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Block NSA funding for collecting the call records of all Americans

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Re: Block NSA funding for collecting the call records of all Americans

#211

Post by nulagrithom »

meepmorp wrote: post #207
sneak wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why? Because there's nothing inherently special about the humans born inside of the imaginary lines that comprise the US borders that entitles them to privacy denied to others. In short, none of us are free until all of us are equal. Also, in the off chance you don't give a shit about basic human dignity for those filthy foreigners: it's also simply bad business. It puts all US internet companies at a huge starting…

> Because there's nothing inherently special about the humans born inside of the imaginary lines that comprise the US borders that entitles them to privacy denied to others. The fact that the borders of nations are arbitrary and drawn by humans makes them no less real or important - it definitely doesn't make them imaginary. To say otherwise is incredibly naive, as well as deeply ignorant of history and the political…

Here, let me remove it for him:

It's also simply bad business. It puts all US internet companies at a huge starting disadvantage against internet companies in countries which don't force private organizations to silently spy for their national militaries by default.

Feel free to retort, once again.

Personally, the "we only spy on non-Americans!" bit bothers me because my wife is permanent resident, not a US citizen. Should I be concerned about the distinction? What privacy is she afforded? Should I be concerned that my communication with a non-citizen makes me 'fair game' as well?

I think this line is just to appease the American public. It's been made clear the lines of right-and-wrong, legal-and-illegal are blurry.

Re: Block NSA funding for collecting the call records of all Americans

#212

Post by meepmorp »

nulagrithom wrote: post #211
meepmorp wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because there's nothing inherently special about the humans born inside of the imaginary lines that comprise the US borders that entitles them to privacy denied to others. The fact that the borders of nations are arbitrary and drawn by humans makes them no less real or important - it definitely doesn't make them imaginary. To say otherwise is incredibly naive, as well as deeply ignorant of history and the political…

Here, let me remove it for him: It's also simply bad business. It puts all US internet companies at a huge starting disadvantage against internet companies in countries which don't force private organizations to silently spy for their national militaries by default. Feel free to retort, once again. Personally, the "we only spy on non-Americans!" bit bothers me because my wife is permanent resident, not a US citizen.…

> It's also simply bad business. It puts all US internet companies at a huge starting disadvantage against internet companies in countries which don't force private organizations to silently spy for their national militaries by default.

Sure, assuming that the US is the only country that would be involved in such activity.

> Personally, the "we only spy on non-Americans!" bit bothers me because my wife is permanent resident, not a US citizen. Should I be concerned about the distinction? What privacy is she afforded?

She's treated the same as a US citizen would be. The law covers US persons, which include green card holders.

I'm not saying the whole NSA/PRISM story isn't concerning. Just that the idea of limiting the NSA's(and, presumably, other agencies) surveillance on foreign individuals who are specifically under investigation (whatever that means, the OP wasn't specific) is a non sequitur idea that finds no meaningful support in our constitution.

Re: Block NSA funding for collecting the call records of all Americans

#213

Post by mpyne »

ferdo wrote: post #171
mpyne wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My government has not once engaged in violence to me or my family. The one possible exception is my sister (I wasn't there when she was arrested), but you steal $10,000 worth of silver from an in-law to feed your drug habit and I can't say I'd be surprised that the government gets involved. P.S. On that note, how does anarchy account for thieves?

> My government has not once engaged in violence to me or my family. What happens if you don't pay taxes? The government will get violent.

No, they'll garnish my wages. That doesn't require violence at all, the banks and/or my employer will be quite happy to comply.

Re: Block NSA funding for collecting the call records of all Americans

#214

Post by mpyne »

oleganza wrote: post #169
mpyne wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My government has not once engaged in violence to me or my family. The one possible exception is my sister (I wasn't there when she was arrested), but you steal $10,000 worth of silver from an in-law to feed your drug habit and I can't say I'd be surprised that the government gets involved. P.S. On that note, how does anarchy account for thieves?

Did you pay taxes lately? Have you ever been disappointed by what government does with your taxes? Why haven't you tried to withhold your participation by not paying taxes? E.g. if you dislike the war in Iraq, what stopped you from not paying a part of your taxes? Also, even if you are hard-core fan of taxation, your neighbour may be not. If he also disagrees with the gov on the same matter as you, but decides to wit…

Like you just said, the government can already generally enforce their laws just fine without violence.

If you go try to beat up the policeman when they come at you with a signed warrant, or ever point a gun in their direction, then don't be surprised when they don't decide to just roll over and die. This is, again, consonant with you mention about personal assault.

But don't try to brush away the question: What does an anarchist propose to do about thieves? Rapists? Murderers? Apparently your answer will not involve violence and will involve sterning telling people to be moral to each other. But I'm not worried about people who are moral, I'm worried about people who aren't.

Re: Block NSA funding for collecting the call records of all Americans

#215

Post by meepmorp »

mwsherman wrote: post #118
mcherm wrote: post #88

Important point: (This point was made clear in the actual page, but some of the comments suggest that not everyone understood it.) The title to this posting (and the name of the website) are misleading. This is not a proposal to block funding for the NSA. And that's good, because such a proposal would have NO chance of passing, and would probably be a bad idea anyhow. Instead, this is a proposal to block funding for…

Also important: money is fungible. To block funding for a particular activity is to say that Congress appropriates money per activity. I don’t think that’s the case, but would happily be corrected. So a law that states ‘here’s your money, but you’re not allowed to use it for x’ seems toothless in the extreme. It’s words on a page. Keep in mind also that the NSA is close to lawless, so any room for interpretation will…

> Also important: money is fungible.

Yes and no. Congress can specifically prevent agencies from spending money on given activities with riders on budget bills. Evading such a ban would be a bigger deal than the current story, if only because congress would have explicitly stated tha such activities may not be conducted with congressionally provided funds. Assuming word of the program got out.

Re: Block NSA funding for collecting the call records of all Americans

#216

Post by mpyne »

meepmorp wrote: post #206
mpyne wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are all unified as citizens of Earth and denizens of the internet. That's something we would all probably like, but that's not actually true to this point. Today we can't even keep $FOOs from killing $BARs (or other $FOOs) when they're in the same national boundary, so why would you pretend the world is something other than what it actually is? FWIW I think the U.S. needs to normalize how it conducts surveillanc…

> we won't spy or do this list of things to you, without arranging with your Foreign Ministry, and you won't do those things to us without arranging with our Dept. of State During the Bush years, I recall reading that the US had (secret) bilateral agreements with the UK, wherein the Brits would spy on the Americans for the US govt and the US would spy on the Britons for the UK govt. This was supposedly a way of worki…

Hell, it probably is true. But it is something that can and should be covered an agreement. The alternative is no agreement and the status quo of nations spying on each other, and citizens getting caught up in the crossfire since we now all share the same Internet.

Re: Block NSA funding for collecting the call records of all Americans

#217

Post by falk »

noarchy wrote: post #94
falk wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy is nothing more than an extremist. Ask him about his prison system and I'm sure he'll parrot how privatized prisons are the solution to our woes. Alas, they aren't. Be weary of someone trying to tell you that if we just did X everything would be so much better.

I can't think of a better way to drive traffic to the authors that OP mentioned than to take this approach. You're going to make people wonder just what they're missing, if this stuff is so "extremist". I'd be surprised if someone touting anarcho-capitalist politics would be in favour of private prisons, at least the flavour we're used to today, where governments pay companies to house inmates. There isn't anything p…

Other comments made in this thread by snitko.

"Police officers, firefighters, teachers... Could it be that we don't really need any government to finance them? The demand is there. Private companies will be more than happy to fill it."

"I agree. Let's use Bitcoin. It's possible right here today and you don't give anyone a cut."

I hope people read the books OP mentioned. Anyone who advocates that we get rid police officers, firefighters, and teachers in place of private entities is an extremist. Plain and simple.

He mentions David D. Friedman and Stefan Molyneux whom are libertarians. It doesn't matter if the government is funding private prisons, private prisons have one goal and one goal only: to get as many prisoners as possible. They will do whatever they can to get more prisoners. They've permanently damaged families across the country. How would you fund prisons beyond taxes? Bill the prisoner? The family? What about someone who maintains their innocence? The point of the matter is that snitko has come into a thread and contributed absolutely nothing.

Re: Block NSA funding for collecting the call records of all Americans

#218

Post by nealmydataorg »

joering2 wrote: post #186
thomaslangston wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an ethical argument that the morality of a government's actions doesn't change because of the nationality of those actions' benefactors or victims. Therefore if it isn't moral to perform dragnet surveillance on the U.S. population, then it isn't moral to do so on foreign populations either. There is another ethical argument that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us (i.e. the Golden Rule)…

> then it isn't moral to do so on foreign populations either. Since when was the last time US government or its Military branch thought or cared about what's moral and what's not? Long story short: the major reason why they can get away with drones flying over foreign soil with lethal weapon is because american media barely reports on it. My hunch is that there are deals done behind closed doors; deals maybe NOT pure…

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/07/22/leaked-pakistan-... informs about number of people including children killed by drones.

http://news.yahoo.com/faa-warns-public-against-shooting-guns... has information regarding drones used in USA.

Re: Block NSA funding for collecting the call records of all Americans

#219

Post by lukifer »

meepmorp wrote: post #127
LoganCale wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be banning surveillance of anyone not under active investigation, not simply domestically.

Why? Persons who are not US citizens who are not on US territory aren't given protections under our constitution. What's the reasoning behind this? Surveillance serves a national interest for the US, and while there ought to be limitations for domestic surveillance, I don't see why those ought to exist for foreigners in other countries.

Setting the human rights issues aside, here's a compelling practical reason: spying on other countries can be a side-step towards domestic spying. By spying on China, we can also capture any data they've captured on us, without circumventing any laws prohibiting spying on citizens.

It wouldn't take long before this devolved to backdoor deals with allies; we spy on Germany, Germany spies on us, and we each "accidentally" get to scoop up data on our own citizens. (Of course, this is already happening now; they just don't have to lean on it as heavily, since most of the countries in question are spying domestically with impunity.)

Re: Block NSA funding for collecting the call records of all Americans

#220

Post by lukifer »

dominotw wrote: post #125
toyg wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you'll be downvoted to hell. HN should be about constructive criticism. We're all intelligent people, we can all tear down anything we put our mind at, but that doesn't mean that we should, or we wouldn't leave our house every day. I know I'm a cynic and it's a bad habit I'm trying to change, maybe you should try too.

We'll there is some merit to his comment(Despite the sarcasm). We have seen so many of these types of petitions/movements recently, only to be totally ignored by the gubment.

If at first you don't succeed...
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