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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...
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*Everyone must have a job even if the things you're good at have been replaced by bots or outsourced to the Chinese.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.
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.
Keep that in mind for after the election when you're wondering "why the FUCK...?"
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.
"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.
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.
If you intentionally meant to imply "whoever wins"| by not actually saying it, then I award you 1 (one) golf clap.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'll bet some of those same geezers would scream if they came after their 2nd Amendment rights.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm not for it, fuck the rest of ya
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.
I doubt this the respondents were most likely picked for their political beliefs. More crap suitable for the litterbox.
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.
American majorities have never stood for anything intelligent or positive afaik.
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!
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"
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!!!
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*
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.
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."
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
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.
Are 'Progressives' the new Liberals?
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
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!!!
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?
"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?
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)
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.
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!!!
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.
So what do you expect? Other countries will do also, even with US citizens.
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.
I just didn't want to get the astroturfers involved.
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.
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.
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?
That was one of President Jihad Wahabi Bush's attempts to avoid blaming Muslims, avoid blaming Islam, avoid blaming his friends the Saudis. Not surprising, since his grandfather was a Nazi, and his father had that famous aides James 'Fuck the Jews' Baker and John Sununu
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.
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.
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If you can't recognize the difference between deportation and torturous murder, you aren't qualified to comment on politics.
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" 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.
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.