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Comment by diyorgasms | Hacker News Reader

It was never acceptable to many of us. But the threat of unbridled autocracy was less present under Obama than it will be under Trump, for the reasons stated in the article. It is possible to oppose these programs with some but not utmost urgency, and then be catapulted into utmost urgency by an event such as a minority of the voters electing a fascist.

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> But the threat of unbridled autocracy was less present under Obama than it will be under Trump.

The creation of the laws is the creation of the autocratic power. The temperment of who ever is in power at a particular point is irrelivent. By creating the law you automatically open the door to use those laws.

Agreed, and I opposed the Bush expansion of executive powers and the Obama expansion of executive powers. Perhaps not everyone has been ideologically consistent throughout this process but there are those of us who have.

And as you have pointed out, the major difference is temperament. Obama has not exhibited a temperament that has led me to believe he would use these powers to round up run-of-the-mill opposition. Trump's opposition to protests and potential unwillingness to concede an electoral loss leads me to believe he would mobilize the executive apparatus into dictatorship, unlike Obama or Bush before him.

Good, there are not many who have evaded the grips of the partisan blob.

Each side takes credit for the same national security policy wrapped in different language and each side pushes the policy a little father. The perfection of the total surveillance state with unlimited Presidential power is truly the bipartisan crown jewel that the Washington consensus wants.

Its a dramatic picture but maybe people need to be scared out of there apathy at this point.

> The creation of the laws is the creation of the autocratic power

That isn't true in the U.S. system: Laws are created democratically, are subject to other laws (in the Constitution, conflicting laws, court rulings), and the actor's (e.g. the President's) power is limited by the law itself, other laws, institutions, and other branches of government. Furthermore, many laws remove or constrain power, such as those in the Bill of Rights.

s/many/most/

Obama betrayed liberal ideals by enforcing and extending Bush's surveillance policies.

Ah, but it is acceptable to the majority for Apple & Google, and now, with a vengance, MS. Or the ISPs and telecoms. Or the IoTs. But not for the guv, unless a 'good guy' is in charge.

Copy that.

I think the majority doesn't think of this at all. And for many of us, it was never acceptable for Apple, Google, MS, the telecoms, or IoT products to do this either. That's why many of us use FOSS and encrypt everything and use VPNs to mitigate these companies' access to our data.

You, like many others in this thread, are trying to point out hypocrisy and ideological inconsistencies where there are none, as some sort of "gotcha" so you can justify the belief that your political opponents are somehow worse than you are.

I apologize, my post was out-of-line and misdirected. I too participate in the FOSS community, recently upgraded my N900 to a N4 w/ CM rom and retired from moonlighting as a PC tech 2 years back b/c Apple's geniuses will fix it for free & I could no longer protect my Windows customers' interests from data thieves(IMO) like Apple, Google, every SaaS under the sun... Windows was fairly easy to harden & idiot-proof until MS jumped on the spyware wagon w/ a vengence... cannot fix what is broken at the core.

To explain my chagrin, the problem I have witnessed over the last 15 years is there are huge inconsistencies in peoples' daily choices and the providers know all the right buttons to push to increase adoption and use highly specialized marketing, over-verbose ToS's and NDA's to evade scrutiny. Lobbyists and "Privacy Committes" make new laws to make previously illegal practices now legal.Your willingness to curtail noe or be less concerned based on whom is currently collecting is a perfect example(IMO) of rationalizing choices. Every(sic) service provider now treats data collection as a part of any standard business model. Ever read Gmail's ToS? As far as I have seen, it is the only ToS that states plainly in the first paragraphs exactly what they are doing. And yet, informed people rationalize that choice for a variety of reasons.

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