Civil rights and security: A swinging pendulum

[the_tyrant]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/06/op...tate.html?_r=1&

Lincoln was spying on your telegraphs before it was cool!

[Wolferz]

Patrick would probably say; " This bill of rights thing is great! Protecting it will be the real test."

Nathan would say;" I spy a mistake on my statue. They didn't get the nose right."

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by the_tyrant

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/06/op...tate.html?_r=1&

Lincoln was spying on your telegraphs before it was cool!

Give this man the internets!

Intel gathering on the populace has been going on for years, decades, even centuries. The only thing that has changed is the ability to search and index information that has been gathered, but even then it would take thousands of man hours for an NSA agent to physically read each email provided, therefore it's just stored and if someone wants to index search, then blam it's done.

Does that make it right? Of course it doesn't, but no matter how much righteous indignation is directed at it, nothing will change, if anything the web will increase, and privacy will decrease. Furthermore, if a major terrorist incident occurred and thousands of lives were lost, and it emerged that the NSA could have intercepted the incident in its planning stages through the tools at its disposal, do you not think that the same people crying out now in outrage would be equally vocal in their condemnation that this plot was not stopped before thousands of people died?
Sure, it won't stop small plots, the spontaneous events, but it stands a chance of breaking cells and groups that form in home soil, as well as those on foreign soil who plot attacks against the home country.

People cannot complain about security and civil rights in the same breath as complaining about the ineffectualness of the government in stopping terrorism. After 9/11, the biggest question was 'why did we not see this coming', now the biggest question is 'why are we looking?'.

No matter what happens now, it's going to carry on, the public has no say in the matter, it never has and it never will. Everything else is just theatre.

[Skybird]

I do not see it that much as a back-forth-back-forth swinging pendulum, but a linear movement at always one direction only. It's just that that single-direction movement goes at varying speeds. Nevertheless it always moves at the same direction.

I also would not agree that it is deconstruction on behalf of security concerns, always. It is deconstruction of freedom, but claiming security only when the opportune argument offers itself at certain points of time, after according historic events like 9/11 for example, or an external threat.

So instead a swinging pendulum that swings between freedom and security, you have a single-direction movement at variable pace. The speed differences get mistaken for a bi-directional pendulum-like movement. Security arguments obviosuly allow to argue to press the gas pedal a bit.

The exposition of the citizen to the state'S claim over him is the purpose of the excercise, and the intention to make him as defenceless in face of the state as possible, so that the state's power over him increases. This includes of course necessarily financial vulnerability, and declining possibilities to defend private property against the claim of the state. Any excuse hiding this real intention, is welcomed by the state. State needs weak citizens so that he can rob their property and redistrubute it, and to confiscate it to hide the snowball system of today's paper"money" system. Either redistribution at the cost of a declining group of victims and calling that "social justice", or expropriation of all and everybody, calling that "stabilising financial markets" - that's what it is about.

Both do lead to first socialist, finally communist conditions of state and society.