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57% Fear Government Will Use NSA Data to Harass Political Opponents

rasmussenreports.com

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Re: 57% Fear Government Will Use NSA Data to Harass Political Opponents

#2

Post by Millennium »

You will, no doubt, find plenty of people who trust Obama to not do this. You'll find plenty of people who would have trusted Bush, and you'll even find a lot of people who don't trust either one of them. But there's a fourth corner to that square, and I don't think you'd find many people in it at all: people who would trust both Bush and Obama with data like this.

That's the thing about governments: people have successors. People like Bush and Obama have been elected before, and given enough time, people like them will be elected again. Trusting one administration with a given power means trusting all future administrations, sight unseen, with that same power, and that is rarely a sane thing to do.

Re: 57% Fear Government Will Use NSA Data to Harass Political Opponents

#3

Post by wonderyak »

Millennium wrote: post #2

You will, no doubt, find plenty of people who trust Obama to not do this. You'll find plenty of people who would have trusted Bush, and you'll even find a lot of people who don't trust either one of them. But there's a fourth corner to that square, and I don't think you'd find many people in it at all: people who would trust both Bush and Obama with data like this. That's the thing about governments: people have succ…

The other problem -- despite the changing of the guard in the Executive branch -- other branches and workers stay the same.

Re: 57% Fear Government Will Use NSA Data to Harass Political Opponents

#4

Post by brokentone »

Millennium wrote: post #2

You will, no doubt, find plenty of people who trust Obama to not do this. You'll find plenty of people who would have trusted Bush, and you'll even find a lot of people who don't trust either one of them. But there's a fourth corner to that square, and I don't think you'd find many people in it at all: people who would trust both Bush and Obama with data like this. That's the thing about governments: people have succ…

Very well put, and why these various spying, leaks, and harassment issues need to be a big deal for everyone.

Do we really trust a large institution that no one knows about (and thus has no accountability) to grab just the data they need and that corresponds to other laws? Do we trust the individuals with the power to access all sorts of data to always do so responsibly, to never play games with it? Do we trust the organizations to always deal with it equitably and never put certain political persuasions under greater scrutiny? Do we trust that the retention won't be used to build cases against formerly innocent people after the fact?

Whether this is your guy, the last guy was your guy, or whether neither are, this is frightening.

Re: 57% Fear Government Will Use NSA Data to Harass Political Opponents

#5

Post by knowaveragejoe »

Couldn't techniques typically used for finding moles be used to test this? Astroturf a politically antagonistic group with carefully crafted information and see what happens. Similar to inserting random strings into documents with each distributed copy in order to later find who leaked their copy.

Either the NSA(or whomever) would have to be incredibly careful in using the information to some end, or they would abstain from using it at all. I'm not sure the benefits would outweigh the risks here.

Re: 57% Fear Government Will Use NSA Data to Harass Political Opponents

#8

Post by wicknicks »

Fun science fact: Fear causes people to think irrationally.

I find it hard to believe that so many people have jumped out of their wits over this NSA news. After all, there are so many more harder and pressing problems in the world. Global Warming, Child Slavery, Drugs, overpriced health care, mortgage and education loans? But on HN, the most intellectual community I am part of (imo) is so worried about automated programs parsing through their mails and tweets, its surprising. Dude, wake up! Your content is NOT so cool. Its like everybody else's -- emails from mom telling you missed on events, defaulting on payments, failures in relationships, failure in school. Everybody goes through those things, and have records to show it.

When I see an article with the title that makes me believe that a bunch of scared folks are now going to set decision making processes for the future, it makes me worried. Very worried. Such community moods have been known to make the worst choices (always conservative than progressive) for the future generations. Today, people complain about the war US took to Iraq, and what a bad decision that was. Five years from now, it will be privacy policies that were set in, after "57% FEARED NSA will misuse their personal info."

Is privacy important -- yes, it is. But should we blow things out of proportion? No. That's never going to lead to a better world.

Re: 57% Fear Government Will Use NSA Data to Harass Political Opponents

#9

Post by tootie »

Millennium wrote: post #2

You will, no doubt, find plenty of people who trust Obama to not do this. You'll find plenty of people who would have trusted Bush, and you'll even find a lot of people who don't trust either one of them. But there's a fourth corner to that square, and I don't think you'd find many people in it at all: people who would trust both Bush and Obama with data like this. That's the thing about governments: people have succ…

Rasmussen has been dinged in the past for having a right-wing bias. It consistently gave higher support for Romney than other posters. The recent Pew poll showed moderately favorable views of NSA snooping. More interestingly, it showed that Democrats had suddenly become a lot more trusting while Republicans were suddenly dubious. A reversal from when Bush was caught spying on us.
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