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Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance

politico.com

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Re: Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance

#61

Post by forgetsusername »

ant6n wrote: post #48
forgetsusername wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's probably more a symptom of how absolutely useless and ineffective I truly don't believe this. Any popular uprising that gets large enough, or loud enough, has the capacity to demand change. Sure, the corporate, moneyed interests will push their agenda as hard as possible to try to sway opinion (which isn't always misaligned with the public good, by the way). But at the end of the day politicians will do what t…

The whole electoral process is so flawed and corrupt that a politician wanting to save their job has little to do with voting, and thus little to do with popular demand.

>The whole electoral process is so flawed and corrupt

Again, I don't believe it.

It is flawed? Sure. Can it be improved? Most certainly. But you can't point to a few glaring problems (which I agree, there are) and compare to some hypothetical ideal without acknowledging the many things the political system gets right, as evidenced by America being the richest, most powerful nation in world history.

In any democratic system there will be winners and losers. Just by the sheer number of decisions that are made, you're going to end up on the losing end of many. If you're really unlucky, you might be on the losing side of a ton. From that perspective, I'm sure the process looks terrible. But that doesn't mean it's broken or worthless. In the long-run, things do seem to get done. I think history bears that out. Yes, I'm a long-run optimist on the economy and humanity in general.

Re: Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance

#62

Post by forgetsusername »

randcraw wrote: post #60
forgetsusername wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's probably more a symptom of how absolutely useless and ineffective I truly don't believe this. Any popular uprising that gets large enough, or loud enough, has the capacity to demand change. Sure, the corporate, moneyed interests will push their agenda as hard as possible to try to sway opinion (which isn't always misaligned with the public good, by the way). But at the end of the day politicians will do what t…

> Any popular uprising that gets large enough, or loud enough, has the capacity to demand change. True. The German people voted for change and got Hitler. America voted for change and got Nixon and Carter and Reagan and Bush Jr and Obama. Wait. Was change supposed to be GOOD?

>America voted for change

What does that even mean?

Re: Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance

#64

Post by morley »

randcraw wrote: post #57
duncan_bayne wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't knock that approach - it's known as Sortition ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition ) and I'm personally convinced that it's a much better way of achieving democracy than any other.

Thanks; glad to know the name for this practice. It'd be a huge improvement over the popularity contest we have now. In fact, it's probably the ideal way to promote anyone in any setting. I'd make a few small adjustments, however. Rather than random selection, I'd like the pool of candidates to be reviewed by their peers and scored for ability, creativity, fairness, leadership -- whatever skills are appropriate in th…

It's easy to fall in love with a political system that's never been tested at the United State's scale. My guess is, if we implemented sortition, a few unsavory things would happen:

(1) The Republican and Democrat parties would just switch their efforts to getting people excluded from the random drawing, much as they currently aim to include or exclude people from voting. (2) After selections, the losing party would attack the random selection process. (3) Assuming the selection is allowed to go through without objection, the random person would be under the same duress that elected candidates have to accept bribes and kickbacks. (4) It's possible that the average citizen would be more prone to reap their rewards during their short term in office, rather than someone who's mindful of their full career.

I'm guessing you're just being flippant out of cynicism against the current system, but I'm a little over that line of thinking.

Re: Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance

#65

Post by caseysoftware »

> An important meeting with Obama was scheduled to begin in the Situation Room at half past noon on Friday, February 6, 2009. Officials who had been asked to participate gathered around the conference table waiting to brief the new president. He was late

> The officials were there to tell Obama about secret surveillance programs—including the fact that the National Security Agency was collecting Americans’ domestic phone records in bulk.

Funny... that was about 3 years before he denied the Feds were collecting anything. And then corrected himself to admit they were collecting metadata.

Re: Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance

#66

Post by sneak »

cryoshon wrote: post #58
yc1010 wrote: post #13

There is another scary explanation, is that they have collected enough dirt on him and other politicians to become "untouchable"

This is probably the case, given whistleblower Russ Tice stating that the NSA had a file on Obama during his senatorial campaign and senate career. This was in the early 2000s. The only question is whether they use this kind of information to get what they want. I'd say they probably do, via the axiom that power corrupts. This also explains why people like Clapper and (now ret.) Gen. Alexander can go into a congressi…

There are two sets of laws for two different sets of people in the United States now.

Re: Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance

#67

Post by irq-1 »

steve19 wrote: post #3

The charitable explanation, which this article seems to imply, is that he suddenly discovers how important these programs are and how much is at stake. The less charitable explanation, since it's hard to believe he fundamentally agrees deep down with these programs, is that he is just another politicians and the guaranteed political fallout from surveillance and drones was far less than the catastrophic career-ending…

Obama publicly agreed with the data collection and voted to expand it before the election.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/jul/14/...

> But recently the Senate again took up legislation that would let the phone companies off the hook. It would also expand the government's domestic spying powers.

> Obama supported an amendment that would have stripped telecom immunity from the measure. But after that amendment failed, Obama declined to filibuster the bill. In fact, he voted for it. It passed the Senate, 69-28, on July 9.

Re: Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance

#68

Post by canjobear »

steve19 wrote: post #3

The charitable explanation, which this article seems to imply, is that he suddenly discovers how important these programs are and how much is at stake. The less charitable explanation, since it's hard to believe he fundamentally agrees deep down with these programs, is that he is just another politicians and the guaranteed political fallout from surveillance and drones was far less than the catastrophic career-ending…

> The less charitable explanation, since it's hard to believe he fundamentally agrees deep down with these programs,

I thought the article was arguing that he in fact did agree with those programs so long as they had a sound legal basis. In criticizing the Bush surveillance programs, people complained that they were (i) bad and (ii) illegal. The article argues that Obama thought that once (ii) was fixed, his work was done.

Re: Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance

#69

Post by harryh »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #42
irixusr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've argued for it for a few years but most people are aghast at the suggestion...

I have seen the same thing. I now firmly believe that most people understand that voting for representatives is a sham, but go along with it either for unstated reasons like tribalism and hero worship, or out of a deep seated misanthropy common to both the left and right wing.

This sort of nihilism is childish. You may not get everything you want from your government but jumping from that to "it's a sham" is absurd.

If McCain had won in 2008 would the US have passed national health care reform?

Re: Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance

#70

Post by forgetsusername »

Zigurd wrote: post #32
forgetsusername wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's probably more a symptom of how absolutely useless and ineffective I truly don't believe this. Any popular uprising that gets large enough, or loud enough, has the capacity to demand change. Sure, the corporate, moneyed interests will push their agenda as hard as possible to try to sway opinion (which isn't always misaligned with the public good, by the way). But at the end of the day politicians will do what t…

> Any popular uprising that gets large enough, or loud enough, has the capacity to demand change. But possibly not within what people call "the system." It's entirely plausible that some things are "kept safe" from the whims of the people.

>from the whims of the people.

I don't really think that's possible, because there is no difference between "the people" and..."the not-people"?

Every time there's any discussion about politics or power, there's the inevitable topic of "us" vs "them". It's always insightful to ask people where they draw the line between the categories of people. Is it all politicians? I mean, is there some secret indoctrination, like Scientology, whereby the minute you reach a certain level in your political career, the "real world" is explained to you? How is it that these secrets are kept?

For many Americans it's the "1%ers" who receive the disdain. That is, until they realize that a significant number of themselves are global 1%ers. I have a personal friend who often rails about the "global elite", meanwhile he is a SMB owner with a multi-million dollar net worth who isn't -- how shall I say it -- especially "diligent" when it comes to offering his low-skill employees the best opportunities.

All this is to say that, yes, often times the incentives of the capitalists and the workers are averse to each other. But "the system" maintains the balance, in that one party can't subjugate the other extremely without personal harm. In other words, "the rich" can't take all the money, because that leaves no demand for product, and eventually "the poor" say @#$% it, and start beheading the royals. At least that's what history tells me.

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