Would you agree that NOT using the technology available to catch criminals that WILL use technology to harm us is giving to much power to criminals? This technology is not going to disappear because you ban the government from using it. By banning it outright, you just give another tool the criminals can use that our government can't use to apprehend them. In essence, you are passing that power from our government to criminals and rougue states that don't have a problem using it.
I am not against using surveillance technology within constitutional limits, I am against the government collecting and retaining data on virtually
everyone. I want the government to investigate people when they have reasonable suspicion and I want them to obtain a warrant before invading anyone's privacy. Its pretty sad if that is now seen as a radical idea. I have yet to hear good reason why the government can not just obtain warrants when they are needed.
They are not following constitutional limits now and the current practices are not transparent. That is why Snowden's release of information has raised such a fuss.
I I have yet to see anyone say that the government should have free reign on monitoring personal conversations.
I have. The government is saying that it has a right to obtain and retain telephone and internet use metadata and even monitor content, that is not constitutional or appropriate in my view.
I have not seen this censorship here in the U.S. other than to protect sensitive information that pertains to national security.
Television and radio are censored except after 10pm.
You may make the argument as to what constitutes sensative information. However, I suspect, you are the type that probably believes all information should be available regaurdless of how sensitive our government thinks it is. Which has always left me scratching my head because it flies in the face of privacy. Much of the information the government holds as sensitive or secret is held precisely to protect the citizens it is responsible for protecting.
I think we need a better process for determining what is considered secret by the government. Far too often, secrecy is used to hide policy decisions, especially foreign policy decisions, illegal activities and mistakes made by the government.
An excellent example is the drone assassination program which was kept secret until the info was revealed by the press. (although it was never a secret to the people in the regions where it was deployed) That was a major policy decision that should have been made publicly by our legislators, especially since it means we are becoming militarily involved in nations that we have not declared war on. Congress doesn't need to select targets or deal with other details, but they should have had the opportunity to create the policies governing and limiting the program.
Then again, you may also be one of those types that believes that the government should be small an ineffective and that you have the ability to protect yourself. Which is probably what you do believe. Many people who hold this belief can hold it because there has not been an invasion on american soil in hundreds of years. The reason is because they have been protected for so long by the government and it's military so they have no sense in what it would actually be like to protect oneself from an outside threat. All you have to do is take a trip to a country where the government is ineffective in protecting it's people and you will find people that would be arguing the complete opposite and would be begging the government or some outside government such as the U.S. to come and protect them as many countries have done.
I am not a Grover Norquist small government advocate, I am a liberal who supports civil liberties for all. I have been to East Germany while the wall was up and saw how grim and lifeless a surveillance state can be. As a human rights advocate and a member of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International I am very familiar with the many human rights abuses that happen throughout the world in the name of national security and anti-terrorism.
I don't have a problem with constitutional programs for our defense. However, our military is largely involved in building empire and protecting corporate interests worldwide. The hundreds of military bases we have overseas are generally not there to protect our citizens in the USA. Our excessive foreign intervention puts our residents at greater risk from blowback more that it keeps us safer.
Well, that is the problem. There is not one vendor that could possibly garuntee 100% protection of your information. So already, your setting the system up for failure. The internet is to large and has to many holes in it to garuntee 100% protection. I don't think you will ever be able to attain that.
I don't expect perfection. I want legal limits on data sharing without genuinely informed consent. Having people agree to twenty pages of user agreements displayed in a small scrolling box on a web page that includes intentionally confusing legal language giving away one's right to privacy in order to use the service is not genuinely informed consent. Having language stating that the service provider will comply with government information requests as required is not informed consent when the government starts collecting data on all users of the service, not just those under suspicion. Especially when the service provider makes no effort to verify the legitimacy of the government's request.
I believe there already is a process any government agency has to go thru to attain personal information that is equivalent to attaining a warrent. Will this ever satisfy you, probably not.
It is a secret process with no one representing the publics' right to privacy. There is no effort to track how many of these requests actually result in obtaining relevant information. There needs to be much more transparency, including after the fact notification to those whose privacy was wrongly invaded.
Then again, you may also be one of those types that believes that the government should be small an ineffective and that you have the ability to protect yourself.
Wrong. I support a reasonable amount of defense and security, I just want it to be legal and reasonable. If you look at the state of the world and recent history with open eyes, you should conclude that government abuses are at least as much of a threat to individuals as war and terrorism. There is a good reason why the former residents of East Germany or Chile et al are not begging for a return to the cold war era surveillance state. Instead, they are trying to prosecute the government officials who claimed that they were protecting them from terrorists.
You make good arguments, but you should stick to discussing what I say, not what you think I believe.
