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Comment by wutwutwat | Hacker News Reader

Who expected different? This is the sort of thing that once you give up, you're not getting back. We let fear and paranoia decide it was ok and the people we gave that freedom to are never giving it back, why would they when they were given exactly what they wanted.

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Whenever there's an emergency, real or imagined, be very careful which rights you give up. Once they're gone they're probably not coming back even once the emergency is over.

9-11 was decades ago and we still haven't gotten our freedom from being surveilled back.

I fail to see how this a productive way to look at this. Rights can easily be restored if people knew that they are impacted by these programs.

We "gave up" a number of "rights" during COVID and the restrictions were voluntarily relinquished by the government as they were no longer needed. It helped that the changes were very obvious to the average person -- i.e. mask mandates and inter-state travel limitations.

(Note: I personally found some actions reasonable hence the quotes above)

I view this as an overly optimistic way of looking at this. It would not be "easy," nor do I believe it's as simple as raising awareness.

Those with power will manipulate people into preserving that power through fear, uncertainty, or doubt. Secret courts, gag orders, and disinformation will be used to keep Americans in the dark at all costs.

> Secret courts, gag orders, and disinformation will be used to keep Americans in the dark at all costs

We’re discussing a bill whose text is public and which was openly debated in the Congress. None of this was in the dark. It was just, unfortunately, wholly uninteresting to most voters.

I don't think they're talking about the renewal of FISA, but FISA itself.

Comparing the rights we gave up after 9/11 (read: actual rights that we no longer have) to the "rights" we "gave up" during the COVID era (read: inconveniences that right-wingers propagandized about) doesn't seem very genuine...

> the sort of thing that once you give up, you're not getting back

We could get it back. But we don’t care about it.

I know staffers on a handful of House and Senate staff. Nobody could understand why Judiciary was taking up this cause, because when you look at call sheets, the voters who care about privacy don’t tend to call and don’t tend to vote. (Large crossover between the lazy and/or nihilists and the privacy conscious.) That pattern bore out here, and eventually, was used to grind down the dissidents.

Hell, I didn’t bother calling about it, and my Congresswoman was trying to build a coalition for. I’m keeping my ear to the ground in case a wave of heightened give-a-shit comes through. But it strikes me there are better issues to spend time on.

I guess you would only expect different if you believed the myth that America is a free country that cares about the rights of its people.

I didn't expect any different, but I also understand that America is a failed state with an unenforced Constitution.

when did we decide that? I don't remember that. In fact I remember being vocally against it.

9/11 - patriot act, which has existed in one form or another ever since, along with countless others, and will exist in perpetuity until the end of time. Prism, warrenrtless wire taps, the room in att mirroring all their traffic for a three letter agency[0]…

at some point we decided all that was ok, either directly out of anger as we did after 9/11, or indirectly by not stopping them.

At some point we decided to elect people who would turn against us

At some point we decided we don’t care about right and wrong, for the people, we care about I’m right and you’re wrong, for our party.

0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

Like I said, I was not involved at all in bringing the patriot act into existence and no one gave feedback on it. And it looks like almost literally every single person who doesn't want it to be an existence has absolutely no say about whether it is still operational. So your reply is incorrect. if you tried to vote someone in who removed such things, your effort would be sabotaged and we have seen this multiple times. and it's obvious the so-called representatives know that we don't want it. So it is very clear that I am not even counterargued by your reply. do you have some attachment to believing that you're actually in control of your government right now? it's like people have lost their minds these days. Even the people who think they know what the hell they're talking about.

Nothing in my reply had anything to do with being in control of the government. It was actually the opposite of that.

no, not to my eyes. you said,

> at some point we decided all that was ok

> At some point we decided to elect people who would turn against us

> At some point we decided we don’t care about right and wrong,

All of those things are about no longer being in control, and they are not even necessarily true statements. Who is "we", exactly?

"we" would be every voting aged US citizen who isn't a felon. "we", yes, you, and me, allowed that to happen. You may have not wanted it, I may have not wanted it, but you, I, and every other person who didn't want it, failed to prevent it. Our inability to prevent something makes us just as guilty of our rights being taken away as those who took them, because our inaction told them it was ok. Bitching and moaning about something while still allowing it to happen isn't worth shit.

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