Over the past few days, EB3 has complained several times that there has not been enough discussion of the NSA’s scandalous grab, in the name of counterterrorism, of details about every single phone call made or received by a Verizon customer. I’m sure this policy has been applied to most, if not all, phone carriers and email services as well. Who knows where it ends?
Ernie’s right. We can debate whether the harm done to any specific person by this snooping is as severe as the harm done by past wrongs. But the sheer breadth of this program, the absolute lack of any limiting principle whatsoever, make this situation deeply troubling in its own right, with no need for comparisons.
It is my hope that the recent revelations will prompt a serious discussion in this country, that there will be an outcry sufficient to force a changing of course from the paranoid post-9/11 security state. I applaud Rep. Mike Capuano and those Democrats and Republicans who legitimately are shocked by this news. I applaud Ed Markey, whose candidacy for the Senate I support strongly, not only with my vote but with my time and money, for voting against the Patriot Act’s renewal in 2005, 2010 and 2011, and against reauthorizing the Foreign Intelligence Security Act (FISA) in 2012.
I applaud Ed Markey for saying this:
“As they’re looking for the guilty needle, they gather an innocent haystack of millions of Americans’ information, and we have to make sure that all of that information is protected. We have to make sure there is no compromise of the privacy, of the security of ordinary American families, who are no security risk in our country. That’s why I vote no any of these programs which do not require a warrant.”
I do not applaud Ed Markey for this:
But Markey declined to criticize Obama for the surveillance.
Look, I want to root for Barack Obama. I just went to see him in Roxbury. I voted for him twice. I worked my tail off for him and donated a number of times in 2008. I did not do so in 2012 because I preferred to focus on Elizabeth Warren’s campaign, and because I’ve been deeply disappointed in his presidency. Never more so than with the revelations of this widespread surveillance. I didn’t travel to four different swing states in 2008 to elect the East German Stasi or the KGB. I didn’t work so he could continue this policy – started under George W. Bush – without anyone telling us about it.
In my view the anti-federalist, states’-rights crowd has done a lot more harm than good in our history. The one thing they got right, really right, was the Bill of Rights. It is not appropriate for a President, of any party, to put the Bill of Rights on hiatus because there’s some danger out there in the world. I understand that any President, of any party, has an awesome responsibility these days trying to protect this country’s people from terrorists. But, as somervilletom has pointed out, in April we saw right here in Boston that there’s no way to keep us safe every minute of every day. Two total amateurs, total clowns, the terrorist equivalent of the Keystone Kops or Roscoe P. Coltrane’s Hazzard County Sheriff’s Department, managed to create mayhem and kill and maim our fellow Bostonians.
Particularly distressing is that, if there is political fallout from this mess, it will only benefit those who would make things worse. In the past few days, as I’ve visited the gym, I’ve been treated to the surreal spectacle of Fox News, whose hypocrisy knows no bounds, acting like staunch defenders of civil liberties and Senator Dianne Feinstein acting like we don’t have the right to know this program exists.
C’mon Democrats. The Republicans, and Fox News, should have no credibility on this issue at all. They spent most of a decade branding anyone who DIDN’T support the Patriot Act and the FISA law that made this possible as a terrorist sympathizer or worse. It takes a pretty big screw-up to make those guys look like the defenders of individual liberty against a security state run amok.
But guess what: we live in a two-party, winner-take-all system. Our politics are binary as a result. When people get pissed off at Democrats, a lot of them vote for Republicans next time. Democrats pursuing bad right-wing policies only gives Republicans cover.
Nor is this limited to the NSA situation by any means. In the past week I’ve seen Gabriel Gomez tell the debate audience on Tuesday that Keystone XL is OK because Obama’s State Department, now run by John Kerry, signed off on it as safe. The same Gabriel Gomez told the Newton TAB that he’s got “bipartisan” bona fides because he’d love to work with President Obama to cut Social Security. Then there was the GOP Congressman who told his constitutents all about Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) taking freshman Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee to have lunch with Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein.
The GOP should own all of this. And it would, if Democrats didn’t work so hard to claim bad policies as their own. All together now:
- We are FOR the Bill of Rights, not against it;
- We are FOR the environment, not filthy Canadian oil running across our country in a leaky pipeline to a designated export zone in Texas where it will be sold to the highest (foreign) bidder;
- We are FOR Social Security, not for cutting it at a time when alternative retirement savings are very limited for most seniors and we’ve just asked workers, over the last 30 years, to pay more in payroll taxes than was needed for benefits so we could use the surplus to paper over tax cuts for the wealthiest;
- We are FOR regulation of Wall Street, not for letting the Wall Street lobbyists write the bill that guts the already weak Dodd-Frank act (this bill passed the House overwhelmingly with 73 Democratic votes in favor- who says bipartisanship is dead in DC?)
This is why it’s so important for Democrats to stand up for what are supposed to be Democratic principles. And that’s why it’s up to us to support those Democrats who will do so.
I worked my tail off for Obama SO THAT I COULD HAVE the moral standing to take issue and criticize.
I’m promising myself not to get deep into this thread b/c I frankly don’t have time right now to get sucked in. But yeah. Good post.
I don’t think someone has to have worked hard for Obama’s election to have a right to complain. In this case everyone has a right to complain. I know I didn’t work for George W. Bush’s campaigns, or vote for him, but I felt that, as an American and a person, I had the right to protest his policies.
The most important thing, for people who did have a lot invested in Obama or any other candidate, is to remain capable of standing up in opposition when that person is just wrong on an issue.
Love the picture you posted!
Agreed; it’s more of a personal code kind of thing. An amplification of the whole “if you didn’t vote, don’t complain” thing. Or maybe more of a sense of “He ought to care what I think b/c I worked to elect him”
My uncle says he always votes to preserve his right to complain about it later.
But it’s really disappointing when you work hard for a candidate who then lets you down. Up to a point, and depending on how scary the alternative is, they can take us for granted. I really like the candidates like Elizabeth Warren, and I think Ed Markey’s in this group too, who do what they said they would do and don’t abuse that trust.
I loath and despise the poorly named “Patriot Act” and I find it hard to dig up any sympathy for people, particularly those on the wrong wing, who are outraged at this obvious outcome to the offensive law.
If I can offer an analogy, it is like watching the JackAss type videos on Tosh.0 and being surprised when someone falls off a building and breaks their leg. I personally think anyone who is surprised by this violation of our rights is a brain dead idiot (i.e. a Republican).
Therefore, I offer the following friendly amendment to your bullet list.
o We are against the “Patriot Act”.
As part of being for the Bill of Rights. It’s really hard to be for both.
that being for the Bill of Rights is by definition, being against the stupidly titled “Patriot Act”. I don’t believe most of the wrong wing (Republicans) get the Orwellian nature of the “Patriot Act”, and being in New England, they might assume the “Patriot Act” is about Football or Tibow or something equally infantile. Or worse, it may cause some children in Waltham to ask, “Daddy, why do democrats hate Jesus?”
Being able to tap every call, read every email, bug every house, and stop people for full body cavity searches at will might result in more security and more criminals/terrorists being apprehended. We might also be safer if we all stay at home all the time, wrapped in bubble wrap.
The Fourth Amendment contemplates that some people who have something to hide will go unsearched because there’s no basis for conducting a search. It certainly does not contemplate that every communication of 300 million people will be logged by the federal government.
This is the very definition of a slippery slope. The possibility for abuse of a program like this is endless. The kind of things a government with bad intentions could do with that information must be considered on the “privacy” side of the equation.
I think that slippery slope arguments are a bit too easy in circumstances like this. Sure, we’d be *more* secure if, as you suggest, the gov’t could look at everything and everybody all the time. But that doesn’t prove that the trade-off at issue here – namely, avoiding some terrorist attacks in exchange for having the gov’t know who everyone is calling – isn’t worth it.
And I’d beg to differ slightly on your 4th Amendment point. What that amendment says is that the people shall be free of searches that are “unreasonable.” It goes on to state that warrants can only issue in certain circumstances, but surely you’d acknowledge that some warrantless searches are “reasonable” – after all, you undergo one every time you travel by air. The 4th Amendment question, then, is whether what the NSA is doing is “reasonable.” That is a harder question than the straw-man of whether there was an individualized basis for every phone record the NSA has collected.
Also, you didn’t address my first question. 🙂
On the 4th Amendment: How is this remotely “reasonable?” The circumstances under which warrantless searches are allowed, although expanded greatly (far too much, in my view) in the past 40 years, remains tightly circumscribed. There’s not a court in the land, except perhaps the secret FISA court, that would uphold a search of my phone records or yours on the sole basis that there’s terrorism out there in the world. This is the equivalent of searching every house in America because it may turn up some evidence of a potential serial killer.
Are we now saying that there are exigent circumstances, there’s an elevated risk of terrorist activity every time someone makes a phone call, as is the case with airplanes? I can’t buy that. It also is far more possible to avoid flying, if one doesn’t want to undergo the search, than it is to avoid telephones and emails. Nor does an airport screening involve keeping a permanent record of everyone you’ve contacted. The search ascertains that you’re not bringing a weapon onto a plane. That’s it.
The possibility of searching everyone, all the time, and keeping the records, was not technologically feasible in 1791. But they certainly would have rejected it outright despite whatever crime-solving benefits it might have. To me, for the reason I gave, it’s clear the tradeoff is not worth it. A major critique of the “war on terror” is that it never ends. If everyone signs off on this NSA program, we’re talking about permanent government recording of our phone and email activities. It seems clear to me that some Nixonian future political figure could easily find something in the history of anyone who dared speak out on key issues to be used against that person. Or just a person he/she didn’t like. It’s harder to keep any secrets in an era of Facebook, etc., but this is absurd. I can hardly think of anything more chilling in its potential that what we’ve learned about with the NSA surveillance.
About your first question: Perhaps Obama would have taken some heat for discontinuing the program if the Marathon bombing then happened exactly as it did. But I’m not sure it would be worse than what he’s facing now. The whole thing is surreal. If he had discontinued the program in January 2009, and told the American people he was doing so, I think most people would have been shocked such a program was in place and kept secret for three years. They would have been pleased that it was being discontinued. And, faced with criticism in April 2013, the President could have reminded people of the reasons why it was not appropriate to tap every American’s phone and computer.
The fact is, the program didn’t work to stop the attack on Boylston Street. They now say it helped stop other attacks. Possible, but I don’t know that. It seems pretty clear that they’d attempt to justify it that way. Even if it did prevent attacks, it can’t possibly be worth it. Human life and serious bodily injury are always easy to comprehend. Privacy is more abstract, but it’s the linchpin of a truly free democracy. Unrestrained domestic surveillance is a hallmark of a totalitarian state.
Just as we could probably appease Islamic fundamentalists by all pledging allegiance to sharia law- we might cut down on the threat of terrorism that way. Or we can put government cameras in every room of every house, subject everyone to daily random strip searches, or make everyone stay home encased in bubble wrap, as you suggested, fenway49. If preventing crime (which is all terrorism really is) is truly more important than anything else, then we should probably ditch the constitution and write a new one, using 1984 as our handbook.
The President’s primary responsibility is to defend the constitution, not to keep Americans safe by any means necessary. Both Bush and Obama have clearly imagined themselves as Protectors-in-Chief, and this conception is pretty unhealthy imo.
Re avoiding flying, maybe in your line of work it’s possible. Not in mine.
Re avoiding telephone and email, I suppose you could go back to snail mail. Oh but wait – every time you send snail mail, you are knowingly disclosing to the Post Office both who you are (your return address) and who you’re communicating with (the address on the envelope), though not the contents of the communication. But that’s totally different because….
it’s possible to avoid flying. The point still stands that an airplane search is only for weapons and explosives; it does not entail generation of a permanent record of one’s communications.
The Post Office is totally different because…they have never, to my knowledge, kept a record of who sent correspodence to whom, on what dates, what weight, etc., for potential future use in a criminal or “national security” investigation.
Indeed. Say no more.
So now people can’t feel violated if they haven’t first established that the USPS isn’t tracking their correspondence in the same way? It’s a little like saying a woman has no right to complain when her landlord installs secret cameras in her apartment until she has irrefutable proof that the painter she hired didn’t do the same thing.
When evidence is presented showing that the USPS keeps a record of every piece of mail I send and receive, I’ll be upset. When evidence is presented showing the same information concerning hundreds of millions of Americans is handed over to the NSA, or FBI, or CIA, I’ll be as upset about it as I am about the Verizon situation. Until that day I’ll keep sending Aunt Maggie her birthday card.
From The United States v. Choate:
All your arguments have giants holes in them. For instance, the post office does not record and store return addresses and addresses for future use if needed.
I am frightened because David and some others like him whose legal credentials are impeccable and hearts in the right place are naturally repelled by this.
David, your comparing the government having this information at their finger tips to private companies have same information is disappointing to hear from a former Supreme Court Clerk. Not only are you the cream of the crop you are also an artist. An opera singer. You have the liberal arts background coupled with your superior legal intellect.
This is why I am scared. It’s not you personally David. You are an anecdote. of the larger concern.
If in the 60s when young people were fighting for more freedom and transparency against their parents who fought hard to protect freedom and transparency and it come to light that the federal government was collecting and storing information regarding when, where, to whom, and how long every phone call made in the country than you would have seen both sides join forces and put an end to it at election time sooner than you can “Sock it to me?”
Where do aging hippies turn?
2nd par should read I am frightened because David and some others like him whose legal credentials are impeccable and hearts in the right place are NOT naturally repelled by this.
And you know this how?
They do not record every piece of mail. Even if someone wanted to, it’s not physically possible.
There is also a strong culture of respecting the privacy of mail in the post office. The term is “sanctity” of the mail. Over 23 years I saw a lot of bad attitudes, but I never met anyone who worked for the PO who didn’t take the sanctity of the mail seriously.
So David, if, as a lawyer, your idea of of establishing a precedent for the NSA’s spying is to suggest that there might be something similar going on in the Post Office, all I can say is don’t quit your night job.
the defense that this has been approved by congress, although they can’t talk about it and we don’t know what the vote was, and approved by a secret court that has yet to deny any warrant are heart wrenching.
And I strongly suggest that anyone who is not highly skeptical of the governments claim it has prevented dozens of marathon like bombings because of this Orwellian policy is as big a sucker as PT Barnum could ever have hoped for.
The most simple minded would doubt this claim based on the indisputable law of nature that if they stopped dozens than dozens more should have been successful.
Hmmm, let’s count them, shall we?
1. September 11, 2001 New York and D.C. – lucky punch when last thing anyone expected.
2. April 15, 2013, Unsophisticated and easy to make bombs set-off by persons known to U.S. intelligence through old fashion cooperation and snail mail.
What do we have now? A phony baloney counter-intelligence industry exponentially expanding. You kids know what counter intelligence is, don’t you? It’s internal spying to make sure everyone is falling in line. Especially when it’s the new big industry they have to expand their markets and services.
Just cause your guy is in power David is not the point. The East German Stasi had one agent for every East German citizen.
2.
n/t
and if it did shouldn’t we know and also shouldn’t a warrant based on reasonable suspicion issued by a non-secretive court (the warrant can remain a secret) be required for this supposed information to be released?
As appalled as I am that you asked it I will attempt to provide an answer.
Paraphrasing your question you wonder what people would say about President Obama after the Marathon bombings had he discontinued this secret practice. If that is not your question than I apologize.
Answer, It would not matter because the facts indicate that because the federal government had so much specific information on the bombers and were aware of them, enough most likely to get a warrant for specifics phone and internet info from the secret court, or any court.
David, this question is highly disturbing. It is however symbolic President Obama. The info is proven irrelevant yet it comes down to “what peole will say”.
I’m sure you know all about the Griswold v. Connecticut. The penumbra of privacy rights. How about Roe v. Wade on privacy rights.
Sorry David, and agin this is not personal but you and the many who think like you on this are misguided to our country’s detriment.
Time to talk to some holocaust survivors and those that remember. Talk to Vietnamese who remember the good ole days under totalitarianism. Walk your ass down to the nearest urban high school that has twenty plus languages spoken in different homes.
I am speechless at the response of our youth on this. Including you David.
Speechless, disappointed, and scared.
You of all people should recognize what I am doing in this thread. I am not arguing for or against the NSA program, per se. I am trying to make people think a little harder, and to force them to defend their positions. That’s what a devil’s advocate does.
I don’t see the relevance of Griswold and Roe; perhaps you can enlighten me.
I will say this: the notion that the NSA program is remotely comparable to Nazi Germany or the Khmer Rouge is, frankly, insulting. Hate the NSA program or love it, I think we can all agree that it has not resulted in anyone being executed. But, you will no doubt retort, it’s a slippery slope, and pretty soon Obama will be rounding up his political enemies that he has found via phone snooping. Give me a break. That is exactly the same slippery-slope argument that the anti-gun control crowd trots out every time someone wants to put a simple background check in place. We ridicule that argument in that context, and rightly so. Someone apparently needs to remind you what real totalitarianism or tyranny looks like.
Nothing personal, of course.
First you say
then
Sad david, very sad. People need to talk to their bubbies and zaddies on this.
Nobody said this is like the height of Nazi Germany when people were killed nor did i say Obama was in his office with an enemies lis.
And this is nothing about guns and the second amendment.
BTW David, when you say “nothing personal” to me in smirk wise-ass tone contrary to the tone I used when trying to analyze the position of many on your generation you have to have said something witty, smart, acute, on point, and/or somewhat embarrassing to the person intended.
You failed on all those accounts. Instead you came up with the sad specious arguments used by those more in love with a cause than the right to have a cause.
Your responses are scarring most every baby boomer and their parents.
I reject your attempt to minimize the import of this because “it has not resulted in anyone being executed”. Is that now the standard for determining whether a violation of basic constitutional rights is egregious or not?
It is not remotely comparable to the argument against gun control, and it’s not a “slippery slope”. Here’s why.
A “slippery slope” argument would require more extreme measures before something terrible would occur. In this case, it’s already happened.
The truth is that with the data already collected and archived, future governments have all they need to identify and “deal with” those who might someday be viewed as “the enemy”. How many Muslims were viewed as “the enemy” in, say, 1985 (when we were, for example, supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan because they were fighting against the evil Soviets)?
Who is to say who “the enemy” might be in five, ten, or twenty years? If a future government were to decide that it was going to execute American citizens who that government decided were “enemy combatants”, this data that they already have (and, under the posture you describe, would continue to gather) would readily identify specific individuals for elimination.
But, you say, no one has been executed. I remind you of the policy announced by President Obama just last month regarding “enemy combatants” (emphasis mine):
These are words from Barack Obama, a Democrat elected with widespread progressive support. I don’t think it’s a “slippery slope” to be concerned that the next GOP president elected with widespread Tea Party support would have a different view on such matters.
The point is that the NSA database gives carte-blanche access to everything needed by ANY government official or contractor to specifically target any individual that they deemed an “enemy sympathizer” — regardless of who the “enemy” is and without restriction on who the government official or contractor is. Edward Snowden was, I remind you, a low-level government contractor with full access to all this information.
Let’s not forget that Senator Diane Feinstein, a Democrat, is calling for Edward Snowden — the hero who revealed this program — to be charged with TREASON!
Sadly, David, I think someone apparently needs to remind YOU what real totalitarianism or tyranny looks like.
…I agree completely with the President’s quote in your comment. I think that is exactly right.
Something major is missing from the President’s statement. When, in his righteous smiting, does the due process guaranteed by the Constitution take place? Do you know? Do you care?
“For the record, I do not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any U.S. citizen – with a drone, or a shotgun – without due process.”
Obviously due process comes before a penalty is carried out, unless I am missing your point.
Eric Holder acknowledges previously classified details of drone program and says US deliberately targeted Anwar al-Awlaki, who died in Yemen in 2011 Mentioning due process is not anything like implementing it. Obviously it didn’t come before that penalty was carried out,
“on U.S. soil” right after the quoted language. Then shifts to open season on American citizens who have gone “abroad to wage war with” the United States. Seems pretty clear the statement was crafted to place Anwar al-Awlaki on the “enemy combatant” side of the line.
I’ve been making the citizenship-is-no-shield argument for those engaged overseas all along.
The point is that whatever due process is or is not actually carried out is COMPLETELY at the discretion of the President.
A state where fundamental liberties are protected only by the whim of whoever is called “President” is indistinguishable from a police state. The fact that unprosecuted war criminal Richard Cheney defends these programs should be another big red flag.
I took it as the President affirming and defending that the concept of due process exists, which is comforting to me. This is a far cry from Bush-Cheney arrogance of we can do what we want because we are at war.
Frankly there is very little difference between them on this from a process standpoint. Both feel that these powers should rest solely within the executive branch, both feel that only the inner circle of their administrations should be privy to and are capable of making these decisions, both gave cursory information to Congress (for all David’s sanctimonious backslapping about Congressional approval of PRISM ask Sen. Wyden and Sen. Paul how easy it’s been to get information on it), and both feel they are more morally and intellectually capable of making these decisions than any other member of government or even another administration. The ends are for vastly different purposes, particularly when we contrast them on the rush to war in Iraq vs. the slowed down creep in Syria. But the means have been utterly similar, with some of the unintended ends (anti-American sentiment abroad, mass civilian casualties, erosion of domestic civl liberties to name a few)
I would add, “How the hell do you know?” If I’m responsible for proving a negative with respect to the USPS tracking every sender’s and recipient’s address on every letter or package in the whole country, you should be responsible for substantiating the claim that nobody has been executed.
If somebody is executed, does that mean we can have our constitutional rights back?
men still imprisoned at Gunatanamo Bay, partly for lack of a place to send them despite their being cleared of wrongdoing.
Someone should ask them if this is “what totalitatianism looks like”.
Many of those imprisoned at GITMO are apparent “bad guys” who were tortured to obtain information and confessions — and who therefore would almost certainly be released if tried in US courts, because virtually all of the evidence against them is tainted by their torture.
Talk about a Hobson’s Choice — it is nauseating and appalling that so much of our conduct has been criminal, and that so little has been done about it.
you knowingly choose to use the united states postal service, including with the knowledge that the mail carriers know where you live and much of what you receive.
No one opted-in to giving their emails and phone metadata to the government, and there’s no reason why anyone should have assumed that doing business with Google and Yahoo included the NSA peaking in at *everything.*
BTW: I’ve never seen any evidence that suggests the US keeps all the metadata of every package sent and received by the USPS. Feel free to provide that, if it exists, and we can all get angry about it, too.
Not as an argument against David – because I know he doesn’t support this. But I’m amazed at the juxtaposition of “security” as a justification for shredding the Constitution and our willingness, as a polity, to tolerate thousands and thousands of gun deaths each and every year.
The “15 dead, several dozen serious injuries” David mentioned is a slow day’s damage in the name of the only Amendment about which many “conservatives” seem to care.
I’ve been OK, for the most part, with extra security everywhere. I’ve gotten used to the cameras all over public places. Little expectation of privacy on Boston Common. But I don’t think it’s appropriate to log phone calls, save emails, etc. for every single American without a whiff of probable cause.
with your point about gun violence, and the double standard some folks seem to hold when it comes to how many American lives it’s OK to lose in the name of various constitutional provisions.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/14/nsa-partisanship-propaganda-prism
Excerpt: “The most vocal media critics of our NSA reporting, and the most vehement defenders of NSA surveillance, have been, by far, Democratic (especially Obama-loyal) pundits … Some Democrats have tried to distinguish 2006 [Bush-era spying] from 2013 by claiming that the former involved illegal spying while the latter does not. But the claim that current NSA spying is legal is dubious in the extreme …”
This is sheer sophistry:
Good grief, Glenn. Maybe, down the road, a court will conclude that the NSA program violates the Fourth Amendment despite having been authorized by Congress. But to pretend that there is no difference between (a) a program that was expressly authorized by and reported to Congress and repeatedly approved by federal courts, and (b) a program as to which none of those things was true, is disingenuous at best.
I’m not arguing that there are zero formal differences between the way Bush spied on everybody and the way Obama is spying on everybody. But that’s not especially comforting to me, and shouldn’t be to you either.
Gee, it sure is nice that the FISA court issued something it calls a “warrant” to cover the constant monitoring of the metadata for all phone calls by all major carriers over a seven-year period, in the name of Terror. It makes me feel so much better that the FISA court, which rejected precisely zero government surveillance requests last year, clearly has no goddamn clue what the Fourth Amendment requires.
The fact that there is a piece of paper called a “warrant” now covering this program is not the end of the story. The Fourth Amendment requires a warrant, yes, but it also requires the warrant to be supported by “probable cause” of an actual crime being planned or committed; it requires the warrant to “particularly describ[e] the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” All of those elements are so obviously absent from a program that collects phone call metadata on everybody, that only a conscious disregard of the Constitution could have produced the “warrant” that makes this program “lawful.”
I should also mention that the Obama administration, like the Bush administration, has fought desperately hard in court to prevent any ruling on the merits of the program by the federal courts. Insofar as the federal courts have ruled on the relatively small elements of these programs that were public before this month, their rulings have dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims not on the merits or on the basis of the Fourth Amendment, but on (a) national security grounds, (b) state secrets grounds, or (c) whether plaintiffs had standing to sue, because they couldn’t prove for sure that they had been surveilled and the government wasn’t admitting to it because of (a) and (b).
All in all, I think the most revealing comment from the sorry melange of senior politicians of both parties who have defended the NSA’s spying on Americans is from John McCain: “I do believe that if this was September 12, 2001, we might not be having the argument that we’re having today.” The best policy, to John and the rest of them, is made when the populace has lost their heads with fear, grief, and lust for revenge. That’s when it’s easiest to pass tyrannical, already-written legislation, and we’re still dealing with that legacy today.
Internment was passed by Congress and signed by FDR, all of Lincoln’s abuses (most justified sad to say) were passed by Congress which gave him wide discretion. Granted it’s worse that Bush did not get this authorization, but let’s not slap ourselves on the back and pretend that ‘not nearly as bad as Bush’ is some standard to celebrate. We can’t say that to the prisoners at Gitmo, the civilians we keep murdering in Pakistan, and we certainly can’t say that to the millions of citizens whose privacy was violated. The Constitution ensures a right to privacy and a right to due process, and the longer the AUMF continues the longer any President of any party will be emboldened to take away that insurance from government over reach.
The sophistry is liberals tying themselves in knots to defend this President who has certainly lost nearly any credibility on these issues at this point. I still support him, I still want him to be successful, but I no longer believe he means what he says at all when it comes to restoring pre-9.11 civil liberties.
Yes, and that’s all I’m saying. Settle down, people, and don’t read more into my comments than what I have actually said.
you have actually said far more. You said expressly that Greenwald was engaging in “sheer sophistry” for suggesting the Obama-era program is as objectionable as the Bush-era program, and in that context your statement about a “program that was expressly authorized by and reported to Congress and repeatedly approved by federal courts” quite clearly implies legitimacy.
I do think that Greenwald is engaged in sophistry; sadly, that is nothing new IMHO.
However, you are reading far too much into my comments by inferring the notion of “legitimacy.” I do think that, as a legal matter, it makes a difference that Obama’s program was authorized by the other two branches of government, while Bush’s was not. But that’s as far as my comment goes – it says nothing about whether it’s a good idea, or whether it’s “legitimate” (which I take it you are using as a synonym for “constitutional”).
You sound timid now. Came out swinging but when pushed you say that all you are saying is the court and congress authorized it.
That’s good enough for you?
Seriously?
Okay, Now that we are clear on this perhaps you can now tell us your position.
Thank you
As for this:
I meant both “constitutional” and “a good idea” when I spoke of “legitimacy.” I don’t believe it is constitutional, unless the Constitution now means nothing at all. But, of course, even if you assume it is constitutional, it does not follow that the government must do it or that it’s good policy.
a specific federal court: FISA. In the last year we have info for how many cases approved/disapproved, there were over 1500 of them brought forward. Care to guess the rate at which the requests were granted?
100%. Not one request for a warrant or anything like that was rejected. Not one.
This is the same court where the people have NO counsel and every case is kept secret, which means there literally can’t be legal standing to appeal.
When FISA was deciding whether or not to allow the NSA to spy on *every single American*, you don’t think it appropriate that, say, America had legal representation for that decision? Or knowledge of what happened and who was effected, so we had standing to appeal?
This is the ultimate kangaroo court. It is a farce, to say nothing of a rubber stamp.
nt
You’re taking the word of the very same organization that has been lying about these programs from the start, including to Congress, under oath! Why on earth should we do that? If the NSA wants to prove these programs stopped events, in way that couldn’t have worked otherwise, let them come out with *all the facts.*
As we saw under the Bush administration and I’m sure since, when the facts are released, often these examples that stand as “proof” fall apart like a deck of cards.
Plus, as many others have made the point, driving kills infinitely more people than any of these may-or-may-not-be-real events would have — including innocent victims who obeyed all traffic laws or weren’t driving at all.
We condone those deaths because we think transportation and mobility as a society is worth it. Generally, we’re right about that.
Well, what about our freedom and privacy? Shouldn’t freedom and privacy, the bedrock of our constitutional rights, be at least as important as our ability to get drive our vehicles at 55-65 mph?
Why are we so quick to dismiss our rights to privacy and freedom here, but so reticent with cars? Hell, there’s an overwhelming consensus that highway cameras that automatically ticket saves lives — and a lot of them — but people would riot before that ever happened.
So, if anything, if all we care about is saving lives, shouldn’t we be doing things the other way around?
Especially when there’s absolutely, positively not one shred of evidence to suggest the NSA’s spying on Americans has saved a single life. All we have are vague promises of a few incidents where it may have been important…. or something… from the people who have been lying all along.
No thanks. Ben Franklin got this issue hundreds of years ago. What the heck has happened to us ever since?
Question 1:
As your question presupposes, the bombing would have happened anyway. If President Obama had dismantled the NSA program when he took office as a high-profile media event — announcing that he was “shocked” and “dismayed” by the “very scope of its intrusiveness” — then we might, five years later, have recovered enough from the Bush-era hysteria and fear-mongering to accept the Marathon bombing as the isolated tragedy it was.
We might have had a highly-trained squad of twenty to thirty professionals apprehend the two amateurs by Thursday night or Friday morning. We might have avoided the embarrassing lockdown altogether. We might have avoided the incredibly dangerous and incompetent exchange of HUNDREDS of rounds of high-velocity gunfire Thursday night — all aimed at two kids, and all apparently missing their target (but, sadly, NOT missing MBTA officer Richard Donohue).
We should not discount the possibility that by ratcheting DOWN the fear and hysteria in our public culture, we might have avoided the bombing altogether.
The NSA program did not prevent the Marathon Bombing, and the relentless wallowing in the aftermath (see ANY edition of the Boston Globe since the event, including today’s) only encourages repetitions.
Question 2:
First of all, this argument is fatally susceptible to the “elephant powder” fallacy (Q: “Why should I pay this exorbitant amount for Elephant Powder, there aren’t any elephants here?” A: “See? It works”). How many deaths and serious injuries were incurred fighting to create the freedoms that this program shreds? We mouth platitudes about thanking veterans for their service every Veteran’s day — is this massive violation of the privacy of every American what those veterans gave their blood and lives to protect? I think not.
As others have observed here, the carnage from the misapplication of a single phrase of the Second Amendment dwarfs the toll we stipulate here, a phrase whose misapplication applies to a tiny handful of Americans (what percentage of the population actually owns assault weapons and/or high-capacity magazines?). Yet we readily tolerate that toll as the “price of freedom”. Surely the freedoms this program destroys are worth far more than the freedom to possess a murder weapon and its ammunition.
The very notion that “those people live in fear that their government watches every move” was one of the few accurate characterizations of the horrors of our Communist enemies during the cold war — and was a mainstay of support for a zealous protection of our individual freedoms. Some of us remember a US right wing that objected to Social Security because it demanded that every American carry a card and have a federal ID number — that was “communist”. This program has far more in common with the East German Stasi than with ANYTHING American. Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley are surely spinning in their graves at the idea that the US Government should pursue and now publicly defend this program.
If we allow or even encourage this assault on our privacy, what freedoms are left? Do they mean ANYTHING?
let me pose another question. The reason the NSA is able to collect all these data is because giant corporations like Verizon and Google have them readily available. (If you don’t want your internet searches tracked, you do have other options.) Does it bother you that Verizon, Google, et al. keep track of this stuff and use it to make money off of your habits? And who knows what else they might be doing with it? Is it that much worse that the NSA then gets its hands on it to find terrorists?
Put another way, do you trust Verizon more than you trust the government?
BMG is free to suspend or bar posters, delete or edit people’s comments, even (theoretically) to disallow certain points of view, etc. because it’s a privately owned and operated site. But the government is specifically prohibited from this kind of curtailing of speech, or of the press, of the right to peaceably assemble, and so forth. Likewise, I think, the government is specifically prohibited from spying on citizens without probably cause by the fourth amendment. Unfortunately most of us rather obliviously “sign” some unreadable fifty page agreement where we give Verizon and Google the right to collect info and sell it to marketers- I’m not completely sure these types of unreadable-fine-print-sell-your-soul-to-the-devil contracts should be legal, but they are private contracts for and, as you note, there are usually other options.
It bothers me a great deal that
In much of Europe it’s not legal. I would love to see it illegal here.
As a general matter, especially in terms of economics, I often argue with libertarian types who cite the anti-government sentiments of the 1787 crowd. My argument includes the point that giant corporations did not exist then, and, if not properly regulated, they can do as much harm to true “freedom” in a typical person’s daily life as the government. By forcing you, for example, to work 80 hours a week in dangerous conditions for a pittance. We learned this between 1870 and 1932, and we’re learning it again.
But there’s really no comparison between a Google or Facebook using my information to make money by selling it to marketers, and the same information going to a government that can disappear people to Guantanamo with no due process, Constitution be damned. If you’d asked me six months ago my GREATEST fear about Google, Facebook, etc., tracking this information, I would have said the chance they’d pass it on to something like the NSA in the name of “counterterrorism.”
Do you appreciate the difference between public and private? Government and citizen. Corporations are private. Free to contract with consumers. If government wants to know what’s in it get a warrant. If not consumer should be told. Understand?
I use Google products.
I do not choose to do business with the NSA when I use Google products. Specious argument.
program to save lives. The assumption seems to be that only a relatively small number of lives might have been saved by the thwarting of terrorist plots by the NSA program.
But we don’t know the nature of those plots or what the real destruction might have been had they been carried out. We are rapidly moving into a new world of potentially unlimited destruction caused by nuclear devices that are becoming more and more accessible. One day, a terrorst might be able to take out an entire city with a bomb in a suitcase. It’s possible that massive spying programs on citizens may in fact be necessary to prevent that from happening.
All that said, I do believe the public has a right to know about these spying programs and ultimately to determine whether they are warranted. As always, it’s not so much the crime that should be at issue, but the coverup.
Why has this program been covered up for so long and kept secret from the American public? Informing members of Congress about it does not imply any sort of transparency since Congress had kept it secret as well.
Why did it take a lone whistleblower to expose this? And equally disturbing to me, why is the Obama administration, in true Nixonian fashion, more concerned about the “leak” of the information than the issues that information raises?
The American people deserve answers to these questions. Edward Snowden may have committed a crime in disclosing this program, but he has at the same time done us a service in bringing this program out of the darkness and into the light of day where we can decide for ourselves whether it’s worthwhile.
do you have any ducktape? you may want some. it could make you feel safer.
I was trying to make. I’m not saying I would feel safer with a massive spying program on the American people, but that we may be headed in that direction as the threat of mass destruction grows in coming years. Do you doubt that threat exists? Either you’re very brave, or perhaps you have your head in the sand.
In any event, my point was that whether a massive spying program is needed or not, it should have been disclosed to the public and not kept secret. I agree with you that our right to privacy and to freedom from government intrusion may outweigh the benefit of any protection that a spying program could provide. At least the public should have the opportunity to decide that and not have such a program thrust upon them without their knowledge.
It’s a good question. David Foster Wallace:
I used to be incensed at the increased use of video surveiilance. It’ s nearly ubiquitous today, but when I was growing up the technology wasn’t there and the the idea of a video camera in (public) places was completely foreign to us. The increased use of surveillance used to freak me out and make me mad in the same way that many are getting mad here. (Not all, some here are just habitually mad… but that’s another story… )
Then a wise (older) man asked me, during a debate upon the subject of video surveillance, “well, would you be so upset if they posted a living breathing police officer in the same public place?”
“Well. No. I wouldn’t,” I answered him.
“Then what’s your beef?” and I had no answer other than I guess I had to trust the cop as much as I trusted the guy who would, eventually, watch the video. “What’s the difference?” He asked, and I could not answer.
When I first learned how to drive, before radar detectors and other ground based methods, state police would, sometimes, track speeds on the highway by aircraft, usually helicopter. Signs were posted on the highway. I can’t remember the last time I saw such a sign. There is a highway infrastructure and to use that highway infrastructure we accept aircraft surveillance. The amount of meta data that can be collected by an aircraft might be different in scale, but it is not different in scope.
I have a car now, but for about a decade I commuted to the the several jobs (Leominster to Cambridge/Boston/Waltham/Bedford/Etc) on the MBTA commuter rail. Not only was I under constant surveillance (train conductors who knew where I got on and off, ticket counters who knew my destination and starting point, electronic ‘charlie’ cards) but I was appalled at the callousness with which my fellow passengers would throw away their security and privacy: very rare was the commute, in the last three years of that decade, where I was not… ‘privy’… to at least one half of a cell phone conversation, often very intimate, sometimes raunchy, and occassionally racist. Often I would overhear numbers, phone numbers, credit card numbers, other numbers… being discussed or given out. If I wan’t to learn thing, for my own, possibly nefarious, purposes it’s not very difficult at all.
People do things. And they often don’t care who knows what they are doing. Fine. But from cops on the street, to aircraft checking speeds to cell phone conversations on the train people aren’t as concerned about their privacy until it becomes a federal issue. I think that’s, well, kinda backwards. All of this is to say, if indeed you want to have a “serious discussion”, is that the relative ease with which the government can collect this data is merely a function of the relative ease with which we give it away. Most of my life, somehow or other, impinges upon Google or Apple: I trust Obama far more than I trust Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google ) or Tim Cook (CEO of Apple). But, somehow, the conversation only gets serious when Obama gets involved. But guess what, if Obama abolished ‘PRISM’ tomorrow, the metadata will still be there. Maybe it won’t be all in one place, which is a step removed from ‘PRISM’ but hardly a very big one. Obama and the NSA might not notice me as much, but I know Apple, Google, Wal-Mart and others are watching me, in one way or another, right now.
In fact, I expect a future congress to expand “PRISM”, not for surveillance but to police Google, Verizon, Apple and all these other companies, all of whom, I feel are more a threat to my privacy and security than the US Government. I don’t see how we can get away from that. The State Police have to police the highways. Who polices the Internet? (which, after all was largely funded by government…) Who’s to know that Verizon does or doesn’t have its own type of “PRISM” for their own, corporate, ends? Where is the ‘serious conversation’ that questions whether marketing is a form of privacy invasion? Did you know that Wal-Mart, Target and other big stores collects ‘meta-data’ on every purchase at every store? There are practical reasons for this, such as inventory management, but there are invasive and quite impractical reasons (from the point of view of privacy) for doing this. They know who buys diapers and who buys guns. They know, and track, who buys diapers AND guns. They know who buys dish towels and they know who buys potting soil… Each purchase might be innocous but they track it anyway… It makes me laugh when people complain about Obama invading privacy when they pay for the privilege to give away their secrets to Google or Apple or Wal-Mart…
The meta data is out there. It’s where we are at. I think the US government, and the American people are behind the curve on this: they are still, often, working on a 1776 version of tyranny and hegemony. Guess what, George III is never coming back. We’re not going to see his like, ever, again. The new tyranny might just be the bastard son of Don Draper: some sleazeball trying to sell you on a happiness you didn’t know you wanted… Or even knew you lacked. All the while prying deeper into your life and your habits to sell you new and improved happiness every other quarter. The only thing big enough to stop it is all of us together, which is to say, the Government.
It’s quite a bind we’re in.
No I would not want a police officer in place of every video camera.
And your suggestion that PRISM is good because we need the government to monitor Google etc. is completely off-base.
Private v. Government.
I would argue most of us have made fairly good arguments against the NSA program and against the double standard that some progressives with their partisan blinders on are propagating.
President Obama did not merely promise getting Congressional approval for these programs, he promised ending them. He didn’t promise revising the Patriot Act, he promised repealing it. He didn’t promise relocating Gitmo or getting them civilian trials, he promised shutting it down. As recently as three weeks ago he was begging Congress to take away the AUMF, while this week he is defending the very extraordinary programs and powers that act allowed him to have.
The polls are on our side, it’s the rare issue that the much hoped for libertarian-progressive coalition can materialize for in Congress, and the President campaigned and won twice on these issues as someone who would make significant changes on these issues. Progressives had a choice between a DLC national security hawk in Sen. Clinton, who favored and voted for most of these terrible policies and a progressive alternative in Senator Obama. Bob Neer even wrote a book about it while other editors, even if they didn’t endorse Obama, also did not endorse Clinton, in large part because of her stances on these issues. The point of Blue Mass Group should be to move the commonwealth and the country in a more progressive direction, not simply to always root for the blue team against the red team. When you are making Rand Paul look more sensible on an issue, your position has to be incredibly illogical and immoral, and yet that’s where Obama has led us.
… so why are you here, ernie?
We’re not here to discuss what you want or do not want. Who cares what you want? We’re here discussing what is. The video has to be reviewed, at some point, by a real live human being. I, for one, prefer that human being to be a cop. I don’t really have a problem with the tools. The use of the tools, however, has yet to shake out and the uses to which they are put might bother me more…
I made no such suggestion. And I certainly made no judgement regarding the ‘goodness’ or ‘badness’ of the thing. I’m responding to fenway49, not you, who says he wants to have a serious discussion. I note the bind that this puts into…
Here’s the serious discussion: what happens when Obama et al ends PRISM? What? Are we safer? All that ‘metadata’ suddenly goes away? We’re free from prying eyes? What’s the difference between Obamas prying eyes and Googles prying eyes? Obama, at least, is answerable both to the electorate and to history. Google is responsible only to the share price. Apple already knows my every move.
Sorry petr, I assumed you knew basic Constitutional principals. High School civics stuff. The difference between persons, private enterprises, and THE GOVERNMENT.
I suggest you take a Harvard Extension course or one at Bunker Hill Community College, perhaps your local middle school will let you audit a class.
After you do that then come back and we can have a big people chat about this country we both love and cherish.
Also, the hate you have for me can be seen dripping through your comment. Obviously I am doing something right.
I agree with Petr about government vs. private. The constitution does indeed address the government, but I’m starting to think more and more that we need legislation to forbid private companies from collecting, storing, and targeting data.
a different point. Your take, I think is right: nobody, either government nor private sector, should be doing this. The other position, that because the private sector can track data the NSA should be able to as well, and in fact is more benign, I can’t agree with.
On balance, It would be altogether so much better to have less criminals. And with less criminals, we’d have less need for police But we can’t have that. And because we have criminals, or the possibility of criminals, we have to have police.
It is not a question of whether or no the private sector can track data. The are tracking data. It’s happening. It’s crept up upon us and it is so big and so ubiquitous that the only possible response, and no I don’t think it’s a question of benignity, is the government. I have some sway, however small over the government. I have none whatsoever over google, apple, wal-mart, etc…
The response of many here, however, is to ignore that. That response is straight out of the NRA playbook. It’s as if highway robbery occurs daily, or, in fact gun deaths occur daily, and the anti-government types don’t want us to collect data on highway travel or gun use, accepting the possibility of highway robbery or gun death as somehow better than any government involvement whatsoever.
The NRA playbook is not instructive here. It’s a dead end. They say they want to stop tyranny. Well, what happens after that: if they overthrow our duly elected democratic leaders, or in the present case simply refuse to work with them… what happens next? Do they set up a fully functioning democracy? Why not work with the fully functioning democracy we already have?
The situation here is analagous: some would eschew the fully functioning democracy we already have in favor of no government involvement whatsoever despite the very real danger that position presents. The collection of data isn’t going to stop just because we stop the NSA from doing it. Until we have a real and really serious conversation about what we’ve allowed to happen, the problem is going to get worse. And, frankly, kvetching about the government only, isn’t really all that serious.
In this particular post my points were two: (1) the NSA program is a bad thing, irrespective of what Walmart or the USPS are or aren’t doing; (2) we should criticize Democrats who implement right-wing policies, because it only helps Republicans electorally and helping Republicans electorally, given how batshit insane today’s Republican Party is, is highly troubling. The additional point that the private sector is collecting data, that it’s pernicious, and that we should address this (the “Don Draper” point) I agree with. We can, and should, have a discussion that includes that problem.
But I don’t see how two wrongs make a right. While I agree that government can be an essential check on private business as a general matter, I don’t agree that government collection of communications data serves as any kind of check on private collection of data. I also continue to believe the federal government has powers (Guantanamo, federal prison, etc.) that are at least as troubling for an individual’s liberty as whatever profitable mischief Apple is up to.
And what control, exactly, do any of us have over “the government” when (as was a key point of this post) both major parties sign off on this? If we turn Democrats out of office we only get worse. If we turn Republicans out of office the Democrats keep the program intact (although, ahem, they get a “warrant” from the FISA court).
when the ‘older person’ asked if you’d be upset if a police officer were stationed in place of all those cameras, you should have said yes. America is not supposed to be a police state.
The police (and NSA) has a role in society. It does not have a role in tracking what we do with every moment of our lives — and unless we do something about it, that’s where we’re heading. After all, coming this Christmas there’s going to be a Microsoft developed camera on in every living room of millions of people all the time (that’s how the new Kinect will work – always on).
We may be heading in a direction in society where it would be very easy to have a police state and eyes on our bodies (kinect 2.0) and NSA operatives in our minds (emails, other metadata, etc.) all the time… but that doesn’t mean we have to let the police state happen. We can — and should — demand that the government not store any of our data without first getting a warrant *before* they start doing the storing.
And, yeah, while we’re at it – there’s no reason for the government to have cameras on every single corner, either.
Well, young’un, it’s a little different now with so much ubiquity of video. The discussion I had, back when “megapixels” was made-up jargon with no real reference to actual technology, led me to a different understanding. You’re so afraid of a police state that you’re willing to allow a corporate state, far more insidious, in its stead…
I think, with a zillion and a half videocams everywhere, and not just in the hands of the police, I might answer the question differently today. Not because I think it differently about the police but because with facial recognition, motion tracking and other, automated, capabilities it’s easier to cut the human out of the loop. That, however, was something I couldn’t envision in the ’80’s when I had the conversation in question. But, in general, I stand by my answer: every video must, at some point, come before the eyes of a human being. What’s the difference between a human being standing there or a camera if the ultimate end is that a human being must review it? Just as it is impractical, and thus not done, for an actual live police officer to stand on every corner, it’s not practical for a zillion cameras to exist if there aren’t human eyeballs to see it. The camera is just a tool and, like I already said, at some point you have to trust the human who’s going to review the tape. Simple as that.
All well and good. But, and this is my point so try to pay attention, that data is not created with the warrant. It does not spring into being upon he sayso of the FISA court or any other. That data is being collected today. Right NOW and with no regulation attached to it whatsoever and complely, effortlessly, prior to any warrant. It’s a complete free-for-all… until, that is, the government gets involved and you, and others get their knickers in a twist about some ancient version of hegemony looming large. Law enforcement, as it exists today, has to get the warrant and then collect the data. It very often can’t use data collected prior to the warrant. But this data exists now. Any warrant is for the collation, not the creation, of data. You don’t, apparently, think that this is a crucial distinction but it is. It completely changes the entire game. And if Obama isn’t watching it, somebody else is… Or, put another way, if you don’t like people spying upon you, what matters it if it is Obama or some nameless Google employee doing the spying? If you don’t like the government doing it but rather welcome the corporations doing it, well then say so. But the same arguments you’ve used heretofore won’t necessarily apply.
I contend that this high dudgeon, aim solely and squarely at the government is exactly the wrong tactic to take. It is the one thing that guarantees a freer hand for the present, and unconstrained by regulations, data miners who are not the government but whom you, apparently, trust implicitly with power you would not trust in the hands of a democratic congress and/or president. Does anything about that strike you as weird? Backwards? Perhaps even self-defeating….?
Something will have to be done. It’s only a matter of time. It’s going to take a scandal where Wal-Mart is found to be manipulating data to increase profits or Apple is subtly using data mining to massively steer product sales. Google just bought Waze: what’s to stop some bright, but amoral, young Google exec from using Waze to to manipulate traffic patterns for the sake of Google profits. You might think that such things are unlikely. Perhaps they are unlikely. But what is in place to make them impossible? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Right, it’s collected. Store camera’s. No warrant needed. If yo owned a story and a purse snatching happened oputside your store one evening you would be glad to turn over to the police the video when they came to your store and asked for it. Same for an assault that occurred in your store and on video.
No warrant needed if you volunteer to hand it over.
Now suppose instead of that situation the police come in everyday and want a copy of all videos for every camera all day long. Inside store and outside.
Should you hand it over?
What if instead of video they wanted copies of every transaction your business made each day. Who bought from you etc..?
You can volunteer to hand that over. Would you?
Yet so few of them are owned by the government.
It’s probably not the best use of resources to put cops all over the place, though that may vary by community. However, if you are up to no good out in public I hope a concerned citizen, cop or not, would report it. I think expectations of privacy within your home are nearly absolute, but such expectations out in public are almost non-existent.
Not having an expectation of privacy and having government cameras or cops everywhere. Citizens looking out for each other is good citizenry, cops making regular patrols makes for better communities… but cameras and cops in * every corner * is a police state, less concerned with protecting people and more concerned with tracking them and keeping them ‘in line.’
On balance I feel safer with police around. Have you had a bad experience with cops, because you often come across as anti-police. I actually did have an encounter once with a cop being a bit of a bully, but my experience has been overall positive.
Not to get too far off topic, but one thing I do think can lead to a police state mentality is municipal budgets including fines in its revenue column. There’s too much incentive to collect IMO so I would prefer that any such money be put into a rainy day fund rather than the operating budget.
but let’s say you were a black kid in Harlem suffering under ‘stop and frisk.’ I think you’d feel differently.
If you want to have an example of what it’s like to live in a ‘police state,’ where law enforcement officers are there less for safety and more to instill fear in the community — that’s it.
Of all my criticisms of your posts over the years, it’s almost always been about how you judge the merits of things based on how you feel about them or what you think about them. It’s always all about you.
You serially refuse to try to step in someone’s shoes and think of how it would impact them — of how cops have been employed in, say, LGBT communities or black communities or other minorities, etc.
I think that’s wrong.
Not only is there potential for abuse in a police state, but plenty of communities in this country know exactly what it’s like to be subjected to them. That I’ve had relatively few bad experiences with police officers (I’ve never had anything more than a parking ticket) is immaterial.
With my skin pasty-white, I’ve had a ‘privilege’ in this regard that I’ve done nothing to deserve, and I’m lucky enough to live in both a time and area in which the people would never allow cops to indiscriminately raid, say, LGBT-predominant establishments to ‘out’ (and thus ostracize) LGBT members of the community.
We have to be very conscious of the fact that we give law enforcement officers immense power in society and that power *must* be guarded against. I’m not skeptical of giving law enforcement and intelligence officers more power because of my personal experience with them; I’m skeptical because we all ought to be.
History tells us that — and so does the document that’s at the very foundation of our society: the Constitution.
I’m pretty sure we are talking about being observant in this particular thread. When there really is abuse I’ll stand with you and those being victimized thereby.
why I’m guarded against expanding police authority; I answered it and gave an example of abuse.
It is only one example of why we should be worried about granting additional powers to law enforcement officers, including those that appear to violate the constitution.
Whether it’s police officers employing stop-and-frisk or the NSA spying on every American, it’s still a violation of our due process rights — and the former is an example of why we never should have entrusted these secretive powers to the NSA in the first place.
You don’t seem to understand that abuses like this are what comprise a police state. The kind of abusive surveillance that we are talking about comes hand-in-hand with the abuse described in the clip Ryan cited.
You don’t seem to appreciate that these surveillance programs give ANYBODY in government the ability to target you or anyone else for precisely the kind of abusive behavior depicted here.
You seem to have no appreciation whatsoever for how easy and incomprehensible it is for you to become a target. Perhaps somebody doesn’t like your brand of Christianity. Perhaps somebody doesn’t like a candidate you used your cellphone to muster support for. Perhaps somebody doesn’t like what you post here. Perhaps somebody doesn’t like white men in your age group. Perhaps you have the misfortune of taking the wrong route home after Celtics victory. You can’t know.
When it happens to you, all you will know is that when you cry for help and correctly expect support from the people who claim to vigorously defend your constitutional rights, you will instead hear silence. Or perhaps that your violation is a “necessary price we pay for security”.
Bullshit. It’s bullshit, and I think all of us know it’s bullshit.
We do this by transperancy, which I am all for, and by checks, balances, and public debate. Sure lots of things could happen. As far as I know there is no legal authority to target on the bases you cite above and i certainly hope not. Anyone who abuses their authority should be fired and in certain cases prosecuted, but the potential to abuse authority is not a reason to not allow the authority at all under the right circumstances.
There have been cases where ICE has detained – without counsel – American citizens, then deported them. No-one has been, or will be disciplined for these outrages. ICE has the authority to do this, under the Patriot Act. They also have the power to detain anyone they think might be an undocumented alien, within 200 miles of the US border. Did you know that the coast of Massachusetts is part of the US border?
The point is that once you hand over that kind of authority, especially when it’s to be exercised in secret, it is inevitably going to be abused. You say you want transparency, but there isn’t any WRT this telephone record-keeping, or with many of the other things built into the Patriot Act. You do not know what they are doing. and the people who do know are not going to tell you about it.
Where are the legal fights to reverse these? The Constitution trumps the Patriot Act. No law can legitimately grant government power prohibited to it by the Constitution. Where are the FOIA requests to reverse the secrecy, and if those are denied where are those appeals? We have to work all three branches to fix this. If they all close ranks I’m not sure where to go from there.
The Obama Administration has been very active in using State Secrets Privilege and national security as reasons to keep so many things secret, and the courts have mostly been cooperative with their efforts.
Here he is doing it in 2009, to defend the Bush Administration.
Here he is doing it in 2010, to quash a lawsuit that challenged his efforts to assassinate an American overseas.
Here he is doing it in 2011, to preemptively quash a lawsuit by LA Muslims seeking to stop religious-based surveillance.
Obama started doing this less than a month after his inauguration, and he has not wavered one bit.
There HAVE been lawsuits, LOTS of them. The President says they cannot go forward because the information required would compromise security.
This has been going on through the entire span of the Obama Administration. and has been widely reported. Tell me, how would your hypothetical lawsuit or FOIA proceed if the government flat-out refused to allow it? I’ll say it again – they’re doing all this stuff in as complete secrecy as they can manage, and anyone who attempts to tell us anything about it is very unpopular with the Obama Administration, the NSA, and the CIA.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with me or anyone else bringing our own experiences into the discussion.
the problem is you serially refuse to take into consideration the experiences of others. If it’s not a problem to you, it’s not a problem. I’m not the only one who’s criticized you for this, either.
…then you grossly misunderstand me, but I apologize for any part I might have had in not articulating that well.
It would not be feasible to place a police officer, 24-7-365, in every place where you can stick a camera. Nor would that police officer be able, beyond his/her limited human memory, to create a permanent record of all the people who came and went.
… that’s not the question. The number of video cameras, and their placement, en masse, is constrained, on hopes by the same thing: the abilities and values of the person who ultimately has to review that data. Robots don’t run things yet.
But for each individual camera and it’s individual placement there is no distinction to be made between cop or camera. If the municipality could place a cop there, they could place a camera there.
If you rely on police officers, you can only cover a certain amount of physical space and you can’t go back later. If you record everything, you can cover much more space and, critically, go back any time you want. It’s certainly relevant that vastly more human comings and goings can be known to authorities.
I’m certainly not ready to feel confident that the people reviewing the data will, now and forevermore, have the right “values.” We’ve seen plenty of examples of the contrary in human history.
Has anyone thought of who uses or will use the information? Who is it to protect?
Do we believe the FBI is full of Jimmy Stewart and Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. types forthright and above board? Other government agencies and politicians?
Is information power? Does power corrupt?
What has history to show us? What information did J Edgar Hoover use on Martin Luther King, Jr.? What government “leaked” information about Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s sex life to the news media when his State of New York was investigating Wall Street corruption?
How many believe that the news of David Petraeus’ affair was not outed because he wouldn’t fall on his sword for the Whitehouse in the Benghazi disaster? The powers-that-be didn’t know beforehand he had a mistress? C’mon, now…
How many of our duly elected are extorted to do the bidding of powerful people that have access to knowledge that can impact a person? Scandal? Jail? Assassination?
Who believes that powerful people in government are spending $1.2 billions for a center to monitor data to protect somebody that may or may not vote for their chosen candidate? Really?
And the Congress, that would have to approve such spending, doesn’t know what’s going on? What’s in their dossiers? Wonder why so much of the Congress cut out before the NSA meeting?
It got me thinking back 50 years to The Outer Limits. But, that had a happy ending…
Is privacy to be a privilege?
“Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. –George Washington
This latest report from The Guardian suggests that the broad new surveillance apparatus of which Prism is a part:
1, is heavily privatized and massively lucrative, as exemplified by the role of Snowden’s ex employer Booz Allen Hamilton;
2, is not just conducted by private contractors, using data drawn from private telecoms, but is integrated with corporate security purposes, accepting corporate operations as central to “domestic tranquility”;
3, is already pointed squarely at domestic dissenters, such as environmentalists and occupiers, at the same time that the legal groundwork has been laid to deploy the military without prior approval during “civic unrest.”
(1) is a fact. If (2) and (3) are established even in kernel form, they could quickly, before anything can be done about it, usurp the war on terror as the main purpose of this essentially extra-legal sector. Personally, I think the contractors’ grift is already more salient than all this highminded handwringing about “wartime tradeoffs between liberty and security.” But the integration into corporate-defined domestic authority is equally worrisome.
and we have people upthread suggesting that why we really need this program is to guard against corporations.
Why am I not surprised that corporations have benefited from PRISM and stand to benefit quite a bit more? Oh, that’s right, because of the ever-increasing rotating doors between the two ‘sectors’ and the ever-blurring lines between them. Booze Allen is just the latest and example — why pay a government salary and have more control over employees, when you can contract out the same services for 5x the cost and have comparatively little control over who they hire or how they oversee those that they do hire who have high security clearances.
… I’m saying nothing in particular about this particular program. But I am saying that we really only have the government to look to for remedy. I’m saying that if we prohibit the government from doing this surveillance, the surveillance should, therefore, not be done by anyone. But if we don’t prohibit the corporations from doing this, then what protections are in place? And whatever protections we, ultimately, put in place aren’t going to look to different from PRISM. The ideal outcome is that neither the NSA nor Google collects and stores meta data. But it seems very unlikely that we’re going to come to that pass. What’s the answer then?
You’re answer, it appears, is to stick your head in the sand and hope that the problem is solved by the simple expedience of forbidding the NSA from doing it. Well I’m all for that specific prohibition, but let us not pretend that single and specific prohibition, in any manner, solves the problem.
It’s a new world. It’s not the world I grew up in where, to have a decent camera meant shelling out mucho dinero. Now I got two cameras on my cell phone. In fact, I searched long and hard to find a cell phone without a camera feeling it extraneous. There exists cameras without phones but they are so lacking in other features I felt it more onerous to refuse than to accept. Somebody, maybe even it was you, suggested upstream that MicroSoft wants to put an live, always-on, camera in every living room. The first phone calls I made in my youth involved operators manually using plugs and wires to connect circuitry. We’ve come so far and so fast that we haven’t fully thought out the implications and they are serious.
Re: google, I don’t care if they collect or don’t collect. I can use google if I want, or not use it if I don’t want. All that matters is they have a policy set forth, so that people can make up their own minds.
Re: NSA — if you say it’s unlikely just enough times, maybe you’ll make it come true. I, on the other hand, will continue to insist on change. It used to be that the NSA only spied on foreign targets. It must go back to that. The NSA, a vast military apparatus, has no business spying on Americans.
Well, um, yeah… if we ban the NSA from indiscriminately spying on Americans, it will cease to indiscriminately spy on Americans. If we ban it from spying on Americans, it will be banned from spying on Americans. It works for us, after all, or at least that’s the way it’s supposed to work.
Isn’t that an argument for us to… you know… NOT allow the NSA to seize all of our metadata? Maybe you’re right and we’ll someday have some kind of better understanding of what is/isn’t appropriate for the government to have…. but until then, I say instead of giving it all of our metadata on the internet, it should have none of that data from the internet without a specific and concrete warrant from a reformed version of FISA in which there is some legitimate counsel representing the interests of the people, and in which the FISA courts have to give up their own ‘metadata’ of the cases they hear — so as to allow as much transparency as possible, including the numbers of American citizens it targets with any warrants (the answer should be none; “foreign intelligence” is in the fracking name of the court, after all — not domestic.).