Timely editorial that makes perfect sense from a relevant "protect yourself" position *********************************************************************************************** Responding to a popular reaction to news of the National Security Agencys massive data collection program, blogger Daniel Sieradski started a Twitter feed called Nothing to Hide. He has retweeted hundreds of people who have declared in one form or another that they are not concerned that the federal government may spy on them. They say they have done nothing wrong, so they have nothing to hide. If it helps the government fight terrorists, go ahead, take their civil liberties away. In his blog, a frustrated Sieradski listed many of the abuses of power our federal government is known for; he is not happy with the "nothing to hide" crowd. ... 1. Every American Is Probably a Criminal, Really That Americans think they have nothing to hide in the first place is a sign of how little attention they're paying to the behavior of our Department of Justice. Many Americans have run afoul of federal laws without even knowing it. Tim Carney noted at the Washington Examiner: Copy a song to your laptop from a friend's Beyonce CD? You just violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Did you buy some clothes in Delaware because they were tax free? You're probably evading taxes. Did you give your 20-year-old nephew a glass of wine at dinner? Illegal in many states. Citizens that the federal government wants to indict, the federal government can indict if it monitors them closely enough. That's why it's so disturbing to learn that the federal government doesn't need to obtain a warrant on us in order to get our emails and phone records. ... The nothing to hide crowd's involvement in political activism is likely limited. Thats perfectly fine. Nobody should feel obligated to join the Occupy movement or a Tea Party organization or be the kind of person who might end up on a politicians enemies list. But to say I have nothing to hide is a fundamentally selfish declaration. What about parents, sisters, brothers, partners, and other loved ones? Can we say the same for them? You dont have to have an illness whose suffering can be eased with the use of medical marijuana to be concerned about the way the federal government treats this industry. Would you say, I dont need medical marijuana so I dont care if they imprison those who do? Sadly, some people do. Fundamentally, saying I have nothing to hide, is similar to saying I dont care about those who do. ... 2. The Federal Government Has Abused its Surveillance Powers Before While most Gen Xers were still very young and before any Millennials were born America went through similar controversies in the wake of the Vietnam War and the Watergate Scandal. In 1975, Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho) put together a committee (which would eventually be known as the Church Committee) to investigate abuses of the law by intelligence agencies. Abuses included spying on leftist activists, opening and reading private mail, and using the IRS as a weapon. Sound familiar? Theres a reason why Baby Boomers have started comparing Barack Obama to Richard Nixon. The value of doing so has been lost to the ages; everything politically awful that happens in America is compared to Tricky Dick. The defense that the current secret NSA/PRISM data collection plan can only target foreigners in foreign territory shouldnt settle anything, even if its actually true, because thats just a description of how the plan is currently being used, not how it might be used tomorrow or under the next presidential administration. And we have absolutely no way of knowing that the description of how the program operates is true anyway, because the oversight has been hidden from public view. ... 3. Government Is Made of People, and Some People Are Creepy, Petty, Incompetent, or Dangerous Gilberto Valle had an unusual sexual fetish. He fantasized about kidnapping, killing, and eating young women. "You look absolutely delicious in that Instagram picture!"FacebookValle was also a member of the New York Police Department, and was convicted in March of plotting to make his fantasies a reality. Whether he really meant to do so is up in the air (his defense was that this was all sexual roleplay), but he was also convicted of looking up his potential targets in a national crime database, accessible due to his position of authority. While the federal government is arguing that all this massive metadata being collected by the National Security Agency is subject to significant oversight and not subject to abuse, it is at the same time trying to blame the IRS targeting political and conservative nonprofits for special questioning as the actions of rogue employees and poor management For the article in its entirety: http://reason.com/archives/2013/06/12/three-reasons-the-nothing-to-hide-crowd
The "nothing to hide" crowd are hardly any different than the "yes...tax them" crowd....and as we see with Obama at the helm, many are now predictably spewing both central authority expanding, "common good" narratives. sheep to the slaughter.
It perfectly describes the Obama administration, which is a perfect example why Americans should be worried. We were warned about this abuse when the Patriot Act was enacted, but it seemed like a good thing to do at the time after the 9-11-01 attack. Now the chickens have come home to roost with the scandalous abuse from Obama and his minions We can thank all you (*)(*)(*)(*)ing idiots who voted for this lying dick for all this crap and change we now experience
4. This year's friend might be next year's enemy. Today, VIP. Tomorrow, DOA. Now add in the fact that NOTHING is ever thrown away and any PAST crime, however trivial, can be used against you. We need a Constitutional Amendment.
I was in Pre Law when the Patriot Act was being pushed and we all knew it was (*)(*)(*)(*) then, regardless of 911. I thought Bush was wrong. I think Obama's wrong. Laws don't go away with administrations. They usually grow and grow and grow. This is why partisan politics is BS. People forgive their pols anything, always believing that they will always be in charge. I hate Bachman but she's the president that all the Obama apologists deserve after their ostrich approach to all his scandals this year.
Yeah, no kidding. I see the light now, government corrupt tyranny is where it will end up every time no matter who is running the show
Republicans said the exact same (*)(*)(*)(*) when Bush was involved in his anti-terror schemes. Obama has simply continued Bush's programs. The only difference is that one group who used to champion these sorts of policies as a stalwart against terrorism (Republicans and their ilk) are now opposed to it because Obama did it, and another group who cried out in horror when Obama did it (Democrats and their ilk) are now all in favor of it. It is a joke. It is one of the major the reasons our country is so screwed up. People will defend their team no matter what, even when they do the same thing they attacked the other team for doing.
Stop it. More humans exist than Republicans and Democrats. Libertarians have always been against it. Greens have always been against it. Just because your teams are swimming in the seas of hypocrisy and double standards doesn't mean the rest of us have been. This is total BS on all sides. Now, you can keep on pointing fingers away and deflecting, in which case, you look like a weasel or jump on the righteous train and condemn it. Your choice.
I am confused now. What do you disagree with? I am not a Democrat or Republican. Libertarians amount to a tiny minority of the population. I really fail to see how anything you said disagrees with or contradicts anything I said. Both sides are partisan, their partisanship blinds them to the reality that both sides are doing the same terrible things, and it means things will never get better. Because all problems will be blamed on one side, and then people will go about their day thinking they simply need to get their team back in power to fix things. Unfortunately both teams who have any chance of winning an election are equally culpable for the problems this country faces. So elections and the like will never fix anything. Unless of course people actually start holding politicians accountable for their actions no matter the party they belong to....
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/snowden-hero-traitor-190447620.html In this article there are quotes from major newspaper and publications, condemning Snowden. It's all in defense of Obama and the NSA. There's one quote from an article in the New York Times. They talk about institutions, and Congress, and "the proper way to do this". The pathetic rants from the liberals at the New York Times are ridiculous. The same newspaper that attacked George W Bush for putting Muslim terrorists in Guantanamo is now defending the NSA for spying on Americans who have nothing to do with terrorism. This is the worst hypocrisy ever. Impeach Obama and others in his administration. They were involved in all the scandals, Benghazi, IRS, spying on AP and Fox, Fast and Furious, NSA, all the stuff they did. Obama continued to use the Patriot act and all the stuff from before, as some here have observed. From some of the things that came out with this scandal, it's clear that the NSA surveillance program was started even before Bush. It started in the late 1990s, when Clinton and Gore were in office. And now Al Gore was quoted by an article surrounding the scandal, as saying on twitter that this "blanket of surveillance is obscene". Like any career politician, Gore says that until he gets elected, and then he would continue the surveillance program. The Democrats in Congress who stood by Obama all this time, like fanatics around their cult leader, should lose their credibility. They should be voted out and some of them even prosecuted for being accomplices in undermining the Constitution and supporting a President known for his unconstitutional actions. Obama criticized the Bush administration for some things that he is now doing. They have no right even being in Congress anymore. The same thing goes for some Republicans who didnt stand up to Obama all this time and who voted for unconstitutional stuff even before.
No... Obama expanded foreign intelligence gathering and warrantless wiretapping, authorized under FISA under the oversight of FISC into a DOMESTIC global roving warrantless wiretapping operation to cast a wider net. FISC cannot authorize that. Congress can write no law to authorize it. It is a violation of the 4th and probably 9th amendments. Not to mention, we gave foreign intelligence the keys to it. Not hard to set up a "we'll spy on yours and you spy on ours" situation.
I disagree with the fact that instead of commenting on the story and agreeing you have to once more remind us what idiots Republicans are, first. Obama, a Democrat, is the president. Why not start with them? We have to fix the now unless you have a time machine.
People will never learn. For all of the Justinians, Hadrians, Trajans and Cincinnatus', Rome was plagued by the likes of Caligula, Commodus, Nero and Domitian.
