Phone Prologue
This story arc will be based on something that happened last year. Indeed.
So I just found this guy’s vids, and I gotta say, he’s a laugh fucking riot. I don’t agree with everything he says, but his videos are thought out, and more importantly, funny.
For those waiting for it… The PRISM debacle is sincerely pissing me off. A lot. To the point that it has shifted my political leanings. Some of you know that I have defended Obama in the past – especially against teabaggers screaming that he was a Socialist Kenyan Nazi Nigger Jew Lizard. I voted for him both times – the first time readily, because he actually seemed to be on board with changing the system. The second time, I held my nose and voted for him, because fuck Mitt Romney.
But I can’t fucking defend Obama saying that “moderate intrusion on your privacy” is okay. I fucking can’t. I was willing to overlook his minor failures at first, but this? I can’t hang with this. At all. This is Aldous Huxley’s vision made real, and the government isn’t even TRYING to act like the 4th amendment applies anymore. This is how tyranny begins. This is how a surveillance police state is started. I’m nowhere close to OK with this. God damn it. Fuck Obama, fuck the current members of Congress. Fuck the entire current government.
Don’t worry – there will be comics about my take on it. And I will make them vicious. It’s what I do.
I, for one, am pretty happy about all this coming out. I’m pissed off that they did it, but I’m glad it’s out in the open. I think many intelligent, reasonable people who previously followed one of the main party lines are starting to see that policies like these are the lifeblood of the Republican and Democratic establishments, and that maybe it’s time to examine other options. I am not an Obama supporter, never have been; but I think it’s important to not let the administration, or the democrats, bear all the blame for this. These programs had large scale bipartisan support for years, and the blame rests on no one more than the average American voter. We should have seen in the first few years following 9/11 what those in power were heading towards. We saw them pass the PATRIOT Act, we saw them push and push to expand the powers of the government, and we did nothing. We didn’t like it when Bush did it, so we put Democrats in power, and now we’re going to act surprised that they are doing the same thing?
And the answer is not just a third party, it’s not outrage at the current administration, what we need is a large scale attitude shit in the American public. Something to drive home what should be a deep-seated national belief that the government is always dangerous, that the government is always guilty until proven innocent, and that the people have to be vigilent all the time and demand transparency. And hopefully, this is a big step towards that.
“what we need is a large scale attitude shit in the American public”
I realize that is a typo, but it’s probably still true.
When you’re full of crap, head for the crapper and cop a squat.
While both parties are largely responsible for the current mess, it’s important to note that the more right-leaning side predominantly had good intentions (yes, that with which the road to hell is paved), and that the more left-leaning side predominantly saw it as a convenient power-grab.
> While both parties are largely responsible for the current mess, it’s important to note that the more right-leaning side predominantly had good intentions
Wow. And here I thought you were intelligent for a second. You honestly think the Patriot act was set up by the W admin with magical “good intentions?” No, it was a fucking power grab. Period.
Any time anyone wants the government to do more, it’s a power grab. That’s why I have longed for a smaller government, that does less, for thirty years.
The whole PRISM debacle does make tough to trust the government when they tell us that they are not going to set up a national database of gun owners.
None of this is a surprise to those of us who’ve been paying attention.
Unforunately, those who pay attention do not make up even a significant minority of voters, let alone a majority.
Especially if you know about the existence of ECHELON. If you don’t know about it then google it.
On another note, Hi people/computers reading this as a part of the ECHELON network hope you have a nice night/day.
You gotta be nice to the people reading what you say after you’ve been flagged, helps you stay off any lists that you might not like being on.
I’m also glad to see this crap being blown wide open. I’ve known about the massive infringements on American civil liberties for quite some time but it’s wonderful to see them being discussed absolutely _everywhere_. Nice to see the general public waking up and caring, too. It’s sad how bad it has to get before most people get out of their metaphorical beds, open their eyes halfway, blink a few times and say “heeeey, is something going oooon?”
God damn you.
I watched ONE of his videos, and now I’m hooked. Frickin’ hilarious. I was gonna try to get some sleep tonight …
Your surveillance police state is exactly how socialism is always practiced when the party pushing it gains complete control. We tried to warn you guys about this and you called us paranoid racist rednecks. I believe an apology is in order, sir.
You go ahead and hold your breath waiting for it, bud.
Same problem, different word choice to describe it. None of us want what our so-called leaders on both sides of the aisle are dragging us into. Putting a stop to this Big Brother madness is going to take a lot of work from a lot of good people, and even if there’s still a wide gulf of opinions dividing us… That’s just part of the freedom we all want to preserve. I’m looking forward to seeing more comics, keep up the good work.
Cato-person:
You sir need to take up political science as a more realistic study, if you’re going to stick your neck out with remarks like your opening one.
Socialism, communism, capitalism: these are economic systems only.
Democracy, Monarchy, Tyranny, Fascism..etc.: these are governmental models.
Comparing any of list A to list B is the old apples-&-oranges error.
In other words, socialism ain’t got nowt to do widdit. Surveillance is, in fact, an earmark of a police state, most typically found under fascism, and maybe practiced concurrently with any economic system including capitalism.
Go back to school.
Oh wait, schools are an institution of socialism, aren’t they.
Never mind then. Carry on. The Paranoid Racist Redneck Party needs you!
I would argue that tyranny isn’t so much a governmental model as it is a governmental attitude.
Also, you forgot to mention the Republic, the single greatest form of government yet devised.
I forgot a lot of things, like Oligarchy, Bureaucracy, and Theocracy, among others. It wasn’t meant to be an exhaustive list.
Also forgot the space betwixt “may” and “be”.
Wasn’t fully awake, and hadn’t yet shaken the rust from my so-called brain.
This could go on, but
I don’t wanna 🙂
I guess I missed the part where Obama or any of the current crop of Congesscritters committed to the real of the Patriot Act. I remember objecting to that in the middle of 9/11 patriotic hysteria mainly because I already knew that once they had our civil liberties, they’d never give them back.
I don’t vote anymore on the candidate promising change. Too many of them have done that in my lifetime and all have failed, unless the topic of change had to to with how much money the middle class gets. My checkbook gets the most bang for its buck from the Dems. Until that changes or I’m rich enough to vote Republican, this is where I stay.
I
Obama has signed every single extension that’s come up, when a sunset period hit. EVERY SINGLE ONE.
Aha. There is a typo in my post. ”Real” should be ”repeal.” I’m aware that Obama has signed all of the extensions and totally unsurprised. The only thing that would surprise me is if he actually asked for alternatives. I’d have been rendered unconscious had anyone involved offered workable ones.
As was pointed out to me by Rachel Maddow (yeah, I know, shut up, just siting my source) many of the tech companies that were named in the PRISM leak have specifically and emphatically denied that they’re involved. That makes this story suddenly way more interesting, because someone is clearly lying. Is it Google/Microsoft/Facebook/Etc that’s lying to us, or is it the NSA lying to the intelligence community? Neither one would be a “good” option.
First, when did citing Maddow become poison? I thought she had the respect of thinking Conservatives? Second, I don’t know that a ‘direct line into servers’ is the same as ‘the owners of the servers needs to know about it’ uh under the PATRIOT Act.
Just don’t cite Maddow on anything having to do with guns, or the credibilometer breaks its needle when it bottoms out on the peg.
Notice that they have all denied knowledge of PRISM. I.e., they were not aware and therefor not culpable.
…If you’re only getting mad about this =now=, you are far, FAR too late.
This has been going on in increasing scope ever since the Patriot Act was signed into law. It had been going on before then, but with nowhere NEAR the same scale or organization, AND they could still be prosecuted if they got found out. The Patriot Act is what let them kick open the floodgates and go hog-wild like this.
You wanna get mad? Get mad at the motherfuckers who voted this horseshit into law – Darth Cheney was okaying shit like this a decade or more ago – Room 641A is just =one= example. Obama is only wielding the power that has been vested in him with the Office of the Presidency. Even if he sat back and did =nothing= with that power, this shit would go on.
And if you think those cocksuckers at the CIA/NSA/FBI?every other fucking need-to-know alphabet-soup clandestine Agency are going to just come-to-Jesus and turn over a new leaf simply because the President orders them to, you need a good solid boot to the head.
This shit is this way because they WANT it this way – the faceless fucks doing the dirty work, the congressional shitheels that run cover/procure funding/issue directives for them, and the soulless moneybloated .01% slimeleeches who control the Congress through election funding, lobbyists, and outright corruption.
The last time a President actually TRIED to bring these jackbooted twits to heel, he got ventilated and disappeared. Every one since has gotten the message; the MIC doesn’t take kindly to people trying to derail the gravytrain.
When it comes to the ‘intelligence community’ in this day and age, the only real choice a President has is to either hold his nose and try to mitigate the worst offences, or just say ‘fuckit’ and enjoy the ride.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m pissed at Obama for a good many things, and I did vote for him twice – the first time, it was because there was NO FUCKING WAY I was voting McCain/Crazybrains or ANY of that loony herd, and did have a bit of hope that things might get less shitty with Obama. The second time was simply hold-my-nose – a Romney Presidency would have been Hell Unleashed At Full Throttle.
Honestly, I’m glad people are finally getting pissed about this in electorally-significant numbers, but the problem is this kinda shit always seems to backfire on us; people who have no idea which way is actually up get angry and vote the way their favorite TV/radio/website tells them to, rather than actually stopping to =think= about how, exactly, we got INTO this fucking ass-twist in the first place, and then think critically about just how to successfully unwind it.
Sadly, the American public seems to get incrementally dumber on a daily basis. It’s like we’re all following a dogdamned script, willingly or no.
~:(
Dude, I’ve been pissed about this since Carnivore days. For those wanting to play the Repub / Demo is worse card, that’s CLINTON era.
…one acronym: COINTELPRO.
At least in the good ol’ days, they had to actually go out and get their hands dirty doing the dirty work…
“a Romney Presidency would have been Hell Unleashed At Full Throttle”
How exactly?
You know, I’m glad you’re pissed off about this whole thing, but as has been pointed out, why are you *just now* getting pissed off? Anybody who is genuinely surprised by any of this shit that has come to light is willfully ignorant and hasn’t been paying attention. This has being going on since Day Damn One after passage of the original and grossly misnamed PATRIOT Act, and the only thing that pisses me off more than the 4th Amendment being treated as little more than a pat on the head and a “that’s nice sweetie, now go play outside” is the people pretending this is all new and the fault of the current administration.
Seems to me that complying with the law (a law originally written in 1978) is a damn sight better than declaring that the President doesn’t have to follow the law if he says it’s important.
i didn’t vote for either of’em, last election. fuck’em both. of course, the guy i DID vote for was a virtual unknown because he was the Libertarian candidate, and Libertarians are considered scary space people by the party line voters of the nation.
ah well. we’re all fucked, regardless.
I still have my Johnson 2012 stickers on my car. They will be removed when the Johnson 2016 sticker becomes available.
amen, sir. though the only political sticker i have on my car is a Cthulhu for Pres sticker. i figure why vote for the lesser evil?
You know I almost voted for Obama back in 2008 because FUCK McCain. In the booth despite all my latent hippie tendencies, I couldn’t bring myself to vote for such an obvious Marxist plant as Commander in Chief.
And anybody that voted for Obama in 2012? Congratulations on being so open minded and FUCK YOU VERY MUCH. “We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” – Samuel Adams
So I’m just a guy what reads the comic, but I have a story I wanna impart that is quite relevant to the goings on in the US currently.
Backstory;
I got married to a woman who already had a 5 year old. In all but legal fact he became mine. His father wanted very little to do with him. Father is in every sense of the words ‘a normal’. Father won’t let us home-school. 4 years later we have a child together. This boy is growing up being shown both sides of the story, is home-schooled, is a burgeoning shooter.
The story;
The elder boy used to love plinking with me. We’d take the Tannerite out and give Barney the Purple Dino his just desserts. We’d have competitions where we’d bet chore duties on who did the best, etc. Over recent years his father took legal action to get more visitation. During that time the boy’s rifle collected more dust. Every weekend for the past year he’s answered no to ‘Want to go out and shoot with me?’. He came home only to spout how lead from bullets is killing condors and poisoning streams. His public school teachers had a discussion about .gov monitoring and they said that it should be okay to watch law abiding citizens if it will help make everyone safe.
I am watching first hand how the new youth are being educated to think their bars are made of gold and that the cage door is always unlocked. Hopefully our younger boy learns to keep both eyes open and to question everything, even if he won’t like the answer. I never used to believe that people were being indoctrinated or subversed, but it’s hard to deny it when mis-information is being taught when they are at the most impressionable phases of their lives.
I for one would like to be the first to welcome our new insect overlords.
I have had my car searched because “I want to look through it, and make sure you don’t have anything you aren’t supposed to have.”
“N0.”
“Then we’ll get the dog to sniff it. We can do that.”
“…”
The dog alerted, the car got tossed, I kept getting asked where my ‘stash’ was… and then nothing. I got to leave.
I did not feel patriotic. I did not feel safe. I felt like I got shaken down for lunch money, and should be happy I didn’t get a charlie horse for not having anything to give up.
and now someone is tossing my computer, phone, porn, email, text, school, health records… without even the sad sorry mis-trained dog as an excuse.
But it’s ok, besause they are only looking for things I’m not supposed to have.
I see you’ve FINALLY gotten “The Word”. Obama is the greatest threat to our way of life we’ve ever had.
When you say stupid shit like that, it reminds me that although I am angry at the president, I am not joining your side.
Um… Isn’t the president the greatest threat to everyones way of life? Even if your a raging communist or anarchist libertarian, the president signs laws and can easily screw you over no matter what, whether it be outlawing shrines to mass graves of your enemies or your closet full of guns, no matter who you are politicians can screw you over.
I never liked Obama because I thought he was full of crap, and when I looked up what he did in the senate I thought voting “present” most of the time probably made him not-president material. I never really learned much about McCain cause I really doubted he could be worse then Obama had the potential to be. Both could and would screw me over in my future or at least attempt to, but then again I was 16 so it’s not like I could vote. Then I voted for Romney just because he wasn’t Obama.
And Grant, not all tea party people are the whole “Obama is a socialist communist satanist ahhh”, most of them just want less government, more freedom, less taxes, no government debt, and no deficeit.
> Um… Isn’t the president the greatest threat to everyones way of life?
No. He’s not a fucking Emperor. Educate yourself on how the three branches work, then get back to me.
Okay, congress and the senate can vote whatever they want, president signs them, courts enforce/decide if they are constitutional. President is the one who normally signs the laws, putting them into law. Its possible to have congress and the senate sit on weird days where only one party shows up to get a vote in so it passes no matter what. Stuff like voting on Christmas day or other holidays, then the president signs them. Both Bush and Obama have done it in MY life time.
The president is the gate keeper of the laws, the supreme court can’t declare something unconstitutional within a few days or weeks of the law passing so it will be in effect if political scheming is going on, and federal and state law enforcement officers can act on that law until it is declared unconstitutional. If they act on a law that directly focuses on a way of life, and put a bunch of people in jail, that can ruin a person, cause people to loose jobs, cause people to spend their savings on legal costs, and they might actually just stay in jail for a long ass time while waiting for the Supreme court to declare it illegal.
Therefore, a president IS the greatest threat to everyone’s way of life, because he is the gate keeper of federal laws that effect everyone, should either the Republicans or Democrats vote on laws on off days when the other party is not there.
I do suppose the argument could be made that congress and the senate is the greatest threat to peoples way of life, but again, they require the president to sign the laws, and if they do use political wrangling and scheming to pass something with only 3 or 4 votes for it total, they are unable to break a veto because the president can hold off signing or vetoing until the entire congress/senate are back.
If the president holds off signing, against a 2/3rds majority vote of the house and senate, what happens?
Then it passes anyway.
But, 2/3rds of the entire house and senate probably wouldn’t agree on complete screwing over people’s way of life, or at least I hope not, and that would usually require both parties to agree, or at least most of one and a few of the other. For pure anti-bill of rights legislation, it would probably require a passage in the house and senate on days when the legislature is considered on vacation so a minority group of congress with the president acting in collusion can pass and sign a law.
I will admit, 2/3rds vote is a dangerous thing, but you probably couldn’t get 2/3rds of congress to agree on whether or not ice cream tastes good, let alone something that might threaten their chances of re-election.
I think the threat of one party unilaterally voting and passing something is more likely and potentially worse than a 2/3rds majority passing something.
Except our current congress has bilaterally supported PATRIOT, and thereby PRISM.
To get back to my original refutation of your statement:
It’s not even the government that’s the biggest threat. Because our politicians, today, are owned. Purchased and sold.
Who owns them?
Follow the money, and you’ll find your biggest threat.
The people of the United States?
Or well you would probably say Corporations or The Rich, which again, is the people of the United States. And the rich want to continue to get richer, and Corporations want to turn a profit, so the economy being bad due to legislators meddling through things like forcing banks to accept stated yearly salary rather than what people were actually making caused, in part (another big part was adjustable rate loans and people who couldn’t afford the houses they were buying) the housing crash which lead to the economy being bad, which caused things like the stimulas packages to be passed, which lead to a normal V shaped housing recession to an L shaped recession which helped dial back the economy massively, hurts them. Also adding in 40% of the GDP being government spending adding to a bad economy, corporations and the rich focusing on one or the other parties actually hurts them. Add in most of the economies doing good right now are ones with low corporation tax rates and low government GDP rate, allowing not only jobs to stay in country, but actively draws corporations to set up offices and the like in low tax countries to continue to make a profit, while mainly dealing with other countries. This is why when the UK tried to bitch slap Google for not paying taxes, it failed, because Google Europe is based in Dubai which has a 0% tax rate, but allows them to do business with other countries. Add in Ireland having a 12% corporate tax rate, and it shows that a lot of countries have better incentives to bring companies to them. So you saying “follow the money” which leads to rich and corporations in your mind makes no sense because the rich and corporations supporting the people already in power is dumb because they are actively hurting themselves.
Add in the political and economical back lash of foreign companies thinking “If I go to America the American Government will listen in on all my phone calls and all my emails just because I’m from another country” means that even if the rich did support PATRIOT and PRISM, it would make them INCREDIBLY stupid due to the fact they would again, make less money because of less options of investing due to fewer countries trading on American markets, and fewer middle class and lower class people investing in stocks to increase stock prices, and fewer Americans as a whole buying things, causing fewer profits to be paid out in the form of Dividends.
Therefore, in my opinion, unless human nature has changed massively without anyone telling me, the president, in collusion with a minorty group of congress, is the biggest threat to an individual’s way of life, because unilaterally they can, for a time, pass laws to put people into jail. Because, from what I understand, human nature hasn’t changed massively, corporations and rich people are not the biggest threat, whether through their own policies and products, or through “bought and sold” politicians because the things politicians are doing are actively hurting the rich and the corporations monetarily, and so would policies and products people hate, causing boycotts and the like.
I will admit, I am taking a massive step in assuming when you say follow the money you mean rich people and companies, if in fact you mean something else, I apologize and ask for clarification.
I am desperately trying to make sense of just the first full paragraph you wrote. Let me get this straight, correct me if I’m wrong: Your argument is that the rich and powerful wouldn’t dare have their congressional lackeys enact something like PRISM, because doing so would hurt them?
Is that actually your argument?
No, it was the rich and corporations, that first paragraph didn’t turn out well, it’s hard to proof read with this small of comment box.
Basically the jist of it was, why would the rich and corporations support people who actively screw up their profits? Let alone search through their communications.
I’m going to attribute your comment, then, to naivety, rather than willful ignorance.
People who actively screw up their profits? Really? Cuz the last time I checked, the government (ON BOTH SIDES) was overwhelmingly letting the rich and powerful get away with all manner of immoral and criminal activity regarding their profits. You honestly think these people give two shits about PRISM being used against them? Really? Because if you do, you are… cute. Adorable, really.
Now, please, please DO NOT tell me you decided to pin this on the President because you’re one of those teabagger types who thinks any word said against the current state of Capitalism in America is heresy. Obama isn’t the one pulling strings – he’s letting his strings be pulled, which is almost as bad, but the people pulling those strings also pulled W’s, and would have pulled Romney’s as well. We currently do not have a free market at all. Follow the money. It goes way beyond a president, who will only be in power for 8 years, tops.
Actually, if the President refuses to sign or veto a bill, it becomes law after 10 days.
Which is a problem.
That only applies if congress is in session.
Remember that principled stand that occurred in congress over the recent push for more federal gun control?
The principled stand of a few dedicated legislators formed the nucleus of a country-wide effort that ended up beating back these anti-gun bills.
The office of the president can have a significant impact on national opinion; If the president really didn’t want something like the re-authorization of the patriot act to pass, there’s a good chance he could sway public opinion enough to get the people to apply pressure on their legislators for him.
“No. He’s not a fucking Emperor. Educate yourself on how the three branches work, then get back to me.”
See, this is what I can’t understand: You freely admit that this administration has, in fact, been ignoring the constitution when it comes to roughly half of the bill of rights, yet you assume that the same administration holds the constitution as sacrosanct when it comes to separation of powers.
This is, quite simply, doublethink.
There’s a name for people who want less government, more freedom, less taxes, no government debt, and no deficit. They’re called libertarians, and they’ve been around a bit longer than the Tea Party movement has. In practice, Tea Party implies focusing on hating Obama, hating Obamacare, and generally getting distracted by things that don’t matter and ignoring things that do. Be assured, the Republican party has no more interest in supporting small-government or balanced-economy goals than the Democratic party does.
I hear Somalia is nice this time of year. They have little government to speak of. Isn’t that heaven?
The Somalis have plenty of governments. Yes, plural. They are just not UN-approved and recognised. Somalia has several warlords, also known as thugs with drugged-up goons and lots of guns. Of course the common people of Somalia don’t get to have guns unless they join the warlord’s forces. This is what is called a thugocracy. It CERTAINLY is not “minimal government”.
Government is not the solution. It is the problem. At this point I am beginning to question the motives of anyone who supports a strong central government. Cui bono? is the question which needs to be asked about the idea of big government. Who benefits? The military-industrial complex, the welfare recipients (NOTE! I am NOT blaming them. simply noting that they benefit financially from a large government.) and of course the law-makers, and law-enforcers; they also benefit.
Who loses? Anyone who values freedom and personal responsibility.
So if you have a weak and ineffective central government, what stops that from happening here?
Who benefits? Anyone that uses roads, the postal system, municipal water supplies, police and fire service, public education, courts, shall I continue?
Your statement, in addition to failing to grasp libertarianism, has nothing to do with my point. My point was that the things the Tea Party claims to stand for are things that have long been part of the Libertarian platform. Either the Tea Party leadership(s) and most of their supporters all completely missed the existence of libertarianism, or the claimed focus of the Tea Party bears little resemblance to their actual focus. In either case, the Republican party has no vested interest in supporting the claimed focus of the Tea Party to an extent beyond lip service.
It’s not Obama who’s the threat, it’s the whole damn government. The problem is WHICH liberties you wish to sacrifice this election cycle. If you’re sacrificing them to save another, just give it another election and you’ve lost them both.
Hurray!
The wheels came off long before most of us were born so we didn’t get a choice about stopping it and once it’s started, it’s very hard to stop. Learning history makes one very depressed. The arc we’re on ends in blood one way or another and it’s not pretty and it doesn’t emerge with everything all better even if we the people win over them the gubmint. Historically speaking, “we” rarely beat “them” without outside help.
So we’re basically boned and hoping to live in relative comfort and die of natural causes before the blood bath begins.
> t’s not Obama who’s the threat, it’s the whole damn government.
Agreed 100%. But I’m still furious that he had the audacity to fucking defend this bullshit publicly. It’s rude to mock someone while you’re fucking them in the ass.
Meanwhile, people sat by and let Bush get away with declaring he didn’t even have to follow FISA, if he determined it to be in the national interest. Seems to me a President saying he is above the law is far worse for our freedoms than one complying with a law
that you personally do not approve of.
What I think pisses me off most about the Obama administration is the outright hypocrisy; Obama castigated the Bush administration for years, but once he got into office he set about expanding every wrong-headed thing done by or during the Bush administration, including those things that he had publicly announced his opposition to (like this very issue).
Your take on voting for Obama in the last election is spot on how I felt.
The unfortunate part of who is going to end up being the sacrificial lamb here will be the current caretakers of the surveillance state, and not its architects (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Dubya, et al) I’m also not optimistic about any sort of rollback in the immediate future. Like war is easy to start but very hard to stop, Power is much more easily achieved/taken by states/individuals than it is surrendered.
Obama this, Obama that… Just like Bush before, he is mostly a figurehead, beholden to the party machinery. And machineries of both parties aren’t all that different, after all the massive electronic surveilence project started under Bush administration, current one thus didn’t break any new ground only fuhrtered the ongoing agenda. The main difference would be that previous administration was bit more concerned about evil left wing extremists and current one is about evil right wing extremists.
The massive E-LINT surveillance started earlier than the Bush administration. We were doing ELINT in the 1980s, and getting around the restrictions preventing domestic survei–(let’s call it what it is,) spying, by trading info with allied intel services using the same technology. Detailed history of ECHELON gets into some of this.
This is a Republic. We deserve the government that we get.
Get out and get your friends to vote or have more of this stuff happen.
We deserve the government we consent to allowing. Saying we deserve the government we get is like blaming a battered wife for her spouse beating on her. She may have made the choice to stay with the ass, and is responsible for that decision,and it’s consequences. However, she is not responsible for the fact that her spouse decided to be a wife-beating piece of shit in the first place. That’s the parallel I see with the Untied States as it currently is.
I do agree we need to take back control of our government; I just disagree with the first part of your statement.
I’m curious, do people think there should never be surveillance?
YES!
I see. So even if they somehow uncover a suspected terrorist group, they can’t watch them?
Of course they can. It’s called a search warrant. And they are SUPER easy to get. All you need is probable cause. Which, again, is SUPER easy to get. The problem with what’s going on right now is that there is no probable cause, and no specific description of the person to be surveilled or the information to be sieazed, both of which are required by the Fourth Amendment.
And is anyone paying attention to the fact that they are NOT “listening to all our phone calls” or “reading all our emails”?
And is anyone paying attention to the fact that they say they are NOT “listening to all your phone calls” or “reading all our emails”?
ftfy
Even if they aren’t recording all phone calls, the fact still remains that the content of many conversations can be deduced by knowing who we are talking to, and who else we talk to around the same time.
Talk to your doctor, an AIDS information line, and a suicide prevention line, and the obvious conclusion is that you are HIV positive.
A woman talking to her doctor and to planned parenthood and/or an adoption service is likely dealing with an unwanted pregnancy.
Someone who talks to a noted second amendment activist, and then to his legislators, while there are major bills in the federal legislature which would increase restrictions on law-abiding Americans likely opposes further restricting the right to keep and mbear arms.
The list goes on and on. Just because they’re not actually listening to the content of our calls (assuming they’re being truthful about that point) does not mean that they have no idea as to the content of those calls.
I for one am paying attention. I just don’t believe the lies, because they are so obviously lies to anyone who is informed on these kinds of issues.
Informed? By whom? But I have to admit, it does make it easier to be angry if you simply assume that anything you don’t want to believe is a lie.
Owen said: “Informed? By whom? But I have to admit, it does make it easier to be angry if you simply assume that anything you don’t want to believe is a lie.”
Nice Ad Hominem attack, Owen! I thought perhaps you wanted to actually have a discussion, but it appears to simply be another case of you mocking anyone who does not believe as you do.
Yes, I am CALLING YOU OUT on your crap, and denouncing you as a troll!
The only reason I am going to lay out the answers, is to help discredit you, and to hopefully help inform others. I’ve no intention of communicating with you ever again, sir.
They are in point of fact, listening to our phone calls and reading our e-mails. THE CARNIVORE program, and the ECHELON program have not ended, and there is evidence all over the damn place, if you will just be honest and LOOK at it, that the telecomm companies and ISP are, and have been since 9/11, rolling over and spreading their legs for the fascisti, and the chekisti. The vedince in question is easily accessed, originating from the T-comm providers themselves, and the admissions of the intel agencies themselves, as well as NUMEROUS government whistleblowers.
So for you to sit here at your keyboard and MOCK me for for being informed and actually being aware of reality is unacceptable.
You have discredited yourself sir,and once again, I denounce you as a troll.
I am a veteran I have fought for this nation before and I’ll fight for it again. A nation is the people not the government. I am an American first and a citizen of the USA second.
I am a veteran I have fought for this nation before and I’ll fight for it again. A nation is the people not the government. I am an American first and a citizen of the USA second.
I can’t believe people are surprised by this in 2013 . Google “Echelon” and “Carnivore” . This same shit has been going on since the invention of the internet and cell phones and it been common knowledge since then You just called the people who discussed it “Conspiracy theorist”. Silly people
JLGrant, it’s OK, I made mistakes too…I voted for Nixon, so my sins are MOSTLY out in the open.
Not like Omar’s, of course…
Yes, I too have lost that blind sense of support for most any politician, it happens, like your first case of the crabs…not that I’ve had the crabs, I check where I go diving first.
Get yourself a little ‘political blue ointment’ and things will get better…