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Comment by PlzSnow | Hacker News Reader

"Americans live in a police state"

Americans do not live in a police state. Not by any sane interpretation of the definition. That's just absurd nonsense.

Here's how Wikipedia describes a police state:

>The inhabitants of a police state may experience restrictions on their mobility, or on their freedom to express or communicate political or other views, which are subject to police monitoring or enforcement. Political control may be exerted by means of a secret police force which operates outside the boundaries normally imposed by a constitutional state.

~100% of American communications are monitored by the government. We have secret courts that authorize the killing of American citizens. We have National Security Letters, requiring people to do exactly as they're told and not allowing them to tell anyone (in some cases even their lawyer) they've been served with one. Government agencies operate outside the bounds of the constitution on a routine and mass basis (NSA's phone spying program was found to be illegal/unconstitutional) with zero repercussions to government employees and agents who violated the law.

It also defines this:

>An electronic police state is one in which the government aggressively uses electronic technologies to record, organize, search, and distribute forensic evidence against its citizens

America is the poster child of an electronic police state. We do it more than any other country on a scale larger than any country in history. Americans are more monitored than any large group of people in the history of the world.

The number of respected social commentators who think America is a police state is essentially zero.

If you believe America is a police state, then you are on the extreme-fringes of opinion. So you'd need extraordinary evidence to back your claim up.

Social commentators employed by the same companies that give us garbage news, terrible reporting, and comically blatant bias at every opportunity. For a social commentator to speak out against the government on a major news outlet would be a ratings disaster. Most Americans either agree with the surveillance state, don't give a shit, or don't even know about it. American media outlets are tremendously political and it'd be political suicide to speak ill of those who essentially own you.

I don't know how anyone can argue that the US doesn't fit the definition of an electronic police state as it was defined above. Your head would have to be very deep in the sand.

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

I think he meant social commentators in academia/think tanks, not anchors at news stations.

> For a social commentator to speak out against the government on a major news outlet would be a ratings disaster.

What do you see them constantly doing when it comes to police brutality? And for the federal level, have you watched Fox News while we've had a Democrat president or MSNBC while we've had a Republican one? Gratuitously negative in both cases.

There is certainly tons of bias at all the popular news outlets, but it's very different from the bias of state owned news agencies.

The problem is that both sides of the political spectrum are in favor on the problems being discussed here. Very few congress members are against the NSA spy program/NSLs/secrete courts/etc. They will bash republicans for being pro-life, but they won't bash them for being pro-NSA (generally speaking).

Also, even amonst the academics, the only ones that make it on air the vast majority of the time (and are placed in a positive context within the programming) are the ones conforming to what the media wants. Ask anyone who's ever been on "the list" for expert interviews on television. They call you up and say "would you be willing to go on air and defend this position?". If no, they hang up and try the next person. The opinions broadcasted on American television are as scripted as any other TV show. Through this process they create what the socially accepted norm is, and even if the majority disagree, they become the "fringe" because their opinions are not as well represented.

"I don't know how anyone can argue that the US doesn't fit the definition of an electronic police state"

Unfortunately the vast vast majority of people disagree with you, including basically every single social commentator. The only people agreeing with you are those on the fringe extremes.

I'm sorry, but I don't think reasoned debate is possible with you.

You're saying reasoned debate is not possible with me when I call you out on a logical fallacy and you reiterate as a trump card, thinking you've won the discussion? Yeah, have fun with your head in the sand.

astroturfffff

Appeal to authority on your behalf doesn't solve much either.

Read up on the electronic police state idea, then return... and try to be honest.

A basic fallacy and tautology, I'm sure if I list a thinker you will simply state they aren't respected or are 'fringe'.

Does the Chicago blacksite count extraordinary evidence? There is so much evidence of police illegality, wanton murder, and lack of criminal action at every level, from the bottom to to the top where our country commits torture and does nothing that it is extraordinary for anyone to not belief America is a police state. You life in an oligarchy ruled by a corrupt elite, I can even site academic evidence of such but again, you argue by tautologies so why bother? Open your eyes.

"it is extraordinary for anyone to not belief America is a police state"

But the vast vast majority of people disagree and think that your opinions are extremist nonsense.

Where are all the conspiracy theorists coming from on HackerNews recently?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

It's like you went to a website of logical fallacies and said to yourself, "how many of these can I commit on a single HN thread?"

Fly away, troll.

> There is so much evidence of police illegality, wanton murder, and lack of criminal action at every level, from the bottom to to the top

This, and your freedom to comment about it on a public forum, is pretty much conclusive proof that America is NOT a police state.

When this evidence is suppressed or anyone attempting to cite this evidence is disappeared, THEN you should start worrying.

I guess the main difference is one of scale. The vast majority of citizens don't "experience restrictions on mobility or expression" in a significant way, even though it happens to some people.

Simply untrue.

Airports. No fly lists. Mass surveillance. Free speech zones, civil forfeiture, national security letters. Millions of Americans have a security clearance, the government has created a two tier system of those inside and everyone else. Big media is tightly controlled in America, and after TPP and other international treaties the internet will also be even more tightly controlled. Civil liberties have been extensively erroded since 9-11, how can anyone besides a shill or the ignorant not know such basic facts?

Unfortunately your text largely uses the rhetoric of conspiracy theorists. You even use the word "shill". I don't think reasoned debate is possible with you, because your opinions are so extreme.

No fly lists are a conspiracy theory? You have got to be a troll.

That post listed a lot of things other than no fly lists...

The person you're responding to stated very few opinions (essentially "things will get even worse") and some well-known facts. The tone and style of rhetoric is a little heavy but there is absolutely nothing extreme about any of the statements there. An extremist would be someone who chooses to plug their ears and shout and refuse to acknowledge these simple factual statements about American society/government.

Facts were stated, but not the salient one: what proportion of the population experience those things, which is what the comment's parent was talking about. You could have a secret court that decides to kill one person per year, but one person out of a nation of 300M does not a police state make.

TL;DR: A sense of proportion is missing from the factoids.

Now that sounds quite weak argument: Where exactly goes the line? A quite small minority of DDR or Soviet (speaking of post-Stalin timeframe) 'citizens' actually were jailed or killed. I'd bet that also a very small percent of Chinese population is killed outside the judicial system today, or even within the judicial system's framework of courts and executions, even if they give death sentences very liberally.

It's a question of principle. Either the government and its agencies are held accountable, or they are not. Arbitrary and extra-judicial use of power is still arbitrary and extra-judicial use of power, even if the wielder of that power chooses to use it discreetly. The government is not restricted by the constitution if they can just choose what parts of it they pay lipservice to as they please, even if they do that only seldom and to people who don't matter or "don't deserve our sympathy".

edit. Edited for tone.

It's only a weak argument because you've strawmanned it. I didn't say that the only thing that makes a police state is state killings. My point was about proportion, not mere absolute existence. You wouldn't say that Norway (0.7 murders/100k pop) is the same as Honduras (~90/100k, from memory) in terms of personal safety, simply because murders exist in an absolute sense in Norway.

> Either the government and its agencies are held accountable, or they are not.

Such philosophical absolutes are useless in the actual human experience. You chide me for weak arguments, yet you hold the modern US state and Hitler/Stalin/Mao/Pot's states as morally equal, since they all have extrajudicially killed at least one person and proportionality does not matter. Clearly this is not the case - the world is shades of gray, not black and white absolutes. Some grays are darker than others.

Well, the fact that the killings are secret means that all we know is that there are nonzero of them since we know there is at least one; if you choose to believe the number is tiny then that's fine but don't act like it's known. That's the very problem behind secret laws/courts/killings; we don't know the scale, we can't. If we interrogate people in court about it to try and find out they will lie under oath and say it's their duty to lie.

And of all the many, many issues brought up you cherry picked the only one which only effects a (likely) small number of Americans so honestly I'm inclined to give that to you since you've let the other 10 or so very serious charges stand. Hooray, you've established that given what's public knowledge it's reasonable to believe we probably don't secretly execute -that many- american citizens without a trial, if that's what 'defending the establishment' looks like then consider the establishment defended.

I think police state is a little much but honestly it's an amorphous term with no meaning other than as a rhetorical tool to evoke some horrible regimes from history. I don't think we are as bad as them, but in particular the post we are talking about is factual and hardly extremist. We don't have to be in Stalin's Russia for there to be some serious problems.

...?

I wasn't literally saying that the said secret courts were matching a quota of one per year. It was an intentionally extreme example to highlight the concept of proportionality.

And seriously, you chide me for playing funny buggers with numbers, then characterise a list of 11 things as 'many, many'? Not to mention that you're implying that the rest of the items are frequently encountered - how many people actually run into no-fly list problems, or have been corralled into a free speech zone?

Finally, I couldn't give a fuck about the Americanness of the victims. I'm not American myself. I think it's a stain on the general American character that so often in discussion about human rights, that whether or not a victim is a US citizen is a salient issue. Why is it less of a moral crime for an unaccountable court to decide to kill a foreigner they don't like? Why is it less of a crime for a tourist to be put on a no-fly list or have their speech curtailed?

You completely misread me if you think I'm of the opinion that the US doesn't have problems. It has serious problems, and a double-helping of them. It also has a lot of awesome aspects. Authoritarianism is on the rise, but the US as it currently stands is not a police state. There is so much hyperbole in US political discourse; everything is polarised and taken to extremes. Someone is a democrat|republican? Now we know everything there is to know about that individual, and they clearly support everything that one party (of only two) does!

The comment I'm arguing against is a typical sky-is-falling polarised position, and doesn't have the shades of gray that the real world does. In police states, people have their movement limited, are afraid to speak out against the government (hardly the case in the US) for fear of prison or similar, and are even afraid of talking to their neighbours due to widespread citizen informant networks. The US is a long way from that - but again, you don't have to be a police state in order to have problems.

Anyone who has ever thought about protesting has been effected by free speech zones -- they have effectively killed protesting. Anyone who has made a public (or not so public) statement critical of the government has been effected by no fly lists -- the threat of a secret list that government officials place you on without justification that seriously damages your life that it is impossible to be removed from is enough to have a chilling effect on every citizen.

And for certain middle-eastern racial groups the no-fly list is actually a pretty widespread concern that effects a lot of people.

10 is not a large number when you are discussing people. It is a huge number when you are discussing serious issues that are independent, each of which requires a response. It is so many most people cannot keep track of them all at once without pen and paper.

And if you are concerned with non-americans (as you should be) every statement in that list is much, much worse from your perspective.

I think the sky is falling, but it's falling slowly. A better analogy is a lobster in a pot of hot but not yet boiling water. If your lobster friend turns to you and says "this water we are in is boiling" do you respond "I took a temperature measurement and technically it's not boiling yet compared to these previous measurements, stop being hysterical" or do you say "you're right, we really need to get worried about this water temperature situation RIGHT NOW" and try to stop it?

How are free speech zones a "restriction on [...] expression"? Surely they are the very definition on the LACK of restrictions on expression, the physical embodiement of the freedom of expression...!

"You may speak freely, but men with guns will escort you to a cage where you may do so in a place nobody can hear you"

The OP was using a shorthand expression for the oppression zones surrounding free speech zones. Free speech zones are areas where normal rights apply, implying that their immediate vicinities are special areas where free speech is curtailed. The zones themselves aren't oppressive, but indicate that oppression exists at their borders, and the free speech zones themselves are used to justify the oppression zones.

OK, I get that one could make that inference. And, having read more about them [1] I think I picked the wrong thing to rebut, as they are probably one of the better examples of "restrictions on expression." The others, I still contend, not so much.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone

Restrictions on speech, specifically with NSLs, can happen to only a few people but still be extremely significant. The example of the Lavabit email hosting service comes to mind. He was served with an NSL requiring him to nefariously gather the private encrypted emails of his users. He was a single person with an extremely important thing to say with drastic implications, but was legally barred from doing so. I would call that significant. Multiply times thousands of people and you have thousands of very important things being censored.

> He was served with an NSL requiring him to nefariously gather the private encrypted emails of his users.

Should really be:

He was served with an NSL requiring him to gather the private encrypted emails of one of his users.

Rather less inflammatory, and more accurate - the NSL really only affected the person (actually, it may have been slightly more - two people?) using the service that was being targeted. The reason the service was shut down was because of the precendent; the request was definitely not for blanket access to all users communications, which would be blatantly illegal.

> the request was definitely not for blanket access to all users communications, which would be blatantly illegal.

Actually, this is exactly what was requested (and was eventually provided).

http://www.wired.com/2013/10/lavabit_unsealed/

From your cite:

> "earlier orders intended to monitor a particular Lavabit user’s metadata."

> "the documents indicate the bureau was still trying only to capture metadata on one user."

> "while the metadata stream would be captured by a device, the device does not download, does not store, no one looks at it, [and] at the back end of the filter, we get what we’re required to get under the order."

> "So there’s no agents looking through the 400,000 other bits of information, customers, whatever, [...] No one looks at that, no one stores it, no one has access to it."

So, they were still only looking for (and recording) metadata on one user...

> We have secret courts that authorize the killing of American citizens

You say this like it's an everyday occurrence, something that happens repeatedly, many many times. But it isn't - it happened once when Anwar al-Awlaki [1] was killed in a drone strike. [ EDIT - should be "happens rarely" not just once ]

As for the 'electronic police state' comment, again this is untrue. The purpose of the bulk surveillance is absolutely NOT to gather evidence against citizens. In fact, it is used agains foreigners only for national security and intelligence purposes. In absolutely exceptional circumstances it is permissible to search the collected data for records pertaining to citizens, but we see in the Snowden documents that there are legal safeguards and procedures to protect against accidental or inadvertant surveillance of citizens.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki

The frequency is not really relevant. It was and is legal and faced no real opposition.

>The purpose of the bulk surveillance is absolutely NOT to gather evidence against citizens.

They admit themselves they gather bulk data on everything. The intent of an organization that has proven to lie through their teeth and break the law really means nothing. Intent is also pointless, the action is what matters.

>In fact, it is used agains foreigners only for national security and intelligence purposes.

This is simply not true.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/27/nsa-employee-sp...

www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/nsa-porn-muslims_n_4346128.htm

www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/08/23/bloomberg_report_nsa_employees_have_deliberately_abused_their_power.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-nsa-can-abuse-data-on-ame...

https://www.rt.com/usa/nsa-domestic-surveillance-abuse-684/

There are hundreds of resources and examples showing rampant abuse and non-security related surveillance of Americans.

edit: don't forget its use for corporate espionage: http://sputniknews.com/latam/20150707/1024322295.html

The cases you are citing are all unauthorized accesses and abuses, not systematic government policy. Your argument seems to be that because a law could be broken, then it must be being broken, which is hardly useful.

The law can be broken, there is abundant evidence that it is broken constantly, and there is very little to no accountability when it is broken. There may as well be no law at all. The entire fucking program was illegal for years and it didn't stop them. They literally don't give a shit if what they're doing is illegal.

Your supposition that "there may as well be no laws at all" is very extreme and no credible person would support it.

> it happened once when Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in a drone strike.

There have been three US citizens[2] killed by two separate drone strikes. Anwar al-Awlaki is one; in that same strike also killed was Samir Khan — the very Wikipedia article you linked to mentions this. In a separate strike[1], Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki (the son of Anwar), a 16 year old with "no connection to terrorism", was killed.

> You say this like it's an everyday occurrence

Even that it isn't an everyday occurrence, how does that justify taking the life of an American citizen without providing due process to that citizen?

> procedures to protect against accidental or inadvertant surveillance of citizens

This is not even remotely true; the Wikipedia article on the NSA states that the NSA "[relies] on a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act whereby the entirety of US communications may be considered 'relevant' to a terrorism investigation if it is expected that even a tiny minority may relate to terrorism"; the 120 million Verizon subscribers whose data was collected were protected against "accidental or inadvertant surveillance"?

Programs such as MUSCULAR[3] gathered data secretly on American companies' data-center links.

But let's consider that perhaps you don't believe "merely" spying on someone to be a violation of the constitution; let's say that the collected information needs to be actually used against a citizen:

> In August 2013 it was revealed that a 2005 IRS training document showed that NSA intelligence intercepts and wiretaps, both foreign and domestic, were being supplied to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and were illegally used to launch criminal investigations of US citizens. Law enforcement agents were directed to conceal how the investigations began and recreate an apparently legal investigative trail by re-obtaining the same evidence by other means.

(emphasis mine)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdulrahman_al-Awlaki [2]: https://www.aclu.org/cases/al-aulaqi-v-panetta-constitutiona... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUSCULAR_(surveillance_program...

We all saw the GCHQ documents, and we all know there is no way to separate bulk "American" content/metadata from non-American. The government considers the most intimate affairs (LOVEINT, SEXINT, etc) as firmly their business to snoop on for the purposes of future blackmail-- it does you no favors to deny this, and puts you in a counterfactual position.

The "Main Core" intel database has dossiers on every person they could find data on. There are no distinctions between foreigners and Americans, as we saw from the Snowden docs.

We also saw from Snowden docs that the DEA among other organizations definitely (100%, utterly indisputable, look at wikipedia if you are unclear on this matter) use "parallel construction" in which the NSA passes evidence for criminal cases to the DEA, which then obfuscates the source before going to trial.

Stop shilling, either intentionally or unintentionally.

How on earth can I be an unintentional shill?

"A shill [...] publicly helps a[n] organization without disclosing that they have a close relationship with the organization." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shill

Try replying to my argument. Your OP talking points are false.

Nobody is going to engage with you if you use the word "shill". It is the rhetoric of conspiracy theorists, and debate with conspiracy theorists is not technically possible.

Try replying to the points I raised. Responses like yours which essentially state "we can't discuss this issue as a group because of some social norm I don't like" really do scream out that someone doesn't want to bite into the meat of the issue.

Some people think living in a police state is where it is absurdly easy for the police to do their job.

Like say being able to casually do an X-Ray scan of any car or vehicle they see.

Some people think lots of things.

If you've ever been in an actual police state, you'd understand that New York isn't one.

Try walking around New York after dark as an African American or Latino male and tell me again how it's not an actual police state.

s/actual/archaic

You overlook what technology has opened up in terms of non-invasive surveillance.

"Police state is a term denoting government that exercises power arbitrarily through the police."

Like say....stop and frisking "shady" people who've committed no crime?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_state

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