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

Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 479 posts

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#301

Post by Alex3917 »

robomartin wrote: post #275
bilbo0s wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...When are you going to understand that a conservative Libertarian (as opposed to extreme and nearly anarchist) approach is the only path to recovery?..." I think this is the issue in a nutshell. Partisanship. Even people who do not like the Demopublicans... are 'partisan'. I know it was probably not intended, but your post provides illustration of the issue by way of example. I'd wager you, like the average Democr…

Wrong. I voted for Obama the first time. Then, when I learned he had no clue, lied about everything, did not do as promised, plunged us into more debt, is a total union whore, etc, I voted for Romney. I am a true independent in the full sense of the word. To be fair, our system is based on political parties. If these were abolished and politicians had to run without party affiliation then one could vote outside clans…

So because Obama lied too much, you instead voted for the guy who probably told more lies than any politician in U.S. presidential history? And rather than voting for the libertarian who was running, you voted for the guy who campaigned on sending people to jail for getting abortions, using drugs, etc.?

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#302

Post by bhauer »

robomartin wrote: post #275
bilbo0s wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...When are you going to understand that a conservative Libertarian (as opposed to extreme and nearly anarchist) approach is the only path to recovery?..." I think this is the issue in a nutshell. Partisanship. Even people who do not like the Demopublicans... are 'partisan'. I know it was probably not intended, but your post provides illustration of the issue by way of example. I'd wager you, like the average Democr…

Wrong. I voted for Obama the first time. Then, when I learned he had no clue, lied about everything, did not do as promised, plunged us into more debt, is a total union whore, etc, I voted for Romney. I am a true independent in the full sense of the word. To be fair, our system is based on political parties. If these were abolished and politicians had to run without party affiliation then one could vote outside clans…

Interesting voting pattern. To my mind, that pattern is another argument in favor of score voting (sometimes called "range voting") [1]. I'd vastly prefer score voting to our present plurality voting for all elections, and of course most importantly, national elections. This would have allowed me and you to score Obama, Romney, and Gary Johnson according to how well they match our ideals.

I grow increasingly weary of either "choosing the lesser of two evils" or "throwing my vote away."

[1] http://btf.io/362

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#303

Post by darkarmani »

king_jester wrote: post #257
darkarmani wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not true. Although some policies and attitudes have changed since 9/11, US society has not fundamentally changed and the major problems pre-9/11 are the same post-9/11. We have way more problems after 9-11. We've invented more problems, starting with the TSA that nudiescans and molests people -- the Patriot act, spying on Americans, other fear mongering.

The US gov't has always engaged in the practices you mention against the people, although this has expanded since 9/11. The point is that this behavior isn't fundamentally different from past policies and doesn't represent a major change in the how the US operates (obviously this is a problem).

> The US gov't has always engaged in the practices you mention against the people, although this has expanded since 9/11.

Whoa! There used to be executive orders prohibiting assassination. There also used to be a prohibition on the CIA spying domestically. They had to pass a law that retroactively made it legal for the Telcos to hand over call data. Torture wasn't legal until Bush Jr.

Things have fundamentally changed.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#304

Post by vpeters25 »

robomartin wrote: post #72

I hate to use this tone but, so be it. Maybe now you morons who continue to vote in the pieces of shit into our government who are bent on taking more and more power for themselves will wake up and figure it out? How much more proof do you need? Does this make you angry yet or is Obama still your diety? Oh, and Republicans don't get a pass either. The point is that all of you morons voting like robots along party lin…

I'm afraid in this case voting for somebody else is just not going to be enough. History shows us the only way to really change the status quo is by massive mobilization akin to the Civil Rights movement.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#305

Post by robomartin »

wolfpackk wrote: post #288
robomartin wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No government? Who said that? Where? We need a simple and limited government that remains out of our lives in nearly every imaginable way. Every human being on this planet is born free. We created these monstrous governmental systems that, effectively, enslave us in one way or another. I can't go for a swim in my local lake. My government will not allow it. I can easily swim 1500 meters or more. Swim every day. Yet,…

hop on the government paved roads to drive to a lake that you couldn't get arrested for trespassing on because the government has preserved it this long, then hop on the darpa/dod funded internet to complain that you can't go fucking swimming is the epitome of irony. Go fuck yourself.

It is better to remain silent and be thought...

May I suggest that getting an education might do wonders for your life? Just a thought.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#306

Post by kunai »

robomartin wrote: post #275
bilbo0s wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...When are you going to understand that a conservative Libertarian (as opposed to extreme and nearly anarchist) approach is the only path to recovery?..." I think this is the issue in a nutshell. Partisanship. Even people who do not like the Demopublicans... are 'partisan'. I know it was probably not intended, but your post provides illustration of the issue by way of example. I'd wager you, like the average Democr…

Wrong. I voted for Obama the first time. Then, when I learned he had no clue, lied about everything, did not do as promised, plunged us into more debt, is a total union whore, etc, I voted for Romney. I am a true independent in the full sense of the word. To be fair, our system is based on political parties. If these were abolished and politicians had to run without party affiliation then one could vote outside clans…

> I voted for Romney

You are part of the problem. When someone is a fucking idiot, you don't vote for the slightly less idiotic idiot, you vote third-party. You are not independent, and it's an embarrassment to say you are if you only vote for the lesser of two evils, and not one that cares about our country, like Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, or Jill Stein.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#308

Post by bmelton »

robomartin wrote: post #298
bmelton wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't really with Obama, it's that the American people haven't done much against the government's attempts at power grabs. There are a variety of reasons for why not, ignorance being high on the list, but perhaps the most prominent reason is that we expect our government to keep us safe, for better or worse. If Americans are just now getting upset about this, it's ultimately our own fault, as this was the…

> The net, basically, is that privacy is nobody's 'hot-button' issue because even while somebody can espouse the inherent ignorance of the "If you have nothing to hide..." argument, we, for the most part, don't have anything to hide. So while we don't acquiesce to these intrusions of privacy, we let them fall by the wayside in the wake of more important issues Perfectly stated. Not sure what the solution might be oth…

At the risk of losing whatever credibility I might have gained by my previous post, an alternative suggestion would be to simply take the power of legislation for non-legislative realms out of the hands of politicians.

Without getting into the merits of how large a government ought to be, it's not really debatable that the government isn't very good at providing services like the ones you described. There are pockets where the government has set up 'businesses' that have done well, the USPS has historically been pretty efficient, the Hoover Dam, Tennessee Valley Authority, etc., but those are the exceptions to the rule, and arguably, the latter two have only worked well because Congress has left them alone, while the former (USPS) has floundered recently because of political decisions with Congress driving.

This isn't necessarily meant to be the stereotypical "Get rid of big government" rallying cry that it might sound like, as I don't generally have a problem with the government setting up businesses that benefit interstate commerce, but the Hoover Dam and TVA have proven that there are ways to do that not involving government's continued interaction. Funds could be set aside for the promotion of general welfare and businesses/policies could be established that would be able to operate as federally owned businesses (in which federally owned is a far more efficient outcome than federally run).

The federal government seems to have forgotten about their past successes, or have forgotten that too often, their over-involvement has led to failures like the USPS, so I'm wary of new government enterprises subject to all the inefficiencies of Congress (Affordable Care Act being a prime example), which doesn't necessarily mean that I'm against the premise of health care for all, but says that letting that be a government-run enterprise is the least efficient way to get there.

Getting to federally owned instead of federally run is another way to get to your stated position, as, so long as we're able to keep political appointees away from the helm of these businesses, they'll be run by competent staff, and be able to fairly compete in the free market as equal competitors to that market, which will help prevent collusive policies, crony capitalism and the like from predatory cost inflation on things like health care.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#309

Post by vijayr »

rdouble wrote: post #290
vijayr wrote: post #287

Ok, so is there any place/any country in the world that is balanced? not free for all/wild wild west where anyone can do anything (like parts of Africa) and not where the govt counts every breath it's citizens take? something in-between, a place more balanced?

Canada, according to Privacy International.

do you have the source?

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#310

Post by kunai »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #195
robomartin wrote: post #72

I hate to use this tone but, so be it. Maybe now you morons who continue to vote in the pieces of shit into our government who are bent on taking more and more power for themselves will wake up and figure it out? How much more proof do you need? Does this make you angry yet or is Obama still your diety? Oh, and Republicans don't get a pass either. The point is that all of you morons voting like robots along party lin…

Don't reboot the system, rewrite it. Instead of a representative government most western countries suffer, switch to democracy. I mean, democracy . Where the people decide for their rules directly. Where real democratic processes such as random trials are used, instead elections which by nature are heavily influenced by a tiny elite. Where the constitution itself is not written by those who will later rule the countr…

"Democracy is little more than mob rule." -- Thomas Jefferson

When more than half the country has an IQ of less than 100, democracy is deeply, deeply flawed. The only way to properly reimplement government is to replace corrupt representatives with trustworthy ones, and offer a voice and most importantly, CHOICE.

Post reply on HN