Of course you have religious beliefs, everyone does.
You said I was part of a religion. I'm an atheist, and I'm part of no religion. What you said was false. And the way you're using the word "religious" makes it seem useless to me.
Otherwise it is just survival of the fittest.
It is just survival of the fittest. Working together doesn't actually change that.
But when the government starts demand certain behaviors (not just demanding that you refrain from certain behaviors, but demanding that you commit certain behaviors).
That's what makes all the difference. You're free to exercise and worship as you please. Demanding something of you wouldn't violate a thing, as it doesn't stop you from doing other things (Like worshiping whatever stupid deity you believe in.).
So you only want to get rid of part of the first amendment. At least you're honest about it.
When did I say that? There was more to my post than that, you know. I merely questioned the logic of saying that the first amendment would be completely destroyed if the government didn't follow one part of it. I want them to follow all of it, and I think that not giving religious people special rights wouldn't actually violate anything.
You didn't actually provide a rebuttal. I said that wanting to monetize everything doesn't mean he's a Republican, which is true. You can be a Democrat and want to monetize everything, and some corporations do this because they believe Democrats will follow their orders if they bribe them enough. So even if I were to accept your definition of "Republican," your logic is wrong.
By my religion? As far as I know, I'm not part of one. Unless having any sort of belief about anything qualifies as being part of a religion, in which case, the meaning of the term "religion" becomes rather useless.
If we take that approach, then what significance does the 1st amendment have? It doesn't say "free worship", it says "free exercise".
To be honest, I'm not sure what the purpose of that is. As far as I'm concerned, if your actions don't harm another, then go ahead and do them regardless of what religion you're part of.
But if you don't allow the government to make reasonable accommodations, then you force a choice between the two extremes of that literal interpretation and no 1st amendment at all.
No first amendment at all? Nonsense. There is more to the first amendment than freedom of religion. Besides, if we let the government decide which religions are 'real', then in my eyes, we're also violating the first amendment. Besides, the right to free exercise of religion (as long as it doesn't hurt anyone) is different from not being required to do something by the law. You're still allowed to take actions that don't harm anyone in the name of religion, but you might have to do something you don't like if the law requires it.
We need another way. Reasonable accommodation is it. And it has long precedent.
Nope. This "reasonable accommodation" business is not reasonable at all; governments should not be giving special privileges to religious people and deciding which religions are 'real.'
I don't suggest ignoring religious freedom. Rather, I do not believe that being part of a religion means you can do as you please. You can believe as you please, and you can take actions that anyone else could take (as long as they don't harm others), but that's it. Worship whoever you want, but don't use your religion as an excuse to do as you please.
But letting anyone pretend to have a religious belief just so they can break any inconvenient rule or law is unworkable as well.
There's supposed to be a separation of church and state. There is no separation of church and state if the government opts only to recognize certain religions and gives special privileges to those religions.
For example, if someone wants to avoid the draft due to a religious pacifism, it makes sense to do so.
The draft is immoral to begin with, as it's an example of the government claiming ownership over individuals. But if it exists and if the religious can get out of it, normal people should be able to get out of it, too. Their made up bullshit is no better than my or anyone else's made up bullshit.
On the other hand, if someone wants to cover their hair for a driver's license or in school it should be sufficient to say "I'm Jewish" or (for a man) "I'm Sikh" or (for a woman) "I'm Muslim".
Again, religious people should not have special privileges. If they can do it, others should be able to do it as well.
And no,the answer isn't to have the government simply ignore the 1st amendment.
Be part of whatever religion you want and worship whatever you want, but don't ask for special privileges.
As for option 2, then the American people wouldn't know about it. If the government is violating people's rights and doing something unconstitutional, or even doing something immoral, the first people you should go to *are* the American people. Leaking all this information was a good thing.
Why does it matter? Since when is the government involved in deciding which religions are 'real' or not? I can make up a religion in five minutes that's just as valid as any of the made up bullshit you see in Christianity, Scientology, Islam, etc. As soon as you have governments deciding what religions are 'real', you've already fucked up. Religious people shouldn't get any special rights; period.
Not a problem. Don't own taxable property, don't have taxable income
So basically, don't have any sort of meaningful property or a job. That's about as good a solution as telling people who don't want to pay for contraceptives to move out of the country and into the wilderness.
If people didn't make the problem about the efficacy of the programs, these terrible excuses would vanish. What matters is that they're violating the constitution and people's freedoms, and that would be unacceptable even if the programs were effective.
Do not make this about the efficacy of the program. The program violates people's fundamental liberties, and that is the only reason anyone needs to oppose it.
If the choice is between an overly burdensome requirement on business versus a violation of the 4th amendment of the US constitution, then to me the issue is clear.
Also, if they have the data, and the rules change in the future, you can bet the phone company will just hand it over. I seriously doubt the government will let all that data go to waste. Best to get rid of it.
I also don't have a problem with them saying to phone providers, "You must keep the phone records we might solicit for a period of X months, in case we do solicit them, and you must have the infrastructure to provide that information in a timely manner."
Well, I do. It's their equipment, and if they want to provide extra privacy for their customers (or just don't want the data), then let them get rid of it. If this makes investigations nearly impossible, then good.
Patrolling is patrolling whether it is done with eyeballs or cameras.
If you're fucking idiotic enough to not be able to see the difference between individuals seeing something and ubiquitous surveillance devices recording everything and sending the data off to some central authority, then I'm surprised you honestly know how to reply to comments; you're that stupid.
They are practically and legally indistinguishable.
They're not practically indistinguishable in the least, and I've already explained why. Don't restate arguments I've already refuted and pretend as if I never responded to them.
If they're legally indistinguishable, then the law needs to be updated to reflect reality.
It does not matter how knowledge of those activities comes into the possession of the state.
It does matter. That's what people are saying, and what you refuse to hear.
You didn't even truly respond to my comment. Instead, you just restated what I've already debunked.
Again, you do not understand that the ability to police is necessary to protect YOUR RIGHTS.
Again, you do not understand that we can still have police without having ubiquitous surveillance, *just like we had long before any of this technology was ever invented.*
You keep pushing this nonsensical line where you want to keep your rights, but you don't want the government to be able to protect them.
I do want the government to protect them. It's not 'criminals' that infringe upon these rights; it's the government.
In other words, you're a mental toddler.
You're the one that can't even be bothered to truly respond to my arguments. You're even worse than a mental toddler; just human garbage.
Utter bullshit. I'd much rather of privacy from ubiquitous surveillance and take 'risks' (The same risks that people have lived with for thousands of years before these things ever existed.) than allow such evil to exist.
but if we decide they can't watch us in public
If an individual cop happens to be around, that is not a problem. What is a problem is ubiquitous surveillance, and that's an entirely different matter.
To play the devils advocate a bit on this, I ask how this would be any different than a network intrusion/attack detection system that runs on an ISP on links that carry peering traffic on it?
For one thing, it's the government that's doing it, and the government has the ability to ruin lives with ease. Also, governments have restrictions put on their powers that companies do not have, and ubiquitous surveillance should be added to that list of restrictions.
If this type of monitoring is a little creepy and offends you, then perhaps we should force every single other industries on the planet with a similar situation, to stop logging their data for the purpose of defending against attacks as well?
Why do you think that individual companies storing some data is at all equivalent to government surveillance? It's not. But yes, I'd say even companies need to be regulated somewhat.
Long story short, get over it.
As soon as people "get over it," we've lost more of our privacy. Ubiquitous surveillance of public places will allow them to track and harass individual targets who have done nothing more than angered the people in power, and they'll be able to do so far more efficiently than they have in the past. Tracking down innocent people and harassing them is nothing new, but now the scale is entirely different. If you think this is a good thing, or that we should "get over it," you're a fool who's utterly ignorant of the countless abuses of government power throughout history.
To say that this is the same thing, except more efficient, is absurd. Whereas the individual cameras were controlled by individual businesses, these cameras will collect data for one entity: The government. That's what makes them far more dangerous. Unless you believe that the government--which misinterprets bomb threats and treats them as if they're real, molests people at airports, spies on everyone's communications, and sends protestors off to free speech zones--is capable of not abusing this information? If that is so, then you're ignorant of history.
How much time and money was spent on tracking that vans path down?
What matters is not time or money; it's privacy, and it's the sort of privacy where you're free from ubiquitous government surveillance. I'd rather have privacy than 'safety' or time or money.
I'm all for this technology, just make sure there are checks and balances in place.
The checks and balances would be not having this at all.
In addition, privacy (The kind of privacy where you're free from mass government surveillance.) is important all by itself, so even absent the government abuses, this surveillance shouldn't be allowed.
You've got nothing to hide in public? You've got something to hide *everywhere*. You seem to think that it's you who decides whether you've got something to hide; that's false. The government decides. The government can decide that certain speech is illegal, that doing something perfectly innocuous is grounds for harassment, or something else that's nefarious. Once they have ubiquitous surveillance devices in public places, things that used to protect you from government abuse--like the fact that they can't be in more than a few places at once, or the fact that they didn't have recordings of everything that's going on--will vanish. Governments aren't made up of perfect angels; the countless abuses throughout history show that. Even in public places, you have everything to hide.
As an example, and since we're talking about surveillance devices in general, there was a case where someone made a bomb joke on Twitter and was harassed endlessly by the government. Anything that can be misinterpreted to harass someone will be, whether it's malicious or not.
The countless people abused by governments throughout history show that I'm not wearing a tinfoil hat. To say otherwise is to admit that you're completely ignorant of history. If you give the government the power of near ubiquitous surveillance, it will be abused and used to target those who do things the government does not like, whether those things are morally wrong or not. And again, to say otherwise is to say that you believe the government is made up of perfect angels that would never abuse their powers or make mistakes, and that you believe that all possible governments in the future will be like that. Guess what? That's not sane. We put limits on the government's powers for a reason; because they can't be trusted with easily exploitable powers.
You speak of "the law" as if it were some decree from a tyrant.
I speak of the law as if it isn't the same as morality. I speak of the law as if bad laws can be created quite easily, even in countries like the US.
This isn't how "the law" sees this: this is how the population sees it.
That would be true if the population were perfectly informed and agreed with their representatives 100%. Otherwise, claiming that that's the case is just bad logic.
Without "the law" that you so resent, you'd be hunkered down behind a mud wall in your hovel trying to hold back the hoards. Law and civilization go hand-in-hand.
I don't know what nonsense you're trying to put forth, but it isn't working, cretin. Objecting to certain laws and such is far from advocating anarchy. What I have a problem with is when people start referring to laws as if they're the be-all end-all and ignoring that many here refer to morality. I also have a problem when people appeal to authority figures and act as if their interpretations are objectively correct, but in this case, that's not the point.
If you want to get technical, the constitution does not confer a right of privacy.
If you want to get technical, the government will do anything to give itself more power, as we've seen. Using bullshit lawyer logic to justify their disgusting activities is obviously not below them, sadly.
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Of course you have religious beliefs, everyone does.
You said I was part of a religion. I'm an atheist, and I'm part of no religion. What you said was false. And the way you're using the word "religious" makes it seem useless to me.
Otherwise it is just survival of the fittest.
It is just survival of the fittest. Working together doesn't actually change that.
But when the government starts demand certain behaviors (not just demanding that you refrain from certain behaviors, but demanding that you commit certain behaviors).
That's what makes all the difference. You're free to exercise and worship as you please. Demanding something of you wouldn't violate a thing, as it doesn't stop you from doing other things (Like worshiping whatever stupid deity you believe in.).
So you only want to get rid of part of the first amendment. At least you're honest about it.
When did I say that? There was more to my post than that, you know. I merely questioned the logic of saying that the first amendment would be completely destroyed if the government didn't follow one part of it. I want them to follow all of it, and I think that not giving religious people special rights wouldn't actually violate anything.
You didn't actually provide a rebuttal. I said that wanting to monetize everything doesn't mean he's a Republican, which is true. You can be a Democrat and want to monetize everything, and some corporations do this because they believe Democrats will follow their orders if they bribe them enough. So even if I were to accept your definition of "Republican," your logic is wrong.
Wanting to monetize everything doesn't mean he's a Republican.
By your religion, sure.
By my religion? As far as I know, I'm not part of one. Unless having any sort of belief about anything qualifies as being part of a religion, in which case, the meaning of the term "religion" becomes rather useless.
If we take that approach, then what significance does the 1st amendment have? It doesn't say "free worship", it says "free exercise".
To be honest, I'm not sure what the purpose of that is. As far as I'm concerned, if your actions don't harm another, then go ahead and do them regardless of what religion you're part of.
But if you don't allow the government to make reasonable accommodations, then you force a choice between the two extremes of that literal interpretation and no 1st amendment at all.
No first amendment at all? Nonsense. There is more to the first amendment than freedom of religion. Besides, if we let the government decide which religions are 'real', then in my eyes, we're also violating the first amendment. Besides, the right to free exercise of religion (as long as it doesn't hurt anyone) is different from not being required to do something by the law. You're still allowed to take actions that don't harm anyone in the name of religion, but you might have to do something you don't like if the law requires it.
We need another way. Reasonable accommodation is it. And it has long precedent.
Nope. This "reasonable accommodation" business is not reasonable at all; governments should not be giving special privileges to religious people and deciding which religions are 'real.'
I don't suggest ignoring religious freedom. Rather, I do not believe that being part of a religion means you can do as you please. You can believe as you please, and you can take actions that anyone else could take (as long as they don't harm others), but that's it. Worship whoever you want, but don't use your religion as an excuse to do as you please.
But letting anyone pretend to have a religious belief just so they can break any inconvenient rule or law is unworkable as well.
There's supposed to be a separation of church and state. There is no separation of church and state if the government opts only to recognize certain religions and gives special privileges to those religions.
For example, if someone wants to avoid the draft due to a religious pacifism, it makes sense to do so.
The draft is immoral to begin with, as it's an example of the government claiming ownership over individuals. But if it exists and if the religious can get out of it, normal people should be able to get out of it, too. Their made up bullshit is no better than my or anyone else's made up bullshit.
On the other hand, if someone wants to cover their hair for a driver's license or in school it should be sufficient to say "I'm Jewish" or (for a man) "I'm Sikh" or (for a woman) "I'm Muslim".
Again, religious people should not have special privileges. If they can do it, others should be able to do it as well.
And no,the answer isn't to have the government simply ignore the 1st amendment.
Be part of whatever religion you want and worship whatever you want, but don't ask for special privileges.
As for option 2, then the American people wouldn't know about it. If the government is violating people's rights and doing something unconstitutional, or even doing something immoral, the first people you should go to *are* the American people. Leaking all this information was a good thing.
He did leak classified documents. That was bad.
Nope. Leaking classified documents is not in and of itself wrong.
What religion is this?
Why does it matter? Since when is the government involved in deciding which religions are 'real' or not? I can make up a religion in five minutes that's just as valid as any of the made up bullshit you see in Christianity, Scientology, Islam, etc. As soon as you have governments deciding what religions are 'real', you've already fucked up. Religious people shouldn't get any special rights; period.
Not a problem. Don't own taxable property, don't have taxable income
So basically, don't have any sort of meaningful property or a job. That's about as good a solution as telling people who don't want to pay for contraceptives to move out of the country and into the wilderness.
If people didn't make the problem about the efficacy of the programs, these terrible excuses would vanish. What matters is that they're violating the constitution and people's freedoms, and that would be unacceptable even if the programs were effective.
There is no "good balance"; you either fix the problem completely, or you hate freedom.
Do not make this about the efficacy of the program. The program violates people's fundamental liberties, and that is the only reason anyone needs to oppose it.
The NSA's mandate if FOREIGN Intelligence gathering. Spying on the rest of the world is their job.
As an American, fuck you. If their job involves spying on innocent people, then their job is wrong. The end.
If the choice is between an overly burdensome requirement on business versus a violation of the 4th amendment of the US constitution, then to me the issue is clear.
Fortunately, there is no such dichotomy.
Also, if they have the data, and the rules change in the future, you can bet the phone company will just hand it over. I seriously doubt the government will let all that data go to waste. Best to get rid of it.
I also don't have a problem with them saying to phone providers, "You must keep the phone records we might solicit for a period of X months, in case we do solicit them, and you must have the infrastructure to provide that information in a timely manner."
Well, I do. It's their equipment, and if they want to provide extra privacy for their customers (or just don't want the data), then let them get rid of it. If this makes investigations nearly impossible, then good.
Patrolling is patrolling whether it is done with eyeballs or cameras.
If you're fucking idiotic enough to not be able to see the difference between individuals seeing something and ubiquitous surveillance devices recording everything and sending the data off to some central authority, then I'm surprised you honestly know how to reply to comments; you're that stupid.
They are practically and legally indistinguishable.
They're not practically indistinguishable in the least, and I've already explained why. Don't restate arguments I've already refuted and pretend as if I never responded to them.
If they're legally indistinguishable, then the law needs to be updated to reflect reality.
It does not matter how knowledge of those activities comes into the possession of the state.
It does matter. That's what people are saying, and what you refuse to hear.
You didn't even truly respond to my comment. Instead, you just restated what I've already debunked.
Again, you do not understand that the ability to police is necessary to protect YOUR RIGHTS.
Again, you do not understand that we can still have police without having ubiquitous surveillance, *just like we had long before any of this technology was ever invented.*
You keep pushing this nonsensical line where you want to keep your rights, but you don't want the government to be able to protect them.
I do want the government to protect them. It's not 'criminals' that infringe upon these rights; it's the government.
In other words, you're a mental toddler.
You're the one that can't even be bothered to truly respond to my arguments. You're even worse than a mental toddler; just human garbage.
Utter bullshit. I'd much rather of privacy from ubiquitous surveillance and take 'risks' (The same risks that people have lived with for thousands of years before these things ever existed.) than allow such evil to exist.
but if we decide they can't watch us in public
If an individual cop happens to be around, that is not a problem. What is a problem is ubiquitous surveillance, and that's an entirely different matter.
To play the devils advocate a bit on this, I ask how this would be any different than a network intrusion/attack detection system that runs on an ISP on links that carry peering traffic on it?
For one thing, it's the government that's doing it, and the government has the ability to ruin lives with ease. Also, governments have restrictions put on their powers that companies do not have, and ubiquitous surveillance should be added to that list of restrictions.
If this type of monitoring is a little creepy and offends you, then perhaps we should force every single other industries on the planet with a similar situation, to stop logging their data for the purpose of defending against attacks as well?
Why do you think that individual companies storing some data is at all equivalent to government surveillance? It's not. But yes, I'd say even companies need to be regulated somewhat.
Long story short, get over it.
As soon as people "get over it," we've lost more of our privacy. Ubiquitous surveillance of public places will allow them to track and harass individual targets who have done nothing more than angered the people in power, and they'll be able to do so far more efficiently than they have in the past. Tracking down innocent people and harassing them is nothing new, but now the scale is entirely different. If you think this is a good thing, or that we should "get over it," you're a fool who's utterly ignorant of the countless abuses of government power throughout history.
Ubiquitous surveillance is bad. Get over it.
This is simply saving time and money
To say that this is the same thing, except more efficient, is absurd. Whereas the individual cameras were controlled by individual businesses, these cameras will collect data for one entity: The government. That's what makes them far more dangerous. Unless you believe that the government--which misinterprets bomb threats and treats them as if they're real, molests people at airports, spies on everyone's communications, and sends protestors off to free speech zones--is capable of not abusing this information? If that is so, then you're ignorant of history.
How much time and money was spent on tracking that vans path down?
What matters is not time or money; it's privacy, and it's the sort of privacy where you're free from ubiquitous government surveillance. I'd rather have privacy than 'safety' or time or money.
I'm all for this technology, just make sure there are checks and balances in place.
The checks and balances would be not having this at all.
In addition, privacy (The kind of privacy where you're free from mass government surveillance.) is important all by itself, so even absent the government abuses, this surveillance shouldn't be allowed.
You've got nothing to hide in public? You've got something to hide *everywhere*. You seem to think that it's you who decides whether you've got something to hide; that's false. The government decides. The government can decide that certain speech is illegal, that doing something perfectly innocuous is grounds for harassment, or something else that's nefarious. Once they have ubiquitous surveillance devices in public places, things that used to protect you from government abuse--like the fact that they can't be in more than a few places at once, or the fact that they didn't have recordings of everything that's going on--will vanish. Governments aren't made up of perfect angels; the countless abuses throughout history show that. Even in public places, you have everything to hide.
As an example, and since we're talking about surveillance devices in general, there was a case where someone made a bomb joke on Twitter and was harassed endlessly by the government. Anything that can be misinterpreted to harass someone will be, whether it's malicious or not.
The countless people abused by governments throughout history show that I'm not wearing a tinfoil hat. To say otherwise is to admit that you're completely ignorant of history. If you give the government the power of near ubiquitous surveillance, it will be abused and used to target those who do things the government does not like, whether those things are morally wrong or not. And again, to say otherwise is to say that you believe the government is made up of perfect angels that would never abuse their powers or make mistakes, and that you believe that all possible governments in the future will be like that. Guess what? That's not sane. We put limits on the government's powers for a reason; because they can't be trusted with easily exploitable powers.
You're the one who's not sane.
I speak of morality, not law. If you're such a mindless drone that you have no opinions of your own, then please don't reply to me.
You speak of "the law" as if it were some decree from a tyrant.
I speak of the law as if it isn't the same as morality. I speak of the law as if bad laws can be created quite easily, even in countries like the US.
This isn't how "the law" sees this: this is how the population sees it.
That would be true if the population were perfectly informed and agreed with their representatives 100%. Otherwise, claiming that that's the case is just bad logic.
Without "the law" that you so resent, you'd be hunkered down behind a mud wall in your hovel trying to hold back the hoards. Law and civilization go hand-in-hand.
I don't know what nonsense you're trying to put forth, but it isn't working, cretin. Objecting to certain laws and such is far from advocating anarchy. What I have a problem with is when people start referring to laws as if they're the be-all end-all and ignoring that many here refer to morality. I also have a problem when people appeal to authority figures and act as if their interpretations are objectively correct, but in this case, that's not the point.
If you want to get technical, the constitution does not confer a right of privacy.
If you want to get technical, the government will do anything to give itself more power, as we've seen. Using bullshit lawyer logic to justify their disgusting activities is obviously not below them, sadly.