SteamPoweredKleenex  - 2013-06-16
This kind of hypocrisy was inevitable after 2001. Every fucking power that was given to Bush/Cheney and any agencies/offices will NEVER go away unless something like Watergate happens, and even then you'd need enough voter anger to make legislators fear for losing their jobs if they didn't vote these powers into oblivion.
Once the NSA had their fingers in everyone's internet, it was game over. Even if Obama threw the rest of his term at trying to rescind their eavesdropping, it'd never stop, and most of Congress would likely try to stop him if they didn't just abstain and let the NSA win by running out the clock.
On a related note, I was listening to NPR today and heard that one of the reasons online mail services like Gmail have to give any requested e-mails over to the gov't that are over 6 months old is due to an old law written before cloud e-mail. Basically, if you didn't check your e-mail and get it off your ISP's servers for 6 months, it was considered "abandoned." Fast forward to today, and everything 6+ months old online is free for the pickings, no warrant need even be thought about. Fun, huh? I bet that gets fixed REALLY quickly in a bi-partisan fashion...
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gravelstudios - 2013-06-16 In his video, Ed Snowden said that the organization he worked for had authority to tap the President's phone. At the risk of sounding conspiracy-crazy, I think this thing is bigger than Obama or Bush.
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baleen - 2013-06-16 NSA has had fingers in internet since internet started.
You can't turn your back on the old guard of the CIA or offend it too much unless you want your presidency to sink, a little gift from the Cold War. Look what happened to Carter, that poor sacrificial lamb.
I am extremely weirded out that nobody cares that we would outsource this much power to some firm. His firm is scarier to me than the NSA looking for war criminals, launderers and terrorists with a bunch of search algorithms. The gaps in our intelligence is scarier to me because I know that the government is run by an army of bureaucrats who are essentially normal, albeit highly specialized people.
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SteamPoweredKleenex - 2013-06-16 Oh, it's bigger than them to be sure. 9/11 and the cold war old guard that were brought back into government after the 2000 elections just got the process ramped up to ludicrous speed. Spying is always awesome, because that's what they believed in. They basically took what people thought surveillance was like during the standoff with the Soviets and ramped it up to 11. These are people who seem to think that the enemy is already doing draconian stuff (torture, listening to everyone, bringing "people of interest" in for detention) and that means if you don't do the same or worse, you'll lose the "war."
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memedumpster - 2013-06-17 I can't wait until all the American weapons contractors finally just say "fuck it" and start openly (as opposed to clandestinely like now) selling weapons to anyone with money in the hopes of creating a more profitable system of all governments against all people instead of the niche market of a few Western governments against the world. By having every single leader actively and openly oppressing its populace, technology will boom, and the money will flow out of the police state vagina like the musky nectar of Artemis During the Slaughter of Virgins.
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MrBuddy - 2013-06-17 memedumpster:
I have the weirdest boner right now.
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SolRo - 2013-06-16
You know, since you have time travel technology, could you please use it for something more effective than debates?
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kingarthur - 2013-06-17
It's been privatized. The mega corps, 1% whatever you want to call it own the politicians, own the lobbyists and have had access to everything due to the war on terror for so long there's no turning back. We're completely a nominal democracy.
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aikimoe - 2013-06-17
Yes, this is all quite obviously the fault of corporations.
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RedRust - 2013-06-17
This NSA Surveillance business hit home personally yesterday. I came to realize that all the "online investigation" and assimilation of information on my enemies through the years can in fact be observed by the NSA from the comfort of a lounge chair. So this means "they" are able to know who is enemies with who from a distance. Those cats are like, 10 steps ahead of the common man...
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