Israel's Arab civilian's regularly attempt to blow themselves up in public places (believe me, I've stopped a few on them myself). Meanwhile the Palestinians gleefully lob rockets at populated cities in Israel. Of course Israel would want to monitor them as much as possible, and corroborate with the NSA to get as much data as possible. If that monitoring saved YOUR child from getting blown up on a bus, wouldn't you s…
So if you object to this type of surveillance then you prefer your children to be blown up by suicide bombers?
Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
61–70 of 146 posts
Re: Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
#62Re: Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
So if you object to this type of surveillance then you prefer your children to be blown up by suicide bombers?
Most every democracy with serious and continuing problems with terrorism throw out the law book and human rights. Afaik, this goes for USA, Britain, Israel, Germany, Spain and Italy. And probably more cases. (Note " continuing problems ". e.g. Breivik was a lone crazy.) The reason is shown by the grandparent comment; terrorism is optimized to scare voters. And politicians are scared of hysterical voters, they need to…
Re: Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
#64Israel's Arab civilian's regularly attempt to blow themselves up in public places (believe me, I've stopped a few on them myself). Meanwhile the Palestinians gleefully lob rockets at populated cities in Israel. Of course Israel would want to monitor them as much as possible, and corroborate with the NSA to get as much data as possible. If that monitoring saved YOUR child from getting blown up on a bus, wouldn't you s…
No amount of spying will solve that ,9/11 was planned by a bunch of guys in a basement . Data mining my porno history won't stop groups like ISIS from forming.
Re: Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Okay, if not fixing it by working within the system, then what is the next step?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monday_demonstrations_in_East_G...
Protest is totally irrelevant in the modern world. It is shuffled into free speech zones or tear gassed, LRAD'd, and pepper sprayed out of the way. "Less-lethal" armaments and massive police militarization means that there will never be another Kent State to shock us into action; instead, the state can play an indefinite game of divide-and-conquer by marginalizing anyone more radical than Ralph Nader, helped by centrist opportunists.
I lived in Washington, DC most of my life. There were always protests. When the police decided the protests would stop, they would roll in the APCs and the LRADs and flex-cuffs and stop them. Most of the time there was no need, since the protesters did the police's job for them, herding themselves into cages and keeping their voices down.
You could say that more people need to be there, or that the demand needs to be clearer, or that the movement needs to be more cohesive, but you can literally always say those things, so they aren't really useful criticisms. Rather, they betray a sort of Boxer-esque "we must work harder" mindset where it's always the fault of the protesters for not trying hard enough in their use of a wholly ineffective tool.
Combine this with state and corporate control of virtually all news media, and a surveillance and police system that is able to destabilize any social justice movement before it even begins (Occupy was a great example of this), you have an unshakable state that can enact whatever policies it wishes.
Ironically, pleading to Google is probably more successful than pleading to your congressman. The plutocrats at Google actually fear your use of alternative services and aren't fattened on incumbency, so they'll respond (as they have in the past) and use their actual power to attempt, at least, to effect real change. Though we've seen how that works so far.
Re: Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
#66I think this is the most damning leak to date. There is no justification for freely giving information to Israel. And the part about people's porn habits being tracked is even scarier. That could be used to discredit virtually anyone (well, any male at least). Who hasn't visited an embarrassing porn website at least once in their life ? Now imagine your name being publicly associated with that website.
There is justification, it's a co-operation between Israel and the U.S. Just like the US helps Israel, Israel helps the US.
Plus if you pissed off Israel whilst you're still there, you're in trouble..
Re: Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
So if you object to this type of surveillance then you prefer your children to be blown up by suicide bombers?
Most every democracy with serious and continuing problems with terrorism throw out the law book and human rights. Afaik, this goes for USA, Britain, Israel, Germany, Spain and Italy. And probably more cases. (Note " continuing problems ". e.g. Breivik was a lone crazy.) The reason is shown by the grandparent comment; terrorism is optimized to scare voters. And politicians are scared of hysterical voters, they need to…
Most every government (whether or not it is a democracy, and whether or not it actually has serious and continuing problems with terrorism) latches on to terrorism as an excuse (though rarely the only excuse) to throw off legal (and/or traditional, depending on the nature of the--note the small "c"--constitution) constraints on the powers and activities of government.
> The reason is that terrorism is optimized to scare voters.
True.
> And politicians are scared of hysterical voters, they need to fix that.
Less true; politicians have a often want hysterical voters -- hysterical voters that can have a prepackaged solution (even if the conception has little to do with the problem that has made the voters hysterical) are very popular with politicians, because its how they get approval to do things that they want to do that would, aside from the hysteria, never be acceptable. Note how many of the measures adopted in the US in response to terrorism were things which had either been tried previously under other pretexts (most recently, in many cases, in the Drug War) -- either proposed as legislation and failed, attempted without legislation but ruled illegal without supporting legislation, or had legislation passed but ruled unconstitutional when adopted for domestic law enforcement purposes.
Re: Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
#68Israel's Arab civilian's regularly attempt to blow themselves up in public places (believe me, I've stopped a few on them myself). Meanwhile the Palestinians gleefully lob rockets at populated cities in Israel. Of course Israel would want to monitor them as much as possible, and corroborate with the NSA to get as much data as possible. If that monitoring saved YOUR child from getting blown up on a bus, wouldn't you s…
So if you object to this type of surveillance then you prefer your children to be blown up by suicide bombers?
Re: Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
#69Re: Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most every democracy with serious and continuing problems with terrorism throw out the law book and human rights. Afaik, this goes for USA, Britain, Israel, Germany, Spain and Italy. And probably more cases. (Note " continuing problems ". e.g. Breivik was a lone crazy.) The reason is shown by the grandparent comment; terrorism is optimized to scare voters. And politicians are scared of hysterical voters, they need to…
> Most every democracy with serious and continuing problems with terrorism throw out the law book and human rights. Most every government (whether or not it is a democracy, and whether or not it actually has serious and continuing problems with terrorism) latches on to terrorism as an excuse (though rarely the only excuse) to throw off legal (and/or traditional, depending on the nature of the--note the small "c"--con…
And no, if there is a terrorism problem scaring voters the politicians are empirically motivated to fix it -- see my examples of throwing out the law book -- or it isn't a democracy. [Edit: To be clear, I think the Drug War etc are different; propaganda -- not really about scared voters.]