House Narrowly Rejects Bid To Curb NSA Domestic Surveillance

octoberasian said:
Do we want to prevent another terrorist attack? Or, should we care more about our right to privacy and protect them?

The dilemma is always this: How to do both at the same time?
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While I agree with your premise, there is an alternative. Stop having war be our biggest and best export.
 
The only way to fix the system is to abandon the system.

Currently Less than 50% of the US votes.

We need to drop that rate to 90% of the US not voting. Then that 90% decided they want to just elect their own president not the toolocrats they put in front of us.
 
Vermillion said:
what in the hell are you talking about? What you just said has nothing to do with what I posted.
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What I swear you posted something about your penis, or ron pauls penis or someones penis.

Wasn't this article about rejecting a spy on your penis law?

lol... you gotta laugh at some people.
 
octoberasian said:
And, in this day and age, America has become and always will be a very big target by both domestic and foreign terrorist groups because of the things we have done in the past; the bad decisions our leaders has made; and the way we've treated our allies and those that aren't a Democratic country. Someone out there is already planning the next 9/11, the next Oklahoma City Bombing, the next Boston Marathon Massacre, and it's either we let the NSA spy on our own digital correspondences [try] to prevent it, or we let another terrorist attack happen again.
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I say we let it... At a certain point in ANY policy/rule/law is counter productive.

Mass communication monitoring is imo counter productive and frankly more dangerous given our history of abusing laws and government power.

They are called Terrorist for a reason... The fact we have turned to spying on our own, letting go of our own belief as the "Country of the Free" is an aspect of the war in which they are winning.

Just as with all things we have to weigh every aspect against the cost.
 
Bamboo said:
This.

The people lost control of the federal government a century ago. The good news is you can buy it back. It's just a little expensive.
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"Narrowly rejects" means they want to give people hope that the government almost works.
 
octoberasian said:
And, in this day and age, America has become and always will be a very big target by both domestic and foreign terrorist groups because of the things we have done in the past; the bad decisions our leaders has made; and the way we've treated our allies and those that aren't a Democratic country. Someone out there is already planning the next 9/11, the next Oklahoma City Bombing, the next Boston Marathon Massacre, and it's either we let the NSA spy on our own digital correspondences [try] to prevent it, or we let another terrorist attack happen again.
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Their success rate would need to be 100% for it to be even close to tolerable. It's not, terrorist attacks still get through, and they will always get through. People can, you know, not talk about what they're planning at all. Or more likely that they'll talk and the NSA will simply miss it like they did in Boston. Evil people do evil things and will always do so until we stop creating evil people.

Not a good enough reason for my rights to be shit on. I don't lose my driver's license even though it's an order of magnitude more likely i'll be killed driving than in a terrorist attack. It's like people have no perspective about how rare and small these attacks really are.
 
octoberasian said:
I understand the concerns with privacy even for myself that cares a lot about my right to privacy. However, show me a more effective method at finding terrorists, terrorist cells, and preventing another terrorist attack on our own soil and I will be fine with doing away with domestic surveillance. Until that happens, we have to live with this.
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All the surveillance didn't stop the Boston marathon bombers. :eek:
John Adams said it best;

“It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, "whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection," and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.”
 
Jeremy C said:
What I found interesting was that this is probably the first piece of legislature that was pased/rejected not on party lines but on the principal of the bill in who knows how long. When was the last time something was decided in a non-partisan matter like this?
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I was thinking the same thing. Looks like we should purge all the nea voters from office to recover the house to working FOR the American people, instead of against.
 
BBA said:
I was thinking the same thing. Looks like we should purge all the nea voters from office to recover the house to working FOR the American people, instead of against.
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Amen to this :) The less we, the people, let them polarize us on issues that really aren't the end-all-be-all and focus on this, the better we will be off.
 
Vermillion said:
Wait wait wait...you're telling me people vote based on irrelevant things instead of what really matters? Say it ain't so! :eek:

;)

I do find it highly disturbing that the birth across the pond made the news more than this votes failure. Go ahead cheer for the new baby while your liberties are being shit on. :rolleyes:
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Media hand in hand with the gov't these days
 
kidstechno said:
I think Ron Paul said it best that Obama should thank Snowden for giving the citizens of the US transparency that Obama promised them. :rolleyes:
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Mackjam said:
This!
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it's more like people have been living the past 10 years with their eyes closed than the president not being transparent. It's all right there in the Patriot Act. Quit acting so surprised. :rolleyes:
 
Azhar said:
it's more like people have been living the past 10 years with their eyes closed than the president not being transparent. It's all right there in the Patriot Act. Quit acting so surprised. :rolleyes:
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NDAA is probably worse than the Patriot Act.
 
Azhar said:
it's more like people have been living the past 10 years with their eyes closed than the president not being transparent. It's all right there in the Patriot Act. Quit acting so surprised. :rolleyes:
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Agreed that we shouldn't be surprised.

But saying "stop being surprised" shouldn't be an alternative to actually helping us fix the problem. Be sure to tell your reps how you feel about how they voted. :)
 
A lot closer then the original 66 that voted against the implementation of this in 2001. Next time we have this!
 
They really need to be voting to expand their power rather than reduce it. There are too many people advocating the overthrow of the government that should be monitored closely to limit domestic oversight programs now. It's not safe with people like that around.
 
The problem with the collection of this data isn't the intended use. It's the fact that it's being collected and stored at all. Catching terrorists is a noble goal, no doubt. But this is one of those cases where the ends do not justify the means.

What is going to happen with this data in 40 years, when the government has your entire life cataloged in excruciating detail? 40 more years of pushing the boundaries by a government that has already shown it has little concern or respect for the Constitution? Right, they'll use your entire life history to blackmail you into doing whatever they want. Or throw you in jail because of that time you tweeted you were out drinking and then they monitored your car and cell phone moving. Or execute you, because you probably posted a joke that can be taken out of context at some time in your life, publicly...or privately, that's the beauty of complete surveillance. They don't need to have a problem with you now, the information is being collected and archived in case they ever have a problem with you.

We got the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, TSA, PRISM, and massive phone surveillance to prevent another 9/11. All that was really necessary was reinforced cockpit doors and public knowledge that some hijackers don't want to fly home and negotiate. The only plane that failed reach it's target wasn't stopped by phone taps or archived emails. UA 93 was stopped by informed American citizens.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
They really need to be voting to expand their power rather than reduce it. There are too many people advocating the overthrow of the government that should be monitored closely to limit domestic oversight programs now. It's not safe with people like that around.
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This post is so over the top that for the first time I have to wonder if you're actually an anti-government activist trolling to elicit a flood of intelligent opposing comments.
 
Mini-Me said:
This post is so over the top that for the first time I have to wonder if you're actually an anti-government activist trolling to elicit a flood of intelligent opposing comments.
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...and that you just couldn't get people to rage enough as SkribbelKat to really drive the message home. Ugh...I never made the connection until now.
 
news flash: majority of politicians DON'T want to curb federal (and thus their) power over the individual :eek:
 
No one cared about echelon. Why do they care now? This isn't anything new. Nope. And why is it in the news now? I'm not being rhetorical. What's the difference? I had a cell, home phone, computer, internet in the 90s as many of you did and everyone else too. Is it the younger generation that's having an impact with this? Is it because too many top dogs can't shred the evidence like in the past? It may be slightly more advanced now, but we've had big bro for a while now. To be honest, he hasn't been that effective. Unless, the mining is purely for corporate use to better market us. I wouldn't doubt that.
 
The Recessionist said:
No one cared about echelon. Why do they care now? This isn't anything new. Nope. And why is it in the news now? I'm not being rhetorical. What's the difference? I had a cell, home phone, computer, internet in the 90s as many of you did and everyone else too. Is it the younger generation that's having an impact with this? Is it because too many top dogs can't shred the evidence like in the past? It may be slightly more advanced now, but we've had big bro for a while now. To be honest, he hasn't been that effective. Unless, the mining is purely for corporate use to better market us. I wouldn't doubt that.
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There are a lot of contributing factors to the growing outrage:
For one, the Internet has made a lot more people aware of what's going on than they were in the 1990's and early 2000's. I was just a kid when various governments started admitting Echelon's existence (the US government characteristically still denied it for years): An online gaming buddy told me about it, and I was the ONLY person I knew who knew about it until I found a tiny newspaper clipping related to it and brought it into class for current events.

Generations Y and younger have grown up with wider access to information and more varied perspectives, so we've access to more information more cynical about power, institutions, and powerful people. We're more aware of the existence of sociopaths, narcissists, etc. We're less invested in the status quo than older generations, so we're better able to recognize the blatant failures of the War on Drugs and inanity of the War on Terror, as well as the warped priorities pushed by more overbearing social conservatives. Combined with Ron Paul's influence, this has produced a huge shift in which the younger "conservative" demographic is now primarily libertarian, and less partisan liberals have rediscovered similar traits from our shared heritage in classical liberalism.

Moreover, the government has become increasingly brazen in its unconstitutional abuses and drastically expanded its programs and their visibility: Back then, there was Echelon, Carnivore, Rex84, MK-Ultra, etc., but few people really knew about them. There were incidents like Ruby Ridge and Waco, but few people really knew the truth of what happened. I mean, I believed for years that David Koresh was just some nutcase cult leader (grain of truth there) who burned his own people alive to keep them from escaping his compound into the arms of the kindly federal agents (untrue). (Reality: Koresh and the ATF went shooting at the range just a few days prior to the incident, so there was no need for any of the drama. As it turns out, the government set the fire and shot women and children as they ran out, and agents were literally taunting them and mooning them in their impeccable show of class and humanity.) Today, the government openly justifies policies like:
  • the Patriot Act overriding the Fourth Amendment
  • general searches and seizures, rather than a specific person or place describing the things to be searched/seized (hrm, sounds like something people have gotten upset about once before... ;))
  • torturing "terrorism" suspects
  • increasingly broad definitions of terrorism
  • torturing children to coerce confessions from parents, including stomping on a child's testicles (John Yoo's arguments IIRC)
  • leaving whistleblowers naked in a cold cell for years with the lights on 24/7
  • no habeas corpus
  • military tribunals passed off as trials
  • jury trials being "squeezed out" by summary offenses on one end and "offenses too great" like "terrorism" at the other
  • indefinite detention without trial for non-citizens first...and now citizens...as well as the ability to potentially strip citizenship at will, rendering people legally helpless in an environment where many think Constitutional protections are for citizens only
  • Presidential assassinations without any real accountability whatsoever
  • secret courts giving Senators secret orders to keep quiet about secret governmental criminal programs
  • endless war and drone strikes on wedding parties (that we're actually aware of, unlike all of the cruise missile strikes, occupations, and CIA ops of the past)
  • highway X-ray scanners
  • TSA molestation
  • an attorney general who can do whatever blatantly illegal thing he wants with complete immunity to prosecution
  • a surveillance dragnet that we know is becoming all-encompassing (look back to the 2005-ish reports of NSA splitters at AT&T), but which we can only prove bits and pieces of at a time (Snowden)
  • blatant corruption, like copyright extremism, a former Monsanto exec getting the Secretary of Agriculture position, and a revolving door policy at the FDA/USDA that goes as far as people simultaneously on federal and corporate payrolls
  • blatantly expansive Constitutional "interpretations" justifying absolute power
  • militarized police jackboots and the raid of the day: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/raid-of-the-day
  • the complete rejection of the Posse Comitatus Act
  • bailouts for major banks and sweeping major governmental criminality under the rug...
  • ...combined with extreme/absurd sentences for minor offenses committed by individuals against corporations
  • new gun control attempts coinciding with all of this (which reminds me of psychiatric bigwigs increasingly pondering the idea of diagnosing people who mistrust government with a disease...and you know what that means for their legal rights)

I'm probably forgetting a LOT. Then, there's the increasingly obvious media manipulation and social engineering, and there are the things the government does that the government doesn't openly admit to, but which others have revealed:
  • renditioning likely innocent people to Uzbekistan to be raped with broken bottles until they confess to something
  • the kindly good guy CIA renditioning another guy to have his penis sliced up with a razor blade

In short, the extent of the government's depravity is growing exponentially, and the list of grievances is becoming a lot longer and scarier looking than it looked in the 1990's. Our economic/monetary situation might be heightening our awareness that we're living at a critical moment in history as well. A lot more people are taking notice that if we aren't careful, the USA might turn into 1984 or this:
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1040074330&postcount=22

Overall, it's probably not very productive to question or doubt why more people finally care. Heck, I'm even thankful for the partisan Republicans who happen to care at this moment in time, even if it's only because they hate Obama. I don't care that they're hypocrites who defended Bush; whoever opposes totalitarian government in the here and now is my ally (and whoever makes excuses for it in the here and now it not), and the same will go in the future when the parties flip-flop. Every bit helps, because advancing technology is turning this point in history into a crossroads: If we allow the police state to take root too deeply, it might take innumerable generations to throw it off. Although other issues like economic issues have cascading effects on government power, the police state specifically is probably the single greatest issue of our time.
 
Oops:
"so we've access to more information more cynical about power, institutions, and powerful people" = "so we're more cynical about power, institutions, and powerful people"

I'm sure there are other mistakes where I half-revised something and left it FUBAR, but hopefully my intended meaning will come across.
 
Ugh, this is what I get for thinking too much on this topic...restlessness.

In short: Nowadays, the government's legal and technological control grid is almost complete, and it's a lot more palpable than before. All it really needs is a few of the final pieces to fall into place to become nearly impervious to opposition no matter what the government does, and with a little more lubrication, the capricious and despotic abuses will escalate with no recourse. Most people still can't fully comprehend or verbalize this eventuality, but thanks to the Internet, recent ideological shifts, and the government's audacity, a lot more people are noticing the feeling in their gut that something's wrong.
 
Nope sorry, I'm totally behind keeping it going. I'm 100% certain the feds aren't interested in busting me for smoking a bowl before jamming out on some video games. However, I am certain that not all legitimate terrorists are hiding in a rock in Islamabad. Yes, there are very malicious people living among us right here in the good old red white and blue. People don't want to believe that but it's true. I'm all for because you're not coming after me for cheating on my wife, or selling some of my pot to someone. You're monitoring because somewhere in podunk, farmville USA there's some guy putting together dirty bombs to drive into our capitals and kill as many Americans as possible. And THEY, are using DOMESTIC phone service.
 
I don't disagree with you. There's some messed up stuff we do, but is it messed up compared to what the US is up against just to survive as a nation? Is it messed up what "our government does to us" when in Mexico people are being beheaded, de-limbed and shipped across the country several times a day per city? Is it messed up when there's nations entirely set ablaze right now and America's fairly stable? I mean usually a day on theYNC dot com is enough to make me appreciate the gravity of what America is up against and forgive our government for some of it's atrocities, and appreciate that there's people willing to do the dirty work, so I can stay clueless as to what an effed up world we live in while I cook steaks from Wal Mart on my Outdoor grill I bought from Lowe's, drinking a beer and talking about my only real complaint "I don't make as much as I'd like to spend on shit I don't need." I mean WE are Americans right? So we accept the bad with all the good we're so clueless we have? Or we just complain about the bad, and ask our government to "play fair" with the people from other countries, that may also be living domestically that are willing to kill/rape/abduct/behead/maim us any way they can?
 
The problem is, people still have this strange belief that this is the same country founded by the "founding fathers." It's not. It hasn't been for a very, very long time. The people who actually believe in having THAT system represent a very tiny minority of the population. The fact of the matter is for better or worse it has evolved gradually into wherever it is going. It's an unstoppable force. Certain liberties or rights have and will continue to be traded for certain conveniences no matter how inconvenient to others. The world continues to shrink as the institutions become more dependent upon one another so the need to advert crisis continues to grow as they prove to impact the entire world. I think there's a possibility that no one can contain this and some are trying to grasp at whatever tethers are available. Probably making some poor decisions in the process.

Not being an isolationist state forces us to not place all of the focus on our well being anymore. Take China for example, in order to ensure their sustainability they have to protect a possible future and current threat. They would love to see the US economy collapse, but they'd shoot themselves in the foot if the USA failed. It works both ways. This makes me feel even more badly for nations with very limited resources as they tend to not do so well in this type of environment even with forced slave labor. Suffering...

Can people forgo some of the 'socialist' programs in this country? I doubt it. To many they feel they paid into it, now that they finally or are about to reap the paltry benefits want what's coming to them. I don't blame them. Just people looking out for numero uno. The collar has already been placed. Now that it is tightening a little some feel maybe they were a little too hasty in their decision making. Others have to read about what used to be, but is no more.

Corruption is everywhere. Has been and forever will be. I could quote Gandhi here...

I think the Ron Paul people are just the new independent party. So long Ralph Nader, hello Ron. In a sense, you know? What is unclear to me is if its this party of old revolutionary thinking or the people who are affiliated with it causing alarm? I think because it's a small party there isn't a fear in the establishment that it may gain traction and undo some of the current settings. Not on a Federal level. I think they are more of an easy target because there are some unsavory groups of people that are peppered amongst some fanatic types.

As for privacy, there is either a really nasty threat we're not aware of, or they are completely screwing us and fear retaliation. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it is a mixture of both. America has had homegrown terrorism forever. Sometimes they are tagged with a different name, but a duck is a duck.

One has to question if "our safety" is really the main concern when our natural resources required for life are being pilfered and wasted at such a disgusting rate.

I have a healthy dose of fear of the gu'ment, but I also have a tremendous amount of fear of my neighbors. Who knows what these people are doing now days to crap all over someone else. We live in an irrational world. The times are interesting. And just think, it only takes one wrong rock in space to really shit all over it.
 
mh15216 said:
I don't disagree with you. There's some messed up stuff we do, but is it messed up compared to what the US is up against just to survive as a nation? Is it messed up what "our government does to us" when in Mexico people are being beheaded, de-limbed and shipped across the country several times a day per city? Is it messed up when there's nations entirely set ablaze right now and America's fairly stable? I mean usually a day on theYNC dot com is enough to make me appreciate the gravity of what America is up against and forgive our government for some of it's atrocities, and appreciate that there's people willing to do the dirty work, so I can stay clueless as to what an effed up world we live in while I cook steaks from Wal Mart on my Outdoor grill I bought from Lowe's, drinking a beer and talking about my only real complaint "I don't make as much as I'd like to spend on shit I don't need." I mean WE are Americans right? So we accept the bad with all the good we're so clueless we have? Or we just complain about the bad, and ask our government to "play fair" with the people from other countries, that may also be living domestically that are willing to kill/rape/abduct/behead/maim us any way they can?
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The US survives because of strong civil society, not the government. What are the governments of Japan, or Sweden, or Canada doing to "just survive as a nation?" Sweet fuck all, because it's neither possible or desirable to have a government in that role.

We are not fighting the fucking Nazis, we have a couple of dipshits with makeshift bombs and a bad attitude out there. The threat is a zero in terms of survival. Have some god damn courage to live already.
 
The only way you'll see real outrage about this is when it's used against domestic political opposition.
 
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