NSA Still Funded To Spy On US Phone Records 362
Reader turp182 notes that the Amash Amendment (#100) to HR 2397 (DOD appropriations bill) failed to pass the House of Representatives, meaning it will not be added to the appropriations bill. turp182 writes "The amendment would have specifically defunded the bulk collection of American phone records." Americans can see how their representatives voted here.
Of Course (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course it failed. What, you actually thought it might pass? It was obviously a hollow effort by some politicians to appear to be on the side of American privacy while knowing full well that nothing would change and the government would continue to have the ability to do what it's been doing. No surprise there.
System works! (Score:4, Interesting)
Ah, Gibson, Sterling and other cyberpunk masters, you were truly prophetic back in your time.
Re:It's A Start (Score:5, Interesting)
Rogue? Seems complicit to me.
What I wonder about right now are the NSA employees who - some surely being geeks who read Slashdot - are reading this comment. How do they sleep at night?
Do they speak like so many mid-20th century "soldiers", absolving themselves because they're only following orders? Have they been brainwashed into thinking that there's suuuuuuch a threat from terrorists to the American Way Of Life that what they do is essential? Or do they just enjoy the power trip in a dying empire? At least one such NSA employee will be reading this, and their conscience will twinge, just for a second.
Re:wait a minute (Score:5, Interesting)
If you don't know your representative's name in a representative democracy, something's very broken.
Re:It's A Start (Score:3, Interesting)
Not bad for a first try to rein in rogue agency.
Just wait until the tech sector starts sending in the lobbyists in droves. Right about now, the implications are starting to hit home in Silicon Valley. All those government contracts in foreign countries are about to go bye-bye, along with a pretty good percentage of private contracts.
Re:113th congress (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, them doing nothing is probably better, otherwise they will screw things up even more.
War not over yet (Score:4, Interesting)
I would also like to take a moment to sincerely apologize to the tin foil hat crowd: I have made fun of you in the past, only now I am sorry I was too blind to really listen. You were right all along.
Re:It's A Start (Score:5, Interesting)
At least one such NSA employee will be reading this, and their conscience will twinge, just for a second.
No, no it won't. Cognitive dissonance will prevent it. They have convinced themselves that they are good people on no basis whatsoever, and in order to protect that belief they will convince themselves that there is no way to achieve their goal but to ride roughshod over the constitution. Then they'll tell themselves that it's OK to violate the constitution as long as you're doing it to protect the constitution. Unfortunately, holding such a clearly contradictory belief is a kind of insanity.
Re:It's A Start (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Still don't get it... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's interesting someone brought up COINTELPRO. The contrast between COINTELPRO and Watergate is instructive. Watergate took down one President who had gone too far - NOT in acting against, and lying to, the American people, but in acting against the other powerful faction in DC. That got reported and everyone has heard of it.
COINTELPRO was much, much worse, it was decades of continuous criminal action. But it was targeted at the people, rather than against a faction of the ruling class. Mainstream media has studiously ignored it more than not, many people have never even heard of it, and those who have mostly have no real idea what it involved.
The rot in this country isnt new, it's been rotting for quite awhile now, it's just that we are finally reaching the point where average folks can no longer avoid being aware of it.
Re:It's A Start (Score:3, Interesting)
Close, but not quite.
While Snowden's actions should be commended for bringing this issue front and center, he wasn't an employee who saw what his company was doing and alerted the media (what most people think of with the term "Whistle-blower"). He had suspicions about what the US Government was doing, sought a job that would allow him to verify it, then went public with some proof (i.e. "investigative journalism").
The level of "spying" being performed by governments, and private organisations, around the world isn't new. The base concepts here are centuries old (if not millennia), the only thing relatively new here is the technology used. And even that has been in the works for decades. The fight for individual liberty is not a single bloody battle or war, it is a constant struggle against the forces of tyranny. A free people must always be on guard for when actions are taken that may oppress their freedom. Too many people have been negligent in this regard, but I believe there are signs that this is turning around.
Re:It's A Start (Score:4, Interesting)
What makes you think it?
The number of times I have seen someone admit that they were wrong (without pressure / coercion) pales in comparision to the number of times someone has been wrong but has continued defending themselves.
It only takes a casual look around the world, and within one's own character, to realize this is true. Someone calls you out as wrong, the first instinct isnt "AM i wrong?", but "how can I refute him". This is part of human nature, and I havent really found anything to indicate that it isnt universal; though certainly some people are quite good at stuffing that defensive posture into the back of their mind and are more humble.
Not sure why you slipped in that little list, but are you by any chance looking at this problem from quite far to the right? I've noticed a tendency of ideologues (rather than ethical pragmatists) to view everyone as evil hypocrites by nature, and to use that as an excuse for their worldview.
I dont know if I'd say Im far right, because I can recognize that even "leftist" programs will accomplish some good (I just tend to think it not worth the cost), but yes, and its interesting you would say it like that. Im currently in a Poli Sci class, and there was a video on "realism" where the speaker described it as basically what you said-- a cynical worldview that everyone is NOT intrinsically good, but intrinsically self-interested and self-justifying. This idea seems to be foreign to a lot of folks I know that I assume to be more to the left-- certainly a number of students in the class appear to never have even thought of the world in those terms.
Folks on the right appear cold and unsympathetic in public policy because (If I can generalize) they DO tend to view the world cynically, as a cold and hostile place. We dont want publicly funded social welfare programs because we see the potential for abuse as through the roof, and the spending as driven by idealism rather than grounded in the reality of both budget and human nature.
Folks on the left (and this is how it seems to me) seem to want to assume the best; that cooperation is not only possible, but easily obtainable, and that we should not only aim for the stars, but actively work towards some ideal world that we surely can achieve. It appears to be a worldview that hopes and dreams that maybe a utopia that looks like communism could be possible, if only we could get rid of the elements that undermine it.
Im not sure how relevant any of that is, but I hope you find it interesting, and if you want to offer any corrections on how I view the leftist mindset, I would appreciate it; I think the hardest thing about really dialoging "across the aisle" is the huge difficulty in really understanding where someone is coming from at a visceral level.
Re:It's A Start (Score:4, Interesting)
How do they sleep at night?
Can't speak for those at the NSA, but I grew up next to GCHQ, and knew a few people who worked there. Whenever the topic of GCHQ came up in conversation, it was pretty apparent that no one actually knew what they were doing. They are given small tasks from those higher up, but they have no idea what it's for, or why they're doing it. Someone might be writing speech regonition software, someone else might be processing some telephone numbers into a database, someone else might be writing some GPS software. No one is allowed to talk about their work to anyone else, and so no one gets the big picture as to what's actually happening. Individually the component libraries are innocent enough, but they turn positively orwellian when they are merged into a single tool (which is something the IT serfs will never see)
Re:Americans no better than foreigners (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to say I'm giving up, and hopefully neither is anyone else, but this seems like saying to someone who lost their house to a tsunami "Karma's a bitch: you should have prevented the tide from coming in."
Re:That kind of works for math, but only math (Score:2, Interesting)
No matter how many times socialism fails, you can ignore the facts and "refute" the conclusion by reasoning abstractly within your own world of ideas, by mental masturbation.
Noting that the socialist regimes that have failed have been authoritarian, and that the socialist regimes that have been successful have been democratic is not ignoring facts or mental masturbation.
leftists have lofty goals, worthy goals, but little to no knowledge of what actually works and what doesn't, what can actually be accomplished and how. Conservatives look at what actually works and end up with "let's stick with doing what has always worked".
That's a funny stereotype but it doesn't reflect reality. e.g. leftists promote single payer healthcare, which provides better health outcomes at lower costs. That's reality. Leftists promote legalization of drugs, which reduces drug use and decreases the harm caused by what's left. That's reality.
Conservatives instead stick their fingers in their ears and make bold moralistic pronouncements that have no relation to reality. They stick with doing what has always failed to work because they are too proud to admit that we've made mistakes.
Rather than refuting each other all day, how about I look for the nuggets of gold in your ideas, and you look for where what I am saying makes sense.
I try. Conservatives are right about e.g. the rule of law. But they seem to be unable to actually apply it in practice. When it comes time to actually force the goverment to obey the law, they show their true colors as authoritarians.