Trump will control the NSA - what this means for your privacy | Hacker News Reader

Trump will control the NSA - what this means for your privacy

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26 pointsraldu12 comments

Ok, seriously, give me a break with this "Trump won, the sky is falling". There may well be a lot of things that Trump would be worse than Hillary might have been on (maybe...), but for crying out loud, she would have been just as bad, if not worse, on a surveillance state.

see: obama

i also agree that the only one we should listen to regarding trump's actions is trump. see what he does, everything else is just pure speculation.

Yep. If you're only bothered by surveillance now, you need to ask yourself if you were ever really bothered by surveillance at all, as opposed to being bothered by who won the election.

This stuff drives me nuts. Obama gets into office and all the people who were talking about how George W. Bush's presidency was illegitimate and the drone programs he was running were wrong suddenly switch positions to saying you have to stand with the president no matter what and drones are fine. And now Trump comes into office and everyone switches sides again.

Seriously, people think that political parties like them... what a world!

But but but... Obama stopped the influx of people into Gitmo!

I mean, sure, he did that by just drone bombing the shit out of everyone instead but...

I doubt it means anything different when Trump controls a huge and likely unconstitutional surveillance complex than when Obama controlled a huge and likely unconstitutional surveillance complex.

Yes, but neither Obama or Trump controlled the surveillance complex. They controlled Obama and will most likely control Trump also.

At least someone controlled Obama, who seemed to be a clever and liberal guy, and not someone who turned out to be one of the worst war criminals and offender of liberal or constitutional provisions. Obama could only control soft issues, the "complex" didn't care about. Or as it was leaked they even mandated the people to lead these soft issues also. And they will most likely control Trump as well, as he is just another new inexperienced outsider.

But different to Obama, Trump at least talked about clearing the house a bit. Obama also made some promises, but on the very first days he betrayed them with the Raytheon lobbyist Lynn, violating his own new ethic rules. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Lynn_III#Deputy_Sec...

I mean, can you really tease it out? I don't think Obama ever wanted to shake up the security complex in the first place.

Its wishful thinking to imagine anyone 'controls the NSA'. They spy on Senators for gods sake.

It's hard to say because so far it's not like any president has shown any interest in reining them in. I think the last president with any real interest in muzzling the CIA was Carter and that work has all been undone by now.

This is the guy who would drop out after New Hampshire, would never get the nomination and would lose the general election in a landslide. All this "Trump will do X", "Trump will do Y" is meaningless speculation at this point.

With all the regulatory agencies Trump and his social circle have had to deal with over the course of their careers I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't buck the trend when it came to authoritarian surveillance.

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