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Obama to release FISA court opinion that ruled NSA surveillance unconstitutional

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Re: Obama to release FISA court opinion that ruled NSA surveillance unconstitutional

#131

Post by chinpokomon »

bsbechtel wrote: post #123
dragonwriter wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Real change starts at the ballot box. No, real change starts with working to build a mass constituency that believes that real change is necessary, and agrees on the general direction of change. If you want it to work, change through the ballot box is fairly late in that process.

If you want to affect change, maybe helping out with this would be a start: https://medium.com/surveillance-state/7d456a6a04df

I'm on board with this, but I expect little traction. I got actively involved with the Republican Party because I saw them as the lesser of two evils. I hoped that my fresh outlook might be able to influence the party to become the party I imagined they could be. To become involved to the point you might make a difference, you need to demonstrate that you share the same values as the leadership... effectively preventing the party from adapting or changing. In Washington, we have a top two primary. Since the primaries mostly attract political party activists, this means that third parties are almost universally blocked from appearing on the general election ballot. I see neither party willing to give up this power they have obtained, so I expect politics in Washington State to go nowhere. We as a people passed that initiative so now we're stuck with the consequences.

Re: Obama to release FISA court opinion that ruled NSA surveillance unconstitutional

#132

Post by chinpokomon »

dragonwriter wrote: post #82
a3n wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If what you're doing isn't working, do anything else. Voting 3rd party is anything else. I vote 3rd party, which to me is invoking "none of the above."

> what you're doing isn't working, do anything else. That's a fairly silly proposition that could justify any arbitrary change of action no matter how unlikely it was to produce better results (indeed, even if it was certain to provide worse results) than your current course of action. > I vote 3rd party Is it working? If not, shouldn't you, by your own standards, be doing anything else?

I don't know about that. It's a vote for left Twix or right Twix; just pick a side and eat it, and keep the other for later - or have a Milky Way instead. It's time to start eating Milky Ways.

Re: Obama to release FISA court opinion that ruled NSA surveillance unconstitutional

#133

Post by chinpokomon »

anigbrowl wrote: post #69
dragonwriter wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US there have been other parties that have put presidents in office There have never been more than two nationally-competitive parties in the US. There have been times when a party collapsed and subsequently was replaced (the Federalists by the Whigs, and the Whigs by the Republicans.) > Theodore Wilson was a Progressive Party candidate Presumably, you mean (former) President Theodore Roosevelt , who, formed…

Theodore Roosevelt indeed - I jammed his name together with Woodrow Wilson, his Democratic opponent. Wilson beat him handily, but Roosevelt still outpolled the GOP candidate, WH Taft. You are quite right about the key difference with the US having an elected executive vs the parliamentary democacy system of the UK, but I don't see how FPTP prevent the election of Congressional candidates from outside the two major pa…

One of the biggest reasons third parties don't make it is financing. If you have a lot of cash that you want to give to a party, you give to a party that will likely be elected and might return the favor. If you have A LOT, you give to both parties. What wealthy contributors are going to give their money to a third party when they can afford to back two horses?

Re: Obama to release FISA court opinion that ruled NSA surveillance unconstitutional

#134

Post by windexh8er »

dylangs1030 wrote: post #76
windexh8er wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how anyone can has enough reasonable information to make a case that FISA doesn't rubber stamp cases. It seems to me it works that of the way large organizations navigate political nuances internally; people who don't run the technology and platforms make the decisions as it pertains to influence that, is often, good for self-preservation and fiscal motivation - the operators implement the systems as the…

"I'm not sure how anyone can has enough reasonable information to make a case that FISA doesn't rubber stamp cases." The burden of proof is on the positive, not the negative.

"can has" -- And here I thought I proofread it. #fail

Re: Obama to release FISA court opinion that ruled NSA surveillance unconstitutional

#135

Post by jseliger »

chinpokomon wrote: post #131
bsbechtel wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to affect change, maybe helping out with this would be a start: https://medium.com/surveillance-state/7d456a6a04df

I'm on board with this, but I expect little traction. I got actively involved with the Republican Party because I saw them as the lesser of two evils. I hoped that my fresh outlook might be able to influence the party to become the party I imagined they could be. To become involved to the point you might make a difference, you need to demonstrate that you share the same values as the leadership... effectively prevent…

Take a look at Hirschman's Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, which describes in general terms the political phenomenon you're describing.

I hope you check this—you should put an obfuscated e-mail address in your profile.

Re: Obama to release FISA court opinion that ruled NSA surveillance unconstitutional

#136

Post by AnthonyMouse »

anigbrowl wrote: post #127
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to disclose the specific targets you're spying on to publish the relevant court opinions. You can redact the names and still publish what the law is. And there is a difference between collecting intelligence on foreign governments (which I don't think anyone could ever expect not to happen) and mass data collection. Part of the problem here is that spying on "terrorist" "suspects" is so broad and poorl…

You don't have to disclose the specific targets you're spying on to publish the relevant court opinions. You can redact the names and still publish what the law is. If you have to redact all the of the relevant facts, then any statement of the law is meaningless because it's unclear what sort of fact pattern it should be applied to. I realize this seems abstruse, but the fact pattern is very important in common law j…

>I realize this seems abstruse, but the fact pattern is very important in common law judgments.

You're basically assuming they would have to redact everything. Just replacing names and addresses with tokens that don't identify the specific subjects would get you most of the way there unless the specific fact pattern is unique to the suspect, and then you can redact what is necessary to make it less specific.

In addition to that, once any given investigation is over the opinions and redactions that were held secret for the purposes of that investigation should be published, and it shouldn't be so easy to keep things secret for decades just by making a facile claim of national security.

>9/11 only involved boxcutters, but I'd say that it presented a rather significant national security problem when those turned out to be sufficient to hijack planes and fly them into high-value targets.

9/11 was not a national security problem. 9/11 was a mass murder. It was shocking but we have inflicted more damage on ourselves in our overreaction to it than the terrorists did in committing it. More have died avenging the victims of 9/11 than died on 9/11.

A national security threat is a nuclear bomb, or a plague, or a foreign government infiltrating high level government offices in preparation for some kind of Communist takeover. Something that would be a factor of 1000 worse than 9/11 and present an actual threat to the security of the entire nation. This watering down of "national security threat" to mean any jerk who might kill some people with an IED is just a ruse to rationalize the use of extremist measures against everyone rather than taking into account the proportionality of the threat.

>You're also ignoring the fact that many kinds of low-level terrorist activity aren't open to direct investigation by law enforcement. For example, suppose you pick up signals about a plot involving Mr X, who has not yet arrived in the US but whose phone number you have managed to identify. If he's in a country that's friendly to the US you might be able to get their law enforcement people to investigate him, but if not then it's logical to monitor who he communicates with for prophylactic purposes.

So get a warrant and conduct surveillance on him then. That's not the same thing as spying and collecting data on everyone "for prophylactic purposes" at all.

Re: Obama to release FISA court opinion that ruled NSA surveillance unconstitutional

#137

Post by specialist »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #29

I donated money to Obama's 2008 campaign and voted for him twice. I am very disappointed with him. Now, my honest opinion is that at worst he sometimes flat out lies, or at least cleverly tries to confuse people. He says that he had an orderly plan for reviewing privacy issues, all the while, I think that his administration has consistently been trying to keep things hushed up.

I am very disappointed with him.

Yup. My disappointment is tempered with the knowledge that we (The People) aren't doing our jobs very well either.

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

-- Frederick Douglass

"I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it"

-- FDR

Politicians only respond to pressure. Period. From a game theoretic standpoint, it makes perfect sense: Why take a position today which could come back and bite them tomorrow? Better to take the safe route, the status quo.

I have modest experience with this, mostly disappointment. The small successes we had happened when we packed hearings with bodies.

If you can mobilize and won't go away, politicians will do anything to make you go away. It doesn't matter who's in the chair: Democrat, Republican, fruitcake, saint, elected, appointed, whatever. You make a stink, you get your way.

Sometimes you have to make a very big stink. And the personal costs are often very high.

Re: Obama to release FISA court opinion that ruled NSA surveillance unconstitutional

#138

Post by specialist »

betterunix wrote: post #100
mark_l_watson wrote: post #29

I donated money to Obama's 2008 campaign and voted for him twice. I am very disappointed with him. Now, my honest opinion is that at worst he sometimes flat out lies, or at least cleverly tries to confuse people. He says that he had an orderly plan for reviewing privacy issues, all the while, I think that his administration has consistently been trying to keep things hushed up.

"I donated money to Obama's 2008 campaign and voted for him twice." ...after the first four years, why would you vote for him again? It became clear almost from the first day of his presidency that his campaign promises were hollow. Stop letting your fear that a Republican might win get the better of you. Vote third party until the Democrats get their act together.

With winner takes all politics, there is no third party. Duverger's Law: to get 51% of the vote, everyone tries to form the smallest winning coalition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law

If you want to build a viable third party, start with local elections, build your farm team. It takes decades to be viable. Then at some point, one of the dominate coalitions will pivot and subsume the new platform.

It's happened many times in the USA.

Re: Obama to release FISA court opinion that ruled NSA surveillance unconstitutional

#139

Post by betterunix »

specialist wrote: post #138
betterunix wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I donated money to Obama's 2008 campaign and voted for him twice." ...after the first four years, why would you vote for him again? It became clear almost from the first day of his presidency that his campaign promises were hollow. Stop letting your fear that a Republican might win get the better of you. Vote third party until the Democrats get their act together.

With winner takes all politics, there is no third party. Duverger's Law: to get 51% of the vote, everyone tries to form the smallest winning coalition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law If you want to build a viable third party, start with local elections, build your farm team. It takes decades to be viable. Then at some point, one of the dominate coalitions will pivot and subsume the new platform. It's hap…

My point was not that we should be overthrowing the major parties. My point was that we should be punishing the major parties when they do not do what we want them to do. The Democrats are supposedly a center-left party, supposedly the choice for liberals in this country. In reality the Democrats are a right wing party, with some centrist leanings on very specific issues.

That means we do not really have a choice. The only solution is to vote third party until the Democrats get their act together, especially in the swing states -- we need to hit them where it hurts until they get their act together.

Re: Obama to release FISA court opinion that ruled NSA surveillance unconstitutional

#140

Post by specialist »

betterunix wrote: post #139
specialist wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With winner takes all politics, there is no third party. Duverger's Law: to get 51% of the vote, everyone tries to form the smallest winning coalition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law If you want to build a viable third party, start with local elections, build your farm team. It takes decades to be viable. Then at some point, one of the dominate coalitions will pivot and subsume the new platform. It's hap…

My point was not that we should be overthrowing the major parties. My point was that we should be punishing the major parties when they do not do what we want them to do. The Democrats are supposedly a center-left party, supposedly the choice for liberals in this country. In reality the Democrats are a right wing party, with some centrist leanings on very specific issues. That means we do not really have a choice. Th…

You might not have seen my late comment upthread...

Sure. Punish them. Get it out of your system.

You do have a choice. You can organize. You can be the change that you want to see.

As a political acquaintance of mine likes to say: Whenever I feel the heat, I see the light!

If you don't know how to get started, I recommend Camp Wellstone's organizer training and joining your local political party (whatever flavor you like) and become a precinct committee officer.

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