PRISM - Where are all the protests?

[Kolby Jack]

And I have nothing against Sweden (I am of Swedish heritage, myself) but it's not really fair to compare it to America. Sweden is a fine country, but let's be fair here: it's small, less populous, and it has few enemies. America is a superpower, and the only one in the world by many accounts. We have many people looking to knock us down a peg or two, a very large military force which is large not only to defend us but also to provide hefty support to our less militarily capable allies (like Sweden), and a combination of a huge landmass and equally impressive population to keep track of. I'm not saying these are excuses for shifty dealings, but certain considerations have to made to keep us as secure as we've become accustomed to.

I'm pretty sure many of us don't want your "protection", or anything close to it. We had to protest when the piracy acts were being made, because one was almost forced on us, which is something that came from you. >_> We haven't been in a war since 1814, which is almost twohundred years by now.

I think time will take care of America anyway, so I don't see why anyone would bother. Much more impressive superpowers didn't stand the test of time (Rome for example). Hopefully it'll be sooner rather than later though.

That's easy to claim until the shit hits the fan. The US is the biggest supporter of the UN and the largest military contributor in NATO. Like it or not, many countries depend on our support. How much support our allies need is always up for debate, no doubt, but the fact they they want it generally is not. France had one major interdiction into Mali, and they still needed United States support in the form of troop transport and other equipment. Your views about America seem pretty narrow-minded. Just because we have power means we're like the Romans or other ancient empires? I think you need to take a step back from your blind cynicism and see the bigger picture. I would certainly think again about wishing for the collapse of the US; That's over 300 million people you're wishing doom upon for entirely petty reasons, buddy, not even including how the rest of the world would be affected. When countries collapse, it affects a LOT more than just the government.

 

[TIMESWORDSMAN]

I've been telling people about it, as many as I can, but the most I can seem to do is convince them to put electrical tape over any device with a webcam. It talked to my sister about and she said "I understand that it's terrible, but why should I care?"

Seems to me most people can't get it into their heads that someone might actually want their personal information, they don't understand why. 1984 is on the required reading list for the local school, and still no one seems to get it. And the American media toned it down, which never helps.

 

[Reeve]

I doubt that we'll see much protesting over in Eagleland even as citizens are being led into camps.

Captcha: yadda yadda yadda

Indeed.

 

[loc978]

I can't believe this was news. We knew it was being built when the Patriot Act passed. We had our protest, and the protesters were shouted down. PRISM is just the result of that, and it's exactly what we knew it would be seven years ago.

 

[Sehnsucht Engel]

And I have nothing against Sweden (I am of Swedish heritage, myself) but it's not really fair to compare it to America. Sweden is a fine country, but let's be fair here: it's small, less populous, and it has few enemies. America is a superpower, and the only one in the world by many accounts. We have many people looking to knock us down a peg or two, a very large military force which is large not only to defend us but also to provide hefty support to our less militarily capable allies (like Sweden), and a combination of a huge landmass and equally impressive population to keep track of. I'm not saying these are excuses for shifty dealings, but certain considerations have to made to keep us as secure as we've become accustomed to.

I'm pretty sure many of us don't want your "protection", or anything close to it. We had to protest when the piracy acts were being made, because one was almost forced on us, which is something that came from you. >_> We haven't been in a war since 1814, which is almost twohundred years by now.

I think time will take care of America anyway, so I don't see why anyone would bother. Much more impressive superpowers didn't stand the test of time (Rome for example). Hopefully it'll be sooner rather than later though.

That's easy to claim until the shit hits the fan. The US is the biggest supporter of the UN and the largest military contributor in NATO. Like it or not, many countries depend on our support. How much support our allies need is always up for debate, no doubt, but the fact they they want it generally is not. France had one major interdiction into Mali, and they still needed United States support in the form of troop transport and other equipment. Your views about America seem pretty narrow-minded. Just because we have power means we're like the Romans or other ancient empires? I think you need to take a step back from your blind cynicism and see the bigger picture. I would certainly think again about wishing for the collapse of the US; That's over 300 million people you're wishing doom upon for entirely petty reasons, buddy, not even including how the rest of the world would be affected. When countries collapse, it affects a LOT more than just the government.

I doubt that will happen. There's not many countries that are hostile to us. The world is moving forward, and becoming more globalized, with a better understanding and communication with other countries wars are less likely to happen. Few or no one goes to war to expand their borders anymore. Some countries aren't fear mongering. <_< Some even get rid of most of their military, to spend money on more important things, like Sweden has been doing since they stopped forcing military service on the young.

Also, haha, no. Only in the way that you'll one day end. Debt. >_>

I don't care. I have no love for humans.

 

[Ryotknife]

Well, there is no good targets to get mad AT. If this was purely an Obama/democrat thing, there would be protests, but this program got support across the entire government spectrum basically.

Combine this with the media (who are usually opportunistic vultures) being hands off with the subject.

 

[Frostbite3789]

Likewise, the US is, as a whole, very big on democracy, and how it makes them the greatest nation on Earth. And yet half the voters don't bother voting, and massive slabs of the nation truly despise other massive slabs.

It's like you don't understand that's part of the system and what makes it good. I didn't agree with either big candidate in the last Presidential election, so I didn't vote for either. And I'm not going to waste chunks of my day when I'm a poor college student and was working or studying instead, standing in line to throw my vote away on a third party candidate.

I vote in local elections, I write my emails and make my phone calls when something I care about is being voted on in state or national congress.

 

[Therumancer]

Well, a lot of people won't like this, but I think at the end of the day the problem is American morality. The problem is largely that the left wing (which I blame a lot) got all uppity about the idea of profiling which is what the government wanted to do in the name of security to begin with. The basic attitude being that it's okay to increase security as long as that increase affects everyone. As a result the QQing is relatively mild when it comes to say airline security due to them harassing everyone, you occasionally get some people screaming when say the actor behind Chewbacca gets his cane examined officially, or some old lady gets hassled, with outcries of common sense, despite this going on largely due to a lack of common sense.

The situation with widescale government surveillance is pretty much the same thing, the government pretty much wanted a free hand to wiretap places like mosques, single out muslims, and other groups known to have anti-US tendencies including militia groups and the like. The left wing largely rallied against this, and took the attitude that it's not far to single anyone out. The result being surveillance directed at everyone that has most left wingers irritated but hardly up in arms. You tend to see more, small-scale, outrage over specific incidents, than over the problem as a whole.

Now yes, examined in detail it is moronic. As far as our President's response, well he is very much from the "big government" party, and people have pretty much lined up for the government to take this authority so he and his regime lapped it up like a hungry cat with a bowl of milk.

I've said for a long time I *DO* have a big problem with this, I very much believe the government needs to embrace profiling and using sociology in more day to day enforcement. My basic argument is that while the government becomes empowered to single people out, it at least has to justify what it's doing by the trends, as opposed to the current system where it pretty much doesn't need to single anyone out, since we've pretty much given them a carte blanche.

In short, I've watched this develop, and like it or not, right now the government ironically has more power than what it asked for post-911 when we were re-building our intelligence and security infrastructure (and there were fears of a so called "US Intelligence Czar"). This power largely came from trying to work around that initial outcry over profiling.

I'll also say that I consider this an example of horrendous government waste, since they need to hire people and create people to sift through all of that useless data to find things that actually represent security threats. People get all uppity over the idea of the government in theory being able to listen in on their phone conversations with friends and family, or watch them going to the bathroom with a patrolling drone, well honestly the guy who has to sift through all that banal conversation and endure shots of you going to the bathroom actually gets the far shorter end of the stick, and on top of that he represents a government paycheck at a time when our economy isn't in great shape. You need tons of those guys running and maintaining systems to engage in this kind of blanket observation even when it's just triggered by key words or "suspicious" activity (you groaned a little too much on the toilet). A more focused approach requires less in the way of resources.

 

[omegaweopon]

There's nothing I can do about this. That's the big issue. I want to say that I could rise up against our government, and gather a bunch of followers to my cause. I'd like to say that I could build a protest, that shook the very core of our nation and changed things. But, I can't actually do that. I'm a mentally unstable, beyond poverty individual. I live my entire life off the charity of others because I can't actually hold a job and the like. What this means, is that were I to raise an army of people, and fight against this, with the information that they have mined on me, I would immediately be discredited. I would have my entire following of like minded people turned against me on the grounds that I am mentally unstable. I couldn't go places to gather people as I lack the funds to do so, and all I can do is ***** about it on the internet. What's worse, is that after it all fails, I will be arrested on grounds of public disorder. Charged for numerous crimes, and disappear off the face of the earth because I tried.

This is how most people that aren't drowned out by apathy feel. Not fear of terrorism, fear of government backlash. When someone that puts all the info out for the world to see, gets allegations of treason? Treason is still punishable by death. This is the sad reality that we live in. This is the sad case of the country that I live in.

I want to leave. I want to follow the advice of many people who say "You don't like it? Get the fuck out!" because I feel like my opinion and how I'm personally affected doesn't matter anymore. This PRISM thing does affect me. Personally. I have a very strong desire to learn damn near everything I can, and I am personally probably on more than a few government watch lists for things like "How to build a nuclear bomb" being in my search history, tied to my google account, and things like downloading the Anarchist Cookbook. Does this mean I am a terrorist? No. It's pure curiosity, and I feel that one of these pieces of knowledge might come in handy one day. If someone fired a nuke, and it landed right in front of me, somehow without having the impact set the trigger off (Maybe it's a timer.) guess what? I actually know how to completely disarm a nuclear warhead, with the only damage being done to me, is that I will probably be sterile for a few years. God only knows when something that I know will come back and save everyone. (Totally unlikely scenario, but hey, good to know if that does happen, I can save millions of people)

So yeah. I'm furious about this. I shouldn't have to feel like I need to be careful because I am on a government watch list. (I've started using TOR lately, and am probably going to be switching my email accounts. I've stopped using Google all the time, and have almost fully swapped to DuckDuckGo for searches. But sadly these habits aren't fully ingrained in my habits yet.)

The point of sad bit of rambling is this. If I could do something, I would. If I could leave the country, and live my life elsewhere as a way of showing my disdain for the government, I would be on the next flight. But I don't have any job skills, I have massive amounts of debt, and I have plenty of mental issues that make me nothing but a burden upon any country I reside in. I'm quite possibly not alone in this either. Because a protest against this will only teach the government one thing. Be more careful next time.

I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. And I am not alone.

Oh yeah, and also, so many people have so much apathy to this thing it's incredible. Seriously. The media sweeping it under the rug. The government witch hunt. Which celebrity is marrying whom. This place is the worst. I swear. (Lucky me. I just so happen to be residing in what I feel is the worst state of this terrible country. Also, I called this country terrible. I'm a terrorist now according to a lot of Americans.)

/incomprehensible rant

 

[Zef Otter]

Honestly? Normal american people worry more about making enough money for room and rent to this. Yah its scary looking but at the end of the day we care more about that really effects us day to day.

 

[marcooos]

I am honestly completely taken aback by this. America is basically the only nation in the world that considers freedom a huge part of its national identity, so much so that they've named themselves "the land of the free".

And then PRISM happened. A secret police secretly spying on probably hundreds of millions of people from the US, its allies and the rest of the world under a president who made freedom, privacy and transparency a huge point of his campaign and on top of that, the FREAKING DIRECTOR of the NSA lies right in the face of congress UNDER OATH and walks away without any punishment whatsoever.

The American reaction to this? A freaking petition to the white house. No protests, no significant calls for Obama to step down and call for early elections, nothing. Not even any major rallies in defense of the guy who gave up a life of wealth and safety to warn the American people, risking his life and going up against the biggest superpower in the world in the process. There were literally bigger rallies in Hong Kong. Yes. China did more to support a guy who did nothing for them than the Americans, for whom he sacrificed almost everything.

I mean, Sweden, "The land of the midnight sun", not "The land of the free" had massive protests outside the Riskdag (our version of congress, basically) when the government considered doing an incredibly light version of this, and in that case they actually told us beforehand. So, what's going on here?

Because everyone assumed we were being spied on anyway, plus if the Yanks an David Cameroan want to go through all that terrible porn I watch they can go ahead.

 

[Something Amyss]

And here's another big reason for our apathy in America: Everyone lies. Fucking everyone. The only reliable news source is starting to become cracked.com. Every time I see a sensationalist news story all I can think is "gee, how much of this is complete bullshit?" and then I just roll my eyes at the people flipping out and arguing over different sides of a story

I'm not sure a Fox News story put together by a criminal (he commited felonies to get later stories) is a good argument for "everybody lies."

Granted, I don't inherently trust any news, but that's more because I think they're lazy and oft irresponsible more than directly fabricating things. I like to rely on multiple sources for verification and tend to look at what's being said, including documents where available. It's still possible to be misled, but it's a lot harder.

Very few people in the media lied. James O'Keefe lied. Fox had access to the source material and still lied. Everyone else picked up on it for fear of being called the dreaded "L" word (liberal, not lesbian). And while that does highlight a problem with the news, it's laziness, not lying. Two more L words.

The same is true of Shirley Sherrod. If anyone had bothered to do any research, there would be no scandal. It was a solid parable. But people ran with the Fox News hype and she was made to resign by text on the road due to panic. Nobody does their homework because they're scared.

 

[Olas]

What can you do? They didn't technically break any laws, and it's hard to really make a case that it's directly harming any innocent individuals, so it'll be difficult to try to make any laws against it. There's no single person you can point to who's guilty (even if this were a crime) and should be asked to resign, and you can't just suddenly overturn the government because of something like this.

You can get angry, and you probably should, but without any actions that can be taken it ultimately doesn't accomplish anything. And you can only stay in a constant state of anger about something for so long before you have to move on. I'd love to see everyone who knew about this and did nothing to go to prison, but it ain't gonna happen.

I guess you can move to another country.

I'm genuinely curious about a lot of things now though. Like, if I created 2 email accounts and started sending emails back and fourth between them talking about assassinating the president and stuff like that, could I expect men to show up at my door? Same goes for calls and texts.

Could someone else please try this expirament for me and tell me how it goes?

[sub][sub](Just kidding, please don't)[/sub][/sub]

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

It's really not news. Most American's are either willfully ignorant or have stopped caring. PRISM is just reaffirming what we already knew.

We torture people. We violate international laws. We kidnap foreign nationals and send them to... Syria? Egypt? damn where do we send them these days? Yemen probably or maybe the Saudis. We support governments that were caught trying to assassinate civilians with poison in the past 10 years. We double tap funerals to kill rescue workers like paramedics in foreign countries. And yes we illegally spy on our own population. Sometimes we assassinate our own citizens. Sometimes we just run illegal and dangerous medical experiments on them. Sometimes our spy agencies just blackmail them. PRISM is just more of the same.

And if "we" didn't get outraged about this stuff before we aren't going to be outraged about it now.

 

[Hero of Lime]

I'll just go with general apathy. Looking at our voting numbers a large percentage of Americans probably can't name their congressman or senator, for being a politically charged country, lots of people have loose political ideologies. PRISM isn't a nice thing, but the media at large, both liberal and conservative don't report too much on it. Many people figure that since they don't do crazy stuff online, they have little to worry about.

Look at it this way, with so much social media services available, people are literally putting most of their lives on the internet, faceless government creeps aren't much scarier than regular faceless creeps. Although I personally hate the idea of being spied on, especially by the government, I'm as mild-mannered as you can get on the web, so I personally don't have much of a horse in the race.

 

[HalfTangible]

As an american... It's less along the lines of 'i don't care' and more along the lines of 'Oh ffs, not again!'. This kind of bullcrap has been happening so much so often and so many people have complained about so much that nobody even cares anymore. This IS a big deal but people are just tired of big deals.

I don't think anyone's going to care until something like blackmailing a reporter actually does come out.

 

[HalfTangible]

Also, I'm having trouble figuring out how they're going to watch enough people for this to do anything for anyone.

 

[Kolby Jack]

I doubt that will happen. There's not many countries that are hostile to us. The world is moving forward, and becoming more globalized, with a better understanding and communication with other countries wars are less likely to happen. Few or no one goes to war to expand their borders anymore. Some countries aren't fear mongering. <_< Some even get rid of most of their military, to spend money on more important things, like Sweden has been doing since they stopped forcing military service on the young.

Also, haha, no. Only in the way that you'll one day end. Debt. >_>

I don't care. I have no love for humans.

Right, debt. Like how for every dollar we owe, we're owed 80 cents? Or how our debt is less than a percent of our gross worth? Our debt causes us issues when it comes to our economy, but it's not what will cause us to collapse. Try again.

By the way, The US hasn't had a draft since Vietnam. We're all volunteer, and yet we still have one of the largest militaries on earth. And I already said, that's fine for Sweden, but there are still threats out there and future threats to be prepared for, and somebody is going to have to foot a lot of the bill. The US is in the best position to do it.

Whether or not your misanthropy is genuine doesn't really matter. It's a futile standpoint and there's no point in me even addressing it.

 

[Woodsey]

I think part of the problem is that most people just aren't surprised. I mean, it gets joked about all the time, which rather leaves the sense that everyone kinda 'knew' anyway.

 

[JasonKaotic]

Under normal circumstances I'd say this is nothing new, the American government pulls shit like this on its own country all the time.

But I live in England. What the actual flying intestine-skipping fuck gives the American government the right to pry through my stuff?