Well, that depends on how you look at it. You're restricting people's freedoms to stop a few people who abuse a tool, and barring extraordinarily catastrophic situations, I just can't get behind that.
Still, I'd be far less concerned if we just amended the constitution to clarify things rather than ignore it outright.
I still haven't seen anything Snowden has released that I have a problem with the government doing to create a peaceful society. Hell, most of what has come out was known years ago and there are court cases debating the civil liberties and NSA was cleared.
I won't even bother repeating myself. A sad state of affairs that people with your mentality even exist.
The NSA won't impact my life today or tomorrow.
Yeah, they're just violating people's rights. No big deal, right? And if they actually use that information against someone, it's not a problem as long as it isn't you.
I'm an American and I don't feel there is anything wrong with what the NSA is doing and don't feel it has done anything to remove my freedoms.
Then perhaps you should read the constitution. Nowhere in the constitution does it give the government the power to do this, and the fourth amendment doesn't allow for general warrants or any other such thing. The constitution is a whitelist of things the government can do, not a blacklist of things it can't.
I think you should also study some history. There was never a government that didn't abuse its powers. Japanese citizens felt the wrath of the US government when they were put in internment camps. Blacks, women, and various minorities all knew what it felt like to have one's rights violated. The US government can and already has shown that it will abuse its powers, and the US was founded on a distrust of government, so why would you ever trust them with such powers? Don't you realize that the people in the government are simply humans, and are as subject to corruption as anyone else? Why would you want them having all this information, especially given all the historical evidence that suggests that governments will abuse their powers should they be given the opportunity to do so? I do not understand.
I'd say there's a good reason that organizations like the ACLU and EFF--who dedicate themselves to defending liberty in various ways--are rather upset about this. The fact that you don't get it suggests to me that you're both profoundly ignorant and naive.
It's worth pointing out that that the majority of Americans feel this way, too.
Even if true, I don't see how that's worth pointing out. Do you think that popularity is meaningful or something?
This is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. Why don't we start acting like it?
While there probably is still more evidence of wrongdoing in what he has, it's also likely he has his hands on something that could very well put a good deal of people's lives in danger.
I'd rather take that 'risk' (not much of a risk, honestly) than let the government do whatever it pleases in secrecy.
I'd much rather than fascists leave than the ones who won't acknowledge that we have a problem and try to fix it. Leaving wouldn't help fix anything, and if he went to a "shithole," then his situation would probably end up being even worse.
Well, there's really not much to do about it. It may be subjective, but it probably came about because we really don't have any other viable method to begin with.
Under such a standard, everyone would take the word to be intended to be hurtful.
There is no objectivity in such a standard, as "reasonable" is subjective. You could find many people who would agree that no one would ever use the word in a non-hateful way, but you could also find people who would say otherwise. It's entirely possible to joke around using that word (which you've apparently acknowledged), or simply use it in any way that doesn't convey hatred towards blacks.
But it would take unusual circumstances for someone to claim an innocent use of that word in the USA when used against someone of a different race.
Why are the circumstances unusual? Do you have statistics on this?
If "Well, we're not as bad as the other guys!" is all you have, I'd say something is very, very wrong. Being punched in the face may not be as bad as having your arm chopped off, but that doesn't mean being punched in the face is a good thing. More generally, X being better than Y does not mean X is good.
Strange how revealing the government's criminal activities to the very people it's supposed to be working for is acting against the US. The US is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave, and was founded on a distrust of government. How is revealing the fact that the government violated the constitution and the principles the US was founded on acting against the US? I feel that I, as a citizen of the US, have a right to know.
The truth is that a large portion of the population supported them, and a majority of the population didn't oppose them. This included both the uncultured masses and parts of the intellectual elite.
Precisely so. Freedom of speech wasn't the problem; people willing to support this nonsense or remain apathetic about it were.
That's because propaganda works.
If propaganda works so well, then your disgusting laws wouldn't be much good, would they? They'd simply send out their magical brainwashing waves and get the laws struck down so they could carry out their little genocide.
There are no laws forbidding people to criticize the government.
You misunderstand. Calling speech something else does not mean that it is not speech, but that is exactly what you did, and what my example demonstrated.
It is no hypothetical scenario. I presented very hard evidence of that happening, and you chose to ignore it.
You presented absolutely no evidence whatsoever that freedom of speech was the cause. Such evidence simply does not exist, and you would be a fool to think that speech alone could cause such a thing.
In my country those laws were put in place right after the last world war by courageous people who physically fought, actually risking their lives, and often lost much, in their struggle to set their home country free from those who believed that Jews were to be exterminated.
If they wanted to be free, perhaps people should not have made laws that infringe upon people's freedoms.
For cowards that they may be, I'd look at them for inspiration rather than people typing about abstract principles in the comfort and safety of an unthreathened democratic system.
There are people who have been proven to be cowards, and there are people who merely may be cowards. The people you speak of are the former. The only way you can tell is when someone is put in a situation where their safety is at stake and they choose to sacrifice freedom to obtain more safety, or if they say they would do such a thing in such a scenario.
This sort of attitude is why every single country in the world has much improving to do.
It's a shame that people who don't care about freedom ruin entire countries for everyone else living in them.
the "right" to shout whatever evil you want is weighed against other, more pressing rights, such as the right to life, for example.
Shouting "evil," no matter how much you wish it were so, does not actually kill anyone. Action does that.
Furthermore, some people have already been criticized for using what others believe is a slippery slope fallacy, and this "But freedom would bring about another genocide!" talk seems like much more of a fallacy to me.
I think it is important to try and find a compromise that preserves Liberty
The problem is that the compromise does not preserve liberty, as the owners of the equipment would be forced to retain information they might not want to retain, and the information would be there for the government to get. As soon as the government started ignoring the constitution (which they already do), the information would be waiting for them/
Once you remove the logical flow of an investigation from a known terrorist to their co conspirators, then most of the reasons for doing dragnet collections of business records are not mission critical and the "needle in the haystack" of finding a lone person planning something big becomes less believable.
They're doing it so they have immediate access to the information. It would be possible for this to continue even under the compromise you propose.
It is interesting how you consider intent in this scenario, but you don't when a non-black uses the word. To me, intent is always relevant.
So does the fact that you can be arrested for wearing only the covering nature gave you in public. Or that public displays of affection beyond a certain degree are considered rude and can even get you arrested.
All of those seem silly to me, and not just in the abstract. These are violations of freedom.
Free speech is not the cause of what happened; that's absurd. If they actually cared about ideas like freedom of speech, they wouldn't sacrifice those ideals even if doing so would give them safety (and it doesn't).
isn't it a bit pretentious for somebody not a citizen or residing within a given country to tell them they need to work at making their laws more like your own?
I don't think so. Criticizing someone when you think they're doing something wrong is perfectly acceptable to me. A country isn't immune from criticism just because you don't live in it.
Or perhaps hate speech should only be a crime when it's directed at a specific person or persons.
I don't really see why you shouldn't be able to insult someone in specific.
If you make derogatory comments or threats toward a general group, that's not really hurting anyone.
Careful. You're giving people who despise free speech some leeway, here. Is offending someone the same as hurting them? I do not believe it should matter whether you offend them or not.
And they have to use specific equipment to capture all this, anyway, or at least get the companies to surrender the information to them. That doesn't sound like something that's "in plain view" to me. In plain view to the government, maybe!
Slashdot Mirror
Well, that depends on how you look at it. You're restricting people's freedoms to stop a few people who abuse a tool, and barring extraordinarily catastrophic situations, I just can't get behind that.
Still, I'd be far less concerned if we just amended the constitution to clarify things rather than ignore it outright.
Even if we love punishing the innocent to stop criminals, we'll have to amend the constitution before we can ban firearms or do anything similar.
I still haven't seen anything Snowden has released that I have a problem with the government doing to create a peaceful society. Hell, most of what has come out was known years ago and there are court cases debating the civil liberties and NSA was cleared.
I won't even bother repeating myself. A sad state of affairs that people with your mentality even exist.
The NSA won't impact my life today or tomorrow.
Yeah, they're just violating people's rights. No big deal, right? And if they actually use that information against someone, it's not a problem as long as it isn't you.
You seem just a tad bit selfish.
I'm an American and I don't feel there is anything wrong with what the NSA is doing and don't feel it has done anything to remove my freedoms.
Then perhaps you should read the constitution. Nowhere in the constitution does it give the government the power to do this, and the fourth amendment doesn't allow for general warrants or any other such thing. The constitution is a whitelist of things the government can do, not a blacklist of things it can't.
I think you should also study some history. There was never a government that didn't abuse its powers. Japanese citizens felt the wrath of the US government when they were put in internment camps. Blacks, women, and various minorities all knew what it felt like to have one's rights violated. The US government can and already has shown that it will abuse its powers, and the US was founded on a distrust of government, so why would you ever trust them with such powers? Don't you realize that the people in the government are simply humans, and are as subject to corruption as anyone else? Why would you want them having all this information, especially given all the historical evidence that suggests that governments will abuse their powers should they be given the opportunity to do so? I do not understand.
I'd say there's a good reason that organizations like the ACLU and EFF--who dedicate themselves to defending liberty in various ways--are rather upset about this. The fact that you don't get it suggests to me that you're both profoundly ignorant and naive.
It's worth pointing out that that the majority of Americans feel this way, too.
Even if true, I don't see how that's worth pointing out. Do you think that popularity is meaningful or something?
This is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. Why don't we start acting like it?
While there probably is still more evidence of wrongdoing in what he has, it's also likely he has his hands on something that could very well put a good deal of people's lives in danger.
I'd rather take that 'risk' (not much of a risk, honestly) than let the government do whatever it pleases in secrecy.
I'd much rather than fascists leave than the ones who won't acknowledge that we have a problem and try to fix it. Leaving wouldn't help fix anything, and if he went to a "shithole," then his situation would probably end up being even worse.
Well, there's really not much to do about it. It may be subjective, but it probably came about because we really don't have any other viable method to begin with.
Under such a standard, everyone would take the word to be intended to be hurtful.
There is no objectivity in such a standard, as "reasonable" is subjective. You could find many people who would agree that no one would ever use the word in a non-hateful way, but you could also find people who would say otherwise. It's entirely possible to joke around using that word (which you've apparently acknowledged), or simply use it in any way that doesn't convey hatred towards blacks.
But it would take unusual circumstances for someone to claim an innocent use of that word in the USA when used against someone of a different race.
Why are the circumstances unusual? Do you have statistics on this?
If "Well, we're not as bad as the other guys!" is all you have, I'd say something is very, very wrong. Being punched in the face may not be as bad as having your arm chopped off, but that doesn't mean being punched in the face is a good thing. More generally, X being better than Y does not mean X is good.
Your comment didn't even address anything I said.
He acts only against the US
Strange how revealing the government's criminal activities to the very people it's supposed to be working for is acting against the US. The US is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave, and was founded on a distrust of government. How is revealing the fact that the government violated the constitution and the principles the US was founded on acting against the US? I feel that I, as a citizen of the US, have a right to know.
It takes a real man to post using a Slashdot account.
The truth is that a large portion of the population supported them, and a majority of the population didn't oppose them. This included both the uncultured masses and parts of the intellectual elite.
Precisely so. Freedom of speech wasn't the problem; people willing to support this nonsense or remain apathetic about it were.
That's because propaganda works.
If propaganda works so well, then your disgusting laws wouldn't be much good, would they? They'd simply send out their magical brainwashing waves and get the laws struck down so they could carry out their little genocide.
There are no laws forbidding people to criticize the government.
You misunderstand. Calling speech something else does not mean that it is not speech, but that is exactly what you did, and what my example demonstrated.
It is no hypothetical scenario. I presented very hard evidence of that happening, and you chose to ignore it.
You presented absolutely no evidence whatsoever that freedom of speech was the cause. Such evidence simply does not exist, and you would be a fool to think that speech alone could cause such a thing.
In my country those laws were put in place right after the last world war by courageous people who physically fought, actually risking their lives, and often lost much, in their struggle to set their home country free from those who believed that Jews were to be exterminated.
If they wanted to be free, perhaps people should not have made laws that infringe upon people's freedoms.
For cowards that they may be, I'd look at them for inspiration rather than people typing about abstract principles in the comfort and safety of an unthreathened democratic system.
There are people who have been proven to be cowards, and there are people who merely may be cowards. The people you speak of are the former. The only way you can tell is when someone is put in a situation where their safety is at stake and they choose to sacrifice freedom to obtain more safety, or if they say they would do such a thing in such a scenario.
This sort of attitude is why every single country in the world has much improving to do.
Fundamental to you, perhaps, but not to me.
It's a shame that people who don't care about freedom ruin entire countries for everyone else living in them.
the "right" to shout whatever evil you want is weighed against other, more pressing rights, such as the right to life, for example.
Shouting "evil," no matter how much you wish it were so, does not actually kill anyone. Action does that.
Furthermore, some people have already been criticized for using what others believe is a slippery slope fallacy, and this "But freedom would bring about another genocide!" talk seems like much more of a fallacy to me.
I think it is important to try and find a compromise that preserves Liberty
The problem is that the compromise does not preserve liberty, as the owners of the equipment would be forced to retain information they might not want to retain, and the information would be there for the government to get. As soon as the government started ignoring the constitution (which they already do), the information would be waiting for them/
Once you remove the logical flow of an investigation from a known terrorist to their co conspirators, then most of the reasons for doing dragnet collections of business records are not mission critical and the "needle in the haystack" of finding a lone person planning something big becomes less believable.
They're doing it so they have immediate access to the information. It would be possible for this to continue even under the compromise you propose.
The first part of your comment gave me that "bizarre" idea:
Yes. It is 100% agreed that the use of that word by non-blacks in the present day is grossly hateful and in fact a "fighting word".
Doesn't look like you stopped and considered intent to me. Just a flat-out 'Yes, that's 100% agreed to be hate speech.'
No, because it is not said with hateful intent.
It is interesting how you consider intent in this scenario, but you don't when a non-black uses the word. To me, intent is always relevant.
So does the fact that you can be arrested for wearing only the covering nature gave you in public. Or that public displays of affection beyond a certain degree are considered rude and can even get you arrested.
All of those seem silly to me, and not just in the abstract. These are violations of freedom.
It is a historically proven fact that incitation to violence leads to violence here.
Action can lead to violence.
Freedom of speech is not a problem, threatening and slander are.
Freedom of speech is not a problem; criticizing the government is a problem.
Those rights, and many others including freedom of speech, become toilet paper once the incited masses come to power.
So... to save people's rights from some hypothetical scenario, we have to infringe upon people's rights. Forgive me for not being unprincipled.
Laws are in place to prevent that from happening.
These laws are in place because people are unprincipled cowards who would rather have 'safety' than freedom.
In Europe whe had millions of people killed at gunpoint for the content of someone's speech.
And? What does that have to do with censorship? You act like freedom of speech was the problem...
This is a very tangible problem that has to be dealt with.
If dealing with the problem means fewer freedoms, then I want nothing to do with that. Freedom is speech is a fundamental right.
"Already not protected speech in the US, I believe."
That is what I responded to.
Free speech is not the cause of what happened; that's absurd. If they actually cared about ideas like freedom of speech, they wouldn't sacrifice those ideals even if doing so would give them safety (and it doesn't).
isn't it a bit pretentious for somebody not a citizen or residing within a given country to tell them they need to work at making their laws more like your own?
I don't think so. Criticizing someone when you think they're doing something wrong is perfectly acceptable to me. A country isn't immune from criticism just because you don't live in it.
Which is a blatant violation of the first amendment.
Or perhaps hate speech should only be a crime when it's directed at a specific person or persons.
I don't really see why you shouldn't be able to insult someone in specific.
If you make derogatory comments or threats toward a general group, that's not really hurting anyone.
Careful. You're giving people who despise free speech some leeway, here. Is offending someone the same as hurting them? I do not believe it should matter whether you offend them or not.
And they have to use specific equipment to capture all this, anyway, or at least get the companies to surrender the information to them. That doesn't sound like something that's "in plain view" to me. In plain view to the government, maybe!