> The article was used for the imprisonment and execution of many prominent people, as well as multitudes of nonnotable innocents. (...) Article 58 of the Russian SFSR Penal Code was put in force on 25 February 1927 to arrest those suspected of counter-revolutionary activities.
So the point is that even in Soviet Russia people were sent into the Gulag based on written laws and going through the legal system, so I'd say that the US Government's reply that "it's all legal! it has gone through the courts" doesn't mean a thing as long as said laws are against the spirit of the US Constitution.
And I'd say that's the gist of it, the current laws are against the spirit of the original fundamental law of the United States. As long as its current citizens are ok with that (no mass protests etc) then I'd say there's nothing that the minority can do (if it matters I'm not from the US)
Yes, Hitler and Stalin spied a lot on their own populations for "national security" purposes, but we should be able to oppose surveillance on it's own merits with out resorting to the painting a (fallacious) slippery slope picture where the next frame is a KZ/Gulag camp.
I disagree that with your last point, that people should make the argument purely on its own merits. "So what if people are monitoring our communications?" I might ask this question myself if I had never read any history books.
The worrying thing for me is that we've been here before. Hitler did not come to power via some dramatic coup. He tried that and it failed. Instead he took the long, slow, legal and democratic route. Many legitimate comparisons with early 1930's Germany are there. I'm not saying it's a facsimile, it never would be. But with each civil liberty we sacrifice in the name of security the state becomes more oppressive, more open to abuse, an evermore viable breeding ground for tyranny. Worst of all, it can all happen without a shot being fired and well meaning onlookers saying, 'It will never get that bad'.
I'm going on a bit now, but for me the really terrifying aspect is that with all our modern technology (which I do love) it is possible for the state to create an apparatus to suppress the population that which we could never extricate ourselves from.
To quote BoC, "Defend your constitutionally protected rights. No one else will do it for you."
Agreed, but consider this: a slippery slope fallacy is more like "If we do A, then B will inevitably follow". Lacking evidence to support it, that is a fallacy. But it's not a fallacy to point out "B" as warning of what might follow from "A".
And in the "reasoning by analogy" sense, it's not wrong to point out that "Group C did A and then B followed, so we might want to be careful about doing A" (assuming "B" is something undesirable).
Sometimes it is a valid point of discussion to point out these potential "slippery slopes"; it's just important to distinguish between the assertion that the following part happens as an inevitable consequence or not, and if that is asserted, to demand evidence.
Yes, and too soon a lot of "healthy living" "outdoors" had too many single girls 15 or so coming back pregnant, as "Hitler's brides" and had to be throttled!
One difference here is that when the USG says "well it's all done according to law", that law was written and passed by an institution who at least nominally represents and is elected by the people. I don't know if the same can be said of the USSR.
The USSR was also nominally run under laws, which were notionally written and formally adopted by an institution which at least nominally represented and was elected by the people, and no doubt for any particular policy the regime could point to some justification in some provision of the Constitution and laws for the authority to carry out the action.
For all practical purposes the "classical constitution United States" that we were taught in school and media doesn't exist anymore. But we pretend it does for pragmatic reasons.
The Constitution never existed as anything more than an idea, and it has force and meaning to the exact extent to which the people choose to give it force and meaning (the same as any other law.)
Laws, including basic laws like the Constitution, aren't magical and self-enforcing; they are real or not to the extent that people give them effect. The idea that "the Constitution protects" this right or that limitation on government's power is the exact thing which guarantees that those things are not protected -- either people protect them by insisting on them, or they are not protected at all. The Constitution is, at most, a statement of intent about what the people will insist upon, and it loses credibility when the people are passive and don't follow through.
I believe that one of the reasons that Jefferson thought it was necessary for the Constitution to be rewritten and readopted every generation is that he recognized that the slide into passivity and lack of ownership of the Constitution was a natural trend that would, over time, render any Constitution into a dead letter.
We have all the pieces in place. Widespread surveillance, a "legal system" that allows anyone to be arrested and imprisoned, soldiers carrying out police work, secret courts/secret laws, mass imprisonment, etc. All it would take is for someone to arrange those pieces properly and tyranny would ensue.
As an analogy, consider how Americans view gun ownership in relation to gun crime as opposed how Europeans might view it. Crime is the telltale of a criminal, not having a gun.
Actually, it's a constitutional republic.
But my real concern here is with the "constitutional" part, because most reasonable readers seem to agree that the PRISM surveillance violates the Constitution. Yet the federal government only seems concerned about Constitutionality when it suits them, (literally) laughing it off otherwise:
CNS: Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?
Pelosi: [Giggles] Are you serious? Are you serious?”
CNS: Yes, yes I am.
Pelosi: [Takes question from another reporter.]
So I'm concerned that the degree to which we're "consitutional" at all is becoming increasingly tenuous.
Conversely, most people that I've talked to agree that the NSA listening is very much not constitutional as per the 4th amendment. Even if you think it's constitutional, you have to do a lot of weasel wording about the definition of 'search and seizure'.
As to the 'it's not a democracy, it's a republic' thing - it's just silly. So is taking the fact that some congressperson would not engage in a constitutional law debate with a reporter as an indication of the country's inexorable drift away from its constitution. Especially when you consider the question was answered - by the Supreme Court.
I don't understand this distinction. I read it from time to time on forums like these. US certainly is a democracy, in my (non-English) native language. And it is a republic. These are not exclusive.
No, not at all. The situation is still all well within the US Constitution in the sense of want people "can do". In particular, as I will outline, there is a very fast, simple solution well within what "the minority can do".
Background: In the US Federal Government, there are three branches, executive (e.g., headed by the president), the legislative (i.e., Congress), and the judicial (with the Supreme Court).
In the case of the Snowden leaks, the actions Snowden was objecting to were by the executive branch which (more or less) was following laws passed by the legislative branch and signed into law by the executive branch. So far so good, that is, within the Constitution. Note that the judicial branch is not involved in passing or signing such laws and so far has not been involved in this whole matter.
But looking at the laws and what the executive branch did that Snowden revealed, a "minority" might conclude that the Constitution was violated. Really, still, so far so good because it's not up to the legislative or executive branch to determine if the Constitution was violated. It's been common throughout US history for the legislative branch to pass laws and the executive branch to sign and use those laws but later the US courts, usually including the US Supreme Court, to find that the laws were "unconstitutional" and strike them down.
So for what a "minority can do" in this case? Sure: Bring a law suit in the judicial branch where the suit claims that the Constitution, e.g., First or Fourth Amendment, was violated. Typically the case (I don't know the details of the process) makes it to the US Supreme Court. For the role of a "minority", in principle only one person need bring the case.
We should guess that people highly concerned with the situation leaked by Snowden will bring such cases. So, we will look for the ACLU and the EFF. But now we also see that Google is bringing a case. The legal costs for bringing a case might be significant, but there are plenty of organizations and individuals with much more than enough money to pay for those costs. Likely cases will be brought.
My guess is that much of the relevant laws will be struck down.
So, why has the judicial branch or the Supreme Court not yet struck down the relevant laws? Because they don't do that; instead, there has to be a legal case brought.
In all of this, the Supreme Court will act very cautiously. And in principle there is nothing important to keep them from acting quickly.
Net, so far the US Constitution is working just as intended. No riots in the streets are needed yet. We just need for some cases to be brought. That the laws mandated a lot of secrecy may have helped slow the bringing of cases, but likely Google, Microsoft, and some individuals have plenty of 'legal standing' to bring suitable cases.
So far the legislative branch passed some laws. They can do that. The laws can later be found to violate the Constitution and even then we don't line up the people in Congress who passed the laws and shoot them. Similarly for the executive branch: Once Congress has passed a law, the executive branch can sign it and use it.
Net, there is only one branch that can say if a law is constitutional or not, the judicial branch, and so far apparently no suitable case has been brought and the judicial branch has yet to speak.
Indeed, I have a letter drafted to my members of Congress but have not sent it because the letter really just claims that the relevant laws were unconstitutional, and for the members of Congress such claims are nearly irrelevant.
Net, we just need a suitable case in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court will have no difficulty at all understanding all the relevant issues, and that court has plenty of ability to slap down laws passed by Congress and signed and used by the executive branch. Slapping down unconstitutional laws is much of just why the Supreme Court is there, and they are 100% fully aware of that point.
Some of the recent appointees to the Supreme Court are quite 'liberal', but nearly always they are plenty bright and will see the constitutional issues in the activities Snowden described with crystal clarity and intense concern.
The fight over the constitutionality of the relevant laws is not nearly over and, indeed, has yet to begin but apparently is about to begin. Don't bet on those laws coming out whole.
In particular the Constitution says nothing about violating the Constitution with secret orders of the executive branch based on wacko laws and approved by a secret 'court' of persons appointed by a member of the judicial branch with secret oversight by committees of Congress. Maybe the people who dreamed up this wacko nonsense thought that they were clever, but they were not: What they constructed has nothing to do with the Constitution, and the Supreme Court will have no difficulty at all seeing this point.
If the Supreme Court strikes down the laws, they will be gone -- out'a here. And that's just the way the Constitution says the process is supposed to work.
We're a government of laws, not men: What matters are the laws, not what Presidents Bush and Obama say, what General Alexander says, what the FISA 'court' says, or what the Intelligence committees of Congress say. Instead what matters here is what laws the Supreme Court says are constitutional.
I wish I shared your optimism.
I sincerely hope that the laws will get struck down, but I also fear that the classified nature of many things that touch this will lead the courts to say that we can't show we have standing, and therefore decline to rule on the constitutionality.
More importantly, what matters is NOT just what the laws say, but whether the government follows them! The core issue here is that we believe the laws and constitution are NOT being followed, and that the government feels that What the King Does Is Legal. That was Nixon's claim, and in effect is what the Bush administration claimed re: treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. This time around, the fact that it's being done by the NSA with the President's permission allows them to claim that the classified nature of nearly everything at stake here means we should trust them.
Getting the laws overturned will be a HUGE first step, though, and you laid out in excellent detail things that we citizens can (and should) do and expect.
http://blog.rongarret.info/2013/06/court-finds-nsa-surveilla...
How screwed up is that?
So, the Supreme Court will let claims of 'secrecy' trash the Constitution? I don't think so! The court should be able to find some ways around such claims of 'secrecy'! Telling those nine justices that they can't get 'secret' details promises not to 'play well'! The NSA is worried about tracking some loser, wacko, nutjob Jihader from Somalia, and the Supreme Court is worried about saving the US Constitution -- hmm ...!
> More importantly, what matters is NOT just what the laws say, but whether the government follows them!
If the executive branch is violating a law, bring a legal case. While this answer is simplistic, and usually is not an easy path, it is basically the way the process works. But such a case has to be brought and decided only once -- after that any judge can say that the issue has already been decided. While the process is not always easy, in important cases it tends to get followed. E.g., if the FBI goes to Google and says "gimme", Google can reply "see you in court". "Double secret probation" worked in the movie 'Animal House' but won't last long before the Supreme Court.
> What the King Does Is Legal
Not really true, but there is a lot of 'latitude'. And there can be a 'time window' until legal cases are brought. But the President is Commander in Chief so can tell the military to take that town. If the town is in the US, then there is a law about that. If the town is in another country, then the president should have some 'war powers', but the way it usually works in practice is that the president asks Congress for an authorizing vote. Then of course the president needs Congress to vote the money for the military action. And Congress can also pass a law that says that no money will be used to take the town in question -- in which case for the money the president has to run a bake sale, sell some arms and call up Colonel North, or some such. If the vote is 2/3rds in both houses, then it overrides any presidential veto and stands. So far the pushing and shoving from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue have not gone beyond such things. E.g., in effect for Gulf War II, Congress voted some 'authorization' (I'm no expert with details), did vote the money, lots of money, often, and didn't vote "no money will be spent in Iraq" or any such thing. W didn't do Gulf War II by himself and, instead, had a lot of help from Congress; it wasn't all W's fault. Cheney's "There's no doubt that Saddam has WMD."? Well, if count chembio weapons, that was true. Why? Because we still had the receipts from when we shipped those materials to him when he was fighting Iran. I was 100% against Gulf War II, but it wasn't all W's fault; he had a lot of help, enough that at least the spirit of the Constitution was followed.
It's simple: Nearly all the power is in Congress, if they can get a sufficient majority to use it. But if Congress goes beyond the Constitution, then they can get slapped down by Supreme Court just across the street. We had some darned smart founding fathers: They were working to give up a lot of the power of the separate states to a central government and were darned careful about doing so.
Gitmo is a legal mess: (1) It's not in the US, deliberately so. (2) It's supposedly about what we are now calling 'prisoners of war'. Somehow a lot of people want to regard the prisoners in Gitmo as having the right to access the US legal system, but that's not so clear, and, indeed, how the US military handles 'justice' on the in times of 'war', or whatever we are calling the fight against Al Qaeda, etc., has long or always been a long way from the US domestic criminal legal system. E.g., the stories go that in Viet Nam, the US had four prisoners and wanted them to talk but they didn't want to talk. So, all four prisoners got a helicopter ride. From maybe 2000 feet up, the prisoners were asked one last time to talk. When they didn't, one prisoner went outside for a 'walk', from 2000 feet up. The story is that then usually the other three prisoners were willing to talk. The Geneva Convention may have something to say about such tactics, but I don't recall if the Geneva Convention applied in Viet Nam. Maybe Senator McCain (whom I rarely agree with -- he didn't actually sink a US aircraft carrier although he came close) can give some details on how the Geneva Convention applied in Viet Nam. I was very much against the US in Viet Nam soon after I heard General Maxwell Taylor speak and asked him a question and got his answer; but with the US military actually sent to Viet Nam, some of the details on just how they talked to prisoners I was less concerned about. Broadly just what the heck the US military does on battlefields is to me a bit far from the US Constitution here inside the US.
> This time around, the fact that it's being done by the NSA with the President's permission allows them to claim that the classified nature of nearly everything at stake here means we should trust them.
They can claim all kinds of stuff. E.g., they might claim that no kittens or puppies were harmed by the NSA. Fine. Irrelevant but fine. Similarly they might claim "you can trust us -- we love the US and work hard everyday to protect and defend the US and honor the laws and the Constitution" -- close to some things they actually said recently and about as relevant as not harming kittens and puppies. Instead, as we know well, very well, all too well, and as I am fully sure that all nine Supreme Court justices know with brilliant clarity,
"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."
Besides, it's not up to General Alexander, the NSA, or President Obama to determine what is "constitutional". And it's not up to Senator Feinstein, etc. either. As we know well, instead, with a suitable case brought, the issue is up to the Supreme Court.
> Getting the laws overturned will be a HUGE first step
Shouldn't be. That's just the way the process is supposed to work. Congress and the president go with the excitement of the moment but eventually a case is brought to the Supreme Court and cooler, wiser heads prevail. In the meanwhile a General Alexander is able to say maybe that he loves America while he tracks mud over the First and Fourth Amendments.
Have some faith: The Constitution is fairly clear. The Supreme Court is highly respected. Nearly everyone in the US understands that the Federal Government is not supposed to be listening in on pillow talk, phone sex, steamy e-mails, or following people around, e.g., via cell phone towers, as they meet for their romantic engagements, etc. And the government is not supposed to be getting all that data, from Verizon, Google, Microsoft, or the Internet backbone even if the government does not use it. E.g., an ordinary phone wiretap takes a court order, and grabbing all the Internet traffic covers wiretaps, literally, and more. That no alligator clips and reel to reel tape recorders need be used is irrelevant -- grabbing voice over IP is the same as a wiretap; grabbing that data for 330 million US citizens within the US instead of just some one suspected Mafia thug is at least 330 million times worse and not better; and without a court order, in line with at least the Fourth Amendment grabbing all that data is just flatly illegal and unconstitutional.
Net, for the Supreme Court to strike down the laws that enabled a lot of what Snowden showed will be an easy slam dunk from a 10 foot stepladder. Telling the Supreme Court that they can't strike down such laws will be one of the most outrageously funny jokes ever cracked near DC. Take that claim and go down the present list of Supreme Court justices and guess who will even smile: Let's see, will Justice Scalia smile? He never smiles! Justice Ginsberg? She's so serious she can laugh and smile and no one believes it's genuine. Justices Sotomayor and Kagan? They are both busting their gut everyday to be sure no one can claim that they, as women, are not up to the full seriousness of the Court.
Trust in the founding fathers, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution. So far what the NSA did may be roughly 'legal' with current laws; that may not be the case much longer.
This is a myth. Any branch can declare a law unconstitutional. If Congress thinks a law is unconstitutional they can keep it off the books. If the President thinks a law is unconstitutional he can refuse to enforce or execute it.
The courts get a reputation as the ones who decide because A) if the other branches do their duty it never gets to the courts, which means the courts have the last word and are the final check on unconstitutional activity, and B) the other branches of government are happy to let you believe they have no responsibility to uphold the constitution (even though they very much do) because they're elected and elected officials violating the Supreme Law of the Land is fairly unpopular, so all the better if people mislead themselves into thinking that they have no responsibility.
When anyone else or any other organization declares a law unconstitutional, then that's nice, nice to have their opinion, but mostly that's just their opinion. As I recall, the president is sworn to uphold the laws. If there is some law the president refuses to enforce, then there might be a law suit that goes to the Supreme Court. Or there might be an impeachment proceeding in the Congress.
Really, in practice there is a lot of discretion on what laws get enforced, and part of the role of the Attorney General (AG) is to decide, as a political matter as the AG serves at the pleasure of the president, what laws will be enforced. Still, likely (I'm not a lawyer) if I am suffering because some law was not enforced, then I can bring suit against the people supposed to enforce that law.
Maybe we should ask the Japanese Americans who were put into camps if they feel safe with the Supreme Court protecting us from the legislative and executive branches.
The excuse was that we were at war, in particular with Japan. The fear was that Japanese in the US would work for Japan.
We knew that putting all Japanese, at least those in the West, in camps was an ugly situation. And, when the war was over, the camps were emptied.
In the camps, life should have been as good as possible with lots of food, good shelter, good schooling, good medical care, etc. I don't know if that was the case. They were not criminals. But a lot of Japanese in the US lost their homes, belongings, businesses, etc. It was ugly. Hopefully they didn't suffer serious medical problems or lose their lives.
What happens in war is different from what happens in peace. Indeed, one of the issues about 'the war on terror' is, is it war or peace in the US? If it is peace in the US, are the terrorists in the US just criminals in the US legal system or enemy soldiers? If the war on terror is war in the US, are we going to suspend the Constitution until all the terrorists, many tens of millions of radical Muslims, have been 'defeated'?
What will the US do about Muslims in the US? Try to judge if they are 'radical' Muslims? Watch them in the mosques? Follow them around? Deport them? Put them in camps as for the Japanese in WWII? Treat them just as criminals in the US criminal system?
E.g., what is going on in Gitmo is not really the US criminal legal system. It's a bad situation. But 9/11 was a bad situation, and so was the role of the camps in Afghanistan and the IED's in Afghanistan, etc.
Laws, Supreme Court and so on mean nothing. They who hold the force make the rules. The constitution is nothing more than a security blanket that people can hold onto and pretend it's protecting them from something. In reality, the government will do what they want to do and (possibly, if they care to) justify it later with some "interpretation" of the law.
> historical precedent.
There's plenty of historical precedent where the US democracy worked. E.g., we passed prohibition -- 2/3rds of the House, 2/3rds of the Senate, and 3/4ths of the states. When we saw how dumb it was, we repealed it.
Recently SOPA and PIPA were close to passing. A lot of people in the tech community raised hell, and the bills went down in flames.
Sure, the Constitution doesn't solve all the problems. Instead, as Jefferson said,
"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."
So, to make the Constitution work, citizens have to keep pushing. You mentioned threats, and there are threats, but they can be defeated.
Once public opinion polls rise significantly over 50%, politicians start to pay close attention.
The main issue, then, is just what the voters want. Sure, the MSM, political ad campaigns, lying politicians, etc. can have big effects, but in the end the voters know a lot about lying, duplicity, manipulation, etc. I believe that the Internet will be helping -- it seems to have helped a lot with SOPA and PIPA and to have gotten the Snowden efforts front and center. No doubt some cases are on the way to the Supreme Court -- from Google, EFF, ACLU, etc. I doubt that the Patriot Act will come out whole.
Indeed, I believe that YouTube is helping a lot: Once a politician gives a speech, then due to YouTube the politician can't assume that the voters will easily forget. And for text data on politics, the Google/Bing keywork/phrase search engines are terrific.
Look at the US efforts in Viet Nam: Before WWII, Viet Nam was a colony of France. Ho Chi Minh was a dishwasher in Paris!
During WWII, Japan made Viet Nam a colony. The US worked with the Viet Namese 'nationalists', e.g., to rescue downed US pilots.
After WWII, the French got one of the peace conferences to let them back into Viet Nam, and war broke out.
Then the US had just fought against the Axis of Germany, Italy, and Japan, and it looked like there was another axis on the way with Moscow, Peking, and Hanoi. So, the US helped France in Viet Nam. The French lost.
By then the US had been fighting in Korea: The North was backed by Moscow and Peking and wanted the whole country. The US and parts of the UN wanted to 'block' that effort. So, there was the war in Korea, really, still simmering.
So, when the French lost in Viet Nam, the US wanted to divide the country and have the southern half allied with the US.
Alas, whatever the Ho government was, it was able to maintain power. And the US couldn't find a government to back in Saigon that could maintain power -- a Saigon politician did not dare sleep in a small village in the South.
So, the US kept backing governments in Saigon that kept losing.
In the US, the foreign policy 'wise men', Keenan, Dulles, Rusk, Bundy, etc. kept screaming that the US had to stop Hanoi or "dominoes" would fall all across the Pacific and land in California or some such. LBJ and Nixon really bought into this stuff, big time.
So the US bent itself all out of shape, inflated its economy, lost the lives of 50,000+ US soldiers, etc. trying to prop up loser governments in Saigon.
Why? Because no US politician wanted to see Hanoi take Saigon and, then, suffer the charges that they "lost Viet Nam" and were "soft on the atheistic, international Communist conspiracy about to take over the world and march into Washington, DC". That sales pitch worked really well in the US from the end of WWII until the US finally was run out of Viet Nam with people hanging off the parts of US helicopters whenever it was in the 1970s.
In all of this, it was really sad that Ho worked so hard to go to Moscow and Peking and, there, poke the US.
Actually, in the end, Hanoi and the US really had no serious differences at all. Indeed, now the US couldn't be happier with Hanoi. The US could have been happy with Ho and Hanoi at any time from WWII until the US totally lost.
But for your point about US democracy, what finally got the US out of Viet Nam was the US voters, e.g., many thousands of them marching on DC. Finally they made such a big noise that even President Ford gave only half-hearted support for staying in Saigon, and we left.
The US voters long bought into that Rusk, etc. "domino" theory. Eventually nearly every young person knew someone in their high school days who had died in Viet Nam. The predictions of the hawks never came true. It was clear that somehow the US just did not know how to build a government in Saigon.
It took US voters a very long time, decades, to see these points. But, eventually the voters saw, and then the US was out'a there.
The bottleneck was the US voters voting for LBJ and Nixon instead of, say, McGovern. I voted for McGovern; he wanted out as in 'leave now' which is eventually just what we did and what brought us to the present which is just fine. But McGovern lost, badly.
There were lots of people saying that we should get the heck out of Viet Nam. One book went "Are not winning, cannot win, should not wish to win". My view is that we burned enough oil, say, in B-52s from Guam, to enable OPEC.
We blew it.
Then, Afghanistan -- same song, second verse. There, still, no US politician wants to say, "Leave. Now.". Me? I'd have bombed enough of Akrapistan to teach them a lesson and then left, without ever setting a foot on the ground.
The US needs to wise up.
OK, I don't like what is happening, and almost day by day thing happen that I feel are pushing the west, led by the US, more and more towards something highly controlled and not in any way free. Liberty is slowly being eroded, and I genuinely feel that is a true statement objectively. Right now, words like stasi, fascist, etc are an exaggeration, but used by people who see it going that way. They use such words to warn, but we all know those words do not really stand up objectively.
So, what is the tipping point, what has to happen for such words to actually apply? Or is it merely a case of presentation? If society, superficially, doesn't look like old Nazi Germany, is that enough for a majority to be content, even if underling that is something deeply nasty?
The surveillance undertaken by the Stasi wasn't really as extensive as (for example) collecting all phone records for the entire country, so in some ways the US has surpassed the Stasi in surveillance, while in others obviously it's nowhere near the same situation (e.g. in-person surveillance and recruiting ordinary citizens as spies), and in other areas it's similar - secret courts and sweeping warrants etc.
I suppose the point of the comparison is to shock, and then perhaps point out that there are some areas in which the current situation is worse than it was in Eastern Germany.
(In East Germany, the Berlin Wall was called the "Anti-Fascist Barrier", and Nazis imprisoned and banned the communist party)
I grew up in Western Germany and visited the East several times. Living in the US now I have to say that it feels an order of magnitude "freer" than either of the Germanies of my youth. However, I'm very concerned about the NSA thing.
American citizens can be arrested on U.S. soil and sent to Guantanamo, they haven't "disappeared" but they are out of sight.
There has been at least two American citizens sent to Guantanamo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Hamdi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Padilla_(alleged_terr... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_detainees_at_Guantanam...
It feels like something out of the Niemoller poem:
"First they came for the muslims, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a muslim."
OT: I always feel awkward about writing "American" when referring to U.S. citizens, as we in South America also call ourselves Americans ("Americanos").
Have you noticed how those who move, move fast? And those who don’t, just stand still; motionless?
Yes, you can go ahead and rant to me about how an object in motion stays in motion, and how an object at rest stays at rest. But, I think there’s more to this than physics.
I think those in motion have seen something the others have not; their imprisonment.
While those who do not move, do not notice their chains.
Truly yours, Rosa Luxemburg
Unlike during the time of the Nazis, what most people in East Germany dreaded was not to disappear, but to have the few possibilities to achieve something taken from them.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/grand-jury-rejects...
Cases like that can be dangerous trial balloons.
You don't necessarily need to 'disappear' people when (with enough information) you can string together a bunch of charges such that a compliant judicial system will put them away for you. Even if there isn't a conviction, the process may be sufficient to destroy someone's life.
http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=de&to=en&a=n...
German original:
https://netzpolitik.org/2013/erschreckende-statistik-geheimd...
Also, his first name is Joachim.
That might be true but you would have to be naive to think that the information that could be gathered from these NSA activities would not be misused by people.
Imagine an up and coming politician. Squeaky clean but was friends with a few people who got prosecuted for drug dealing. Those useful NSA phone records could easily lead to the press asking the young idealist if he often hung around with drug users. Irrelevant and potentially career ending.
Civil rights campaigners who could be accused of having an affair because of call records.
A journalist investigating a corrupt politician... is he a terrorist sympathizer... comb through the records.
You may have nothing to hide but often the people trying to improve your country for the better and root out corruption and crime will be more vulnerable to this. Because the corrupt individuals in positions of power will not respect the laws and procedures and will use this information for evil.
Thoughts?
The third problem is that due to the complexity of the penal code, this is already the case. You have already done stuff in the last 10 years, that you didn't think was illegal, but somewhere in the tens of thousands of pages of the penal code someone can find a reason to throw you in jail if they have enough information about you. As Richelieu put it, "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." - the NSA has billions of lines about you. They can hang you a million times over.
Are there any examples of crimes that many people have probably committed? Maybe software piracy, but isn't that just a fine? And I hope that isn't the only example.
Have you ever ordered anything off Amazon? Did you declare and pay the appropriate use taxes for what you bought? Did you ever discuss with anyone that buying things off Amazon meant there was no tax?
Depending on where you live, that's tax fraud and conspiracy to commit. If you had the discussion over email or on a message board, then it's an inter-state crime...
http://www.dumblaws.com/random-laws
They've basically "al caponed" the entire US. If they can't get you on one thing, they'll get you on another. Oddly enough, taxes are probably something everyone has broken the law on. Do you really report everything to the last penny? No? Oh, well theres tax evasion.
And I wonder if this also works for the Dutch police.
It won't work on Customs and Immigration. When you're talking to them you're not "in the US" yet. After that, yes, the privilege against self-incrimination is granted to everyone in the United States, citizen or not.
> And I wonder if this also works for the Dutch police.
The privilege in question is considered an essential component of the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution. Most other countries based on English common law have something similar. You'll have to look for parallel support within the Dutch legal system.
That invalidates their entire premise instantly, by pointing out that it is not their judgment that matters as to whether they have anything to hide.
People say that they have nothing to hide - in response to things like the NSA spying scandals - because they're terrified of confrontation. To say almost anything else is to challenge the government's authority, to say to them: you have no right to violate my constitutional rights and I refuse to accept it.
When you see someone cowering in fear behind that statement, remember what their mental state of mind likely is and re-approach how you discuss the spying with them, otherwise you'll find they will just turtle. It's far easier for most people to back down from confrontation than to challenge such extreme authority (the US Govt.).
Consider that lobbyists & bureaucrats now have the capability (prevented only by policy) to snoop the past and present communications of elected officials.
Imagine your squeaky clean politician, whose friends are equally squeaky clean. How effective will this politician be when at negotiations, hearings, etc, his opponents have already studied his history and relationships? They know where he likes to eat, where he's been on vacation, where his dog goes to the vet. They know how the talks are going, they know which strategies are working, and which lines of thought aren't.
In short, they know which ideas to push, and which ideas to back away from.
This politician will be both ineffective at representing his constituents, as well as unable to point to why this is the case. And he's never going to cry out "blackmail!"
Who hasn't broken some minor law at some time? Selective enforcement and total information awareness on the part of the enforcers are a dangerous combination.
http://www.france24.com/en/20130619-us-seizure-journalist-re...
The 4th amendment is all but obliterated, and now this is how the 1st amendment and the freedom of the press will be destroyed, too, by killing any sort of investigative journalism left, and by prosecuting all leakers.
I used to think that Wikileaks and other such secure leaking is the future of investigative journalism. If you believe the print media will die, and blogging will take its place, then investigative journalism will die, too, because I doubt many bloggers will go out and do that. So in a way Wikileaks would serve as a "disruptive innovation" for investigative journalism. Actually, most investigative journalism is only about finding "sources" that are willing to leak stuff to them, anyway. Wikileaks is kind of a "user-generated" investigative journalism/leaking, or investigative journalism 2.0.
But if the government is trying to kill both at once, then I'm not sure what's left to uncover illegalities inside the government.
We have serious problems, as evidence by the unwillingness of any member of Congress to really speak out on the issue, and the sheer scope and reach power of this poorly regulated surveillance regime.
There's no gulag archipelago, but the tools used by repressive totalitarian regimes are being built for other purposes, and many of us believe that these tools are not compatible with a free and democratic society.
Let's focus on the real and stop running down the slippery slope.
Similarly we can talk about NSA overreaches all we want, as opposed to the old way of actually silencing the dissent. Great, except everyone is just talking, they are probably continuing with impunity under a different program name.
"There's a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think... it's all about the information!"
"The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data. It's all just electrons."
Because even if we win this round, the state will find ways to bring these programs back in some other guise. For example, the FISA courts were part of the reforms that emerged from the abuses of the CIA and FBI during the Red Scare and Civil Rights eras.
In other words, we need a technical Rosa Parks. Well, more like a million of them.
The only reasonable conclusion is that to stop the bloodshed and invasion, one must stop supporting the oppressors.
You are quite literally paying many thousands of thugs to fly to the middle east and support a paedophilic, incompetent, oppressive regime which directly hurts people's lives. At home you're paying many more thousands to pick on people carrying small amounts of plant trimmings, specifically targeted by the colour of their skin. Those people are then sent to buildings and force fed in contract-incestuous CEO-laden prisons with an economic incentive to cost more money to their handlers.
Aggression is the problem, and paying people to use it against you, or anyone else for that matter, is probably not going to help.
Stop all domestic surveillance? What about US Citizens in other countries? What about foreign nationals inside the US?
Increase oversight? What about for rare unambiguous national security threats? How can that be enforced?
And it sounds a lot like learned helplessness, but what is an individual supposed to do?
