From: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jason Resch
On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 5:42 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
On 1/14/2015 7:42 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Sun, Jan 11, 2015 at 4:00 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
On 1/11/2015 12:27 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Sun, Jan 11, 2015 at 7:14 AM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
On 1/10/2015 12:54 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 7:19 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
On 1/10/2015 2:00 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 12:24 AM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
On 1/9/2015 3:11 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:
_____
From: meekerdb <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net> <meeke...@verizon.net>
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, January 9, 2015 2:45 PM
Subject: Re: Democracy
On 1/9/2015 1:08 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:
_____
From: meekerdb <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net> <meeke...@verizon.net>
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, January 9, 2015 12:25 PM
Subject: Re: Democracy
On 1/9/2015 4:55 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
Money becomes coercive under statism, because it becomes illegal to use
alternative currencies, operate outside of the banking and taxation system and
so on.
>>Banks used to issue their own script and in principle anyone could do it.
>>The trouble with anarcho-capitalism is that there's nothing to prevent a
>>group from organizing, forming a "government", raising an army a conquering
>>people around them. In fact that's exactly the arc of history. If you want
>>anarchy you can go to Syria or Somalia right now.
What you describe is not the political philosophy of anarchy; what you describe
is life under warlords, and the susceptibility of anarchy to such organized
groups of thugs.
Functioning anarchy would require a level of individual ethics that does not
yet exist (or at least is not widespread). Anarchy is vulnerable to being
destroyed by thuggery and mayhem; no doubt about that; however it should not be
confused with that heartless outcome.
>>Every form of government will work well with perfect people.
That is side-stepping the point that some forms of social organization require
a much higher degree of civic involvement than others do.
Exactly, and anarchy that functions as well as constitutionally limited
democracy would require angels.
This overestimates the importance of things written in a piece of paper and
underestimates the importance of social norms, culture and education.
The reason why I don't go and loot my neighbours is not because a piece of
paper says I can't, or even because I am afraid of the police. Remove this too
things and I still wouldn't do it. I suspect everyone participating in this
discussion is the same. Why?
On the other hand, the Weimar constitution was powerless to stop the nazis, and
the American constitution appears powerless to stop the NSA.
And I think you underestimate it. It is something any citizen can point to as
a norm. Notice that everyone who complains about the NSA's invasion of privacy
cites the Constitution as evidence their complaint is justified.
That is true, but it's far from the only argument. Now my question is: do you
figure that people think that invasion of privacy without a warrant is wrong
think that because of what the constitution says, or do you figure invasion of
privacy offends their sense of morality and then they look for arguments to
justify their position and find the constitution?
That's a good question, and the answer supports my point. When you poll people
and ask if they think it's right to wiretap people suspected of plotting crimes
the majority say yes. So in a way the Constitution informs and bolsters
people's understanding of the importance of freedom from government
surveillance. If they were just morally offended by surveillance then they
would be equally exercised about AT&T, Google, Time-Warner, Verizon, and a
dozen other corporate organizations that spy on them. But because they know
the Constitution forbids the government from doing it they are much MORE
offended when the government does it.
Without it they would have to give a long argument based the prior abuses
that the founding fathers used to to support the right to privacy.
This would be a good argument had the Constitution actually succeeded in
preventing total surveillance from the government on its own people. But it
didn't.
But it did. The NSA is only allowed to track who-calls-who, not what is said.
Unfortunately, after Snowden we know better.
No, we don't. First, while I approve of Snowden I don't think he *knows*
everything attributed to him.
One of the important tricks here is how they interpret the word "track". A
secret court(!!!) decided that storing data is not tracking if no human is
looking at it. So they can record your phone calls and the content of your
internet communications and then, if they get a court order, they can go look
at it.
And that is wrong how?
The attitude of governments can change in unpredictable ways in the future.
It's acknowledged that laws can have a "chilling effect" on free speech, but
how strong would that chilling effect be if it's based on the unknown future of
what future laws may come? If my conversations now are stored indefinitely, how
can I be sure I won't be persecuted for my speech 30 - 40 years from now?
NSA is only authorized to keep domestic communication data 5yr.
Well that's a relief!
But this is mostly just metadata. It is obviously appropriate to keep data for
some period. Discussions of an airline flight that seem innocent may become
important evidence weeks later when that flight is bombed.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated"
Not to mention, if you watch someone for long enough, or have enough data
concerning someone's life to pour over, you're almost certain to find something
you can charge them with. See
http://www.threefeloniesaday.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.aspx
How many unknown felonies have you committed just today? (Don't answer that!)
I guess that would the ones I don't know about, so I can readily answer, "I
don't know."
But they don't really need to bother about these warrants. The neat "five eyes"
system allows the participants to spy on behalf of each other, circumventing
these privacy protections.
The NSA sent divers to place physical optical splitters on submarine cables. It
stores all the data in gigantic datacenters and has algorithms comb through it.
A slightly paranoid idea. It's much easier for them to get data other ways.
Not paranoid at all. I've heard from many sources, including submariners that
this exact thing is done. Also, are you aware of Bluffdale?
http://www.wired.com/tag/bluffdale/
It infiltrated American companies, like Google, to install spying software on
its servers. It also infiltrated technical committees responsible for
cryptography standards to introduce backdoors in the implementation of
cryptographic algorithms. These actions make us all less safe. Even open source
cryptography projects like TrueCrypt decided to give up, because they were
infiltrated by the NSA and realised they could do nothing against it.
What makes you think it makes us less safe. I'd say part of the problem is it
makes us more safe and people think being safe is more important than privacy -
and they are right at least in the short run. The problem is the long run.
What leads people to think it's less safe is that governments have killed far
more of their own people (estimates are around 100,000,000 in the last century)
than terrorists ever have (or likely ever will).
We're not talking about governments in general. We're talking about the U.S.
government.
>>That's right, it can't happen here.
Or perhaps the verb tense should be “It has happened here!”
So I'm not clear on the relevance of Nazi Germany, Mao's Cultural Revolution,
or Stalin's purges.
The people in those countries 20 years before the purges should have seen it
coming.
On the other hand I agree that terrorists are only a tiny threat. The reason
that people feel threatened by terrorism is the play that media give incidents
- something pointed out years ago by Scott Atran. He also pointed out that
this coverage serves to recruit more terrorists.
They use made up threats to expand their power and sustain trillions of dollars
to be made by those in the MIC.
War, the biggest business of all! And as every propagandists knows it’s all too
easy to whip up a war fever – and they all pretty much follow that dead Nazi
bastard Goebbels same recipe whenever a war is needed.
In case no one has noticed, our dear president Obama has changed the rhetoric
used as cover for our Orwellian systems state of permanent war…. The term “War
on Terror” is bad enough, it implies an endless war requiring an Orwellian
intrusive state. But at least it seemed circumscribed to opponents it could
describe as being involved in terror.
Obama is now calling it the “War on extremism”. That term sends Orwellian
shivers down my spine; it is so broad and arbitrary in nature and can be used
to describe any and all opponents.
And yet…. people persist in believing that fascism is a just some future
hypothetical danger.
-Chris
These are not the actions of an organisation that respects privacy.
Any intelligence agency worth it's salt is going to push to the limit of the
law. Would you expect, or want anything less? Would you be happy to hear,
"Yeah, we could have found he was conspiring to blow up that building, but we
thought we should respect his privacy when talking to Al Queda in Syria"
Here's a good analysis of the technical aspects of the situation:
http://bit-player.org/2006/room-641a
If our laws, rights, and constitutional protections mean nothing, then we might
as well be living in Syria already.
But the NSA is obeying the law - it's just not a law to your (or my) liking.
Nor to the liking of those who wrote the bill of rights.
Jason
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