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Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

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Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#121
post #84
post #45

The Declaration of Independence states that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Gendered language aside, the idea of the founders was clearly that rights derive from one's innate humanity, and do not derive from government largess. This was the…

> This ideal is all but gone. Doesn't slavery demonstrate that this ideal never even existed in the first place?

An ideal can exist, but take time to be fully realized. It's not as though slavery were universally accepted in America even at the height of its use.

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know plenty of people in Europe that would have trouble locating major US cities on a map, but I wouldn't be so bigoted to say Europeans don't know geography.

I'm not expecting them to find the city on a map (aside from their own), but you'd be hard pressed to find a European that didn't know that New York or L.A. was located in the United States.

The tremendous amount of US culture exported by through movies, TV, and sports makes a lot of American people, places, and things household names around the world.

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#123
post #84
post #45

The Declaration of Independence states that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Gendered language aside, the idea of the founders was clearly that rights derive from one's innate humanity, and do not derive from government largess. This was the…

> This ideal is all but gone. Doesn't slavery demonstrate that this ideal never even existed in the first place?

It demonstrated that they had the right ideals but were unable to put them into practice in one fell swoop. As Lincoln pointed out - the framework of the Declaration was an ideal to be pursued. The Founders' wisdom in what they put into motion necessitated the eventual end of slavery.

There's a big difference between moving toward the Declaration as an ideal as we still were in the time from the Founding until the early 1900s vs completely running away from those ideals as we have since.

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#124
post #23
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You, as a non-US citizen, are not protected by our constitution. Nor am I, a US citizen, protected from your government. I have no grounds to "raise outrage" at my government for spying on foreigners, much as I might disapprove. They don't break any laws when they do that. Moral rules, yes; disrespect to our friends and allies, yes; laws, no. When they spy on US citizens, they tear up our Constitution in doing so. Th…

You are factually wrong. You, as a US citizen, are most certainly protected from my government by the German constitution. Not when it comes to all basic rights in the constitution (only Germans have freedom of movement, freedom of labor and freedom of association), but most are universal and apply to every person. The US constitution is out of date and simply wrong on this point. Human rights are universal and every…

The US Constitution is mostly the same. If you're in the United States, regardless of your nationality, you have the right to free speech, the right to remain silent when questioned by police, the right to demand a search warrant before letting the police into your home or automobile, the right to purchase and possess firearms, the right to espouse whatever political opinions you may have, and even the right to refuse to quarter troops in your home. You don't even have all of those rights in Germany!

Spying is a corner case. Every country spies on every other country. Do the Germans wiretap international communications? Absolutely: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesnachrichtendienst Have they ever spied on their own people? Even worse: their own journalists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesnachrichtendienst#Spying_...

The question is what "spying on other countries" actually looks like, and one of the legal barriers is that, well, if you're spying on Americans in America then you're not really spying on other countries at all, so let's make a rule that US citizens are exempt from NSA or CIA surveillance. Does this mean US citizens are exempt from being spied on? Of course not! That's what the FBI is for!

If there's a human right of "not being spied upon", it's violated by every country that spies. Germany is factually one of them.

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#125
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it depends on your political preference. Strong social liberty or strong economic liberty or something in between? It depends on what's important to you. Economic Freedom: http://www.heritage.org/index/ Democracy Index: https://portoncv.gov.cv/dhub/porton.por_global.open_file?p_d... Human Development Index: http://hdr.undp.org/hdr4press/press/outreach/figures/HDI_Tre... Gun Freedom: http://www.freeexistence.org…

It's curious that you mention libertarianism in your first comment, but the leaders in most of those lists are the social democracies.

Just providing options. Personally, I'm skewed towards economic freedom.

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#126
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy? If only. We have no rights as human beings, let alone privacy. The worst part is that America claims to have rights over us, where ever we are. It is a disgusting abuse of humanity that American asserts that its laws apply to world citizens, while denying them even the few rights Americans think they have. Few countries stand up to the US, and if they dare, they get threatened. How vile is it to say to a cou…

> Its all "USA, USA, USA". (Which, BTW, sounds to many non Americans like "Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil". We even see the the fist punching the air, which again looks a bit like a Nazi salute. If Americans reading this can change one single thing, please stop that. It a very scary thing to see. Or do average Americans know this already, and like it as much as the Germans did?) I hardly ever hear the "USA" chant ou…

> I hardly ever hear the "USA" chant outside of sporting competitions

Watch some of the videos from gatherings and rallies leading up to last years presidential election. Anytime any single heckler tried to make a scene, they were immediately drowned out with the "USA!" chant.

As a US citizen it's embarrassing and frankly, idiotic.

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#127
post #53
post #45

The Declaration of Independence states that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Gendered language aside, the idea of the founders was clearly that rights derive from one's innate humanity, and do not derive from government largess. This was the…

Thank you for that. Can I just say, I wouldn't say the Enlightenment Ideal is all but gone. It's not even near death. We, the people, chose leaders and were betrayed. That doesn't just apply to the US, but I'll start there. I believe the people were half-awake...but not completely unaware of who they were electing or what they would lose. The idealist's battle against tyranny on one side and anarchy on the other is s…

We, the people, chose leaders and were betrayed

No, we chose leaders who would give us freebies and security vs leaders who would protect our freedoms.

The fact that we have twice elected a President who talks of "fair share" and we don't recognize that language for the trap that it is tells you exactly why we are in this situation today.

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#128
post #84
post #45

The Declaration of Independence states that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Gendered language aside, the idea of the founders was clearly that rights derive from one's innate humanity, and do not derive from government largess. This was the…

> This ideal is all but gone. Doesn't slavery demonstrate that this ideal never even existed in the first place?

Perhaps the founding fathers left their aspirations on words and letters hoping that a braver, future generation will make it happen for real.

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#129
post #39

I was going to write a comment to this effect on one of the many threads related to this subject, but figured it would fall on deaf ears. Americans should not underestimate the damage this scandal has done to the American 'brand'. Growing up, I was the Americophile of my friends. I loved American culture, I aspired to live the American dream, I fully intended to pursue American citizenship later in life. This is only…

Bush and Obama have, by acting in concert against the American people and the constitution, fundamentally and permanently undermined global trust in any American company. (Secret courts indeed!)

The US internet industry will be lucky to recover, if indeed it is even possible at this point.

No foreign business or government or municipality paying attention will ever trust high-value confidential data to Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, or Microsoft ever again.

Remember that all of these companies have substantially more customers outside of the US than they do who are US citizens.

Even if PRISM/MARINA/MAINWAY are provably dismantled (fat chance), we have demonstrated an innate untrustworthiness at the highest levels of government, from both red and blue. Trust is incredibly easy to destroy, and famously difficult to rebuild. We've now got video of them lying under oath - what's to stop them building another in the future and lying about that one, too? We (both US and "foreign entities") would have to be stupid not to expect them to do so, given what we've learned in the last month.

In this case, the regeneration of trust simply won't happen. We'll see tons of national commodity services spring up in dozens of industrialized countries simply because our leaders have destroyed our industry with their reckless, short-sighted, fear-based warmongering.

Indeed, Snowden's disclosures will be the proximate cause of grave and irreparable damage to US interests, industry, and national security. The problem though, is that the root cause of this damage is shitty, warmongering, fear-driven leadership that is willing to shred every last semblance of the enduring values of this country to game the fickle court of public opinion, pretending to pursue security but instead ushering in a totalitarian nightmare that had been previously confined only to fiction.

We passed from the realm of "incompetence" into "malice" territory some time ago— and if you think that's exaggeration, I urge you to review the disgraceful treatment of Bradley Manning at the hands of the US military prior to even being granted a trial.

Sadly, I am vividly reminded of George C Scott's incredible performance as General Turgidson in Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove", explaining excitedly to those assembled in the Pentagon's War Room why it'd simply be best for the USA to launch a nuclear first strike, immediately killing hundreds of millions of people (including dozens of millions in the US)—to preserve American values. The mind reels at the scale of the irresponsibility of these decisions undertaken in our name and on our behalf. There's a damn good reason why they teach the system of fallible humans and interlocking governmental checks and balances to every ten-year-old child in social studies class.

(A corollary to these conclusions: the corporate rulers of this country, should they wish to continue existing, must dismantle the Nash equilibrium formed by the MSM/GOP/Democrats, lest continued destructive collusion between the only two currently viable parties in the US completely destroy the nation's remaining competitive advantage in the global marketplace.)

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#130
post #123
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This ideal is all but gone. Doesn't slavery demonstrate that this ideal never even existed in the first place?

It demonstrated that they had the right ideals but were unable to put them into practice in one fell swoop. As Lincoln pointed out - the framework of the Declaration was an ideal to be pursued. The Founders' wisdom in what they put into motion necessitated the eventual end of slavery. There's a big difference between moving toward the Declaration as an ideal as we still were in the time from the Founding until the ea…

Some of the Founders more than others. While many of them came from the North, where there were no slaves and slavery was generally unpopular, and some of the others like Washington and Jefferson held slaves but felt bad about it, there was a large enough contingent of Southern politicians who just plain favored slavery and had to be politically negotiated with. If you define "the Founders" as "everyone who attended the Continental Congresses or the Constitutional Convention", many of them were idealists, many of them had a vision, but many others were just ordinary politicians with their own agendas.

This also holds true for all American political history from the founding of the country to the Civil War.

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