# Is America really becoming an unaccountable police state or is that hyperbole **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 31, 2013, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-america-really-becoming-an-unaccountable-police-state-or-is-that-hyperbole/659765 "2013-05-31T02:45:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2013, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-america-really-becoming-an-unaccountable-police-state-or-is-that-hyperbole/659765/62 "2013-06-08T12:01:25Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > :rolleyes: > > I’m hardly supportive of these measures but do you truly believe any sort of crime/terrorism prevention policy to be 100 percent perfect? If anything we should be delighted there have been so few successful terrorist plots since 9-11. I’m also inclined to suspect you wouldn’t have said the same thing when Bush was in the Oval Office. When your internet records, phone records, travel records are all in the hands of the government, what then? WE have a constitution, with something called the 4th Amendment. This amounts to unreasonable search and seizure, and I don’t want it. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2013, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-america-really-becoming-an-unaccountable-police-state-or-is-that-hyperbole/659765/63 "2013-06-08T13:38:33Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Nope. Keeping a record of phone logs is intrusive. It is an invasion of privacy. It shouldn’t have happened, and it needs to stop. > > It doesn’t rise anywhere close to the level of a “police state.” > > How many people have been arrested solely on the basis of their phone calls? Until the number rises into the thousands, it’s a pretty damn lame “police state.” Where are the jackbooted thugs with truncheons? > > Weak. Sissy. Pansy-ass police state. (So weak, I can post this without fear of the “knock on the door at night.”) Oh, so you wanna wait til the jackbooted thugs are knocking on everyone’s door to take alarm. Brilliant. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2013, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-america-really-becoming-an-unaccountable-police-state-or-is-that-hyperbole/659765/64 "2013-06-08T13:39:57Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > So you admit that public outcry stopped waterboarding. I ask again: does that happen in a police state? I never maintained that we currently HAVE police state. I said the groundwork has been laid. And it most definitely HAS been laid. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2013, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-america-really-becoming-an-unaccountable-police-state-or-is-that-hyperbole/659765/65 "2013-06-08T14:50:24Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > I said the groundwork has been laid. Having police lays the groundwork. Having an army lays the groundwork. Having custom and border agents lays the groundwork. Having a computer-based telecommunications infrastructure that could have its hard drives supeanead – whether or not they are – lays the groundwork. The groundwork is inevitably laid by civilization and the existence of nation states. The question shouldn’t be whether we have laid the groundwork, but whether what is now going on is wrong. > [@ralph124c](#): > > It is pretty obvious to me, that all of this information gathering by the NSA has nothing to do with security. It is all about control . . . . Well, the NSA is doing a piss-poor job of controlling you. Now, if you mean controlling millitant attacks on American civilians – I’d say my tax dollars are doing a great job of keeping this a low-terrorism country despite the US being a target certain parties would love to hit almost above all others. Law enforcement efficiency being equal, I’d expect approximately as many attacks here as in Pakistan, since our government is at least as hated. The biggest threat to civil liberties is the mass casualty militant attack. In October 2001, you wouldn’t have seen a whole lot of protest against listening in on calls to Afghanistan. A fourth amendment is not a big factor after hundreds of your civilians have been killed. The fact that prominent civil liberatarians are now upset even about phone logs, without content, being computer-matched, is not a measure of oppression. It’s a measure of how successful we have been in sqelching militant attacks while maintaining the fundamental freedoms existence of this thread illustrates. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2013, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-america-really-becoming-an-unaccountable-police-state-or-is-that-hyperbole/659765/66 "2013-06-08T23:39:28Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Oh, so you wanna wait til the jackbooted thugs are knocking on everyone’s door to take alarm. Brilliant. That’s the problem with “Crying Wolf.” The Alien and Sedition Acts mean the Death of the Constitution! Lincoln repealing Habeus Corpus means the Death of the Constitution! Joe McCarthy’s investigations mean the Death of the Constitution! Obama’s investigations mean the Death of the Constitution! So that, some day (and may it be in the far future, if ever at all) some jackass actually does come along and try to destroy the Constitution, we’ll be less prepared to oppose this, because of all these premature cries of despair. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2013, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-america-really-becoming-an-unaccountable-police-state-or-is-that-hyperbole/659765/67 "2013-06-08T23:45:36Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#): > > . . . The groundwork is inevitably laid by civilization and the existence of nation states. The question shouldn’t be whether we have laid the groundwork, but whether what is now going on is wrong. . . . > > . . . the NSA is doing a piss-poor job of controlling you. . . . Exactly so. The potential for tyranny in the U.S. existed from the day the U.S. came to exist. George Washington was in an excellent position to rule as a virtual king. Alexander Hamilton toyed with the idea of deposing John Adams in a “colonel’s coup” and becoming an “American Bonaparte.” Smedley Butler was approached and offered the role of America’s Mussolini; he had the class to turn it down. We could have become a police state. We still could. Freedom is never guaranteed. But the strength of our freedom is proclaimed by how very tepid the scandals of the day are. The IRS examining groups before granting non-profit status? The NSA observing phone switching-room traffic patterns? Cameras in public places catching the Boston Marathon bombers? For some odd reason, I’m not shivering in terror. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-america-really-becoming-an-unaccountable-police-state-or-is-that-hyperbole/659765.md?page=3)