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Comment by jsonne | Hacker News Reader

This is complete hyperbole and you know it. Where are the secret police whisking away "dissenters" in the middle of the night? Where are the mass forced migrations of ethnic minorities? Where are the mass executions of political prisoners? Fraudulent elections? A one party state?

The fact that you made this comment on a public forum is evidence enough that we are nowhere even close to living in a police state.

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I honestly can not tell if you are being sarcastic or not...

>Where are the secret police whisking away "dissenters" in the middle of the night?

Think IRS targeting; think of the secret targeted kill lists (not only can you not know who is on it, you can not know the criteria to get on it).

>Where are the mass forced migrations of ethnic minorities?

Check the farms where you will find field hands who are likely undocumented immigrants. Or check the slums, no need to physically relocate anyone when you can economically relocate them.

>Where are the mass executions of political prisoners?

Thank goodness there is no argument here. However, we do have indefinite detentions and targeted kill lists without due process/judicial review. Maybe not mass executions, but one targeted killing by the government is to much for my tastes.

>Fraudulent elections?

Um...2000 Bush v. Gore? Florida? Certainly no known fraud, but an election decided by a single state and a few hundred votes, where thousands went missing for a period of time, not to mention the "faulty ballots" in Florida. I would say this is more like MLB during the steroid era, sure the new records still stand, but there is a asterisk next to the names.

>A one party state?

You have a choice between red or blue, either way you get budget deficits, a surveillance state, Gitmo, war of terror(opps *on), ect...

Read up on Greg Palast's investigation of voting machines. There's substantial evidence of vote tampering in 2000 and 2004.

VoterAction.org proved in court that Kerry won New Mexico in 2004, even though its electoral votes were awarded to Bush. Just the tip of the iceberg.

And the regular, massive voter fraud throughout major Democrat strongholds like Philadelphia.

There's little question BOTH parties are engaging in routine election fraud.

Even if one generously ascribes good motives to every political campaign, politicians and their staff are under enormous pressure to win. If there exists any way to cheat the system (hacked voting machines, gerrymandering, voter suppression, the list goes on), it will be taken advantage of. And We The People deserve what we get for allowing these flaws to persist.

So, while we have problems that should be addressed, it's no where close to the police state the GP was referring to.

My understanding of the GP is specifically that we should not be comparing ourselves to 1984, but instead acknowledge the real problems we are facing, the OP article being a reflection of one of the real problems.

I agree it really does not do a great deal of good to compare ourselves to some hypothetical society, especially when we have such a rich and vast historical record to compare our modern actions against. We just need to look to the history of the NSA and CIA and see a whole range of domestic spying operations (the Prisms of their day):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHAOS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MERRIMAC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MINARET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_RESISTANCE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SHAMROCK

The truth is comparing the US to some hypothetical police state we are simultaneously better off and worse off (so who cares if we are close to being that police state), but one thing is for sure our problems affect real lives on a daily basis, I think that is the point the GP was making.

You must be living in some sort of alternate reality dreamstate where these things don't happen routinely. Allow me to attempt to wake you up:

Eternal NSA surveillance. The TSA. No-fly lists. Secret prisons. Guantanamo Bay. Election rigging. Being targeted by IRS. The percentage of population that is in prison (much higher than USSR at the height of its power).

I could go on. Out of everything you stated, the only thing we don't have is mass executions of political prisoners. But the fact is, the differences between the USA and USSR are only on a matter of scale. And that scale is growing at an alarming rate.

Where are the secret prisons, anyway?

Almost all of them are overseas, outside of US territory and jurisdiction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site#Suspected_black_site...

Also, why are they still considered "secret" if random people on HN are discussing them candidly?

Because their locations are or were undisclosed, and obviously not even everyone here has heard of them. They exist.

Edited in reply They are explicitly said to exist in Hollywood propaganda film Zero Dark Thirty (2013). No, this is not proof, although it is evidence. If the establishment wants us to believe they exist, is that not troubling enough?

FYI hollywood propaganda films aren't usually the best citations...

EDIT: spelling counts...

the fact that the movie made a splash within the security community for "saying too much" helps to give credence, as well.

Yeah, it's a movie, but the people who were upset about it being released were people in authority.

With Hollywood's ties to the US Government, it was probably a fake attempt to get their buddys' movie to sell better...

who knows. theories abound.

For the same reason the Gestapo were the official secrete police of the Nazi Germany. Abbreviation of Geheime Staatspolizei, "Secret State Police"

Or the US Secret Service...

Didn't you hear of these suspected terrorists sent by the CIA to Morocco, Syria or elsewhere explicitly to be tortured?

Nope.

So if I stick my head in the sand, and refuse to believe any of these things exist, does that mean they magically disappear?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_Arar

It's unfortunate if you've managed to avoid the news for the last decade. The secret prisons the US has been running around the world have been regularly in the news since not long after 9/11.

Secret prisons. Guantanamo Bay.

As someone born in the 70s it's ironic to think that we now talk about "sending people to Gitmo" the way we used to joke as kids about people being "sent to Siberia" back when Russia was the bad guy. Funny how much things can change in your own country.

"But the fact is, the differences between the USA and USSR are only on a matter of scale."

I can still buy bread, reliably, at a corner market. I can still open a business on a whim without too much fear of bureaucrats making my life completely miserable. I don't have to worry about leaving the country.

There are very real issues with the United States, but this kind of rubbish comparison does nothing to help spur the debate onwards in a useful fashion.

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." - Mark Twain

Historical comparisons are tricky. I remember reading numerous comparisons of Bush to Hitler in 2003. On the one hand, such talk is both absurd and offensive. On the other, certain detailed similarities were extremely accurate, such as Goebbels' infamous quote about denouncing pacifists for lack of patriotism.

Nothing ever repeats exactly, and empires least of all. The best lesson that can be drawn from the history of powerful states is that they learn from one another, carrying forward the "best practices" based on what did and didn't work.

Has the U.S. become Nazi Germany, or Stalinist Russia, or even modern China? Not even close, by any metric. But have we engaged in human rights abuses analogous to other actions by those three? Undisputedly. The fact that we do so on a smaller scale and with more effective P.R. does little to help the victims.

The US incarceration rate is higher than Russia's during the height of the KGB. That's right: while the political goals and tactics are different and somehow palatable to a pliable US population, the net results of our current system are actually worse than those of most oppressive regimes in the history of the world.

What's worse is that there is no end in sight. The NSA scandal has shown the the people who make it into elected office these days are all about the same. US elections are nothing more than political theater designed to delude the population into thinking that it can make choices, when in fact the end result will be the same regardless of whom they choose. Who needs rigged elections in this environment?

Yes, this is hyperbole, like the poor kid's. And just because you had to answer it and reflect a little on it, it has served its purpose. Exactly.

So: we are not exactly there but do you not see the writing on the wall?

Being afraid of making a joke is hideous. And being afraid because of the police is, honestly, horrendous.

EDIT: did I say anything wrong? Enjoy the downvotes.

>did I say anything wrong?

Yes you did. You're basically pulling the puppetmaster defense of 'I said something incorrect but you reacted so I win'. People tend not to like that argument.

"Where are the secret police whisking away 'dissenters' in the middle of the night?"

You mean like the 40-50,000 swat team raids against non-violent political dissenters that the US government carries out each year, almost always in the middle of the night?

Even more: you can get phone-swatted, is it really believable?

That is an interesting thought. At any moment, an officer that can't get a search warrant could anonymously call 911 from a burner cell or pay phone and report a violent situation. That alone is enough for a full-scale paramilitary invasion of the target's home or office.

Doesn't even have to be violent. Just as easy to roll an informant to claim drugs dealings at a residence. Drugs seem to be easiest way to get a no-knock raid, even if your mayor.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayo...

So more than 100 a day? Where do you have that number from?

http://www.cato.org/publications/white-paper/overkill-rise-p...

So, non-violent drug users (criminals), rather than political dissenters?

Only if you don't consider civil disobedience to be a form of political dissent, or if you don't consider drug crimes to be a form of civil disobedience.

You are referring to things such as:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

...but we are not talking in terms of building a model showing the equivalence in replica between each state's government and actions (actually Stalin was a very 'unique' dictator, the same as Hitler, in relation to ANY other leader).

We are talking in terms of ideology behind a governments actions e.g. a complete disrespect for individual freedoms granted by the constitution. Tha kid was placed in jail for uttering a joke. Come on.

Don't need secret police when the kids are whisked off to jail in broad daylight, out in the open. Secret police are only required when one wants to hide such grievous acts. Quite the opposite is the case now - our leaders our proud they're Fighting Terrorists.

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