To think anyone would feel safe in the USA is ridiculous, the USA is one of the last places anyone should seek refuge in modern times. What scares me most is the United States influence inside Australia.
* "extraordinary renditions" (kidnapping), sometimes of the wrong person who after months gets dumped in Albania.
* "enhanced interrogation techniques" such as waterboarding (torture)
* holding people indefinitely without charge or trial in Guantanamo Bay
* killing people remotely in foreign countries, including their own citizens based on the president's decision. Sometimes through mistaken identity or bad intel or pure human error the wrong person is killed, or the right person is killed with their children
* The "Kids for Cash Scandal" where a judge received kickbacks from a prison owner to give juveniles harsher sentences.
* And finally, spying at an enormous degree on the US population at large.
These are astonishing things and I'm even more staggered that people en masse don't get outraged by these things and demand change.
And that's the problem, while people have their comforts and believe that bad things only happen to other "guilty" people, or should I say other guilty "Americans", government gets away with what ever it likes.
What you're reading/seeing is an ever increasingly opinionated and vocal crowd that think they possess the truth and are right about everything. They want a perfect system. And a simple system. And worst of all, they don't know what they don't know (how utterly destructive their actions and changes would be). So this negativity parade continues... Where they hold a magnifying glass on the few negative events while pretending what they are seeing is the entire picture.
All those things I listed are well-documented. For the sake of keeping my post short I didn't post links to the appropriate Wikipedia articles nor to mainstream US online newspapers that reported the events.
I'm pretty sure we could look at any person or government, find all their past flaws/mistakes and only list this to show that the person is 'evil'. But without looking at the bigger picture of everything they do, you aren't being fair with your judgement of that person/country.
In all but one of the examples cited, this was acknowledged, deliberate policy of the government at many levels. Extraordinary rendition, imprisonment without charge, torture, drone strikes, all were known, approved of, and carried out with the assistance of many levels of the central government.
The only example there that can be reasonably cited as an aberration of the norm is the judge taking payoffs for heavy sentences - that's an example of one piece of the machine going rogue.
Sure, the US has done good during all this time as well, but the atrocities cited are not "exceptions", they are a core part of the American government of the past decade.
As in all things in life there's a tradeoff between "justice" and "security". Luckily for you and most of the people in this thread, you get to benefit from the actions of people who have to make that call, while looking down on them from your moral high horse in your comfortably AC'ed parents' basement.
But actually, even (very generously) at 100,000 brand-new prisoners for the USG to deal with it would certainly cope just fine (an increase of 4% on the current prison population). And imagine all the money which would be saved from surveillance programs if all the terrorists were dealt with!
> As in all things in life there's a tradeoff between "justice" and "security"
Some amount of tradeoff between freedom and security, I will grant you. But I can't see how strong security precludes us from actually bothering to properly investigate, try, and incarcerate people. That's just laziness, if not pure malice.
just ask any black guy in a court room.
Weighing information is the nature of judgement. Sometimes we don't know what we don't know. Sometimes we don't care what we don't know. Sometimes we don't care even though we know. It's the nature of the human machine.
This is the principal reason for the old adage "Life's Unfair".
It's just that we usually won't notice that until it's unfair to us.
We should fix these negative things as they come up instead of doing the gymnastics it takes to justify them. You never want to get caught fighting a rear guard action against the truth.
So are many of the positive events powertower mentioned.
Either way, you don't even live in your own native country let alone the US, you don't have a dog in this hunt.
Oh, and if you think Spain is a good example of a decent place to live; look up those bull runs. Barbaric.
I'm not agreeing with him and I'm not disagreeing with you. I just don't think the way you're attacking him is entirely appropriate.
That's a terrible phrasing. Every society generates the characteristics of its "exceptions" through its internal contradictions.
That phrasing means that definitions describe the whole or major; they don't describe the minor... That is, I'm not going to describe the buildings of an entire city as derelict, when only a few are so.
That's actually a good point you're making against yourself, because I went to a public school from grades 4-12, and spent 5 years in state college. Not once was a gun fired. And most people will say the same.
What you listed are again exceptions...
America has 300MM people, 400MM guns, some crazy violent demographics, yet the "school shooting" incidence in the last 40 years can be counted on two hands. And from what I've heard, have been steadily decreasing.
Even if they were 10x the rate, they would still be exceptions to the rule.
Wow, you are either not informed, not human (got like 100 fingers per hand?) or using some very narrow definition of school shooting (like children below 6 in Michigan).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the...
So let me rephrase, how many school shooting can you count on your hands that you knew about? I'm guessing you won't make it pass your two hands.
I'm not going to count crime infested ghetto area school shootings that involve a 70% dropout and incarceration rate, where one student shoots another over some argument over a girl. Nor gang related violence in those same schools. They will do that in and out of school as much as anywhere else. It's not related to any particlar place or time.
I'm not going to count a depressed kid that goes into the school to commit suicide in the bathroom. Nor someone that purposely shoots someone else in the butt and gives up. Or attempts to murder one single person at school because they don't know were that other person lives and it's convinent... All those things have nothing to do with schools.
What I'm going to do is only count real school shootings that involve someone walking in and trying to kill as many people as possible. And weight that against all the non-school shooting events in relation to the the number of pupils, schools, and days. Guess what happens then?
Data should always be filtered, outliers removed, then normalized or standardized.
Enough to know that it's larger than ten. And knowledge of shootings is like the worst possible criteria. How many people you knew that died of asthma?
Why not count the crime infested ghetto? They are also result of current politics in one way or other.
I'm guessing with enough applied statistic any conclusion you wish can be reached. Also even by that statistics you'll reach a conclusion that American has a lot of school killings compared to other countries of similar wealth.
But positive and negative events don't cancel each other out. It's not arithmetic. If you have 1,000 excellent meals for every time you get poisoned, the 1,000 excellent meals really aren't relevant and they're certainly no consolation.
First of all, if you really didn't know the U.S. government and military had some creepy capabilities, you're not living on planet earth. Anyone with a brainstem and a basic interest in security and crypto can decipher this basic truth. Many even believe they can crack RSA and similar encryption schemes.
Second of all, I don't begrudge any country their right to choose their principles and their form of government - that includes the Iranians and the rest of the Islamic world. In the U.S., we have a much stronger defense backbone than most countries. That's because we're a bigger target than most countries. You may have heard the U.S. is a major world superpower. New Zealand isn't. Neither is Spain. For a "New Zealander living in Spain" to cast this judgment on us is, as I see it, unfair. Our elected officials, elected according to our chosen system of government, voted for these measures. What more can you ask of a democratic system?
These "whistleblowers" everyone sympathizes so much with -- they broke the laws of our country. They released classified information to the public. Why not just release the nuke launch codes on Twitter while you're at it? Free speech has limitations. Si vis pacem, para bellum.
As an American, I have no problem with the NSA using large-scale statistical methods to filter my private communications out as "not related to terrorism." After all, it's not like Carrie from Homeland is chillin' at the CIA reading my texts with my girlfriend. They have neither time nor inclination for that. On the other hand, I very much do mind New York City being used for another terrorist attack. If these measures can keep me and my loved ones safe, I applaud them.
If you don't like the way we do business in this country, fine. Stay in Spain and use your own social networks and search engines and mail platforms. The beauty of the world is there's something for everyone, from Sharia law to Scandinavia.
And if you don't like the way we treat combattants in our wars -- which included, by the way, the right to appeal to the Supreme Court, and many judicial and legislative battles over the rights of non-military combattants -- don't fight the U.S. military. It's a pretty simple equation. It seems to me, the people with the most to fear here also have the most to hide.
Let the flamefest begin.
I live in NYC. I used to be in the WTC on a weekly basis for business. I was in Rockefeller Center when anthrax was found in Rockefeller Center (that was actually kinda scary). I'm aware that 'PRISM' purportedly prevented a NYC subway bombing. This isn't to say I'm 'so brave'. It's just to give the context that I'm not removed from the situation.
With that context, I'd much rather take my chances with increased terrorist activity than give the government expanded surveillance powers.
Also, I agree with this.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2013/06/09/i-am-so-fucking-over...
you want to see the villain, look in the mirror. It’s the pants-wetting populace of the United States, who votes for these assholes who pass bad laws in moments of crisis, because we have to do something and because Americans, unlike every other nation in the world, have a god given right to be safe at all times from all things.
REALLY? Could you say that with a straight face to a victim's family member?
BTW, where does your logic stop?
My brother got killed by a drunk driver, but at least the government can't read my facebook messages about porn and cat pictures...
I'm sure we could cut down on drunk driving fatalities (10K / year) if we applied the NSA to the problem. Should the government search through Facebook messages and Gmail to see if people are writing stuff like 'man I drove hammered last night'?
The more likely result is 100000's innocent Americans are placed on the no-fly list, thousands of innocent non-americans are waterboarded in Guantanimo, etc for each potential terrorist stopped.
Most terrorists are incompetent and would get stopped get good police work or fail because the bombs do not explode.
Let's say in a few years a corrupt politician manages to get himself elected president. For convenience, let's call him Dick Cheney. President Cheney expands the powers of the office, rewards his corporate friends who bought it for him and generally makes a mess of things. It doesn't look like he'll get a second term until there's another big terrorist attack. He makes his opponents look weak on security, further expands his power, starts three wars and gets re-elected easily. In his second term, he gets presidential term limits repealed, doubles the national debt and starts making journalists who ask too many questions "disappear".
People start to get fed up. They realize the terrorist threat is overblown. They realize President Cheney is more of a threat to the country than any outside entity. A challenger emerges. He persuasively argues for solutions all the experts agree are wonderful. He's well-spoken, good-looking, charismatic, entirely electable. He promises to restore civil liberties, release political prisoners and end intrusive surveillance. He's expected to win in a landslide. There's just one problem: he likes Thai ladyboys. Thanks to PRISM, Cheney knows, and ensures that a friend at Fox News finds irrefutable proof. Cheney wins a third term. The opposition candidate is later found with his throat slit outside a brothel in Bangkok.
When you get accused of a federal crime and they use the handful of terabytes of all your data against you, what then? How can you possibly defend yourself against an entity with unlimited power and funding. Check out how much it costs to defend yourself from a federal charge and what the chances of winning are. If your charge is anything remotely national security related, you have zero chance. Partly because of the massive data they have on every citizen.
> I very much do mind New York City being used for another terrorist attack.
Has PRISM or any other program done this? When we do find out about foiled terrorism plots, it always has to do with FBI informants posing as arms dealers or fellow extremists, which ends with an arrest of a low-hanging fruit weirdo who may or may not be dangerous. All this infrastructure didn't stop the shoe bomber or the underwear guy. Those guys were mildly determined. How will it stop a group as organized as the 9/11 bombers?
And by the way -- why would I be accused of a FEDERAL CRIME? I didn't do anything wrong. If anything, _their collection of my data could be used to exonerate me_. Data is a two way street. It can both prove or disprove your guilt.
Be real. You and I both know that when it comes to national security, we do what we have to do. That doesn't mean we exploit those capabilities to put people in unfair situations. You let me know the first time someone gets picked up on a petty offense from PRISM-collected data. I doubt PRISM even collects data on offenses short of treason, terror plots, etc. Certainly none of that falls under the purview of the agencies involved.
By the way - you know other countries are engaged in the cyber war, right? Are you saying you don't want our government's protection against them actually _stealing_ your data and using it for god knows what purpose?
When I traveled to the US first time with a new passport (Chicago, year 200X) I was taken to a police station at the airport and made to answer various questions (I'm a whiter than white male from Northern Europe). The answers were entered into what I assume is some monster database, and I was never explained why this was done or what would be done with the data. It certainly didn't make me feel like I was entering the "land of the free", rather I felt like I was entering a police state.
I had to... because it seems for the USA, any Mexican that dares to enter the country is a potential criminal, so there I am in the huge Mexa database. Just because I needed to spend a week in the USA for work.
Whereas the 7 years I lived in Europe (UK and Germany) I did not feel as "guilty". Even with Germany's Rathaus compulsory city registrations.
I would guess that every Mexican is treated as a potential illegal immigrant.
Having said that, last few times have been pretty painless. Although I must admit the idea of the fingerprinting does freak me out I'm usually in a state where I don't care when I actually get there.
Kind of a damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don't thing, I fear.
However, my (US citizen) wife gets harassed here at the UK border all the time; a couple of months ago she was detained at London Heathrow Airport for several hours by the UK Border Agency for no particular reason.
But, OTOTH, I do think most people see Europe as more open than the US. It's not like it's a unique and magical "land of the free" like some people seem to believe.
So while I can't say I like the amount of CCTV here, it's a lot less sinister than portrayed.
Now, some parts of central London is very well covered by live, monitored CCTV, though.
No, people are just sent to Gitmo to be waterboarded and held indefinite without a trial. They don't even care the nationality of where you come from.
(Looking at how Bradley Manning was treated even shows that US citizens aren't treated much better. Being denied a lawyer and confined to solitary cells for months is not much different from torture.)
I remember this vividly because Manning's own lawyer was the one who admitted that Manning had joked about killing himself before being placed on prevention-of-suicide status...
That said, US citizens has been sent to gitmo. They might been transferred out of there at a later time, but there is no denying that it happened. Then we have people like José Padilla who was held for several years without a trial, and only after major pressure from civil groups was he transferred to a civilian court. Being indefinite held without a trial until political pressure pushes the issues to the breaking point does not exactly paint a great picture.
It continues: "But although Yasser Hamdi was born in the USA, he was raised in Saudi Arabia, and Joint Task Force Guantanamo counter-terrorism analysts did not realize he was an American."
Your original comment was: "No, people are just sent to Gitmo to be waterboarded and held indefinite without a trial. They don't even care the nationality of where you come from."
They obviously care, which is why the American citizens were either transferred out or never sent there in the first place, despite being caught fighting in Afghanistan.
Now when it comes to foreigners there's not much that can be said for the U.S - although the border can be somewhat thin with extraordinary renditions and withdrawal of nationality to allow for arbitrary executions. Also, it seems that the will to deconstruct civil liberties is nowhere as strong as it is in Washington DC (except in Pyongyang), so that doesn't help. And the american people do not seem to care at all (but then again, the same is happening in Europe to a smaller extent, and the people don't care either)
So I'd say this perception is more linked to the direction you're headed to than to the place where you are right now (although that is scary in its own right too)
Some days I just think I should move to Iceland
No. But US citizens are routinely arrested and placed in solitary confinement (widely held to be worse than a labor camp) for decades without a trial (guilt is nearly always resolved via plea bargains using the threat of even more years). And by "routinely" I mean the highest incarceration rate in the world: about 0.75% of the population.
It's funny how you mention having a jail cell with no one to bother you as worse than a labor camp though. I think those who have survived gulags or Nazi labor camps might disagree with you on that.
I did say it's still better than labor camps, especially for the types of "solitary confinement" usually being discussed, which are "cells or prison wings without other prisoners" and not "dark holes with only a slot on the door".
Should I ever go to prison I would greatly prefer the "prison wing without other prisoners", though I understand that's only a personal preference.
I feel perfectly safe. This whole entire issue about the government collecting meta-data is overblown IMO. And comparing it to tyranny and demanding rioting on the streets is literally self-destructive and utmost retarded.
Maybe you need to compare it to a country like the Republic of Congo to get an idea of what's safe and what's not. But instead the majority of people here sit in their comfortable chair in front of the computer fantasizing about how much they hate the government and how much the government must hate them.
An American colleague of mine (doing a 2nd PhD in Liverpool while I was doing my first/only one) told me he did not create accounts in Google/Yahoo/Hot mail not because of what could happen at this time, but at what the people with that information could do in the future.
Right now, you feel perfectly safe in your comfortable chair, having all your information in Google, Facebook, and other servers. But after a small wrong turn of events (that I hope do not happen), you might find yourself in the wrong place and the wrong time, and all your innocently shared information (shared with google, microsoft, facebook, etc) will be used by your government to condemn you.
Modern US patriotism at its finest: find the shittiest place you can think of and compare the US to that to show how great it is.
Can you get up in the morning, turn on your coffee maker, shower, eat, get in your car, drive to work, ... enjoy your free time, etc? Do you know how many safe things need to happen for any of those events to work? Think about it. From the electricity to the police force to the gas prices and 100 other things.
Or just compare it to Russia, China, UK, etc. A place with at least 100MM people...
We'll both still choose to live in the USA.
So, your argument is that the USA is as safe as Russia and China? I mean, I'm sure there are plenty of people in those countries that were able to accomplish those tasks today without a problem.
I get hassled a lot more by LE in the US on trips there than anywhere else. Hell, I made it across eurasia with a grand total of one brush with the law, which went away with a bribe.
I feel unsafe in the US. Not because of "the terrorists", but because of the jackbooted thugs that you call your government and her agencies.
Survivor bias. Your experience in Congo does not in any way discredit events of genocide, rape, catabolism, and all the other crazy things happening in those parts of the world.
> but because of the jackbooted thugs that you call your government and her agencies.
Someone asked to see your ID?
For most people, living in the USA is a simple and non-violent experience as far as the government goes. You can post your outliners, but that's all they are.
1) So if you went to disney and came home safe, that's survivor bias? 2) You don't have rape in the US? Way to go!
> Someone asked to see your ID?
1) Yes, and they didn't like it ("what state is this from?" "England" "but what state?") so I spent a night in a cell.
2) At the tender age of 13 while living in Chicago, I was threatened with spending the rest of my youth in juvie... for throwing a bit of gravel at a closed window to get someone's attention. This went as far as court.
> For most people
Ah, you're William Hague, right? Nothing to fear if you've nothing to hide?
You'd be there in 1938 shuffling into a cattle car believing that your benevolent government was sending you to a holiday camp.
Oh, and finally...
But instead the majority of people here sit in their comfortable chair in front of the computer fantasizing about how bad things are outside of their glorious america, having never left their home city, never mind state.
imprisonment of people opposing the regime, especially the intelligence agencies -> check
Torture of prisoners -> check
Overly broad powers of the government without checks and balances -> check
Intelligence agencies spying on all citizens -> check.
Yeah, surely an incomprehensible comparison.
and most of that isn't even new, the veil of the american dream has been ripped apart.
what is most depressing is that in the next election cycle, the american people will just run back to the republicans instead of finally giving up on the charade that are political parties
How does that work exactly? Do banks operate in a vacuum in the economy?
It's my understanding that social program spending (and hence the deficit) over the recession was at all time highs. "Main Street" got its share of the bail out, as it should have.
For example, the fact that you call yourself the land of the free whilst having the largest number of people in prison both by number and proportion of the population, the whole Guantanamo Bay thing, and the constant electronic surveillance, the crazy overreach of the TSA (I couldn't believe it when I had to take off my shoes and jacket at an airport when I passed through the US a few years ago - crazy!) etc.
we see the USA in the same light as China and Russia
when it comes to freedoms
Other countries with Western European cultural traditions or influences (this includes Australia and NZ but also Japan and Israel, for example) are on the same "other hand". One reason the focus is often on the USA is how it positions itself in the ideological space, as a pinnacle of liberty and freedoms and so on. Personally, while I avoid ideologies and ideologues as much as I can, I think there is a positive side to it, which is precisely the level of scrutiny typical for the US.
True, but that just means that the people are more (but far from completely) able to be aware of what is being done to them and more free to talk about it. It doesn't change the spirit behind the government agency's actions, and even then "able to be more aware" covers a lot of ground as things like the recent revelations are only heresay (and ignored by most) until good evidence somehow becomes public knowledge.
On the other hand, yes, the USA is much better right now. However, one can say that the important distinction is that, while China in particular seems to have improved over the last 20 years, the USA has gotten worse (w.r.t. freedoms). But of course, this is up for debate.
To think anyone would feel safe in the USA is ridiculous
I'm not sure what your background is, but for 99% of the population of the world, the US is a comparatively very safe place to live.
I don't see much chance of Obama and Biden swapping roles to get round term limits (Russia).
America doesn't also have 1,000s of dissidents in jail and widespread censoring and firewalling of external objectionable content.
Have you even been to America lately? And I'm saying this as a Brit.
I don't consider the U.S. as the same as China or Russia (or North Korea, etc) but I don't consider them in the same league as any European country either.
Having said that, I think the U.S. is more of a danger outside its borders than China/Russia/N. Korea.
I haven't travelled to the U.S. in the last 10yrs, despite wanting to for conferences or meetings or a wedding, because I consider it to be a hostile environment.
If you honestly see the world this way, you might take the time learn more about China's internet. A good starting point are the 9 articles in the economist's special report:
http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21574628-intern...
America, you have NOTHING to brag about.