Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?

tuta.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 192 posts

Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?

#141

Post by ComputerGuru »

ethanbond wrote: post #41
dmix wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of written law in the US gov has grown exponentially since the 1970s. https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20190903_R43056_5083d3b... The only time it slowed has been during brief gov shutdowns. As this report explains this includes plenty of non rules and administrative stuff and does count repeals but anyone who has followed Congress knows that the bulk of those bills is new spending and new rules impose…

Why should the government be shrinking when our population and the complexity of our society + economy is growing?

I can’t believe this argument is being made in good faith, but just in case: do you not realize that the number of laws need not scale with the size of the population? Especially when that growth is less than an order of magnitude?

Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?

#142

Post by ClarityJones »

seanw444 wrote: post #111

The FBI director straight up admits that they violate the 4th amendment routinely, and then begs Congress to not ruin their precious workaround. And yet they will face no punishment whatsoever. Like another commenter said, many people were probably unconstitutionally charged via parallel construction thanks to this crap.

The problem with parallel construction is that it implies the defendant is guilty. However, when individuals have secretly accessed the source of evidence, there is a potential that they planted / altered the evidence that they subsequently "find" through a parallel construction. The prosecution inevitably then suggests that the defendant had sole custody of the resources (which is no longer true) and that anything found there must be theirs.

Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?

#143

Post by WendyTheWillow »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #71
WendyTheWillow wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://legiscan.com/US/legislation?status=passed A few times this year in the US at the federal level, for starters. One could argue that every peaceful transition of power is the current government giving up power to the next government. Even Roe v. Wade was a “giving up” of power by the federal government to guarantee a right to abortion nationally.

Does revoking a previous ruling really count as giving up power? The government had the power to say this is banned. They still have the power to say this isnt banned. It doesnt seem like any power has been lost. They just decided to use it in another way. They could change the decision tomorrow. That wouldnt be any more or less power. They are still using it to enforce their rulings.

Yes, removing a limitation counts as giving up power.

Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?

#144

Post by geodel »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #139
Minor49er wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's to stop them from just making up numbers?

They already do. Entrapment then reclaim they prevented a threat they came up with . Claim on a daily basis that they’ve prevented “hundreds” of 9/11 equivalents and no one presses for proof. Or when a new reporter that doesn’t know the rules does ask for proof, they get “classified for national security reasons.” So, no. Please don’t give me BS charts and graphs to make it easier for fed-apologists to point and play…

Absolutely.

Their metrics generating and promoting departments will have field day with this. Endless reports, case studies etc, a whole industry will pop up gorging on tax payer dollars for this "metrics" task.

Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?

#145

Post by phpisthebest »

seanw444 wrote: post #111

The FBI director straight up admits that they violate the 4th amendment routinely, and then begs Congress to not ruin their precious workaround. And yet they will face no punishment whatsoever. Like another commenter said, many people were probably unconstitutionally charged via parallel construction thanks to this crap.

What ever protections the constitution may have provided in the past have been eroded away to nothing starting with the Massive Expansion of the federal government powers from the Wickard case, everything is down hill from that time period.

We no longer have a Government subservient to the people, we have a people subservient to an unelected bureaucracy.

Free Speech is the next target and it is well on it way to erroding that last freedom using code words of "mis Information", "Hate Speech", "Authoritative sources" and the like

Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?

#146

Post by phpisthebest »

tenacious_tuna wrote: post #138
Minor49er wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's to stop them from just making up numbers?

this was a plot point of The Wire, where the mayor ran on a campaign of reducing murders. The murder rate dropped--but a zillion other stats came up, because the officers were fudging the classifications of the crimes to try and achieve the metric goal. Fictional, but it makes a poignant point about needing to deeply understand how metrics are collected and recorded to be confident in the conclusions drawn from them.

Like Idiotacracy, I believe the Wire is more Truth than fiction

Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?

#147

Post by rtkwe »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #132
rtkwe wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It defines a proscribed set of powers but doesn't say the use of those must be minimized. On top of all of that all the powers currently used have either been ruled constitutional, are untested extensions of tested uses of powers, or haven't been challenged/are currently being challenged, we can all have our own opinions about what the Constitution does and doesn't allow but within the system defined the only opinion…

I agree that it is our country and we get to shape it as we wish. But we should build on what came before. The Constitution is pretty damn good but obviously not perfect. I believe that the identifying feature of the Constitution isn't so much the words on the page but the underlying message. The whole of the Constitution espouses an idea that we, as a people, and individuals will agree to live under laws of the defi…

We are building on what came before, the decision for a more powerful federal government isn't particularly new. Pooling the resources of the many states has a lot of benefits (and the states traditionally opposed to that benefit the most from federal dollars).

> If the government breaks their end of the deal all bets are off. etc etc

Those are all explicitly extra constitutional and the ones I euphemistically referred to. The methods for changing the constitution systematically within it's own rules are through Convention or Amendment.

> If ruled constitutionality is different than the people's understanding of the Constitution it creates a sense of tyranny

I'd be more charitable to the devolution of powers if the expressed preferred outcomes of that devolution of power didn't so often tend towards the repression of various groups. There's the OG slavery, segregation, voting rights, and the modern day antitrans/gay panics and to gut things like the voting rights act to prop up gerrymandered governments... but now we're tending towards topics that wind up [dead] due to flame wars.

Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?

#148

Post by mistermann »

solardev wrote: post #130
reedjosh wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The existence of a deep state precludes fixing a shallow one.

Are you saying we need a whole rewrite of the government?

Most any other matter is open for discussion in society, but I have noticed that if one suggests doing the same for government, people tend to start acting strange...experiencing strong emotions, hallucinating (delusions of mind reading abilities, etc)...it is a fascinating phenomenon, yet it tends to get little to no attention. And when it does, the content of the attention tends to be untruthful, hallucinatory, etc.

I sincerely believe I "smell a rat" of some sort.

Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?

#149

Post by mistermann »

flkenosad wrote: post #32
mistermann wrote: post #14

[flagged]

Who's side are you on?

What do you mean by "who", and "sides"? Or, are you engaging in memetics, perhaps not intentionally or knowingly?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness

Re: Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?

#150

Post by ethanbond »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #141
ethanbond wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the government be shrinking when our population and the complexity of our society + economy is growing?

I can’t believe this argument is being made in good faith, but just in case: do you not realize that the number of laws need not scale with the size of the population? Especially when that growth is less than an order of magnitude?

I said size of the government, not size of the code. Both were mentioned in GP's comment.
Post reply on HN