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Before Prosecuting, Investigate the Government

nytimes.com

11–20 of 103 posts

Re: Before Prosecuting, Investigate the Government

#11
What annoys me is that just watching the various government agencies, IRS, NSA, FBI, and others, is that there is a pattern of not telling the public the truth, they lie to Congress as well.

How is it that our own government agencies can lie to Congress with near impunity? It is like disrespect has become second nature to government. They do not respect us nor do they respect other agencies within the same.

Too big to fail, too big to jail, applies to government now.

Re: Before Prosecuting, Investigate the Government

#12
post #3

In my honest opinion, I truly believe that this ship has sailed. It is too late to turn back now. Too much money and too much value has been had from these systems for these black projects to be switched off. They will not budge and those systems will never be switched off. I would bet my last dollar on that premise. Our only choice is to accept this and live in the knowledge that we are always being watched, or go a…

la résistance

Re: Before Prosecuting, Investigate the Government

#13

What annoys me is that just watching the various government agencies, IRS, NSA, FBI, and others, is that there is a pattern of not telling the public the truth, they lie to Congress as well. How is it that our own government agencies can lie to Congress with near impunity? It is like disrespect has become second nature to government. They do not respect us nor do they respect other agencies within the same. Too big t…

I think you should be even more outraged about the fact that Congress doesn't really seem to care that they lied to them. Because if that continues, then we have a pretty big problem here.

Where are all the impeachments and swift punishments from Congress? By not punishing them, it just makes it ok for the next guy to do it.

Re: Before Prosecuting, Investigate the Government

#14
post #6

As Bruce Schneier points out in his book Beyond Fear humans are very bad at assessing risk accurately. Ask yourself how scared are you of terrorist attacks vs. heart disease. Notice how the government is putting much more money into the terrorist attack threat then the heart disease threat? Here are some of the reasons why people are so bad and assessing risk: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/08/five_neglec…

By the way, he was Econtalk this monday: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/06/schneier_on_pow.htm...

My favorite part: "We don't say that pigs kill more people than terrorists every year."

Re: Before Prosecuting, Investigate the Government

#15
post #3

In my honest opinion, I truly believe that this ship has sailed. It is too late to turn back now. Too much money and too much value has been had from these systems for these black projects to be switched off. They will not budge and those systems will never be switched off. I would bet my last dollar on that premise. Our only choice is to accept this and live in the knowledge that we are always being watched, or go a…

What purpose do comments as these serve to you? Encourage other people to be sheep? Such a small minded attitude to have, if you ask me. And insulting to all the people throughout history that time after time have sought to bring change, successfully and unsuccessfully. We all have pessimistic attitudes, but to make pointless comments like these, to me, it's like pollution; better to be a leader, no matter how small or insignificant a person is in the large scheme of things. Anything can change, nothing can be fully predicted, this much is proven throughout history. It starts by not accepting the status quo.

Re: Before Prosecuting, Investigate the Government

#16
post #5

Anyone have a pulse of Congress to know if "PRISM" has become politically toxic enough to warrant change? I'm guessing that if PRISM has SOPA level public distain that real change can happen. If the majority of Americans are shrugging at this, any announced changes may be superficial.

Change! There's a masterful political campaign centerpiece if I ever saw one. Obama's recent comments re: PRISM: "I'm not against change". How vacuous.

Feels like Obama Bin Laden ... hope they don't kill me for the perfection :-)

Re: Before Prosecuting, Investigate the Government

#17
post #13

What annoys me is that just watching the various government agencies, IRS, NSA, FBI, and others, is that there is a pattern of not telling the public the truth, they lie to Congress as well. How is it that our own government agencies can lie to Congress with near impunity? It is like disrespect has become second nature to government. They do not respect us nor do they respect other agencies within the same. Too big t…

I think you should be even more outraged about the fact that Congress doesn't really seem to care that they lied to them. Because if that continues, then we have a pretty big problem here. Where are all the impeachments and swift punishments from Congress? By not punishing them, it just makes it ok for the next guy to do it.

I'm not sure the process should be too swift. Otherwise agreed, though.

Re: Before Prosecuting, Investigate the Government

#18
post #15
post #3

In my honest opinion, I truly believe that this ship has sailed. It is too late to turn back now. Too much money and too much value has been had from these systems for these black projects to be switched off. They will not budge and those systems will never be switched off. I would bet my last dollar on that premise. Our only choice is to accept this and live in the knowledge that we are always being watched, or go a…

What purpose do comments as these serve to you? Encourage other people to be sheep? Such a small minded attitude to have, if you ask me. And insulting to all the people throughout history that time after time have sought to bring change, successfully and unsuccessfully. We all have pessimistic attitudes, but to make pointless comments like these, to me, it's like pollution; better to be a leader, no matter how small…

I'm being pragmatic. I would loved to be proved wrong, but history shows us otherwise.

Re: Before Prosecuting, Investigate the Government

#19
How many men will fall before we find the source of the corruption is in fact the paradox of democracy itself.

To have a democracy, you must first enable everyone to be in a fair system. To enable a fair system you have to have certain conditions. To have certain conditions, any conditions, you have to have authority. To have authority, you must not have democracy.

Re: Before Prosecuting, Investigate the Government

#20
When this issue came out, I was really hoping that the people will rise and big changes will finally happen. But now I realize that it was just wishful thinking. For any real big positive changes to occur, there first needs to be a change at the root level, and by that I mean the way people think. The government doing this is a big problem, sure. But the majority of people don't even care, and that I think is a much bigger problem.
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