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Pentagon surveilling Americans without a warrant, Senator Wyden reveals

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Re: Pentagon surveilling Americans without a warrant, Senator Wyden reveals

#181

Post by kelnos »

nickysielicki wrote: post #14
ssklash wrote: post #4

I knew before even reading that the senator would be Ron Wyden. He's a treasure and the most tech-literate politician I know of. Oregon is lucky to have him, and we could use a lot more like him.

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's a climate-change denier who wants the EPA disbanded, seemed to downplay the seriousness of COVID-19, and voted against human-rights bills relating to Hong Kong and China.

I guess "tech-literate" isn't really worth that much as a label.

Re: Pentagon surveilling Americans without a warrant, Senator Wyden reveals

#182

Post by throwawaygh »

sudosysgen wrote: post #173
SR2Z wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The state is rarely capable of enforcing the law on more than a small minority of lawbreakers because enforcing the law is expensive. 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 philos…

The state is definitely capable of detecting every single speeder and sending them a ticket. You just need some smart centralization, wire traffic cameras and doppler radars on every corner, program tracking algorithms and decode the license plates to match them with the owner and record a fine. It chooses not to.

> It chooses not to.

Sometimes it does, which provides an interesting case study that proves slibhb's point -- "A law that is followed only as long as it is enforced is not much of a law and is unlikely to last."

One example is a portion of interstate near the St. Louis airport that runs through St. Ann, MO. (right next to Ferguson, MO), which resulted in changes to state law [1].

Many other munis in that region -- most notably Ferguson -- went far beyond strips of interstate and handed out fines as abundantly as possible, enforcing every law with an iron fist. And then the whole area exploded into chaos, reverberating out of the local community and, over a period of years, boiled over in dozens of communities.

You can rule with an iron fist. Until you can't.

[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/st-louis-county-municipal-cou...

Re: Pentagon surveilling Americans without a warrant, Senator Wyden reveals

#183

Post by nr2x »

maybelsyrup wrote: post #30

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…

Here's a good behavioral experiment that shows surveillance can reduce people's comfort speaking online. Likewise, if people are afraid to speak up, you aren't hearing it.

http://scratchbook.ch/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Journalism-...

Re: Pentagon surveilling Americans without a warrant, Senator Wyden reveals

#184

Post by dragonwriter »

slibhb wrote: post #104
babesh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Power is itself largely a product of voluntary submission, which radiates out. When some people voluntarily submit to the putative leadership, including in its request to back up the leaders orders with force when necessary, to report violations, etc., it increases the inclination of other people of others to submit without force being directly applied, and so on.

Re: Pentagon surveilling Americans without a warrant, Senator Wyden reveals

#185

Post by maybelsyrup »

tsimionescu wrote: post #87
maybelsyrup wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is on point, and way underappreciated by the non-hard-right in the US. People who vote Democrat tend to think of "their" media institutions as objective or sincere, and they're quick to forgive the litany of examples of heinous shit the NYT or WP or CNN has pulled over the years - salivating and fully turgid support for endless wars being just the most obvious example.

This video of CNN host Brian Williams referring to 'The Beauty of our Weapons' has stuck with me as one of the most bizarre examples of the prevailing pro-war attitude in the 'left press': https://twitter.com/i/status/850204332758716420

Good lord man, I thought I'd seen some bad stuff coming out of that guy but that's pretty obsequious

Re: Pentagon surveilling Americans without a warrant, Senator Wyden reveals

#186

Post by anaerobicover »

monocasa wrote: post #177
anaerobicover wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original publication was at Harper's Magazine, not CNN, but this infamous quotation has dubious provenance and veracity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman#Drug_war_quote

I'm not sure I'd accept the family's statement at face value. In fact that's the statement I'd expect out of them completely orthogonally to it's veracity. Additionally I don't find the subsequent argument compelling. 'Sure Nixon hated hippies and blacks, but it wasn't an effective policy until workshopped by subsequent presidents, so targetting those groups couldn't have been the point" doesn't really hold a lot of…

Interesting, would you mind to point to one of such edit you mention? I cannot see to what you refer. I see removal of newsmax URL few times, however that linked article is not supporting of Harper's original as I read. Perhaps I am not viewing enough backwards in history.

Re: Pentagon surveilling Americans without a warrant, Senator Wyden reveals

#187

Post by slibhb »

dragonwriter wrote: post #184
slibhb wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Power is itself largely a product of voluntary submission, which radiates out. When some people voluntarily submit to the putative leadership, including in its request to back up the leaders orders with force when necessary, to report violations, etc., it increases the inclination of other people of others to submit without force being directly applied, and so…

This is a semantic argument. I agree that power flows from consensus. When it doesn't, we're talking about coercion, force, and violence, not power. But the word power is often used colloquially to mean those things: coercion, force, violence, and that's how I was using it.

Re: Pentagon surveilling Americans without a warrant, Senator Wyden reveals

#188

Post by [deleted] »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #20
mc32 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We gotta thank the Bush admin for this. Obama had the opp to make things right, but passed and instead gave them a wink. Trump was never going to act against these interests even if he’d wanted to given all the other aspects he was embroiled in. And now Biden. No way is he going to buck the establishment. Unfortunately Ron Paul nor anyone like him will make it into office to dismantle this surveillance-industrial com…

Yes, blame GWB. But I'm not sure why you're giving a pass to Obama, Trump, and Biden. Their failure to address it is every bit as bad as anything that was (presumably) set up under Bush.

[deleted]

Re: Pentagon surveilling Americans without a warrant, Senator Wyden reveals

#189

Post by cma »

babesh wrote: post #27
billytetrud wrote: post #2

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.

> Power does not give up power.

This isn't true, look at for example the nineteenth amendment (men giving up power).

Re: Pentagon surveilling Americans without a warrant, Senator Wyden reveals

#190

Post by seaourfreed »

billytetrud wrote: post #2

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…

Congress is corrupt (via lobbyist money) which causes this problem.

The DoD tracks large scale threats to our nation. When the economy is rigged, then the establishment worries about the citizen base turning on the establishment.

Congress corruption (via lobbyiests) happens by:

a) Wall Street rigged economy HF front-running trades,

b) Wall Street is rigged

c) 2008 Mortgage crisis theft

d) Pharma is rigged

e) Medical costs are out of control. Every price fixes are killed by lobbyists): Hillary, Obama cost controls, etc.

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