitimate in Islam, and it's why the minimum marriage age in the Taliban, Iran and ISIS is 9. And most of Mohammed's life was lived as a warlord, and by the end of his death, he had converted all of the Arabian peninsula to Islam, and his successors spread it from Spain to India. That is the history that inspires Muslims, and makes them aspire to not just reconquer those lost territories, but the rest of the world as well.
About any enlightenment, there have been attempts in Islam to reform it, and it's always been met by persecution. The Bahai and Ahmadiya sects were 2 such attempts: the Bahai to import things from the Bible and the Quran into the book of Bahatullah, while the Ahmadiyas tried to declare their own founder as a subsequent prophet to Mohammed. In Sudan, a reformer named Mohammed Taha tried coming up w/ a version of Islam that was watered down: he was executed in the 80s. It's YOU who are totally ignorant of Islamic history to have come up w/ something that happened way before that in Christendom.
The only way Islam can be reformed, or more precisely transformed, is by something done similar to Shintoism after WWII. After WWII, when Japan was occupied, the emperor was forced to declare that he was not a god. Similarly, only an occupation of Arabia and forcing them to concede that Islam is destructive and will be changed accordingly would end all of this.
On my original point: if we banned all Muslims, we wouldn't have what Obama keeps describing as a 'false choice' b/w liberty or security: we WOULD have BOTH.
You mean dangerous idiots like John McCain, who said 'I respect the Islam'? Or ones like Obama, who state that 'The future shall not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam'?
when they don't even know the full extent of the surveillance let alone the murders, torture and targeted abuses surveillance is being used for.
most citizens don't even know surveillance is used today to enable the government to scan their homes with interferometry using space capability. read all emails and listen to all phone calls. etc.
the government deployed mass psychological warfare to achieve this goal. that citizens would be fine being surveilled and spied on. government for Christ sake called surveillance only "metadata" when it's actually all content saved that travels over the united states fiber optic backbone cables from emails, to photographs, to text messages, to websites visited, to facebook chats. it's all saved and made available to government by fiber optic upstream duplication.
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our government does not use surveillance for criminal investigations or fighting terrorism. it's used to control the population. targetedly kill, stalk, torture, track, harass, and abuse citizens. numerous whistleblowers back it up and state such. the folly public doesn't get that message because the mainstream media refuses to cover the issue and takes their orders from the executive branch and department of defense.
The feeling that I am surrounded by morons was not imagined.
Most Americans now are utterly brainwashed! I think that has been the plan ALL ALONG.
1) Put Fluoride in the water to make us more "docile" - just like the Nazi's did.
2) Continually tell us our rights and liberty's need to be taken away to protect us from "Terrorists" - which our government CREATED!
3) Pump the same bullshit into our heads through TV and movies.
4) Wash, rinse, repeat - until we completely believe ANYTHING the government says.
The Truth is a Virus!!!
NOT the majority of Americans.
Never trust 'random samples' as they are anything but that.
None of the above. They set out to 'prove' something and created their 'sample' to do just this.
Islam is a religion; communism and NAZIism (fascism) are political ideologies....
Religion is the belief in a higher power than man. That makes religion the supreme authority of its believers, no matter what man-made law says about the separation of church and state or what is legal or not. It is the Creator himself dictating what believers must do and how unbelievers are to be treated, what is right and what is wrong, rewards and punishments both in life and in death. In the old days, the king ruled supreme over his subjects. The Pope ruled over the kings as God's acting representative on Earth. To think that religion is not about politics is naive in the extreme and with total disregard to history. Or even current day, as vast areas of the world still live under religious law.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The "mob" doesn't get to decide. Thank goodness. Because that what "majority rule" is... mob rule swayed by "pop" culture and sound bites. The majority of any country are sheep.... and when the shit hits the fan.... cannon fodder.
The interesting thing about this is that it's a non sequitur. It is simply not true that fighting terror requires warrantless surveillance. It's just *easier* that way: doing mass surveillance of everyone, under all conditions, is merely a matter of spending some more billions.
Not only has the government not established that specific (therefore warrantable) surveillance is necessary, but it has ALSO not shown that surveillance can prevent all future terrorism...
So what do you expect? Other countries will do also, even with US citizens.
That an invisible entity in the sky snapped its fingers and created the universe.
In world world 2 a majority of Americans also supported Hitler and Nazi's in polls before you joined the allies...
(It only means your people are the New Nazi's..)
Two great American patriots addressed this subject succinctly and unequivocally. Patrick Henry (remember him?) said something that every school child learns: "Give me liberty, or give death". And Ben Franklin said ...those who would give up liberty for a little bit of security, deserve neither liberty nor security... Unfortunately the American public is, on average, dumber and more fearful than the general public in other Western countries. Rick Cameron
What do "Muslims/liberals/homos/SJWs" have to do with this? Go back a couple of messages: we're talking about white rednecks with guns:
there is absolutely nothing even a town full of gun toters will accomplish against the national guard armed with body armor, drones, tanks, etc
Could you get the military to oppress Muslims? Quite likely. Their own family members from small-town America? Never.
The ignorance that Slashdot posters seem to have of American culture really astounds me.
If you were to say left of conservatives that would be close enough
Never is a big stretch. There are plenty of historical examples of the military and paramilitary massacring ordinary citizens for all sorts of reasons.
You didn't ask what makes someone "suspicious".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sadly the United States use to be the land of the free and thanks to dumbing down of our education system and citizens ignoring the history of what happens when you allow the government to snoop on you, people don't realize how the government can abuse this power. It's embarassing enough that the leading candidate of one of the major parties is Donald Trump and he has gotten even more popular by making comments that he thinks Muslims should be required to register with the government similar to how the Jewish had to register with the German Government prior to World War II. He also advocates killing members of a terrorists family who may have nothing to do with their family member's terrorist beliefs and loves the USA. As Benjamin Franklin once said "anyone willing to give up liberty for a false sense of security deserves neither". It's sad to say the US is no longer the land of the free and people don't care since they are watching the Kardashians or whoever it is and don't mind giving up freedom as long as they are able to watch TV. They don't realize that these freedoms that are being taken away will eventually affect them and by the time they notice it will be too late.
So?
How is it that the US government, at least those that make the laws, haven't been declared an enemy of the constitution yet?
"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."
Yes, I'm including one of the mentioned order givers as a domestic enemy.
That's what I said.
What the majority say they are ok with says much about what they do and do not understand and especially about how well they have been conditioned. It says nothing at all about whether such things are ethical. The majority of people in the colonies if polled would certainly have said they were ok with continued English rule. So what?
I don't know who was interviewed, but no way in hell i am ok with this
That's important, too
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"Dictator" was actually an elected position in the Roman Republic. It was an emergency measure to be used by the senate in times of a national crisis when the shared two consuls administration (elected for one year) system could not produce strong decisive leadership. This allowed them to elect one powerful general to make the tough decisions and lead them against an approaching enemy. Sadly there were no limits on the power of the dictator, and he could even "proscribe": that is, post a list of names of Romans he wanted dead. Any citizen who killed these people could have their property. Most proscribed people got out of Rome fast, and maybe came back when the dictator was gone and things had cooled down. Julius Caesar was never elected dictator. Hie enemies, the right wing Bonii (good men), put it about that he intended to declare himself one, but that was really impossible for him because he was a jurist, a legislator, and a very law abiding man. The propaganda against him is still working.
Heavy is the head that wears the tinfoil hat.
as a species.
Some modern religions, yes. Many, perhaps most primitive religions involve supernatural creatures who are meddlesome fools of negligible moral value. Consider the ancient Greek, Roman, and Norse gods for obvious examples.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
If you can't recognize the difference between deportation and torturous murder, you aren't qualified to comment on politics.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
1000 people. [1042 total]
Don't care.
" a majority of Americans, 56 percent, were in favor of warrantless surveillance."
Just to be clear, 1042 people were asked, 583 of which were in favor. That is, 0.00032 percent of the US population was asked, and it turned out 0.00018 percent of the US were in favor of warrantless surveillance. Yes, that proves something: the AP-NORC Poll is useless crap.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
... but the majority are morons only because they suck up useless drivel like this "survey" to justify their prejudices.
The "survey" is shit, poorly sampled, badly questioned, and begs so many questions that any "observations" are foregone conclusions before a single person was asked. It's a fucking daft way to discover "the truth", and a perfect method for astroturfing. Troll:1, Public: 0.
Fuck me, but THE WHOLE WORLD is getting stupider daily, and it's largely because we mindlessly absorb the propaganda and "media" circus with nary a thought as to who and why we are presented what is taken as modern gospel. ... .. I'm new here, but it's still quite discouraging.
Then again, the vast majority of humanity seem to willfully accept the ever-changing interpretations of several "holy books" as their leading moral compass, so it's no wonder we generally accept the "announced word" (TV) as our scripture and social conscience.
We be fucking doomed any rate, so no reason to belabor the point. But why do dice and slashdot encourage this insensate debasement of intellectual debate?
Yeah, yeah
I could probably come up with a question worded in such a way to prove that the people in the US want a Communist Regime badly.
That's easy. Ask people if they agree or disagree with the premise of the John Lennon song Imagine.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.