How is monitoring infringing on any rights at all?
They had no right to monitor all of that information to begin with, that's how.
Why do you hate freedom? Why do you want the government to have so many powers? Surely even minimal knowledge of the history of governments would tell you that giving them access to so much information is simply an awful idea, so why would you want to be such a rabid bootlicker?
Well, I would indeed call it censorship when companies decide to remove entire books that were previously available to people, thereby making them not available any longer.
You're making a positive claim, you do indeed have to explain.
I am speaking theoretically. To say that it is theoretically impossible for a nation such as the US to exist without such organizations is absolutely false. To say that it is practically unlikely is another matter entirely.
You implicitly claim we can magically keep our status as everyone's ally without technology
I do not.
We live in a country that has voter id laws that have already disenfranchised me, engages in stop-and-frisk, but the threat to American freedom is that some asshole can read your email using a warrant you disagree with?
All of those things are threats to freedom.
And you're convinced that freedom is dying because the Courts issued a warrant that inconveniences millions of middle-class white people.
This has nothing to do with middle-class white people, or even skin color; I'm not sure where that came from. You're just making shit up at this point. This is an issue for everyone.
But the implication that one bad warrant spells an end to freedom is incredibly arrogant
I never said any such thing; as usual, that is something that you made up, or it's based on an interpretation of my writing that I would deem unreasonable.
especially given that you don't seem to care about the other ways which the government is actually oppressing people today.
Let me ask this of you: Where did I ever once say that I don't care about the other ways in which the government is oppressing people? Never once. Not a single time did I say or even imply such a thing. Just because I'm talking about the NSA at the moment doesn't mean I don't care about anything else.
You're becoming a massive eyesore.
And no, the fact they know who you talk to on the phone is not less important then my right to vote.
Agreed; they're both big issues, even if you try to trivialize this disgusting violation of people's freedoms. Information is power.
We made ex post facto statutes unconstitutional for a reason:
Probably, but when the government is doing something so egregious, a constitutional amendment that mandates that people working for the government be punished severely when things such as this (or any other violation that they usually get away with) come to light isn't a bad idea.
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Spew forth more straw men and I'll have to become a snap dancer. Oh, yes.
There are many more definitions than that. With that said, some people take the position that if it is not the government doing it, it's not censorship; I find that so silly that I chuckle whenever I see someone saying it.
So there is no way to say for sure that this is or is not true.
The chance that it is true is so small (as far as I'm concerned) that it's simply not worth considering, and only 'for the children' nutjobs believe otherwise.
You're talking about a group of people that, I think demonstrably, can't tell the difference between the real world and fiction.
Incorrect.
They've built up in their mind that what they're doing isn't harmful and that these kids they're abusing appreciate it.
Pedophiles are not necessarily child molesters (and vice versa).
Don't compare this to video games
It's a perfect comparison, but you don't feel it is because you're part of the idiotic 'for the children' crowd in one situation, but not part of it in another.
The only people reading child abuse fiction are the people that want to abuse children, and yes that includes people that " have read a few doujinshi which feature young anime characters in sexual situations"
[citation needed]. You're just making things up, as you've done numerous times in the first paragraph of your comment. There is no logical reason that only people who want to abuse children would read such things.
I think there could be some truth in the 'too much violence desensitizes'
Desensitizes people to... what? Fictional violence may desensitize people to fictional violence, but I have serious doubts that it does anything more than that. And being desensitized doesn't mean you're even remotely more likely to harm other people, though you didn't claim that anyway.
I think a semi-rational argument, more than "sex bad violence good", is that kids are more likely to see sex and want to have sex than they are to see violence and want to be violent.
Which they'd want anyway. It's simply not going to turn them into perverts.
If you're going to explain to me how we can survive without SigInt you might actually have to do that.
Easily, and I shouldn't have to explain. It is a possibility.
And now the guy who doesn't read people's posts resorts to ad hominem
If you mean that I insulted you, then I definitely did. I also read your post, though.
Moreover he's conflating "warrants" with freedom.
A government that blatantly violates the constitution is a threat to our freedom.
Warrants are a tool that promotes freedom. They are not the freedom itself.
I think you're just looking to score points here. Congrats.
arresting a Judge for improperly granting a warrant is, indeed insane.
We didn't arrest people before... so we shouldn't now? I don't really understand.
More importantly blatantly Unconsitutional. There's no statute you could use, so you'd have to pass a new law, which would be an law.
Yes... and? That's pretty much what I propose. We need new constitutional amendments and laws. I don't expect it to happen, since our government is completely corrupt, but it definitely needs to happen.
And you will note that People's Tribunal's are a lot more anti-freedom then improperly granting a warrant.
Given some of the warrants they signed off on, that couldn't be further from the truth.
... I almost respected you until this post, but now you sound like an idiot.
Hopefully the people defending the NSA sound as idiotic to you.
I predicted a response like yours; the problem is that you're being pedantic and not thinking about the differences between your examples and this. Think seriously about your examples for two seconds and you'll realize just how silly they are.
What I propose is that we follow the constitution, not legalize everything under the sun. Most of the actions in your examples inflict immediate harm upon people, ensure someone's death, or increase the likelihood that you'll personally end up killing someone, so they're simply awful examples to begin with, and that isn't even saying anything about the fact that almost none of those have anything to do with fundamental freedoms.
to hire assassins (what, *I* am not killing anybody...)
I am no expert by any means but I am not sure if such checks and balances are possible - I suspect that the overlap between spying on legitimate targets and illegitimate targets is so big that you can't design infrastructure that only allows for one but not the other
What did we ever do before mass technological surveillance? Spying still existed.
Still, if it really is impossible, then I've already told you where I stand.
How would your "serious effort" roughly look like?
Well, I was going to suggest a few things that have probably already been suggested. First, we need to get rid of most of our spying infrastructure (we simply don't need backrooms in every ISP and phone company in our country to begin with, and we don't need/shouldn't to monitor all communications). Second, we need to be able to challenge this nonsense in the supreme court when it comes to light; right now, as far as I am aware, one of the only ways to challenge this sort of evil is to prove that you were a victim of it (having your freedoms violated isn't enough to make you a victim, either). Third, throw everyone involved (congress, judges, and anyone in the government who knew but didn't try to stop it) in prison for life and do the same if something like this happens again. Fourth, introduce an adversarial system so that organizations like the EFF and ACLU can be aware of what's happening behind closed doors and challenge some of it.
Maybe these are naive or stupid for some reason, but these are the obvious ones. And I don't think it's possible to implement them, as the ones in power simply don't want it to happen (especially not the part where they take responsibility for being complicit in the crimes against the American people).
Option A) Don't vote for less Evil guy; more Evil guy has an increased chance of winning
This also has the effect of sending a message and actually sending us on a path towards change rather than just maintaining the status quo. Not taking option A just ensures with near absolute certainty that nothing ever changes.
So while in the short term, the "more evil" (and really, the two candidates are only slightly different) guy has a better chance of winning, option A is actually superior.
Everyone who has piped up and said it was obvious that Obama was a turd sandwich is the same sort that lacks the minimal cognitive capabilities to figure the above out
That's false. People have heard this same defeatist argument a million times, so there's no way they don't know about it.
And there it is, you think you're holier, wiser, and more patriotic than George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.
People back then weren't exactly paragons of freedom. While not everyone owned slaves and abused women back then, it wasn't a good time to be living in if you weren't a white man, so forgive me for being unimpressed with some of their activities.
Just what I expected.
I don't expect anything from you. I just reply to you government bootlickers for laughs.
Intelligence and spying are necessary activities but the elected representatives of the people can't shirk their responsibility to oversee these agencies and keep them within bounds.
The problem is that they shouldn't even have the capability to spy on as many innocent people as they do.
Am I understanding you correctly that you want to stop all spying, including spying on military targets?
That depends on whether or not we're serious about ceasing the spying on innocent people. We need to remove the infrastructure that makes this largely possible, among other things.
But between getting rid of the NSA completely and keeping what we have now, I would, without a doubt, choose the latter. That choice is actually a realistic one, as I sincerely doubt people are going to make a serious effort to get rid of most of the infrastructure they use to spy on us, and implement draconian checks and balances on their powers.
Oh, I understand what it is, but to say that it's impossible for a country to exist without it is blatantly absurd.
In other words, just because you haven't bothered to learn anything about the NSA from anyone who actually knows what it does
That's not the problem; the problem is that you don't understand what I'm saying.
You really don't get the point of warrants.
It seems that you don't get the point of freedom. Judges should not be signing such reaching, disgusting warrants to begin with, you fool.
As for prosecuting the Judge, do you have any idea how crazy that is?
The idea that he should be prosecuted is not crazy.
AQ attacked, and the American people freaked out, leading their elected representatives top create PRISM and make it secret. Then the American heard about PRISM, and freaked out again, leading to the low-level Judge who signed off on PRISM being sent to prison.
And your point is...? More than just this judge should be sent to prison. I say "should" because I don't actually believe it will happen, but believe it's what ought to happen.
Violating the constitution and people's individual liberties (or 'representatives' or judges allowing it to happen) is simply inexcusable, no matter how much people "freaked out."
Hell, given that no Judge is gonna convict another Judge for following the law as it was understood at the time, how you gonna nail this guy?
I didn't say it was viable, just that it should happen. Criminals like these are almost always impossible to bring to justice.
Slashdot Mirror
How is monitoring infringing on any rights at all?
They had no right to monitor all of that information to begin with, that's how.
Why do you hate freedom? Why do you want the government to have so many powers? Surely even minimal knowledge of the history of governments would tell you that giving them access to so much information is simply an awful idea, so why would you want to be such a rabid bootlicker?
No, my problem is that he portrays himself as some sort of sage
Does he?
while others do the work
I would argue that spreading the word is work; it's certainly more than most people do.
Well, I would indeed call it censorship when companies decide to remove entire books that were previously available to people, thereby making them not available any longer.
You're making a positive claim, you do indeed have to explain.
I am speaking theoretically. To say that it is theoretically impossible for a nation such as the US to exist without such organizations is absolutely false. To say that it is practically unlikely is another matter entirely.
You implicitly claim we can magically keep our status as everyone's ally without technology
I do not.
We live in a country that has voter id laws that have already disenfranchised me, engages in stop-and-frisk, but the threat to American freedom is that some asshole can read your email using a warrant you disagree with?
All of those things are threats to freedom.
And you're convinced that freedom is dying because the Courts issued a warrant that inconveniences millions of middle-class white people.
This has nothing to do with middle-class white people, or even skin color; I'm not sure where that came from. You're just making shit up at this point. This is an issue for everyone.
But the implication that one bad warrant spells an end to freedom is incredibly arrogant
I never said any such thing; as usual, that is something that you made up, or it's based on an interpretation of my writing that I would deem unreasonable.
especially given that you don't seem to care about the other ways which the government is actually oppressing people today.
Let me ask this of you: Where did I ever once say that I don't care about the other ways in which the government is oppressing people? Never once. Not a single time did I say or even imply such a thing. Just because I'm talking about the NSA at the moment doesn't mean I don't care about anything else.
You're becoming a massive eyesore.
And no, the fact they know who you talk to on the phone is not less important then my right to vote.
Agreed; they're both big issues, even if you try to trivialize this disgusting violation of people's freedoms. Information is power.
We made ex post facto statutes unconstitutional for a reason:
Probably, but when the government is doing something so egregious, a constitutional amendment that mandates that people working for the government be punished severely when things such as this (or any other violation that they usually get away with) come to light isn't a bad idea.
-
Spew forth more straw men and I'll have to become a snap dancer. Oh, yes.
Give organizations tons of data and the government will have the data as well. We've seen this countless times.
limits surveillance of US civilians by our government.
It shouldn't just be US citizens, but innocent people in general.
Why do you despise freedom?
There are many more definitions than that. With that said, some people take the position that if it is not the government doing it, it's not censorship; I find that so silly that I chuckle whenever I see someone saying it.
So there is no way to say for sure that this is or is not true.
The chance that it is true is so small (as far as I'm concerned) that it's simply not worth considering, and only 'for the children' nutjobs believe otherwise.
You're talking about a group of people that, I think demonstrably, can't tell the difference between the real world and fiction.
Incorrect.
They've built up in their mind that what they're doing isn't harmful and that these kids they're abusing appreciate it.
Pedophiles are not necessarily child molesters (and vice versa).
Don't compare this to video games
It's a perfect comparison, but you don't feel it is because you're part of the idiotic 'for the children' crowd in one situation, but not part of it in another.
The only people reading child abuse fiction are the people that want to abuse children, and yes that includes people that " have read a few doujinshi which feature young anime characters in sexual situations"
[citation needed]. You're just making things up, as you've done numerous times in the first paragraph of your comment. There is no logical reason that only people who want to abuse children would read such things.
Censorship used to mean something.
It still does, but you simply disagree with how people are using it. Still, I'm curious as to what you think it used to mean.
Just because it's not the government doing it doesn't mean it's not censorship.
Store owners are free to carry whatever books they want.
Therefore... they're exempt from criticism? What a strange comment.
Or were you just trying to state the obvious for some reason?
I think there could be some truth in the 'too much violence desensitizes'
Desensitizes people to... what? Fictional violence may desensitize people to fictional violence, but I have serious doubts that it does anything more than that. And being desensitized doesn't mean you're even remotely more likely to harm other people, though you didn't claim that anyway.
I think a semi-rational argument, more than "sex bad violence good", is that kids are more likely to see sex and want to have sex than they are to see violence and want to be violent.
Which they'd want anyway. It's simply not going to turn them into perverts.
Rape, incest, bestiality are some of the things being targeted.
And...? Censorship remains disgusting.
"We outlaw snuff films, child porn and, increasingly, revenge porn, because actual people are harmed during their production,"
Whether they're harmed during production isn't relevant to whether they should be censored after the fact. But this is about books.
Whether it is or is not justifiable is 100% subjective; same with morality in general.
If you're going to explain to me how we can survive without SigInt you might actually have to do that.
Easily, and I shouldn't have to explain. It is a possibility.
And now the guy who doesn't read people's posts resorts to ad hominem
If you mean that I insulted you, then I definitely did. I also read your post, though.
Moreover he's conflating "warrants" with freedom.
A government that blatantly violates the constitution is a threat to our freedom.
Warrants are a tool that promotes freedom. They are not the freedom itself.
I think you're just looking to score points here. Congrats.
arresting a Judge for improperly granting a warrant is, indeed insane.
We didn't arrest people before... so we shouldn't now? I don't really understand.
More importantly blatantly Unconsitutional. There's no statute you could use, so you'd have to pass a new law, which would be an law.
Yes... and? That's pretty much what I propose. We need new constitutional amendments and laws. I don't expect it to happen, since our government is completely corrupt, but it definitely needs to happen.
And you will note that People's Tribunal's are a lot more anti-freedom then improperly granting a warrant.
Given some of the warrants they signed off on, that couldn't be further from the truth.
... I almost respected you until this post, but now you sound like an idiot.
Hopefully the people defending the NSA sound as idiotic to you.
I predicted a response like yours; the problem is that you're being pedantic and not thinking about the differences between your examples and this. Think seriously about your examples for two seconds and you'll realize just how silly they are.
What I propose is that we follow the constitution, not legalize everything under the sun. Most of the actions in your examples inflict immediate harm upon people, ensure someone's death, or increase the likelihood that you'll personally end up killing someone, so they're simply awful examples to begin with, and that isn't even saying anything about the fact that almost none of those have anything to do with fundamental freedoms.
to hire assassins (what, *I* am not killing anybody...)
Indeed.
I am no expert by any means but I am not sure if such checks and balances are possible - I suspect that the overlap between spying on legitimate targets and illegitimate targets is so big that you can't design infrastructure that only allows for one but not the other
What did we ever do before mass technological surveillance? Spying still existed.
Still, if it really is impossible, then I've already told you where I stand.
How would your "serious effort" roughly look like?
Well, I was going to suggest a few things that have probably already been suggested. First, we need to get rid of most of our spying infrastructure (we simply don't need backrooms in every ISP and phone company in our country to begin with, and we don't need/shouldn't to monitor all communications). Second, we need to be able to challenge this nonsense in the supreme court when it comes to light; right now, as far as I am aware, one of the only ways to challenge this sort of evil is to prove that you were a victim of it (having your freedoms violated isn't enough to make you a victim, either). Third, throw everyone involved (congress, judges, and anyone in the government who knew but didn't try to stop it) in prison for life and do the same if something like this happens again. Fourth, introduce an adversarial system so that organizations like the EFF and ACLU can be aware of what's happening behind closed doors and challenge some of it.
Maybe these are naive or stupid for some reason, but these are the obvious ones. And I don't think it's possible to implement them, as the ones in power simply don't want it to happen (especially not the part where they take responsibility for being complicit in the crimes against the American people).
Option A) Don't vote for less Evil guy; more Evil guy has an increased chance of winning
This also has the effect of sending a message and actually sending us on a path towards change rather than just maintaining the status quo. Not taking option A just ensures with near absolute certainty that nothing ever changes.
So while in the short term, the "more evil" (and really, the two candidates are only slightly different) guy has a better chance of winning, option A is actually superior.
Everyone who has piped up and said it was obvious that Obama was a turd sandwich is the same sort that lacks the minimal cognitive capabilities to figure the above out
That's false. People have heard this same defeatist argument a million times, so there's no way they don't know about it.
And there it is, you think you're holier, wiser, and more patriotic than George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.
People back then weren't exactly paragons of freedom. While not everyone owned slaves and abused women back then, it wasn't a good time to be living in if you weren't a white man, so forgive me for being unimpressed with some of their activities.
Just what I expected.
I don't expect anything from you. I just reply to you government bootlickers for laughs.
Intelligence and spying are necessary activities but the elected representatives of the people can't shirk their responsibility to oversee these agencies and keep them within bounds.
The problem is that they shouldn't even have the capability to spy on as many innocent people as they do.
Am I understanding you correctly that you want to stop all spying, including spying on military targets?
That depends on whether or not we're serious about ceasing the spying on innocent people. We need to remove the infrastructure that makes this largely possible, among other things.
But between getting rid of the NSA completely and keeping what we have now, I would, without a doubt, choose the latter. That choice is actually a realistic one, as I sincerely doubt people are going to make a serious effort to get rid of most of the infrastructure they use to spy on us, and implement draconian checks and balances on their powers.
I don't think you understand what Sig Int is.
Oh, I understand what it is, but to say that it's impossible for a country to exist without it is blatantly absurd.
In other words, just because you haven't bothered to learn anything about the NSA from anyone who actually knows what it does
That's not the problem; the problem is that you don't understand what I'm saying.
You really don't get the point of warrants.
It seems that you don't get the point of freedom. Judges should not be signing such reaching, disgusting warrants to begin with, you fool.
As for prosecuting the Judge, do you have any idea how crazy that is?
The idea that he should be prosecuted is not crazy.
AQ attacked, and the American people freaked out, leading their elected representatives top create PRISM and make it secret. Then the American heard about PRISM, and freaked out again, leading to the low-level Judge who signed off on PRISM being sent to prison.
And your point is...? More than just this judge should be sent to prison. I say "should" because I don't actually believe it will happen, but believe it's what ought to happen.
Violating the constitution and people's individual liberties (or 'representatives' or judges allowing it to happen) is simply inexcusable, no matter how much people "freaked out."
Hell, given that no Judge is gonna convict another Judge for following the law as it was understood at the time, how you gonna nail this guy?
I didn't say it was viable, just that it should happen. Criminals like these are almost always impossible to bring to justice.