We need a peaceful solution for this. Vote these people away. Replace them by better people. Educate those who think they have nothing to hide.
People love a figurehead to moan and blame, but it's not ever as simple as that. I'm not making excuses for Obama, but he's also up against the establishment.
The weird thing is, I'd read about Prism a few weeks back, and like others have just been under the assumption that my electronic data isn't secure. That's not to say I'm happy about it. If the NSA wasn't doing it, then someone else would be. I know that's a pretty crappy line, but it's the normal diatribe for the advocation of defence policies.
I'm totally disillusioned with British politics, so have the same sinking feeling, along with others to the point of apathy - which is really quite sad. I think the expression is 'don't let the bastards grind you down', I feel ground down. Our current government is a sad mishmash of nearly theres, and we haven't even got a viable opposition at the moment. Good times. That along with media lies, and the average Joe paying the price for corporate crimes - is all pretty shitty.
The worst thing about all of this, is that you end up questioning whether this is legitimate or not, is the US just bigging up their capabilities - is this all just disinfo?
Either way, the hot pot of data that a silo like Facebook has, is just gagging to get into the hands of the wrong doers, and that's probably a tough force to be reckoned with.
Obama's not 'up against' the establishment. He is the establishment. After everything he's done, how on earth are people still ascribing good intentions to this guy?
If you look at the 2012 presidential debate topics, it is mostly devoid of any real substantive insights into the candidates world view or ethics. This leaves the citizens to deduce disparate idealized versions of the candidate based on mostly trivial or momentary current event topics. Combined with the two party system, you get a citizenry with black and white goggles. The average person never has to think philosophically about how elected officials might steer the moral and ethical direction of the country.
I'd much rather have a politician that bas his plans on the latest known evidence, rather than blindly adhering to promises made. This isn't to suggest that this is what happened here, but frankly, it's too early to tell. Information is still being spilled day by day.
And for many of this, it isn't news. It's stuff we've known was going on for a long time. But shit, some whistleblower comes out and everyone suddenly becomes all for privacy, forgetting that countless times scaremongers and conspiracy theorists were shouted down.
This is what the American people voted for many times, not just in the presidential elections. And it didn't start with Obama.
So, until you can answer "How many lives is a promise worth?" you're simply playing arm chair politics. It's easy to get indignant and out of sorts when you don't have any responsibility.
Is he or is he not the establishment, that's probably another debate in itself.
I'm over the pond here, so I can't quite grok the American reaction to the recent news over this Prism stuff. I'd expect the Hacker news community to be pissed, but what's the general feeling over there?
Either people watch too much national news, and don't really hear this story, or if they do know about it they don't believe it's that big of a deal.
Here in the midwest, "I have nothing to hide" is a popular comment.
We need examples, emotional heart-string tugging examples of good people who had something to hide and suffered because it was exposed. I don't have any off the top of my head, but perhaps someone has already realized this and started collecting them somewhere on the web?
http://americablog.com/2013/03/facebook-might-know-youre-gay...
One nice point raised in that article is the feeling of encroachment on personal space.
Going somewhat OT, sorry no concrete examples for you...
Like other's have said the thought that you are being watched is like being in a panopticon, or having God looking over your shoulder. Which might of course curb some people from doing wrong, but could stifle exploration and expression of our multiple personas on the web.
Some laws are easy to get on board with, others are not. You could kill your career with something like the exposure of drug taking.
There's the possibility of smear campaigns (if the data falls into the wrong hands). Did anyone hear about the news of the world police bribing scandal in the UK?
You might loose your job, if you are found to have certain political or organisational leanings.
You could find yourself the target of ethnic cleansing.
Those that have nothing to hide, probably feel right now that they are on the right side of the law. Perhaps you could identify 'criminals' by asking for a show of hands for those that 'have nothing to hide', and lock up the rest.
We all have a few skeletons in our closet, it might be nice to get these out there and seek repentence, but sadly some people are just not so tolerant, forgiving, or able to not pass judgment. And sometimes it's best to just bury these things.
really I fail to understand people here, One day they bitch about invasion of privacy the next day they want the same people to have every bit of control over their health care. Well guess what, you cannot have it both ways.
Granted he had help from a major government agency interfering with groups opposed to his reelection from gathering funds. So perhaps you didn't have a choice in who won.
This is just as flawed as the arguments that giving the government access to your email is no big deal because you gave access to Google, and they're a massive organization too, right?
I have no problem with Medicare having access to the health records of every American. Single-payer healthcare is a great system. This is completely tangential to giving the NSA/FBI similar access to information.
Comparatively speaking, it might actually be more difficult for the NSA to get unwarranted access to government medical records, since we have extensive laws on the books protecting such data. Your argument is an absolute red herring.
It's also important to consider not just the size of the organization, but the nature and extent of its powers. For instance, Google - no matter how big - cannot arrest you, try you, convict you, or imprison you. Your health insurer isn't going to send the Marines to attack another nation, no matter how many doctors they have in their network. I could go on, but the point should be clear: military and law enforcement have a unique - and uniquely dangerous - set of powers. Accordingly, they operate under structures for accountability unlike those that exist anywhere else. The extraordinary trust they're given in some areas is balanced by a distinctly high and formalized level of distrust in others (e.g. actions that are subject to prior judicial review and approval).
So contrary to what you insist, we can give some powers to some organizations, withhold the same power from others. And we can base those organization's ability exist and operate legally on the degree to which they respect and abide by these divisions, and the rule of law.
When it turns out that (a) they don't and (b) we can't respond to these violations, it's a signal that the most basic arrangement keeping our society viable is coming undone. That's a problem that needs to be solves. But thanks to the principle of divided power, it doesn't mean we have to give up intelligent arrangements for sending email or handling health care data in order to keep the police and military in line.
It probably depends on which person you're talking about and how they decide to allocate votes: some people vote to signal some measure of approval of a candidate, some people vote to send one kind of message or another, some people just vote to select one of the available candidates.
> One day they bitch about invasion of privacy the next day they want the same people to have every bit of control over their health care.
I don't know what your level of familiarity with the various threats to civil liberties is, but after reading this, one could be forgiven for thinking that you don't know very much about the recent health care legislation if your working summary is that it provides for the government to have "every bit of control" over each individual's health care.
https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/todays-cia/george-bush-center-...
Politicians can act as scribes and put down into legislation a part of the cultural ethos, but they don't do much in the way of inspiring that ethos in the first place.
Practice what you preach, call bullshit by its' name.
If you want to change the system at this state the only option is to be the system.
I mean look at how inefficient governments are… Have you ever seen one make a solid economic plus? Those archaic structures are pretty much already crumbling.
I hope and think that the kind of shit these systems are doing right now are just the death throes of an obsolete institution desperately trying not to fade into irrelevance.
The reason that governments (I'm in the UK) keep on doing this is that by its nature institutions will naturally gravitate towards this kind of behaviour, so it becomes self reinforcing.
Is it enough to just vote? Possibly not. Those peers of yours, the people you grew up with, one day they might be in Government, but don't expect them to be different from the last lot.
We need more radical action to re-establish a new relationship between a government and its people; What we have now works in many ways, but clearly it has its limits that need to be addressed.
I hate to sound pessimistic, but it is incredibly naive to even think this is possible.
To which I reply:
Your voting record.
All the people you flirted (or more) with.
What you did in Vegas (every single visit).
The details of the activities you engage in when your parents/siblings/children/significant other aren't looking.
Your religious views.
Yes, the government knows a lot about all the above, thanks to the magic of big-data.
I honestly think this might be the most important insight in the modern political landscape -- though I think it's incompletely expressed in the language on display here.
The central truth is that voting on its own is a pretty limited form of civic interaction, and as long as it's the only one, officials and citizens will tend to be pretty isolated from one another.
Lobbyists close the loop. Of course, as long as that means hired lobbying, it only closes the loop for people who can afford to hire people to lobby for them.
The question I think this analysis brings up is whether we have too many lobbyists or too few.