I still don't understand how societies accepted no-fly list, civil forfeiture, de-banking, de-platforming people and other clearly totalitarian practices in or "democratic" and "free" countries.
9/11 caused an existential panic in the US public that made them willing to accept several new things in the name of safety against a threat model they did not understand. Once those things were in place, (a) burden of proof that removing them doesn't jeopardize our safety rests on those calling for their removal and (b) the average citizen can see the list doesn't impact them so they have little opinion on keeping or removing it.
In short, it was a sticky-bit that once stuck, is hard to un-stick because people don't, generally, feel less free (day-to-day) with it in existence.
I'm old enough to have watched the change happen. There was no existential panic, but a straight up propaganda campaign waged by a collaborative media and government to ensure that this would be accepted, and that dissenters would be seen as "the other" to be feared and reviled, and potentially targeted for law enforcement action.
Seems very familiar, but history rhymes.
ETA: Regarding effects on the American psyche, https://www.webmd.com/balance/features/american-psyche-post-... summarizes some of the post-9/11 research. Probably most of interest is that 21% of Americans studied by a researcher at Carnegie Mellon believed they would be the victim of a terrorist attack within a year. That number proved to be a way-outsized overestimate, but I think it's easy to see how people accept new curtailments to freedoms (especially someone else's freedoms) if 1-in-5 of them believe they'll be personally attacked.
Once again, because of the media amplifying the terrorism over and over, repeatedly playing it on every screen and telling everyone that they were under attack. Just as you're arguing that popular opinion shouldn't be ignored, neither should the centralized actors driving that opinion. They feed into each other, and downplaying the involvement of one category of actors only serves to hide their share of the blame.
It's worth noting that since the American news model is fundamentally capitalist, one can assume, once a panic starts, that cognitively-dissonant news will be downsampled. I don't know how to disambiguate "the media caused / fed a panic" from "people weren't interested in hearing 'everything's okay and nothing has fundamentally changed' when there was a crater where two skyscrapers used to be." Did the media feed a panic, or did the public tune out cool heads?
Also if I'm reading your comment correctly, characterizing potential leadership as "cognitively-dissonant news" is a bit weird, especially with "cognitive dissonance" commonly referring to the rejection of criticism in the larger run up to the war on Iraq. With both points it feels like you're nominally agreeing, but still trying to push this framework that the news media and other leadership is inherently blameless.
> Also if I'm reading your comment correctly, characterizing potential leadership as "cognitively-dissonant news" is a bit weird
Because Americans elect their leadership, they have the advantage that many (ideally, most) voted for them and so are inclined to follow them. But they also have the disadvantage that Presidents are not thought of as infallible rulers with any kind of mandate from heaven, so when things get tough their position is a lot more fragile than many would assume. You can easily see this play out in how an untrusted executive failed to handle a pandemic recently; it didn't matter whether they were right or wrong, much of America had that President and his administration pegged as "nominally and legally in charge, but too stupid to follow" and discarded federal guidance the minute it inconvenienced them unless force of law (often and mostly: state law) prevented them from doing so.
In the run-up to the Iraq War, the cognitively-dissonant news was media suggesting Saddam Hussein's administration was not involved in global terror. True or false, it didn't fly because Americans wanted someone to blame that they were confident they could kill (as opposed to the guy who'd successfully evaded capture in Afghanistan) and Hussein was a very easy-to-believe target because he was already one generation's default bad-guy.
(But to be clear: the executive in charge during 9/11 did orchestrate a hell of a lie to get the US into another war in Iraq; that scenario is well-documented and involved multiple overt fabrications of information. I may assert that a more skeptical public that wasn't having a panic may not have bought those lies, but that's not intended to downplay the responsibility of the liars).
I think the takeaway from this sub-thread is "Scared Americans and power-hungry leadership make for a bad combination." But the larger point I wanted to emphasize is that the consequences of those changes to American law aren't as reversible as just declaring "Well those guys were monsters;" bits like the no-fly list are sticky even if the people who implemented them were bad-faith actors.
I'm also old enough to have seen the change happen, and maybe it's just that you and I lived in separate bubbles, but I really don't agree with this. I absolutely did see an existential panic in the general population, we were in an insane frenzy, and I don't get the sense that the media or government needed a propaganda campaign to get this sort of shit passed. Aside from a very small number of dissenters (including myself), we were all out for blood and there was no such thing as too far. Hate crimes against People Who Look Vaguely Like They Might Be Muslims shot through the roof, in spite of the government trying to quell that sort of thing. Giant flags the size of New York City were being flown on peoples' cars left and right. Normal Americans were absolutely NOT acting normal and didn't need any push towards supporting insane policy ideas.
Keep the affected individuals at <1% (I don't know the real number) and it's a small enough set of people that they'll silently fall through the cracks. Be careful to not accidentally use it against people who are part of rich and powerful families, because they'll make a stink. Use it only against the poor, immigrants, or otherwise socially disconnected and you can keep doing it in perpetuity.
- having a bank account is a right
- civil forfeiture exists but is heavily regulated, nothing even close to the US style abuse
- there is no no fly list
- there is no credit score
Deplatforming is a private business thing, I though freedom advocates loved the right of business to serve whoever they please ?
The French consumer credit system resembles the U.S. no-fly list. Bankers have discretion on making loans and sharing consumer records, which are absolutely maintained. But consumers don’t get to look into the black box.
Nor your landlord, nor the shop in which you'll go buy a new bicycle, &c.
Also, it's much harder to get a credit in France, you don't get on the list randomly. So all in all it's completely different thing since it won't impact your day to day life for simple things such as renting a flat.
Ah, and you can still fly, you just can't get into more debt.
I’ve bought bicycles in America. Nobody checks credit.
> much harder to get a credit in France
If you aren’t rich, yes. If you have a personal banker, credit flows.
> you don't get on the list randomly
You do if you’re my friend and a SocGen clown mis-reports your mortgage as in default to the BdF.
Both systems, the U.S. no-fly and French consumer credit, share common impetuses. They’re necessary, particularly for the elites. But they’re ideologically distasteful. So a system is maintained, shrouded in secrecy and, ideally, kept clear of the hoi polloi.
This isn't good.
The alternative to credit scores is that some banker, most of whom grew up upper middle class or upper class, meets you in person, nods at your firm, masculine handshake, and decides they like the cut of your jib, complexion of your skin, and accent of your voice well enough to give you a loan and/or a reasonable rate. The inherent discrimination of this process is a huge part of the reason we shifted to credit scores in the 80s.
Credit scores are objective, algorithmic measures of credit worthiness that anyone can game upwards by following the rules. The alternative is subjective measures that are applied erratically by different human minds that will always be riddled with bias.
Citation needed. It’s in the bank’s interest to offer loans based on credit-worthiness and not on the superficial things you described.
From the outside looking in it seemed to be a bit more hoop jumping, but overall more palatable than 3 private firms, who don't give damn about you, aggregating your financial history with financial institutions' best interests in mind.
No, you get a credit because you prove you have regular, stable, safe incomes or a solid business plan.
But unfortunately that is often where things break down.
[0]: "the accused is/are the asset/s not the person/entity robbed by the police/TLA"
1) Power comes from the people. It is centered in churches, families, and limited local city governments.
2) Power comes from the government. The federal government has the most power and the power decreases all the way down to the local level, which has the least power.
The second group, obviously, has become richer and more powerful. It has also done a good job of capturing the minds of the richest and smartest people in the country, who have been convinced that problems require government solutions.
There are a lot of people who don't accept these sorts of things, but they're called racists, white nationalists, nazis, and all other sorts of horrible (and usually illogical) things. To people who aren't politically active or don't have a good understanding of political philosophy, these accusations are very effective.
"What you oppose a national list of people who are standing in the way of our great society? What are you a nazi?" etc.
There was as far as I can tell one instance of somebody doing this, and they were immediately denounced and told to stop. I agree, btw. Trudeau is an authoritarian, but he isn't a Nazi.
Government, for better or worse, is secular. I don’t have to be concerned that I am subject to the rules of someone else’s faith when I need help from an organization larger than myself.
Participation in church is voluntary. Participation in state government is not. That's the difference.
I know from experience, I’m just getting back on my feet after my own run of bad luck.
I’m not in love with the government by any means. It is inefficient and incentivizes corruption. If all the money that moved through faith-based organizations instead moved through secular organizations, I would be interested in “small government” reforms.
Are you sure? How much US Senators are openly atheists? I was shocked about 5 years ago, when I learned, that (about 5 years ago) answer was two. Yes. Two.
Look at anti-abortion laws in USA: they are all religious-based!
And it is not only USA. Poland. Russia. Greece. Some places in Germany. Not to mention Iran, Afghanistan, UAE, Qatar, Yemen...
I read them and you're making this up.
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613932028784742400
>7.Twitter policy at the time didn’t ban QAnon, but “deamplified” such accounts. About the batch of tweets that included those above, Twitter execs wrote: “We can internally confirm that a number of the accounts flagged are already included in this deamplification.”
The rest of your comment reads like beginning of The Narcissist's Prayer:
That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.
The original comment put civil asset forfeiture and no-fly lists on the same moral plane as deplatforming. The difference between deplatforming on twitter and the others is the threat of state violence. My frustration with the outrage around "The Twitter Files" is that y'all equate lobbying with state violence. I do not think that congressmen directly lobbying with twitter execs is necessarily good, but i also don't think its on par with the state disappearing people. I think it is just a distraction from real state overreach domestic and abroad and makes people like you view it as a liberal brainworm thing, when both parties are responsible for the real threat of state violence.
Twitters choice to comply or ignore the lobbying requests is within their rights as a private institution and there is no credible evidence of state coercion other than a congressman complaining.
https://www.thefire.org/news/yes-you-should-be-worried-about...
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-responds-twitter-files-...
Who are those people dangerous enough to never be allowed on a plane (despite being searched, xrayed, water bottles and corkscrews taken away from them), yet not dangerous enough to roam free everywhere else?
1) At some point, if you are on the list, they will have to tell you. If you were on the Selectee list, they could try to pretend that the additional screening was random/risk-based, but if they don't let you fly at all, they have to tell you that.
2) Aren't most of the people on the KST (know/suspected terrorist) list non-US citizens? If so, they have no chance of legally entering the US, so if they are flying here, they must be using a false identity. I'm not sure what the point of even having them on the list.
I'm not following here. Why would being a non-US citizen give you no chance to enter the US?
The only exceptions I could see would be some of those people might be allowed in as representatives of a foreign government, and there might be a few people who already have green cards and the US doesn't have enough evidence to remove them.
This is backwards: there should be a justice process _for getting onto_ said list in the first place. The US Government has 0 authority to remove a right from a US citizen without a trial.
The US Constitution is silent on whether or not this applies to non-citizens unfortunately, but my recommendation is handcuff the government's power whenever possible.
Blocking someone from riding in a common carrier ordinarily open to the public falls under the "negative right" which is the variety of rights usually ascribed.
And, even if you don't have a license to drive it's illegal for them to even check unless there is RAS you've committed a crime to initiate a stop. Meanwhile TSA searches you on no RAS.
Devil's advocate, but the point of the no fly list is to stop someone carrying a flagged ID->person mapping from getting onboard an airplane. (Because fake IDs exist, IDs are not 1:1 to people!)
If the no fly list was public, then people who wanted to get on an airplane and cause devastation would see if their current ID is blacklisted, and if so, go get a new ID under a different name. Hard but not impossible, especially with RealID constantly being delayed.
If America had verified identifying documents that couldn't be easily forged, this wouldn't be a problem, but that isn't the infrastructure we have right now, and it really wasn't the infrastructure we had when the no fly list was implemented.
Without biometric IDs, the no fly list is essentially a blacklist of IDs.
How the list is used in practice is a separate discussion from the threat modeling exercise of should the list be public.
Remember: the alternative of (non-government required) deplatforming is that anyone can do anything they want on any platform. Want to flood knitting forums with porn? Well they cannot refuse you! And that just makes it impossible for anyone to actually organise anything without constant trolling...
Look at all the disgusting and "inconsistent with your values" behavior you, or if not yourself then the other people who support your causes, will turn a blind eye to, minimize or at the very least object less to when it benefits your cause(s). Now scale that behavior up to all the diverse groups and causes that exist across a nation of 330+mil. That's how.
Regarding flight: nobody is assumed to have a right to fly, so the privilege of access to flight is easily revoked.
A "no crossing state lines" list, in contrast, is heavily mediated by the judicial system and the burden generally only placed upon those intimately and immediately entangled in a legal action.
Some of these are perpetrated by private companies and it's a much more gray area whether or not it's ok. "De-platforming" gets a lot of press but Twitter, Facebook, et al are under no obligation to let any particular person or group use their platform, nor should they be.
The no fly list still shouldn't be used for gun control. If we want gun control, we should look to do it in a way that doesn't further entrench the horse shit the USA implemented after 9/11