121–130 of 265 posts
Until high ranking government officials start getting very length prison sentences for this sort of shit, I doubt it will ever get better.
Why would they get a prison sentence for legally buying information that the private sector can also buy?
The thing I still can't fathom, all these years after Bush II and then Snowden, is just how little human beings really care about mass surveillance. Yeah, the Snowden leaks made a splash, but the media cycle turned over a couple weeks later and everyone moved onto other things. It's like, if you're of a certain age, you had to read 1984 or whatever in school. You'd think "well, no one would stand for that sort of thi…
I think most people don't care much about privacy for themselves ("I have nothing to hide") and are happy to let military intelligence daddy read their emails, as long as it doesn't affect their life. They remain ignorant of the fact that this means that people who actually do need privacy for purposes of organization against the harmful elements of the status quo (civil rights leaders, labor leaders, political party…
Unsurprising, but still disappointing. Actually I'm glad someone is trying to hold them accountable. It seems silly tho that we need to pass a law to uphold what's already written into the constitution. It highlights that the constitution only has teeth in some legal contexts, primarily where a court case is being heard on a citizen being prosecuted. Conditionality seems to not have any bearing on preventing agencies…
Surveillance is a form of power. Power does not give up power. Law is enforced via power. When it meets a greater power then the law is contravened. Look at the US and how it broke international law to force a plane down that it thought had Snowden.
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Law is primarily about voluntary submission, not power. A law that is followed only as long as it is enforced is not much of a law and is unlikely to last. In terms of your broader point, something about restricting the authority of a law-giving entity via the law seems paradoxical. An example of this paradox is the fact that it's difficult to have standing to sue the government over an illegal spying program that is…
> Law is primarily about voluntary submission, not power. Let me know how that works out for you, k? I can assure you that although state power ultimately comes from the people, the state most definitely will enforce its laws against you, should you break them. That is, unless you're rich and powerful enough to afford the best lawyers and a handful of legislators.
If there's a busy road where people are routinely speeding, the state is actually incapable of pulling every single speeder over and ticketing them. Instead, the state relies on setting reasonable speed limits and scaring drivers with the prospect of fines.
This isn't a personal philosophy as much as it is a statement of truth: it's really expensive to enforce laws.
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Law is primarily about voluntary submission, not power. A law that is followed only as long as it is enforced is not much of a law and is unlikely to last. In terms of your broader point, something about restricting the authority of a law-giving entity via the law seems paradoxical. An example of this paradox is the fact that it's difficult to have standing to sue the government over an illegal spying program that is…
> Law is primarily about voluntary submission, not power. Let me know how that works out for you, k? I can assure you that although state power ultimately comes from the people, the state most definitely will enforce its laws against you, should you break them. That is, unless you're rich and powerful enough to afford the best lawyers and a handful of legislators.
One of the main reasons the war on drugs failed is a lack of voluntary submission. Pure enforcement, even with the progressive strengthing of enforcement powers, was simply unable to stop drugs being widely available in the USA.
Our society runs on trust and voluntary submission to the rule of law. If either of those went away in a signifant fashion, the our legal system and society in general would cease to function in it's current form.
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Respectfully, the most tech-literate politician is without a doubt Thomas Massie, who went to MIT for both his undergrad in electrical engineering and his masters in mechanical engineering, who formed a decently successful startup working on novel computer input mechanisms. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Massie#Early_life,_educ...
And yet he is publicly against Net Neutrality and doesn't believe in climate change. Tribal affiliation takes priority over technical ability I guess.
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I think most people don't care much about privacy for themselves ("I have nothing to hide") and are happy to let military intelligence daddy read their emails, as long as it doesn't affect their life. They remain ignorant of the fact that this means that people who actually do need privacy for purposes of organization against the harmful elements of the status quo (civil rights leaders, labor leaders, political party…
>I think most people don't care much about privacy for themselves ("I have nothing to hide") and are happy to let military intelligence daddy read their emails, as long as it doesn't affect their life. I'd point out that the DoD is purchasing this data from private entities, not collecting it themselves. As such, I'd say that it's less about government surveillance specifically, and more about surveillance in general…
Corporations don’t generally have guns or handcuffs that they can use on arbitrary people. The state does, which is why there’s such a danger associated with them being able to access the data.
Experian doesn’t have a torture chamber. The Chicago PD and the CIA do.
Unsurprising, but still disappointing. Actually I'm glad someone is trying to hold them accountable. It seems silly tho that we need to pass a law to uphold what's already written into the constitution. It highlights that the constitution only has teeth in some legal contexts, primarily where a court case is being heard on a citizen being prosecuted. Conditionality seems to not have any bearing on preventing agencies…
The Constitution is just a piece of paper. It is powerless if people ignore it. It's the same with presidents, kings, and dictators. If people just stopped doing what they said, they become nothing. There's an incident in Soviet history where Stalin was sure they were coming to arrest and execute him. He was shaking and completely powerless. But they were just coming to affirm his power. The Arab Spring came about be…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Bush II and then Snowden, is just how little human beings really care about mass surveillance. I'm struggling to think of a single negative thing that I can directly associate with mass surveillance in the US. Certainly nothing bad has happened to me personally or anyone that I know because of it. So no one cares because it doesn't impact anyone's lives.
Here's one negative thing you can now associate with mass surveillance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction