Jeremy Bentham and his consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
Pentagon surveilling Americans without a warrant, Senator Wyden reveals
241–250 of 265 posts
Re: Pentagon surveilling Americans without a warrant, Senator Wyden reveals
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
In other news: - More than 120 retired generals and admirals wrote to Biden appearing to back a false election conspiracy and questioning his mental health - https://www.businessinsider.com/former-generals-admirals-let... - An open letter by former officers calling the president a “Marxist” dictator is a greater threat to U.S. democracy than the ouster of Liz Cheney. - https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/05/12/joe-biden-m…
There are over a million service members in our armed forces. A couple of retired , senile crazies does not indicate a “military putsch brewing.”
The number is significant.
The statutory limit on US army general staff is 241, and most of those guys are quite recent retirees.
Countries had putsches with much lesser portion of generals mutinying, and some times made without general staff involvement as such. In fact there are almost as much succesful putches on record by majors, and colonels, than generals.
Re: Pentagon surveilling Americans without a warrant, Senator Wyden reveals
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assange deliberately leaking false information is a very interesting admission.
Given the extreme asshattery history of Assange, it seems just as probable that he was mostly trying to get some attention with guesses and then later claimed that it was a deliberate disinformation campaign.
> asshattery
Stopped reading there.
Re: Pentagon surveilling Americans without a warrant, Senator Wyden reveals
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s a big difference between being under surveillance because people want to manipulate you into giving them money, and being under surveillance so that you can be kidnapped at gunpoint to stop you from whatever it was you were doing (even if it is all legal). Corporate surveillance is bad, sure. But, even when maximally bad, it doesn’t pose that grave a threat to a society’s correct functioning. When the state g…
>Corporate surveillance is bad, sure. But, even when maximally bad, it doesn’t pose that grave a threat to a society’s correct functioning. Except it does. Especially in this case, since the government purchased the data collected via corporate surveillance. Or did you miss that part? If the data hadn't been collected via corporate surveillance,the DoD would have nothing to buy, would they? We can vote out of governm…
> We can vote out of government those who would allow violations of our privacy (whether or not we do so is a different, but equally important discussion).
I think this is an illusion. There is ~no one to vote for that supports rolling back US government bulk surveillance.
Re: Pentagon surveilling Americans without a warrant, Senator Wyden reveals
#245The Third Party Doctrine is one of the things that is so obviously out of date, and needs to be changed. When so much of our lives (to the point where it is our lives) are online, why is there no expectation of privacy? --- [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine
Apple sells privacy, so there's a market for it and it's expanding into the public conscience. Apple isn't a bank though, and they aren't beholden to the same paternalistic/sinister interests. So what's really needed is reducing the size and scope of what paternalistic/sinister interests manage. Design principles such as separation of concerns come to mind.
Re: Pentagon surveilling Americans without a warrant, Senator Wyden reveals
#246Earlier 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…
The problem is that certain of our laws are written in a way that makes them hard to enforce, especially when the people breaking those laws are part of the government. Often the problem is that the only people with the authority to charge someone with a crime are specific people in a specific government organization. If those are the people breaking laws, there may literally be no outside party with the legal authority to charge them with the crime they've done. That can be changed, it just takes a lot of work and understanding. People generally don't have a very good understanding of the law, and part of the reason is that law is pretty much intentionally complex and obfuscated.
Re: Pentagon surveilling Americans without a warrant, Senator Wyden reveals
#247Unsurprising, 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…
The problem with the constitution is that it provides few good legal mechanisms to enforce the provisions of the constitution. It doesn't incentivize government officers and representatives to follow the constitution. If there were clear consequences for doing things or supporting things that violate the constitution, and if there were clear procedures for indictment with a broad ability for those procedures to be started, we would be in a far beter position to protect the constitution. As it stands, lawmakers can just create unconstitutional laws that are in place for years or even decades until someone brings it all the way to the supreme court. And once they do, the lawmakers that created those laws aren't held responsible at all - no consequences for them. That must change if we want to protect the constitution.
Re: Pentagon surveilling Americans without a warrant, Senator Wyden reveals
#248Unsurprising, 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 Supreme Court and constitution have always been irrelevant. Ask any former black slave or many laws etc that were trampled on by Presidents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_v._Georgia The constitution and Supreme Court do not consider Blacks humans or citizens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford
I very much disagree. Yes the constitution has been violated many times. But without the constitution, its tenants would be violated constantly everywhere in the country. Nothing is perfect, and the outcomes brought the constitution being imperfect is no indictment of the document.
Re: Pentagon surveilling Americans without a warrant, Senator Wyden reveals
#249Unsurprising, 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…
i'd go one step further and prohibit our government from surveilling any non-governmental foreigner without an auditable warrant, and strictly prohibit corporations with heavy sanctions from sharing any non-governmental surveillance with the government whatsoever (on top of existing privacy laws of course). the government should be in service, not in command, of the people.
I agree. I think the constitutional limitations placed on our government should limit it universally, not just within the borders of the country.
Re: Pentagon surveilling Americans without a warrant, Senator Wyden reveals
#250Unsurprising, 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…
> It seems silly tho that we need to pass a law to uphold what's already written into the constitution. The constitution only grants or limits power of various branches of government, it doesn't prescribe punishments for breaking the rules. That's a job of Congress (or courts, for civil cases).
Yes, but it could have defined punishments for violating it. IMO it should have.