221–230 of 232 posts
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> 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.
Just a quick note to add that this was built over the course of 5 hours by four developers as part of http://taskforce.is , which was pretty much assembled here on Hacker News. Please take a few minutes to call. It's amazing how low conversion rates are on calling campaigns like this one - a factor of 100 lower than email asks - but this is really critical. We only have one day to make this happen. If you're interest…
I would strongly recommend including an auto email form. Maybe not as powerful as a phone calll, but conversions will be much higher
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Countries are just arbitrary divisions. Just because you are born in a certain geographic region doesn't mean you are the property of the government of that region. Every person is a human being with inherent rights and freedoms. You think we are all equal, but Americans are just more equal than others? Dividing people is counter productive and antiquated. We are all unified as citizens of Earth and denizens of the i…
> Countries are just arbitrary divisions. No, they're not. People in China will not fight and die to defend your freedom, but people in Nebraska will. There is a real world outside the internet, and in that real world countries and national boundaries are tremendously important.
First, the context of the parent's comment about countries being arbitrary divisions was clearly with regard to human rights.
Secondly, your argument is completely circular. That people in Nebraska will defend your freedom does not make national divisions any less arbitrary. It simply means that those who would do so have bought into the arbitrary divisions. So, you are effectively saying that if we can get people to believe in those arbitrary divisions, then they are not arbitrary.
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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.
Whatever we allow them to do to non-U.S. citizens can and will likely be turned against U.S. citizens. Their simple argument is that the terrorists walk among us, and are thus indistinguishable from American citizens. So, they must now cast a wider net that includes Americans.
We have already seen them use this rationale and, in fact, it is part of what got us here today.
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Unfortunately, even if NSA stopped all domestic spying, the fact that they have programs like PRISM that silently turn any US company into a snitch for the US military means that the US internet industry has suffered an irreparable blow. Obama getting on national TV and saying "we only target foreign entities" is the worst possible thing that could have happened. Even if all of this stuff works, the spying on foreign…
It should be banning surveillance of anyone not under active investigation, not simply domestically.
The bar for spying on purely private foreign citizens should be high, but not quite as high as on US persons -- maybe going 3 hops at a basic level internationally (i.e. Bin Laden's courier's maid) vs. 2 hops for US persons (McVeigh's maid, but not his maid's mom).
The bar for spying domestically should be very high, and essentially limited to counterintelligence on USG employees and contractors, agents of foreign powers, and maybe certain classes of domestic terrorist; everything else should be handled under regular law enforcement.
This is something real, tangible, and valuable that we can all actually do. All of this month I have felt powerless. This is something within everyone's power to do, and it can definitely help start the ball rolling back the way it came. It is pretty unfortunate that there is such a short window of time in which this information can be disseminated. I can imagine if there were a bit more time, this could really sprea…
I disagree, it is not something real or tangible. I'm all for defunding NSA, but it's not like a regular business which you can boycott by not giving them money. You have to go and ask permission from the government to not give the money (which they previously extracted from you by force for the "good of society") to some of the government agencies. It's pretty much like going to NSA itself and ask them to defund the…
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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.
No, they'll send men with guns to imprison you.
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"We elected Bush in 2004 when he had Tom Ridge upping the terror alert every week before the election." You hit the nail right on the head. The problem in America isn't the politicians, it's the people.
If Obama would do what he promised he would do, we would be in a better situation right now (about the PATRIOT Act, Guantanamo, etc..)
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This isn't Watergate. There isn't widespread public outrage. If you want to change the policies, you'll need to generate or simulate that outrage first.
Watergate made barely a ripple at first, according to Woodward and Bernstein's book. It built up over time.
This is the very first (recorded) vote on the issue; even if it were 100% symbolic, which way it goes, how many votes for it will make a difference going forward. And this is bipartisan from the beginning: in a Republican House, an heretofore obscure Republican is the sponsor with the very prominent Democrat John Conyers as the leading co-sponsor.
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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 off…
In a system I advocate, private prisons are, just like police and firefighters, funded by private citizens. A private citizen doesn't want to pay for the prisoner being held longer than it is truly required for him to become a decent member of the society again. If such a private prison decided to cheat its customers and extract more money by holding prisoners longer than needed, a customer may decide to stop paying it or switch to another prison (that is, switch to another protection agency). In many cases, people would not be send to prison at all, because it wouldn't be economically feasible from the protection agency customers point of view.
Now tell me, what's so extreme about my position? Why is it not reasonable?