Hacker News Reader

Comment by Daniel_Newby | Hacker News Reader

Unaware? Mass surveillance has been going on for a long time, and everybody who cared to learn knew the immense scope. This is not a news revelation, it is a media campaign by parties who need something to talk about.

Consent of the governed is the problem. The U.S. Senate is directly elected, and the public paranoia wanted these broad pseudo-security measures.

Speaking of consent of the governed, why is the media saturated by Snowden-as-Bieber celebrity stories, and not election rigging by the IRS? Would you like to learn more?

View on HN

^ says the guy who works for ICx Nomadics, a Homeland Security contractor.

http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/sn...

Worked. When I was there I had the good fortune to mostly work on useful products, like non-fraudulent bomb detectors. (Mind you, I would cheerfully work on surveillance products.)

Just because it isn't totally new, doesn't make it a non-issue.

Blaming things on a stupid electorate just sounds like more justification of a totalitarian regime. Could it be possible that people need more information about what is going on in order to make better decisions? Let's err on the side of democracy please.

Half of Americans have an IQ under 100. Give them a sound bite about yellow cake uranium and they will line up to kill them some sandniggers. This is not an insult, just an experimental observation.

I would like to see government run something like grand juries. Randomly conscript a commission of intelligent, well-educated people to study some issue, and let them make policy. A non-democratic government need not be totalitarian.

Until those committees start selecting the committees.

Indeed. The committee selection lotteries should be very public and the guardians conscripted from the whole population.

Who could forget the calm, thorough, logical debate about liberty vs. security that took place in the media and congress, when these programs were passed?

why is the media saturated by Snowden-as-Bieber celebrity stories, and not election rigging by the IRS?

Let me guess, did your group's 501(c)(4) paperwork get held up by a few weeks?

It was months or years in some cases, and there's also evidence the IRS leaked private donor lists and audited donors.

There's no evidence of 'rigged elections' though.

U.S. political campaigns are conducted largely via tax-free contributions. Banning 1/3 of the advertisements and rallies most certainly is rigging an election.

There has never been any dearth of Tea Party content since it began. The media has been inundated with their point of view since the last presidential election. Money pours into their PACS. Nobody's stopped any TP group from running ads or rallies. Fox News is practically a Tea Party shill.

To suggest that somehow the Tea Party voice has been silenced or that their point of view hasn't been firmly established in American political consciousness is just absurd. They fail to gain traction because of the extremist nature of their views, not because the establishment is "keeping them down."

Winning elections is about getting out the vote, which is mostly a matter of money. PR firms and canvassers do not come cheap. When the IRS takes a third of your money, you lose a lot of votes.

So the people asked for something to be done without their knowledge? Uhhh.

why is the media saturated by Snowden-as-Bieber celebrity stories, and not election rigging by the IRS?

Why is it not saturated with mugshots of the people dying of starvation and thirst every minute? And why are the stories that matter, when they do get discussed, trolled with that argument? With that tool for tools, all you need is more than one issue that matters, and you can constantly bounce back and forth like a real champ.

Oh hell, this again? No you did not know. We did not know. We suspected. Only now, do any of us, not on the inside know.

Besides, if we accepted your argument, then replacing the word "surveillance" with the word "slavery" and we'd still have slaves.

I dont know if its just me, but public ignorance or consent is not an excuse not to behave well, or do the right thing. Sometimes, often even, the majority are simply wrong.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com