Obama Calls for Reforms to NSA Surveillance Programs
- Thread starter roseofbattle
- Start date
What the actual fuck? Is our definition of privacy and freedom outdated? What would happen, once the USA stopped their surveillance of everyone on the planet?
The way Obama puts it it seems like they are constantly averting an otherwise unavoidable nuclear apocalypse, brought onto us by evil terrorists. Either they should disclose the threat they are battling, or they should stop feeding us bullshit and admit that all this is to control their own people.
This is a decision out of fear, the fear to lose control. Fear is never a good advisor in decision making.
Regarding what he said about the extend of the surveillance being lowered, I don't think that this is how the data mining works the NSA is conducting. They are not reading each eMail individually and they are not listening to every phonecall, but everything gets filtered by algorithms and checked for keywords, phrases and thelike. So they are technically not "looking" at everything, but in a way they do nontheless.
The way Obama puts it it seems like they are constantly averting an otherwise unavoidable nuclear apocalypse, brought onto us by evil terrorists. Either they should disclose the threat they are battling, or they should stop feeding us bullshit and admit that all this is to control their own people.
This is a decision out of fear, the fear to lose control. Fear is never a good advisor in decision making.
Regarding what he said about the extend of the surveillance being lowered, I don't think that this is how the data mining works the NSA is conducting. They are not reading each eMail individually and they are not listening to every phonecall, but everything gets filtered by algorithms and checked for keywords, phrases and thelike. So they are technically not "looking" at everything, but in a way they do nontheless.
Keep in mind I live in the South (yes yes, go ahead and get the jokes out of the way) so I hadn't expected it to be like that. It's certainly not like that in most places, but in Washington it's surprisingly common. I've never even seen an armed soldier in civilian public, so seeing sub machine gun carrying men everywhere was a surprise. Some of the men were okay, a few were even friendly, but it definitely felt like something was hanging over my head the whole time. Maybe people living in Washington are used to it, but I haven't seen it like that in any of the places I've ever visited, inside the U.S. or outside. I wonder if London and Paris do this in their capitals...nuttshell said:
Unfortunately the U.S. is rather paranoid right now, especially the older generations. My generation has grown up with terrorism, so I don't think we're scared of them.
The sad thing is, yes they do. There are a still a lot of democrats who just cannot bring themselves to admit that Obama is a massive hypocrite and liar. Obama took the surveillance program Bush and Cheney set up and expanded on it because he wanted to. He is not liberal, he is not progressive. At best, he is slightly left of what currently constitutes republican, at least on social issues. When it comes to economics and corporate issues he's mostly in agreement with the conservative establishment. He wants to cut taxes on the wealthy, he wants to lessen regulations on the banks, and he wants to cut social programs to help pay for those tax cuts and the out-of-control spending of the Department of Defense.Slash2x said:
Even his healthcare law, the thing he brags about every chance he gets, is based on a republican law originally thought up by the Heritage Foundation (a large republican think-tank). In fact, there are starting to be reports coming out now that while he was campaigning for the law, he was actively trying to sabotage the single-payer portion that was originally a part of it (before all the talks of 'death-panels' derailed that debate into idiocy and the single-payer option got cut). A healthcare law with an individual mandate, but without a public option, is just one big handout to the insurance companies, in the end.
Even with Obama giving lip-service to the idea of 'reforming' his surveillance program... I still wouldn't let myself get caught out in any wide-open, witlessness places if I were Edward Snowden. One thing Obama has shown himself to hate more than anything are leaks. Especially leaks that make him look bad. He's charged people with the Espionage Act literally more times than all the other presidents combined. The fact that the NDAA allows him to execute US citizens abroad without a trial is also especially worrying in Snowden's particular case.
It's a worrying signal of poor health of a political system that people of such integrity can get this far. (and don't get me wrong; it's not like there are any good examples of idyllic politics in the vast majority of countries these days. Hell; exhaustively covering every act of recklessness, narcissism, skull-duggery, bullying, entitlement, corruption and treason of the UK's last Labour government could stretch out to a duration equivalent to the 13 years they were in power) And I recently heard about a prominent Republican bloke who got exposed for causing significant public disruption over petty political feuds, so the immediate outlook in the wider field also appears bleak.rcs619 said: