Obama’s crackdown views leaks as aiding enemies of U.S. • Hacker News Board

Re: Obama’s crackdown views leaks as aiding enemies of U.S.

#111

Post by graycat » Sun, Jun 23, 2013, 9:01 PM UTC

PavlovsCat wrote: post #85

Sven7 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solutions please. Rhetoric is easy.

Rhetoric is easy. Ironically, that itself is also rhetoric. You didn't even address anything I said, can not point what makes what I said mere rhetoric either, but just dismissed it all with that statement. So maybe even if there are solutions, even if they get posted in plain sight of you; as long as you're trying hard to not see them, you won't. What you're really saying is "give me solutions which keep me and my c…

Now, now, now, which Fromm document did you have in mind? My favorite is his TAOL. That's the one?

Re: Obama’s crackdown views leaks as aiding enemies of U.S.

#112

Post by hga » Sun, Jun 23, 2013, 9:02 PM UTC

venomsnake wrote: post #77

Sven7 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how do you plan to stop the next terror attack?

By nuking the rest of the world to glass. If only USA exist there will be no more terrorism. I also intend of stopping crime by preemptively incarcerating everyone and sending them to prison. And I will also stop rape by freezing the sperm of every man when he gets his first ejaculation and then castrate them. The prevention efforts should be reciprocal to the threat.

What do you think is going to happen to the Muslim parts of the world that aren't in majority non-Muslim nuclear states after the, say, third Muslim origin nuclear weapon slags a US city?

That's a pretty powerful motivation to keep this beat back, to e.g. as I noted WRT to Afghanistan post-9/11 send a strong message that if you kill thousands of us we will return the favor to the leaders and enablers.

Re: Obama’s crackdown views leaks as aiding enemies of U.S.

#113

Post by fnordfnordfnord » Sun, Jun 23, 2013, 9:05 PM UTC

Sven7 wrote: post #71

lukeschlather wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't. We could have a 9/11 type event every year, and it would still not be as big a problem as automobile accidents. If we're going to live in a police state, I would hope the police state would focus on major causes of preventable death, like disease and automobile accidents. Terrorism in the United States is not a serious problem worthy of this level of concern.

This is like saying lets have a lottery every year that picks 3000 people and send them over to the middle east. My point is people have to be pushed to answer the question on how to tackle terrorism to take this debate in a constructive direction. Ofcourse governments will do dumb things but the terrorism problem is a hard one.

>My point is people have to be pushed to answer the question on how to tackle terrorism

It barely deserves a response. Practically nobody dies of terrorism.

>to take this debate in a constructive direction.

To derail the debate with FUD?

Re: Obama’s crackdown views leaks as aiding enemies of U.S.

#114

Post by chez17 » Sun, Jun 23, 2013, 9:06 PM UTC

dpeck wrote: post #55

crististm wrote: post #23

That raises the question: who is US after all? Is it the officials or is it the people?

Ive tried to stop myself from forming opinions of the residents of other countries by the actions and rhetoric of their political leaders, whether elected or otherwise. I would hope others do the same and don't believe the actions of DC to be anything more than an exaggerated and often inaccurate caricature of the American people.

I've quickly changed my mind about this sort of thinking. It's a nice little "get out of jail free" card for everyone. We should be held responsible for our government's actions, at least to some degree (especially in a democracy). How many of us really sacrifice significant resources and time to causes that would make the country/world better? How many here spend more at the bar than they do in charity every month? How many spend hours consuming media but don't take the time to keep educated about politics? What's the turnout at major primaries? Ten percent? Twenty?

It's easy to say, we shouldn't judge the people of the country because it feels good to us and, in reality, most people are rather decent. However, I think it should be the opposite, we should all be ashamed of ourselves for letting ourselves get bought off for a little convenience and comfort. We're all guilty to varying degrees. We should step up and accept that. The first step towards recovery is admitting you have a problem.

Re: Obama’s crackdown views leaks as aiding enemies of U.S.

#115

Post by hga » Sun, Jun 23, 2013, 9:09 PM UTC

aspensmonster wrote: post #80

>But R. Scott Oswald, a Washington attorney of the Employment Law Group, called the Obama administration “a friend to whistleblowers,” saying it draws a distinction between legitimate whistleblowers who use internal systems to complain of wrongdoing vs. leakers, who illegally make classified information public. Jesselyn Radack, Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou, Peter Van Buren, and William Binney didn't seem to think that…

At a less dire level, look at the early Obama administration treatment of Inspectors General (IG, try https://www.google.com/search?q=obama+inspector+general&oq=o...), i.e. the guys who's official job it is to expose problems. We're pretty sure that's why the IRS IG didn't even do an investigation, just an "audit" (really), with unsworn testimony with people's supervisors in the same room.

Anyone who makes this "a friend to whistleblowers" claim is simply not living in the same universe I am.

Re: Obama’s crackdown views leaks as aiding enemies of U.S.

#116

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sun, Jun 23, 2013, 9:12 PM UTC

twoodfin wrote: post #102

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The terrorism problem is a manufactured one. You want to fight terrorism? Fine, your budget is proportional to the budget we use to solve other types of murder based on the number of lives it costs us, and you can use the same methods. If you don't agree you'll have to distinguish terrorism from other types of murder in a defensible way, otherwise we should be treating them equally.

What is this obsession with body counts? To bang again on my favorite drum, many, may more Americans were dying of polio or coal mining accidents in 1941 than German or Japanese bombs. That doesn't mean it was stupid to enter World War II. Obviously those who have chosen to deliberately kill civilians in spectacular ways are not right now a danger akin to imperial Japan or Nazi Germany. But will it really take a dirt…

>Obviously those who have chosen to deliberately kill civilians in spectacular ways are not right now a danger akin to imperial Japan or Nazi Germany.

Obviously. Which is the point.

>But will it really take a dirty bomb, a successful mass infection/poisoning, or god help us a nuke to stop this silly argument?

These are movie theater plots. "Mass poisonings" are a very poor attack vector because as soon as they're identified they get publicized and people stop consuming the adulterated product, which minimizes the impact. Spreading infection has similar constraints, is difficult to contain (i.e. the attacker can't prevent it from spreading to his own family/country), and it is vastly more difficult to obtain weaponized infectious materials than poisons.

And dirty bombs are a media fabrication. Here's the money quote from Stratfor: "By its very nature, the RDD is contradictory. Maximizing the harmful effects of radiation involves maximizing the exposure of the victims to the highest possible concentration of a radioisotope. When dispersing the radioisotope, by definition and design the RDD dilutes the concentration of the radiation source, spreading smaller amounts of radiation over a larger area."[1]

[1] http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100421_dirty_bombs_revisite...

Which leaves The Bomb. But terrorists can't build nuclear weapons. States can barely do it. So if your concern is nuclear terrorism, the solution doesn't require you to catch the terrorists, all you have to do is limit the availability of weapons grade material. Which is a completely different problem with completely different solutions that don't involve domestic surveillance or foreign wars, is required to prevent state-level nuclear proliferation regardless of terrorism anyway, and mostly just involves being the highest bidder if weapons grade material ever becomes available on the black market.

>It's bizarre to me that one of the anti-anti-terror arguments of choice reflects that hilariously dystopian scene in the film Brazil, wherein the staff and patrons of a restaurant that has just been bombed attempt to paper over the incident by completely ignoring it, as innocent people suffer and die.

I don't think anybody is arguing that there should be no response to a terrorist act. But why can't the response be to bring the terrorists to justice as international criminals, and not to let it change the fabric of our society?

Re: Obama’s crackdown views leaks as aiding enemies of U.S.

#117

Post by fnordfnordfnord » Sun, Jun 23, 2013, 9:19 PM UTC

cglee wrote: post #15

betterunix wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is also an exceedingly rare crime. It would have been acceptable to let the robbers get away, and then catch them later (if at all). Our cities are not war zones (thankfully). To put it another way, this is no different from saying that the police should be armed with anti-aircraft missiles, because of the 9/11 attacks.

It's rare because police can handle it now. If you let head to toe kevlar robbers get away all the time, well, you'll have a lot of those types of attacks.

Yeah, they showed a lot of improvement in the Dorner case.

Re: Obama’s crackdown views leaks as aiding enemies of U.S.

#118

Post by mehmehshoe » Sun, Jun 23, 2013, 9:25 PM UTC

Sven7 wrote: post #45

mtgx wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I could understand why the vast majority of the government is in favor of this, or why the mainstream media is with the government, too, however disappointing that may be, what is most saddening is that there are a lot of people out there who agree with them, too, maybe not the majority but even 40% would be a very scary number. Even in the most ruthless dictatorships there were a lot of normal people who suppo…

And how do you plan to stop the next terror attack?

Remember a few year back when a group of Irish were the worst terrorists in the world? Oh, wait, a few people in the United states funded them! There will always be people that fight nations with non traditional warfare. Today it happens to be from the middle east. Tomorrow it may be Hello Kitty fanatics.

Re: Obama’s crackdown views leaks as aiding enemies of U.S.

#119

Post by thangalin » Sun, Jun 23, 2013, 9:25 PM UTC

christkv wrote: post #95

reminds me off the Hermann Goering quote from the Nuremberg trial in 1947. "Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the lea…

Part of the problem is that the people have no direct voice over the policies that shape their lives. Even Plato hinted that people will always be unsatisfied with their rulers (be they kings or democratic electorate) in writing, "People unwilling to govern themselves will be ruled by those deemed unfit to govern."

Fortunately, ubiquitous computing opens up new approaches to democracy.

https://bitbucket.org/djarvis/world-politics/

Re: Obama’s crackdown views leaks as aiding enemies of U.S.

#120

Post by zainny » Sun, Jun 23, 2013, 9:27 PM UTC

Sven7 wrote: post #98

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The terrorism problem is a manufactured one. You want to fight terrorism? Fine, your budget is proportional to the budget we use to solve other types of murder based on the number of lives it costs us, and you can use the same methods. If you don't agree you'll have to distinguish terrorism from other types of murder in a defensible way, otherwise we should be treating them equally.

Finally someone with a realistic solution that can be politically acceptable. Amazing to watch how defensive people get over a question. So thank you, for showing everyone else who has been downvoting me into oblivion, the right way to react to questions that make one uncomfortable. And in the end, this debate will only move forward over reasonable solutions. Not fancy speeches on privacy and freedom. Which I have ha…

Other people have in fact been pointing out this very fact/approach as well, you just chose to ignore them. Coming in at the last moment and saying "Finally!" is just dense and completely transparent.