The Day We Fight Back: February 11, 2014
This is a protest movement against NSA spying on American citizens, sponsored by the likes of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reddit, Fight for the Future, and more.
I don't know if there'll be any presence out in Denver...
Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Comments
-is ignorant about current issues-
^ The US could use that power to spy on its own citizens for a lot of nefarious purposes, and since the NSA is only accountable to a court that approves everything the NSA does, no one can stop them. Just the threat of being spied on is enough to create a "chilling effect" on free speech, which is a bad thing for a democracy.
Also, people like their privacy.
They aren't going to be able to spy on everyone's internet use, all the time. That's far too much information; you'd need loads and loads of workers doing nothing but watching; and about 99.998% of it would be non-useful. Sure, they'd get sensitive information, but it'd be buried in a huge ocean of information. Finding a needle in a stack of needles the size of a house.
Even if they can collect all that information, its not as though they have the manpower to read it all. The amount of stuff you'd gain from that compared to the amount of manpower needed would be simply inefficient.
It was you internet types who were saying things like "Information wants to be free", and supporting wikileaks, And it was you guys who were like “If there is incriminating or embarrassing information about a government; it should be made available. Governmentsshould be made accountable to the people.”.
And supporting stuff like free information; transparency, and such. And saying stuff like “I have a right to information,I have a right to know and be informed”
.But now, when the government wants access to incriminating or embarrassing information about you; you’re like “Wait! Privacy is an inalienable and inherent right! I don’t want you having this information, and my wishes should be respected.” And where’s the “citizens should be made accountable to the government” talk, eh? What about that right to information; the right to know and be informed?
I thought information wanted to be free.
Really, I have no problem with you wanting to rule the world, but it does seem like every post you make contains instances of the phrase "you [folks/people/etc.]" and it's really rather irritating, nobody here is personally responsible for the infrastructure of the United States government or the governments of any of the other western nations represented in our userbase.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
I'm gonna assume this is a dialect thing.
The phrase "you people" has negative connotations in the US (at least the part that I live in anyway) that I'm finding it hard to put into words (it can also be sorta racist but that's not really what I'm thinking about here).
Generally when one wants to refer to the US government one just says "The US government".
I don't know, maybe I'm just being irritable.
Crap, that changes everything. D: In that case, there is effective surveillance and monitoring. Since they have a practical way to seek out people and find incriminating data, there's nothing stopping them from finding and monitoring people with dissident ideologies. I was certain the practical difficulties of information sifting would prevent effective monitoring (so I thought that there wouldn't be anything to worry about on that front). But with effective sifting, the problem becomes much more dire. I apologize for having so much faith in the "stack of needles" method of hiding.
So yeah, nothing really stopping the NSA from finding and monitoring dissidents.
And then, since dissidents would actually be more closely watched and scrutinized, those same dissidents would experience a stricter level of enforcement of rules. So, the enforcement of the rules is different depending on what the NSA decides is dissent. They could punish you for speaking out against them. They might not arrest you for speaking out against them, but they could heighten the monitoring and scrutinizing on you. It would make you more likely to get arrested, and it would certainly let them selectively make life very hard for anyone who opposes the NSA.
Oh, i guess when you guys put it that way, it sounds less like "information should be feee" and more like, "I have the right to freely express myself". This situation of a governmental agency being able to effectively monitor dissidents is actually not at all what the "free information" people wanted; if the aim was free speech instead of co plate information access to everyone. I misjudged the philosophy, and the aim of that philosophy. This isn't, then, a double standard, because this situation isn't what basically anyone arguing for free speech wanted.
And heck, if the NSA only answers to a court, and if that court is, as criminalscum says, not at all an actual restraining force, and won't actually make the NSA accountable, then that screws up the whole checks and balances thing. And checks and balances are the main thing restraining full-out abuses of power.
The NSA, in that case, wouldn't just have to rely on selective enforcement of the laws to punish dissidents. The court, in that case, wouldn't stop the NSA from just up and arresting dissidents on flimsy charges, or even maybe no charges.
Power without checks and accountability, possessed by an agency with effective ways of monitoring dissidents and getting after said dissidents...
I'm sorry I was so dismissive in this thread. My understanding of the situation was wrong, I mistakenly judged those advocating free speech, and I dismissed real threats based on outdated ideas.