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'Chilling Effect' of Mass Surveillance Is Silencing Dissent Online, Study Says (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a Motherboard article: Research suggests that widespread awareness of mass surveillance could undermine democracy by making citizens fearful of voicing dissenting opinions in public. A paper published in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, the flagship peer-reviewed journal of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), found that "the government's online surveillance programs may threaten the disclosure of minority views and contribute to the reinforcement of majority opinion." The NSA's "ability to surreptitiously monitor the online activities of U.S. citizens may make online opinion climates especially chilly" and "can contribute to the silencing of minority views that provide the bedrock of democratic discourse," the researcher found.
>> signed into law a provision to forbid the cops from using these raids to attack politicians
>> police state is coming and both the Republicans and the Democrats can't wait for it to get here
Well...which is it? In Wisconsin, you had a Democrat district attorney try to punish Republican political supporters for legally supporting Republicans in a political arena. (Fortunately courts at multiple levels essentially said the DA was on a rouge witchhunt but stopped short of tossing him in jail.) That's a chilling police state if there ever was one: support the wrong party and go to jail, lose your house, and pay tens of thousands of dollars of legal fees.
In response, the state passed a bunch of reforms, one of which is that if you're going to investigate a political crime (e.g., misuse of funds), you have to use a normal criminal process, not a secret (called "John Doe" in Wisconsin) multi-year process in which one prosecutor can (and without judicial supervision) seize the records and property of anyone he/she wants without ever specifying what crime he/she is trying to prove.
>> Republican Scott Walker and his Republican Cop Cronies in the WI Congress changing the laws for themselves only
The reforms don't just benefit Republicans operating in Democrat-controlled counties, they also return the rule of law to Republican-controlled counties. In other words, a right-wing DA in upstate county X can no longer start an open-ended "John Doe" investigation to hassle the peace protesters his buddies hate to see at the Memorial Day parade. (If you're for open government and an open court system, you should be FOR Walker's reforms.)
it does not matter because court cases cannot be brought using information gathered without warrant
Yes they can.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas