http://now.msn.com/nsa-spying-extended-to-germany-france
etc,etc, etc.
If anyone out there is uncomfortable with this surveillance, but wants to pretend to be in favor of it and make bad arguments to make those sorts of folks look bad (internet agent provocateur style), you now have a new strategy.
Where’s the part about anyone being surveilled who isn’t a criminal suspect?
whoosh, right?
So for example, if you couldn’t disprove that no false vote would be cast you’d be ok with something so archaic as say a voter ID requirement to vote, cause, after all, only those wishing to game the system would have a problem with that requirement, right?
The editors of the site that published that story have “corrected” their story: Link.
Don’t worry you little heads – an “independent” (snort) review of the problem is being organized:
No word yet on the Administration’s appointments of Alex Rodriguez as anti-steroid czar or Whitey Bulger to head up a new anti-crime task force.
Well, there’s also the fact that your average terrorist cell’s main means of action are handfuls of rusty AKs, more-than-dodgy RPGs, homegrown 'splosives and the contents of the head honcho’s piggy bank ; whereas governments can rely on tanks, banks, fighter planes, charter planes, atomic bombs and worst of all : lawyers.
[QUOTE=Smapti]
I’ve not seen that this surveillance is being applied against anyone who doesn’t deserve it.
[/QUOTE]
Quite. And I’m sure when you deserve it, you’ll be duly informed. Possibly by email.
Good thing the founders included protection from unreasonable searches and seizures in our constitution. That pretty much trumps any right a guy named Smapti feels he is entitled to.
Jingoism does have something to do with your confusion of the two disparate concepts of country and government.
What the fuck are you talking about? The point, as it is with voter IDs, is that if it can be demonstrated that government spying/IDs are necessary to prevent illegality, then such laws might make sense. What I am asking is what percentage of the people utilizing this service are criminals, just as many people ask how much voter fraud there is. If every election had rampant voter fraud, clearly some sort of legislation would be necessary. It has nothing to do with not being able to “disprove that no false vote” happened. It’s about trying to figure out how prevalent something is.
The only difference is that whereas there is little individual incentive to cast a fraudulent vote, there is a lot of incentive for a criminal to encrypt their email; thus the level of suspicion should be higher. Either way, the principle is the same.
Do you honestly think one of these email services whose user base is 90% criminals should be not be subject to government oversight and surveillance?
Please. They want to kill you because you reelected a man who jokes about the Pakistani men, women and children he’s had murdered.
Oh, what a fucking surprise.
Looking into it, Obama has apparently done some hand-waving and said Clapper is not the head of the review group, he just has veto power on who gets the security clearance necessary to be involved, and will report its findings to Obama. You know, because it’s such a great fucking idea to have the lying bastard who has spent the last three years collecting blackmail material on everyone in the entire country have any say on who investigates him, and to give him a second chance at lying his ass off about what his organisation has been doing.
What’s being unreasonably searched and seized?
The electronic communications of the vast majority of people for whom there is no legitimate grounds to believe they are involved in any sort of criminal behaviour.
Quite. When you have specific information that a specific person is involved in crimnal activity then you can ask legal permission to look at specific information. You cannot surveil all the world, intercept all communications, electronically read all communications and then store an unknown number of those just in case they might be useful later on the basis of a legal ducument you won’t reveal and remain within the spirit of the constitution.
Does the Constitution mean nothing? Does anyone think the Founding Fathers would have been okay with a machine that automatically copied everyone’s mail and stored any that had certain key words?
Nothing on the internet is ‘private’ in a legal sense. You put it out on a public network, and anyone can read it.
Similarly, if you have a conversation in a public place, somebody can hear it.
So NSA hasn’t violated ‘search and seizure’. They have very carefully avoided breaking the law with all this.
It breaks no law if “the law” is the Patriot Act.
If “the law” is that other piece of paper - the Constitution, specifically the First Amendment - it emphatically does break the law.
We don’t take kindly to habitual JAQoffs in these parts, mister.
brickbacon - I want to close down the internet, what percentage of the people utilizing the Internet are paedophiles?
Could you please explain how the first Amendment plays into this?
Are you going after the Freedom of Association angle?