But, as Huxley was so keen to point out, that's not going to happen when people are staring at Honey Boo Boo and Hollyoaks.
When the Berlin Wall fell, the Stasi began burning and shredding everything they could. German citizens stormed their buildings and much of the documents were saved, so that the crimes of the Stasi could be documented for prosperity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi#Recovery_of_the_Stasi_fil...
(And remember in your home and biz life, if you do whole disk encryption, you need to hibernate or shut down to get your disk/data back into its encrypted state.)
The only way to take out a TLA and seize the incriminating data is swiftly and without warning. With warning times on the order of minutes, I don't think this is possible politically or otherwise.
The best we can hope for is to shut them down, and the best we can do afterwards is punish those responsible in absence of specific evidence against them (but I don't think that we have the guts necessary to do that. However as a real-world example of that sort of response, consider the show trial and execution of Nicolae Ceaușescu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu)
----->[ good times ]---->[ hard times ] ---> [fascism] --\
^ |
\-------------------[revolution] <--------------------/
We're stuck in a pretty long loop at the moment just verging on hard times.
Edit: the "good times" above is optional.
If you were to start an armed insurrection, the government would be totally justified in ending you. Not a smart decision given today's level of technology. It was through sheer luck that the American revolution worked at all: the British commanders were so incredibly incompetent that they checkmated themselves.
There is no terrorist. The system, the agents of the USG have won the coup on freedom.
They now exist only to preserve their power, and this is the reason why apologists for the deep state are worse than fools
And we all know how effective that technology is at ending all those pesky terrorists with their zip guns and IEDs...
Those people have been indoctrinated since birth to see us as evil invaders. Some of their religions have baked in the idea that it's good to die in order to kill invaders. And we've sometimes acted like an evil invader. (See Blackwater atrocities, etc.) It's an invalid comparison because our population isn't motivated in the same way.
It's easy to become disheartened with the current state of affairs, but history has shown that ignoring reality doesn't work. Setting aside the question of ethics, the reality is that an armed revolution in America probably can't happen. And besides, there are plenty of other options to explore.
It doesn't take religion or "indoctrination since birth" for people to see an invading army as evil - it just takes an invasion.
If your country were occupied by foreign armies, you might want to fight back too - or at least you shouldn't be surprised if others do.
Blackwater!? That we were there at all was an invasion based on a lie and a tragedy of convenience. 9/11, strong connection to Afghanistan and a Saudi/Yemen family ... let's invade Iraq! I think we're still searching for the real weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destr...
A key problem I see, that I used to have, and learned from my mistake, is that the checks and balances system works.
Yes, you see the executive branch overstepping its bounds. Lots of people getting picked up. However, the judicial branch is finding the charges untenable.
It's not easy nor automatic, and costs a lot of time and research and arguing, but those amendments are still pretty damn strong. Arguments directly to them are handled in the Supreme Court all the time.
There are some dings against the 4th as of late, but don't give up and invest the time and research and arguments. Put your focus on the judicial branch and increase their power to put down bad behavior by the executive branch.
also, Brennan was sworn in on the consitutions without the bill of rights
http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-news-blog/2013/mar/08/jo...
What you have today is an illusion of the freedom and the "equal and impartial justice under the law".
http://www.popehat.com/2013/12/23/burn-the-fucking-system-to...
Nope, it's meaningless. What else are they going to say?
"It's exactly what it looks like! We just don't give a fuck about you or your rights, and in fact, we're an important part of the police state springing up all around you. When you're thinking of rebelling, remember we know where you live, where you are, and pretty much everything else about you! Stay in line, peasant!"
That would be fairly accurate, but they're not going to say it. Doesn't the propaganda just keep going anyway, even in North-Korea?
Genuine question: why do hackers and obviously smart persons believe in this cargo-cult "founding fathers" concept? As if some guidelines set by some 18th century guys are the be all end all in running a state or even mean much after centuries of "interpretation" and changing conditions (including technology).
Case in point 1: most of the things people now enjoy, from women's voting to the abolishment of child labor, to work safety laws, to the end of seggregation, were achieved by long, hard, struggles, protests and even martyrs (just like in Europe, for example), and not by some "founding fathers" decree.
Case in point 2: an armed population then was a major counterbalance against a corrupt government, being effective almost at the same level as the government's forces (as evident in tons of revolutions and stuggles around Europe for example). Today? Not so much. So this naive belief on the "right to bear guns" for this purpose is mostly BS cargo-cult.
However this idea of restrictions placed on a democracy to keep the majority from oppressing minorities is worthless without actual rules. How do you perform the initial population of this set of specially privileged rules then?
Think of it like a problem of bootstrapping trust. A pure democracy cannot be trusted (as a pure democracy trivially allows/enables the oppression of minorities), but non-pure democracies must be conceived and implemented somehow. Can you trust a constitutional democracy that was created by a pure democracy? Arguably no, since the pure democracy cannot be trusted. Can you trust a constitutional democracy that was created by a small set of arbitrary people? Again arguably no, since arbitrary people pulled from the general population wouldn't be any more trustworthy than a pure democracy. Can you trust a constitutional democracy created by a small set of particular people? If you trust those particular people, then perhaps you can trust the constitutional democracy created by them.
People want to trust their government, which leads to them wanting to trust in broad terms the general concepts and ideas that this particular founding group had.
Personally I think it's all shit. A constitutional democracy does not resolve the tyranny of the masses, it only pretends to. Democracy itself is nothing more than "might makes right" combined with a primitive notion of MAD (with anarchy and civil war being the boogieman, rather than nuclear war). Constitutional democracy is good for little more than lying to ourselves to make ourselves feel better about democracy.
I view the current situation as not unlike being locked in a hotel room. In the main room is a hungry tiger. In the bathroom, is a pissed off cobra. You're locked in there so you have to pick your poison, but the last thing you want to do is mistake "the worst choice, but better than the alternative" with a satisfactory situation. I don't have a better suggestion than democracies, but that sure as hell doesn't mean that I trust democracies. I'll sleep with the cobra (with one eye open), but I sure as hell won't praise the merits of sleeping with a cobra just because that tiger looks hungry.
When a "geek" or systemically-thinking person wakes up politically, having realized that much is going deeply wrong, the first thing he or she is likely to do is to consult the founding documents which most of us were taught in civics class or for our various merit badges comprise the guide and inspiration for our civil governance. Seeing obvious departures from the design, it is not hard to seize onto the idea that to correct things we merely need to return to the design and follow the rules. Indeed that might improve things.
The difficulty of the various struggles to implement substantial changes is hardly an indictment of the system laid out by the founding fathers. Conservatism is the rule. It is wise to temper the passions of the people for radical changes which they may press to address temporary needs. The ultimate success of campaigns to extend suffrage, abolish child labor, end slavery and segregation, and even to rollback prohibition testify to the effectiveness of the system devised. It presumably worked as intended in those instances. It failed to prevent a war between the states, the death of 600,000 men, and much other injustice in more recent times.
One can find much wisdom and value in the writings, thinking and dialog that went on at the founding of the United States and surely a measure of nonsense too. It seems clear however leaders of that time sought to grapple with the problems of governance and cooperation sincerely and with a great deal of intellect and ability. They treated these issues as matters of vital importance in a way that seems quaint and removed from our decadent era -- that is unless you live in one of the many countries lacking material comforts, safety and political stability.
The problems they sought to address have not changed much since then. Human beings are what they are, technology not withstanding.
America is and remains an experiment on many levels. Ben Franklin's remark coming out of the constitutional convention about "A republic, madam, if you can keep it" is relevant today. This surveillance business could be the end of it. So could imperial overstretch and fiscal profligacy precipitating a collapse. Its also possible that the very different demographics of the country two and a half centuries after its founding render it simply ungovernable in the way or fashion imagined by the founders.
With particular regard to the Constitution and its merits, I believe I paraphrase Lysander Spooner in saying, it either has failed to prevent tyranny or in fact provides for it. If it is so, then the verdict would be the same either way. I am not certain I have better proposition but I do not have a blind faith that in order to cure our ills all we need to do is exhibit greater fidelity to the Constitution.
Consider Mr. Putin's past as an example.
If you work with government, you'll observe this first hand. The second echelons of management that are "professional" staff run the day to day operations, and can often bend or break political directives.
Poison the routing tables.
Jam the wireless.
Take out root DNS.
I cringe slightly at quoting Firefly but it's similar in nature: "If your quarry goes to ground, leave no ground to go to."