where were you half a decade ago when Bush et al were taking a big dump on our civil liberties in far more egregious and inescapable ways? Wiretapping programs, expansion of government data surveillance programs, etc.
some claptrap along the lines of “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” seems to be ringing a bell…
You get your panties in a bunch about an optional website giving you a relatively benign disclaimer, but you didn’t bat an eyelid back then when laws were written that may actually result in you being surveilled… why?
Glen Beck and his brood are complaining that the CARS computer system that dealers have to access to get their rebates contains a disclaimer that allows the government to search your computer, take your files, do whatever they want. bascially, they’re claiming that this is some big brother program that occupies the 7th circle of hell
i’m just curious why they even care: they were silent for years in regards to the expansion of domestic surveilance that took place under GWB, and their normal retort to liberals (and others) who had a problem with it was “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”.
I can’t be bothered to search, but let’s assume you haven’t substantially misstated any of the above.
I will also assume that you think the domestic surveillance program was a bad thing five years ago. So does that make this CARS disclaimer a bad thing? Are you against that?
At this point in my understanding, I’m not OUTRAGED against the disclaimer because it is by and large meaningless. It’s (AFAIK) technically impossible to achieve the nefarious ends Beck is claiming (in his hyperbole, that is. Of course I expect a site to use cookies and whatnot), it’s not a consumer site, and has many of the trappings of a hastily written EULA.
Nor was I outraged at, say, Bush’s signing statements. They were unenforceable statements of his intent, which will get more or less weight depending on the court that hears any related controversy.
Both are non-issues. (on preview: please don’t read too much into my examples, they came off the top of my head)
I was outraged at many of the things the OP brings up (e.g., surveillance), and am rather disconcerted by some recent Obama filings (e.g., state secrets).
In effect, you’re right to ask for consistency. Incursions on civil rights by either administration should provoke OUTRAGE. But I think the gist of the OP’s point is that people who were recently approving of “real” incursions are expressing false outrage at the CARS program, which is a “fake” incursion.
ETA: was the OP meant for the pit? Isn’t that where most of the “nyah nyah, you’re a hypocrite!” threads reside?
I heard about this over the weekend. Beck, on his Friday TV spot, raised the issue in such a way to make it sound as though the Federal government had asserted a right of unlimited access to the computers and files of anyone who visits cars.gov. In fact the disclaimer, if it exists, is visible only to dealers that have registered and logged into a scure area of the site. No such disclaimer exists in the public area of the site; I’ve looked myself. In fact the DOT privacy notice, linked at the bottom of the cars.gov home page, is fairly standard boilerplate stating that no personal information will be collected or shared for persons merely visiting the site, and that persistent cookies will not be used.
It appears that Beck has backpedaled somewhat due to complaints from listeners and now is more clear that only the secure part of the site has the disclaimer in question. Thing is, he could not show the actual page where this appeared during his original piece; the only evidence was a screened quote from the site, and given FOX’s frequent, er, mistakes when making attributions, I’d prefer to wait for something more definitive. I’m certainly not going to register as a dealer just to see the disclaimer; maybe someone else here has already registered and can confirm whether it really exists.
Regardless, Beck and his ilk make their livings off of manufactured controversy. If there doesn’t happen to be any this week, then by God we’ll make some!
What is the rationale for the current computer searching rights? National security is at least theoretically a good that can be weighed against the loss of privacy.
Car dealers are mostly Republicans. If Justice takes em down now, Obama will have an easier time of forging a permanent Democrat majority come the elections of 2012.
Apples and watermelons. There are perfectly good reasons to for and against both of them. There are reasons against them that are not the same. Look at the thread on cash for clunkers and read some of Shodan’s, and other, posts.
What’s really strange is that while reading this thread IE told me that this website (boards.straightdope.com) wants me to run something called "Remote Data Services Data Control) by Microsoft.
That don’t sound right.
The really bad thing is, I accidentally clicked “yes.” Total misclick! But there it was. I’m screwed aren’t I?
For the same reason that Democrats were giving credence to the Palin/Trig rumors: they don’t like the politics of Obama and will use any flimsy excuse to criticize him and the government.
The earlier complaint from statistically inept Republicans was that the car dealership closings during the bankruptcy proceedings were unfairly targeting Republican dealers. What they weren’t taking into account was that the most car dealers are Republicans. Most of the closings were Republican dealers precisely because most dealers are Republicans.