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Comment by anm89 | Hacker News Reader

Which is unsurprising given that its goal never had anything to do with terror in the first place.

What do you base that on?

Bush and his crew had the Patriot act written before 9/11 and were simply waiting around for a circumstance to justify enacting it.

Honestly I'm surprised this is even a controversial opinion at this point. This is exactly what Snowden exposed. That these programs were as if not more focused on internal spying than anything else.

Quite an extraordinary claim, I'm surprised _you're_ surprised it's controversial: can you share a little bit more about how Snowden exposed the Patriot Act was prewritten & waiting for an excuse to be enacted?

Claiming it was entirely conceived and written in only 42 days is the extraordinary claim. If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.

You are conflating two things. I did not claim that Snowden exposed that the patriot act was pre written. I don't believe that to be true. Snowden exposed the underlying premise, not that detail.

By Bush & Crew you meant to say Joe Biden, right? Or, perhaps all those who enrich themselves by warmongering, despite party affiliation? If you were to parse the mass edits of JB & Patriot Acts wiki pages you would find that Joe's substantial contributions to the Patriot Act have been cleansed from said pages.

And yet the OCA page still exists. The scripted narrative of politicos can't completely whitewash all historical facts. Yet.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_Counterterrorism_Act...

Obama announcing his VP gave me pause back in '08. I voted for them anyway. After they retained/appointed W.Gates & T Geitner, I realized "Change" != change, apparently.

We now have two shit choices, IMO, and truly struggle to determine which is the least evil option through all the noise. Perhaps if we knew before casting our ballot who will be in each admins' cabinets making policy decisions we could make an more informed vote.

No by Bush and crew I meant Bush and crew and you know exactly who I mean.

2001 didn't center around 2020 partisan politics. This is not a defense or condemnation of Biden.

That the legislation was in action before 9/11 has no bearing on the assertion that 'it was designed for something else'.

There were a few attempts to blow up the WTC in the 1990's and many security officials were 'sounding the alarm' on Al-Qaeda well before 9/11.

The conspiratorial views here are unsubstantiated.

Wether or not PRISM/Patriot are effective, legal or worthwhile is a huge and legit question, but they were implemented effectively for the stated objectives.

Says here it's about oil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prism-week-in-life-straig...

The supposed targets (terrorists) use tools and technologies that are invisible to PRISM and similar programs. No security expert with an interest in being truthful could have made a strong case that PRISM and similar programs would have a measurable effect on tracking down criminals and terrorists.

William Binney and Thomas Drake, two of the people who gave Snowden the insight to understand how well "normal channels" work against any whistleblowers.

Binney's thinthread program juxtaposed against what replaced it is a prime thing to start reading up to understand gp's point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance#Purposes

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