10 ms·
Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)
- diminoten 13y agoThese weren't warrantless.
- ninetenel 13y agopoliticians lie? nowai
- shill 13y agoYeswai. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6fnfVJzZT4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6fnfVJzZT4
- hawleyal 13y agoI remember that.
- JensenDied 13y agoMe too, I wanted him out of senate on this. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/110-2008/s168 http://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/110-2008/s168 I learned to be more specific.
- edward 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_promise#Broken_promises http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_promise#Broken_promise...
- monsterix 13y agoChhi... Compare it with the words and deeds of Abraham Lincoln 250 years ago: "If slavery isn't wrong, then nothing is wrong." [1][2] There is a stark change in quality of leaders available today. There is so little correlation between words spoken and execution. [1] http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trt027.html http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trt027.html [2] http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/images/ltoh1.jpg http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/images/ltoh1.jpg
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- samolang 13y agoI think there are plenty of quality leaders that exist. The problem is that there are too many cunning politicians that beat them in elections.
- Nursie 13y agoAnd too many people that vote for the tall guy with the good hair, the sharp suit and a suite of meaningless platitudes. Unfortunately we do get the politicians we deserve, though it's true they conspire to make us think our choices are limited.
- einhverfr 13y agoActually go through and look at where the money comes from for campaigns and you will note that very often the names in common of the Republican and Democratic donors near the top of the list are quite striking. Calling Obama the Goldman-Sachs candidate and McCain the Morgan-Stanley candidate would be incorrect because these two donated to both candidates... When you bet on both sides (and get to pick the frontrunners), you can't lose.
- antoko 13y agoActually Lincoln was a pragmatist and had to deal with prioritizing things accordingly. On August 22, 1862, just a few weeks before signing the Proclamation and after he had already discussed a draft of it with his cabinet in July, he wrote a letter in response to an editorial by Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune which had urged complete abolition. Lincoln differentiates between "my view of official duty"—that is, what he can do in his official capacity as President—and his personal views. Officially he must save the Union above all else; personally he wanted to free all the slaves: I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_and_slavery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_and_slavery
- freyr 13y ago"My job this morning is to be so persuasive...that a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany, and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Barack," In other words, say whatever needs to be said to get elected. Worry about the details later. Or not.
- bluetooth 13y agoIt's almost as if he's speaking to a cult. Might as well have said something along the lines of "Obama is the savior of the US. Let him into your heart and soul and you will know it to be true. Go forth and vote!"
- JamisonM 13y agoWait.. are you being sarcastic or you really don't realize that Obama was making a joke when he said that? I remember when he said it and certain media outlets sort of went crazy - but the audience just laughed.
- smsm42 13y agoHe's making the same joke for years now. Not everybody thinks it's still funny though.
- smsm42 13y agoHe's making the same joke for years now. Not everybody thinks it's still funny though.
- smsm42 13y agoHe's making the same joke for years now. Not everybody thinks it's still funny though.
- bjustin 13y agoIn his defense, President Obama knows lot more non-public information than ('08) candidate Obama did. That said, dragnet surveillance of US citizens is still heinous.
- RedneckBob 13y agoHere is the rub, if government does nothing and we get attacked people will complain. If government steps up and works to prevent an attack, people complain. Where is the balance?
- Dirlewanger 13y agoThe balance is lost in the clusterfuck that has become our toxic bipartisan Congress and the bloated hyperpluralism that engulfs it.
- swombat 13y agoThe needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Quite simply, the freedom of hundreds of millions is worth a few terrorist attacks that kill a few dozens. If not, then you should definitely ban cars, as they kill a whopping 33k people a year. In other words, the balance is: let people die free rather than live unfree.
- deelowe 13y agoExactly. This is the cost of being a free society. You can not and should not rely on the government to sacrifice liberty in the name of security. Security is first and foremost a responsibility of the people. The role of a government of a free society(regarding security) is to enable it's populous to defend itself, not necessarily do it for them. This is why the second amendment refers to a "militia" instead of a government ran military. Unfortunately, America has truly lost it's way and I don't know if things can be fixed at this point. No matter what the reasoning or circumstances surrounding it, does this look like the image of a free society ran by the people: http://static1.demotix.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/a_scale_large/1900-1/photos/1366383512-police-raid-watertown-houses-for-final-suspect-in-boston-bombing_1973421.jpg http://static1.demotix.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/a_... "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
- daughart 13y agoI honestly fail to see how monitoring telecommunication metadata is an infringement of rights. The government has not stopped you from taking any action. I agree that it COULD be used for evil, but that's not a very convincing argument. Many technologies we enjoy and rely on enable evil acts.
- daughart 13y agoEven someone on reddit pointed out that these phone taps aren't warrantless wiretaps. First, the FISA court has given a warrant for broad information gathering (whether you agree with it or not). Second, they're only taking metadata. In addition, it seems controversial whether these tactics were targeted to domestic calls at all. Just saying.
- breischl 13y agoThey're not, but Obama was referring to a prior program that was basically equivalent. So by the definition that Obama himself was using at the time, these are wiretaps. Also, check out the news on PRISM, which comes much closer to the common definition of wiretaps. I'd say his administration has pretty thoroughly broken that particular promise. http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence...
- daughart 13y agoI voted for Obama twice and can't say I've been universally impressed with his decisions. I look forward to seeing how the story develops. Everyone involved has denied that this is an accurate description of the program, but then again that is probably what you expect. That being said, it does seem somewhat reasonable to me that the US is monitoring metadata about who is contacting who overseas. If you are making calls to and receiving calls from numbers originating in Afghanistan that appear on CIA lists of contacts associated with anti-American activity, that information should be used to get a warrant to listen to the content of those communications. On the other hand, I would feel better about the surveillance state if there were some evidence that it was effective. In reality most of this surveillance is probably a waste of resources and potentially distracting to real law enforcement. Our rights are obviously already interpreted through a "prism" - it would be beneficial if people could make utilitarian assessments of these practices.
- brown9-2 13y agoYou're missing the point. There are court orders behind these "wiretaps". "Warrantless wiretaps" refers to the program authorized by Bush in 2001 to do these wiretaps without ever notifying the FISA court. What Obama was campaigning against in 2008 was the executive branch deciding what it could and could not do in regards to surveillance in secret without any input from the legislative or judicial branches. What is being done now is under the FISA, an act passed by Congress and just re-authorized in 2012, and a law that the courts have upheld (at least, when they've allowed a lawsuit in the first place). I am not defending the practice, but let's at least be strict about the terms we use. Surprisingly, no one in the government seems to mind a wiretap that has a warrant behind it.
- Shivetya 13y agobut its okay if its a secret warrant? Why do people think that throwing up quotes to the contrary matter to these people? I mean, its no different than listening to talk radio, just a days difference. These guys do not care, they don't have to care, and they know it.
- o0-0o 13y agoJune 3, 2008 "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." --Barack Obama ...on what will happen if we elect him POTUS.
- shmerl 13y agoDid anyone really believe him?
- bsg75 13y agoApparently more than half of the voting population of the US. And most of the media. A ton of bloggers. Maybe Europe.
- genwin 13y agoOr they made what they thought was the best choice among the only two viable choices. The biggest problem in the US, maybe the world, is that we don't have instant run-off voting to allow competition in federal gov't. We're trapped by this one oversight of the Founding Fathers.
- bsg75 13y agoIt would seem that two choices is approaching none. Different speeches, same game.
- shmerl 13y agoOr they made what they thought was the best choice among the only two viable choices. This is a wrong methodology. If you don't accept them - don't make such choice at all. There were other alternatives, but the current voting system prevents anything from competing with the two dominant parties.
- yoster 13y agoIf you think politicians nowadays are here for your best interest and will not go back on the their word, then well..... I got a bridge I want to sell you in Brooklyn.
- edw519 13y ago"I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way: I don't vote. On Election Day, I stay home. I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. Now, some people like to twist that around. They say, 'If you don't vote, you have no right to complain,' but where's the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain. I, on the other hand, who did not vote -- who did not even leave the house on Election Day -- am in no way responsible for that these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess that you created." - George Carlin
- joering2 13y ago> I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way: I don't vote. On Election Day, I stay home. You are not solving the problem you just ignoring it. And I am not sure what's worse...
- einhverfr 13y agoWell, at this point voting for the lesser evil is voting for the loser on a race to the bottom. I cast protest votes.
- einhverfr 13y agoWell, at this point voting for the lesser evil is voting for the loser on a race to the bottom. I cast protest votes.
- mej10 13y agoThis is why you should actively abstain instead of staying home if you truly don't like any of the candidates.
- einhverfr 13y agoIt's better to cast a protest vote. It is slightly easier to interpret protest votes (and realize "we might have won if") than it is to interpret non-votes.
- jbindel 13y agoIs the headline trying to mislead? A) Phone records are not wiretaps. B) They weren't warrantless. However, secret warrants can be misused, and gathering data on domestic calls needs further scrutiny than this collection of every call.
- ahoy 13y agoYeah, there's a very real difference between the collection of metadata and actually recording phone conversations and text messages. Both leave a bad taste in my mouth, but conflating the two is dangerous and dishonest.
- mpyne 13y ago> Both leave a bad taste in my mouth, but conflating the two is dangerous and dishonest. Unfortunately that is par for the course here on HN, if you pay attention to the political threads. It so often is just the same political truth-twisting, logic-bending contortions that I often saw applied by the GOP or creationists, where logic becomes subservient to the objective, instead of forming your objective based on logic. And in this case it's completely needless! Why use propaganda techniques to mislead when the truth is persuasive on its own? I'm not even shocked about collection of metadata per se, but it should not be a secret program run by secret courts issuing secret warrants. If it's important and useful the people will allow it, if not then let us live with that choice too.
- notdrunkatall 13y agoThey're not just collecting metadata. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepting_v._AT%26T http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepting_v._AT%26T
- notdrunkatall 13y agoNo, it's not, you're apparently just not fully aware of what's going on. They don't only have access to phone records; they also have access to our communications, and they have had that access for at least the last 6 years without a warrant, not even one from a FISA court.
- dschiptsov 13y agoWhen election campaign advisers are making a "list of promises to make" they never considered with possibility of fulfillment, but focusing on a percentage of electorate which could be "taped" by such and such promise.))
- yulaow 13y agoThe problem is US started so many fights with other states (just to bring "their democracy") that now they are facing a big amount of guerrilla-not-centralized terrorism that they have to sacrifice freedom to have security. And for more time US keep this type of political, for more they will have to give up on a lot of rights his population have now. I already see new patriot acts-like caming.
- jvanderbot 13y agoPerhaps he learned something in the last 4 years that persuaded him to allow these things? Or perhaps the president is actually not so powerful as to overturn laws and policies passed by congress? Maybe we should be raging at congress for allowing these things in the first place? In secret hearings and committees with closed doors?
- ck2 13y agovideo from 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6fnfVJzZT4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6fnfVJzZT4 There is also a video from December 15th 2005 that I cannot find online which is even more hypocritical than this one.
- willholloway 13y agoWhen thinking about the end game of NSA surveillance it is useful to think of the NSA as a tech company with no need to be profitable, almost no legal constraints, the best connections to the biggest corporations (enforced by the power of law with the urgency of national security) and de facto unlimited funds for hardware and top talent. Total information awareness is their goal, and they will succeed.
- ChikkaChiChi 13y agoAs a Venture Capitalist (re: Taxpayer) in the NSA's endeavors, I don't believe I approved this part of the business plan. As an end-user, I also did not agree to any sort of terms-of-service. In fact, the original TOS specifically said this wasn't part of the agreement.
- murbard2 13y agoIt's cute that this surprises anyone. Someone who's not an egomaniac psychopath has about has much chances to win a presidential election as an average person has to win a gold medal in the olympics.
- murbard2 13y agoIt's cute that this surprises anyone. Someone who's not an egomaniac psychopath has about has much chances to win a presidential election as an average person has to win a gold medal in the olympics.
- jmagoon 13y agoThe oddest thing about this is that people seem totally fine that corporations control all of their personal data (and use it to develop new revenue streams), but if the government gets that data (that already exists), then there's a serious problem. What?
- honzzz 13y agoThe government has way more power to hurt you.
- coldcode 13y agoThey don't share everything about everyone, just what they have. Also they can't force other people to do what they want.
- darkarmani 13y agoWhich one can you opt out of?
- VikingCoder 13y agoI just love watching people complain about government surveillance while accessing Comcast Internet with Google Chrome on Microsoft Windows on an HP computer that was shipped by FedEx after being purchased from Amazon over a Motorola phone on a Verizon 4G network with a VISA debit card from FDIC-backed Wells Fargo that was issued after a credit check from Equifax, Experian or TransUnion, using currency controlled by the Federal Reserve System by someone who went to a for-profit college with a Pell Grant. Did I mention they're complaining on a website, owned by another corporation? Which more often than not sells ad space (and user information!) to dozens or hundreds of other corporations? It's comforting to think that these companies don't know everything about you. But right now, a 4 TB hard drive can be bought from NCIX for $159.99. And right now there are 313.9 million US citizens. That means, for $159.99, you could store 14,011 bytes of information per every US citizen. If you don't want the government to look over a company's shoulder at data they've collected, maybe we should make it illegal for companies to collect that information in the first place. I clock the United States Constitution at 19 kB in EPUB format, according to Project Gutenberg. That means that you wouldn't even need two 4 TB hard drives to store an entire copy of the Constitution, for every single US Citizen.
- aaronchriscohen 13y agothe fisa court DID issue a warrant. it was just obscenely broad.
- kunai 13y ago"Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. " But you didn't work on it, Mr. President. Just like your preceding, you established a corrupt administration hell-bent upon restriction of freedom and secrecy. You are no better than Bush, and regardless of what party differences both of you had, you are one and the same behind the scenes. You just don't give a fuck.
- geoka9 13y ago"and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth." No joke. These are not idle words. I grew up in Eastern Europe looking up to the great US of A, where hippies stopped a war and abolished the draft, where people can sue the government and win, where privacy and human rights are enshrined in the Constitution, which more than 200 hundred years ago prompted other nations to adopt something similar many years later. Then the 9/11 came. Fast forward a decade and it looks like all those great achievements went to the toilet. Sorry, I can't help but feel that the Americans have let the world down, and the terrorists have won.
- kunai 13y agoIt's just the nerve that gets me. "We can tell our children this day" --stop it right there. That's bullshit, and he knows it. A president can't do anything without Congress, and when Congress is crap, nothing but a downward spiral is going to be the outlook.
- Spearchucker 13y agoThe president can, and does do things without congress. Dig into FISA for an example.
- clarkmoody 13y ago
- codex 13y agoNowhere in the past two days news has it been revealed that there are warrantless wiretaps in existence. The OP is confused.
- malandrew 13y agoWhy is it not possible to prosecute politicians for fraud or at least sue them in a court of law for making fraudulent claims, possibly via a class action suit? If an advertiser promised that their product does X when it obviously does not, then that is essentially fraud, and I have the right to sue on those grounds because I paid for their services with my money. In the case of politicians, I give them votes based on their promises. If they try to carry out those promises and fail in good faith that is one thing, but if I give them my vote based on their promises and they don't make a good-faith effort to carry out those promises then they basically committed fraud.
- Dirlewanger 13y agoThe way to get back at politicians for lying is to vote others in office. Unfortunately your average idiot is so bereft of political awareness that their voting decisions are based on those banging the most pots and pans and getting the most coverage on MSNBC...so nothing ever really changes. It's one shill against the other. Bipartisanship needs to be broken in this country. Both parties need to be dissolved immediately.
- malandrew 13y agoBeing able to vote others into office hardly constitutes moral hazard. Lying to the American people as a politician for the sake of gaining power presents a very real clear and present danger to the United States of America. If we can't rely on a politician to at least make a good faith effort to carry out their promises, then the entire basis of a representative government, a fundamental concept upon which our entire union is based, is essentially nullified. I know this sounds naïve, but this is a very real conversation we should be having because it is at the root of many of the problems with politics these days and many problems can just be solved by introducing moral hazard when votes are at state and holding the politician and anyone that follows him into office (as a cabinet member) accountable. Lying is fine with me. Lying for the purposes of getting votes from citizens, should fall under the clear and present danger clause and should be prosecutable just like yelling fire in a crowded theatre. If a politician wants to lie while outside an election cycle, that's fine, but from the moment they begin making an intentional effort to be voted into office, until the time they are voted into office, they should not be allowed to lie in forums and messages targeted towards a voter they are trying to court. Doing so, should be prosecutable.
- robomartin 13y agoAt some level this has to bring up the issue of voting age into the fold. I'm sorry but I know few 18 year olds who could be trusted to run their lives, much less make sensible, informed and intelligent voting decisions. They simply don't have enough education and life experience to understand what they are voting for. Is there an argument for producing better vote quality by raising the minimum voting age to somewhere in the 24 to 30 range?
- megablast 13y agoAnd I know lots of older people who vote for what I consider stupid reasons, they vote for who there church tells them to, or because they are being lied to or can't understand how taxes work. But certainly the most enthusiastic voters to me are the young ones. They are the ones who would actually protest, and put themselves in danger for what they really believe in.
- robomartin 13y agoAbsolutely right. That's an entirely different problem. One of education. Not implying college as a requirement but rather an understanding of the issues. It's really easy for politicians to snow voters with statistics, percentages, factoids, contortions and all manner of lies and manipulative tools in order to get their votes. Few people really have command an understanding of all topics that come into play in an election. At some level allowing everyone to vote might be a romantically attractive feel-good idea but it sure creates a situation where you have a lot of really ignorant voters (probably a majority) voting on stuff they simply know nothing about. While I consider myself a well-rounded and reasonably educated person I would gladly welcome a scenario where, for example, the general public (including myself) is not allowed to vote on, say, medical laws or policies where medical knowledge is paramount to the understanding of the issues at hand. I am not exactly ignorant about these things but compared to my wife, who is a doctor, I am the equivalent of a moron. Her vote ought to have hugely more value than mine when medical knowledge is key to understanding what you are voting for or against. Now, I can see a scenario where if I wanted to have a voice in such a vote I could take a test (and maybe a class prior to that) in order to receive qualifications to vote. I don't see anything wrong with that at all. I really don't see why we insist that everyone's votes are equal for every single issue in front of us. I don't think it makes any sense. I am not, even for a millisecond, trying to be elitist here at all. I include myself with the millions of "ignorant" when it comes to a myriad of topics. Two hundred years ago people didn't have to deal with the complex array of knowledge domains we have in our hands today. You could make an argument for voting being open to everyone. Today, well, nobody knows everything. Why is it that everyone can then vote on everything? I mean, people vote on matters of economic impact and, if you dig, they don't even know how to balance their checkbook or are "uncomfortable with math". Really? I really think voting age ought to be increased significantly and voters ought to qualify to vote in areas that require having an understanding of the topic at hand. This would definitely prevent politicians from manipulating the masses into voting based on utter bullshit arguments designed to guide them by the nose.
- lr 13y agoThe Office of the President of the United States is controlled my the machinery of government. At this point, the person you put in there does one thing that we need to pay attention to: appoint judges. Everything else is just nuance of a system so entrenched, even the staunchest Green Party candidate would have problems doing anything he/she claimed as a candidate. Once the person is elected, "realism" kicks in, and the person is merely a guide on an already sailing ship.
- bcoates 13y agoThis isn't true at all, Obama has been extremely effective at getting whatever he wants done. Lots of presidents in recent memory have made sweeping changes in how the government operates. He has enormous and specific powers relevant to most of the things he promised (and the things he didn't promise but his voters imagined he did), he just doesn't actually want to do them so he doesn't.
- ilourvehn 13y agoSweet, I guess HackerNews = infowars
- znowi 13y agoIsn't there a site that tracks politicians' promises and what has been done while in the office? It'd be a great tool to weed out the fraud. Words get easily forgotten in a couple of years. This would make them count.
- gregPC 13y agoWell, technically, if it's cellphones, then Obama is using Warrantless Wirelesstaps... so he's all good!
- methodin 13y agoWhat does any of this have to do with "hacker news"?
- anonymuzz 13y agoI dont understand why more United States citizens aren't voting for the underdogs. In the last election, it was possible for the greens to "win" . If you want to protest, instead of not voting, vote for the least likely to win. It makes a statistical analysis of the "protest votes" possible.. Under some (eg, normal curves) statistical models, you assume that the non-sampled closely resemble the sampled (with some level of confidence). By not voting you're basically saying "dont worry, I am very much like the 'norm'" . By voting for the underdog you're helping to elucidate the fact that you are not represented by the main parties.
- mikeash 13y agoThere's a common narrative that the two major parties are disliked, but win because people feel they have no alternative. That the will of the people gets railroaded by the political process. That things like TSA, wiretapping, drones, etc. are plots by those in power that the American people dislike but are powerless to change. This narrative is dead wrong. There are not many people who are properly fed up with the two major parties. The vast majority of the electorate still strongly identifies as either R or D. They may not agree with everything, but they will still see people from their party as "our guy". Those who do not identify with a political party but still feel strongly about politics are very much in the minority. You probably routinely hear about how Congress's approval rating is in the single digits. What doesn't get as much play is that the average approval rating for an individual representative by their constituents is still quite high. People may dislike Congress as a whole, but they like their own people. As for these bad policies, there's a simple reason they persist: people want them. The Rs and Ds differ on many significant issues, but not on these. They want the TSA, they want massive anti-terrorism surveillance, they want terrorist leaders killed by faraway drone strikes. The American electorate is, by and large, terrified of al Qaeda and anything that resembles them. Just look at the reaction to the attempt to try the Guantanamo prisoners in New York. Just the idea of bringing terrorists into the country, no matter how harmless they've been rendered, frightened people out of their minds. You can talk about "security theater" all you want, but the TSA makes them feel safe to take an airplane. The fourth amendment is a distant and abstract concept compared to the possibility that massive surveillance might prevent another Boston Marathon bombing. The collateral damage from drones is sad, but every terrorist they kill is one that can't blow up a building in the US, and a lot of those other people killed were probably terrorist sympathizers anyway. Now, to be clear, I don't agree with any of this, and I expect most people here don't. Which is, of course, part of the problem. If you hang out on HN, you get the idea that everyone thinks these security programs are terrible overreaches, and if you have that idea, then there's only one possible conclusion: politicians are ignoring the people to advance their own agenda. The reality is much scarier: on these issues, politicians are simply listening to the people. This is scarier because it's vastly easier to convince politicians to obey the people's will than it is to change the people's will. I have no idea how you go about convincing the American public that it's not worth doing these things to fight terrorism, but that is what must be done if these things are to change. Telling people to vote for third parties isn't going to cut it, because people don't want to vote for third parties. They want to vote for for the major parties because the major parties are by and large the ones with the policies they like.
- quadrangle 13y agoregarding the voting dilemma, the only real solution is: http://rangevoting.org/ http://rangevoting.org/
- veritas20 13y agoI have a problem with the article and title on 2 levels. 1) It identifies a "bad" guy. In a two party system the other party is the "bad" guy no matter how or whom signed legislation into law. If you identify yourself as a democrat or republican, then you are part of the problem. It's unrealistic to think that you'll ever agree with a single person on all issues let alone an entire political group. 2) It does not address the real problem. We have a problem with add-ons in legislation that have absolutely nothing to do with the essence or spirit of the bill. These egregious actions occur all the time, no matter who is in charge. We need to rid our political system of money and lobbyists. Oh, and by the way, a bill that probably mostly affects tech companies, the Immigration Bill, contains the authority to create a biometric database. Note "authority to create" and not "setup a database". News outlets are mincing words.
- godgod 13y agoObama is a liar and a puppet. Clear as day to see.
- godgod 13y agoNew Boss, Same As the Old Boss
- dllthomas 13y agoWhile I am not a fan of what's been going on in our security sector, and I don't think Obama is living up to the spirit in which he campaigned on this issue (amongst others), it's worth noting that there's an easy weasel way out here: collecting records that would have been generated anyway after the fact is not a "wiretap". While I am uncomfortable with some of the choices around the wiretapping of the Fox News reporter, I was pleased to note that they had obtained a warrant in that case.
- ttrreeww 13y agoIt's a data-feed, not a wiretap!
- smsm42 13y agoA politician promises something, then violates the promise after being elected. Shocking!
- Datsundere 13y agoJapan has similar constitution than the US and yet they're perfectly fine. That says something about the government elected officials itself.