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I would actually quite like to take military grade weaponry, as you described, away from the police, or at least significantly scale it down. That level of armament is a sign of something dreadfully wrong with American society, and certainly not helpful towards fixing it.

IANAL, but I'd be surprised if the police was allowed to raid me, launch tear gas through my window and shoot me in the head. Even with a warrant. I'm not worried about this happening, because it doesn't. If it did, I'm sure it would blow up into a huge scandal.

I am worried about government agencies intercepting my traffic / communications because it does happen, it's really hard to find out unless you know what you're looking for, and they don't have a warrant on every American citizen that happens to get caught.

> Even with a warrant. I'm not worried about this happening, because it doesn't.

Spend a little time in here: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=warrant+no+knock+raid+mistake&t=ca...

Or here: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=warrant++raid+mistake+death&t=cano...

Or here: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/08/swat-t...

I'm still waiting for the scandal.

Is there a difference between ddg and startpage.com principles? Because I find startpage to be more in-line with the results I want to see.

startpage serves you google results, anonymized. It's sort of like scroogle was, I suppose.

ddg, I think, does their own spidering and also serves bing and other results (but not google), but that's from dusty memory and it could be wrong or changed. ddg will however forward your request to google if you want, and you'll get a results page from google itself. In fact I use ddg as a front end for google when I want to use google.

startpage is Dutch/American, ddg is American.

https://startpage.com/eng/company-background.html

https://duckduckgo.com/about http://dontbubble.us/

ddg's Gabriel Weinberg posts here on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=epi0Bauqu

> If it did, I'm sure it would blow up into a huge scandal.

how are you sure of that? Do you honestly think the public is privy to the movements of the people in charge?

Police having military weapons and vehicles is actually a huge problem, especially when they are punished with no more than a paid vacation for misusing them.

At any time the police could in theory fly to your house, launch tear gas into your windows, and shoot you in the head as you run out. And I don't know about you, but I'm not exactly worried about that happening to the point where I want to take guns, tear gas, and helicopters away from the police.

You might want to rethink your position: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/13/25_years_ago_philadelp...

Don't worry, I doubt he'll have to rethink his position - after all, he's almost certainly white.

The FBI as every state organization is a position of power give by the state and it's citizen to protect them from illicit activities. All of them, not some of them.

When the FBI engages in unethical and illicit practice, it's like stating that rules do not apply for them. Given for granted that they are in a position of power a priori, it's hard for me to see how this is good thing and how accountability can be held.

Also you seem to be convinced that the judge and court will apply the rule of law to the FBI as they would have done with you and me.

It is unethical or illicit for me to tap someone's phone or install malware on their computer. That doesn't mean it's illicit or unethical for the FBI to do so. The whole point of having a state is to trust it with powers that individuals should not exercise on their own authority.

"The whole point of having a state is to trust it with powers that individuals should not exercise on their own authority."

Also to address collective-action problems (like defense).

Right, and when the FBI goes rogue (because that's whats happening) what?

Obama fires the FBI director? If they're not following his policies or the law, why hasn't he?

>I don't know about you, but I'm not exactly worried about that happening to the point where I want to take guns, tear gas, and helicopters away from the police.

If we were to learn that they found it to be acceptable practice to use these weapons indiscriminately on innocent people in their efforts to catch the bad guys, I might want to take away their guns, tear gas, and helicopters.