Obama does not feel Americans' privacy violated

Post by AnthonyMouse » Mon, Jun 17, 2013, 12:10 AM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #47

mattnewton wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who says the cost is purely economic? What is the value of the first and fourth amendments to americans?

Intercepting messages doesn't violate the First Amendment. Intercepting messages with either "reasonable" means or "unreasonable means + probable cause warrant" also doesn't violate the Fourth Amendment. So I wouldn't necessarily make your sole complaint about the legality of the program, as it may very well soon be both legal and Constitutional.

Post by dinkumthinkum » Mon, Jun 17, 2013, 12:57 AM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #47

mattnewton wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who says the cost is purely economic? What is the value of the first and fourth amendments to americans?

Intercepting messages doesn't violate the First Amendment. Intercepting messages with either "reasonable" means or "unreasonable means + probable cause warrant" also doesn't violate the Fourth Amendment. So I wouldn't necessarily make your sole complaint about the legality of the program, as it may very well soon be both legal and Constitutional.

Post by gus_massa » Mon, Jun 17, 2013, 1:02 AM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #30

Brushfire wrote: post #16

This is pretty amusing, but they've just made a classic apologists mistake. Either they need all this access and funding to surveil a large number of dangerous people, or they dont need either to surveil such a small number of people. If it only resulted in 300 phone numbers to track, then sure, maybe the privacy violations weren't as bad (hypothetically). But that argument then puts the whole program at a ridiculous…

But that argument then puts the whole program at a ridiculous cost to threat ratio. Sorry but this is just nonsense. Major terrorist acts e.g. 9/11 have a devastating impact on the economy. It results in a country-wide drop in consumer spending, consumer confidence, business spending, business confidence, hiring etc. As well as locally in areas like tourism. It alone accounted for a 1.1% drop in the third quarter GDP…

Post by tomrod » Mon, Jun 17, 2013, 2:43 AM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #22

Brushfire wrote: post #16

This is pretty amusing, but they've just made a classic apologists mistake. Either they need all this access and funding to surveil a large number of dangerous people, or they dont need either to surveil such a small number of people. If it only resulted in 300 phone numbers to track, then sure, maybe the privacy violations weren't as bad (hypothetically). But that argument then puts the whole program at a ridiculous…

Are you saying that the U.S. has more than ~300 people overseas actively working on terror plots at any given time? You can't represent cost:threat ratio as dollars per person tracked. The major reason for why the program exists is to detect and break-up one-off major terrorist plots so even if the NSA was detecting all worldwide terror plans against the U.S. the number of people they were tracking would never be ver…

Post by CamperBob2 » Mon, Jun 17, 2013, 3:16 AM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #30

Brushfire wrote: post #16

This is pretty amusing, but they've just made a classic apologists mistake. Either they need all this access and funding to surveil a large number of dangerous people, or they dont need either to surveil such a small number of people. If it only resulted in 300 phone numbers to track, then sure, maybe the privacy violations weren't as bad (hypothetically). But that argument then puts the whole program at a ridiculous…

But that argument then puts the whole program at a ridiculous cost to threat ratio. Sorry but this is just nonsense. Major terrorist acts e.g. 9/11 have a devastating impact on the economy. It results in a country-wide drop in consumer spending, consumer confidence, business spending, business confidence, hiring etc. As well as locally in areas like tourism. It alone accounted for a 1.1% drop in the third quarter GDP…