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President Obama’s Dragnet

nytimes.com

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Re: President Obama’s Dragnet

#51

Post by mullingitover »

Shivetya wrote: post #49
emin_gun_sirer wrote: post #13

This article would have been stronger if it had contained a bit of introspection. Why did it require a UK paper to uncover this operation?

which of the major issues that the Obama Administration has the major US media broken recently? None. We have had nearly five years of a silent, complacent, if not compliant, major news media in the US. Sadly we have to resort to foreign news sources to get to the story. Don't be surprised if Al-Jazeera breaks a story before one of ours does.

Well, given how the administration has treated publishers[1], who can blame them?

[1] http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-05-13/world/39226618...

Re: President Obama’s Dragnet

#52

Post by rdouble »

cookingrobot wrote: post #41
khuey wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't vote with your tax dollars unless you renounce your citizenship. And that feels like abdicating responsibility to me.

That's not true in practice. You always need to file taxes to the US no matter where you live, but you only pay to the US if you paid less overseas (you pay the difference, you don't double pay). Almost any county you'd want to live in (except tax havens) will have higher taxes than the US.

You have to file taxes for 5-10 years even if you renounce your citizenship.

Re: President Obama’s Dragnet

#53

Post by mullingitover »

jpdoctor wrote: post #8
sillysaurus wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the significance of this?

> What's the significance of this? I cannot remember (I'm 49yo) the NYT ever going from endorsing a candidate [1] to " The administration has now lost all credibility. " That's quite a fall politically. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/barack-obam... Edit: I have to agree with them, but I hold out hope that this will cause several high-profile firings in the administration.

The New York Times did not write "The administration has now lost all credibility." You made a very misleading statement.

What they actually wrote was "The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue." (emphasis added) Quite a bit of difference there.

Edit: apparently NYT did some hasty editing, I apologize--You didn't make any misleading statements[1].

[1] http://www.newsdiffs.org/diff/245566/245668/www.nytimes.com/...

Re: President Obama’s Dragnet

#54

Post by jessaustin »

dkulchenko wrote: post #11
jpdoctor wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the significance of this? I cannot remember (I'm 49yo) the NYT ever going from endorsing a candidate [1] to " The administration has now lost all credibility. " That's quite a fall politically. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/barack-obam... Edit: I have to agree with them, but I hold out hope that this will cause several high-profile firings in the administration.

> I hold out hope that this will cause several high-profile firings in the administration. Why would it? It's pretty obvious Obama's complicit in this - why would he fire those who are implementing policies that he's supporting?

He habitually fires inconvenient people. If they leave gracefully, like Susan Rice did, he brings them back as something else.

Re: President Obama’s Dragnet

#55

Post by f1nch3r »

mtoddh wrote: post #25

From the article: "The defense of this practice offered by Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is supposed to be preventing this sort of overreaching, was absurd. She said today that the authorities need this information in case someone might become a terrorist in the future." That second sentence is the one that really caught my eye: She said today that the au…

Precrime. Minority Report becomes more real every day.

Re: President Obama’s Dragnet

#56

Post by Everlag »

pvnick wrote: post #30

Said Jim Sensenbrenner, who introduced the Patriot Act : “As the author of the Patriot Act, I am extremely troubled by the F.B.I.’s interpretation of this legislation,” he said in a statement. “While I believe the Patriot Act appropriately balanced national security concerns and civil rights, I have always worried about potential abuses.” He added: “Seizing phone records of millions of innocent people is excessive an…

When the fellow who introduced the Patriot act goes against something in the name of American privacy you know you've crossed the line that is political suicide.

And they don't have a 9/11 as an excuse this time.

Re: President Obama’s Dragnet

#57

Post by drawkbox »

The 'Patriot' Act was written 8 days after 9/11. It is time for it to go and be rewritten in saner times.

The founders and framers of the Constitution and Bill of Rights knew the tyranny that can happen, but they have never seen what abuse of technology can be in terms of privacy.

The people that say 'they have nothing to hide' don't realize that personal, business, ideas, private, market information can really be used in many other ways beyond helping fight terrorism.

Strong anonymization and approvals to access the individuals responsible for the info need to be rethought and it should be a public discussion if all our data will be accessible.

Re: President Obama’s Dragnet

#58

Post by pessimizer »

Aren't you suddenly getting terrified about what the dossier created by data mining every phone call, every email, every article on every website you read, every comment you've ever left, every book you ever bought, every library book that you ever took out, the magazines that you subscribe to, every cent you've ever spent by card and where it was spent, every place you've ever lived, every place where you worked, every place you ever made a phone call from, every classmate you've ever had, how much electricity you use, and the same things about all of your probable friends - w/different data sources starting 7-15 years ago?

Are you even more terrified of the executive summary? Is it just me?

Re: President Obama’s Dragnet

#59

Post by sp332 »

wslh wrote: post #28

I really think of Obama government as populism (disclaimer: I live in another country with a lot of populism). The IRS scandal is part of that. He plays nice cards in public but in secret he has another agenda. At one point you connect the dots when he plays the same tricks.

From what I've seen, Obama is pretty peeved about the IRS thing. Mainly because it spent a lot of political capital he needed for other projects... like this one.

Re: President Obama’s Dragnet

#60

Post by wonderzombie »

vijayboyapati wrote: post #23

Question: At what point does the average statist admit that the libertarians (s)he has been belittling for so many years as tin-foil hat crackpots were far more savvy about the nature of the state than they were? Answer: never

Stopped clocks, once a day, etc. ;)

In all seriousness, though: civil liberties are one of the very few areas where libertarians and liberals (I presume "statist" was meant to be a jibe) can agree. Liberals were in fact among the groups pissed off about the PATRIOT Act, FISA, et al, during the Bush years.

By this point, nearly a decade later, I'd resigned myself to the fact that nobody cared. I can't decide if I'm pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised that this is finally getting more attention.

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