Storming a terrorist compound in a foreign country (that we're not already occupying) would constitute an act of war if I'm not mistaken. America loves its double standards, but imagine our reaction for a moment if a foreign power we didn't like very much sent armed combatants into our territory and shot up a bunch of Americans they claimed were terrorists.
And as Snowden said, applying the surveillance dragnet to non-citizens is just a way for them to sell it to Congress, which is also why Congresspeople are immune from the surveillance. (so says Snowden, no docs to prove it yet)
And the Bill of Rights says 'persons' 'the people' and 'the accused'-- not 'citizens'. Whether or not it applies to non-citizens is very much a non-settled issue. The framers did restrict voting and running for office to 'citizens' however, so these words were chosen carefully. Personally I would tend to believe that 'inalienable rights' would apply to every human being but that's just me. It's easy for people to say it shouldn't apply to Muslims, but do you want to put Canadians in that boat? I very much do not like the idea of recording every bit on information on the lives of citizens of close allies, particularly when they can do the same to us and just share the information to get around the 4th amendment. Not to mention the collateral damage such as the billions already lost to American cloud providers the loss of ever more international goodwill.
Ok, first of all, storming a terrorist compound may be an act of war, but who gives a shit ? Certainly not Obama. I mean, that's EXACTLY what we did to get Bin Laden. We stormed a terrorist compound in a foreign country that was -- supposedly -- our ally. Did you want Obama to go to a Federal court and ask for a warrant before we went after OBL? That's ridiculous. I mean, you might have some grounds to say that what was done was "illegal", because they violated the sovereignty of a foreign nation, but that has nothing to do with whether or not a warrant was issued.
And your interpretation of the applicability of the constitution is just dead wrong. There is no ambiguity. Perhaps I should have explained in more detail, but: 1) The constitution protects American citizens, wherever they may be. 2) The constitution may also protect non-citizens
if they are within the jurisdiction of the United States.So a Chinese citizen vacationing in California IS protected by the constitution. But the constitution DOES NOT protect a non-citizen who is outside the united states. If we drop a bomb on a farm in Pakistan owned by a Pakistani farmer, that farmer can't sue the United States government for a wrongful taking in the courts. I don't get the argument about "that's just a ploy to get you to buy it". Well, call it a ploy if you want, but that is factually and legally true -- non-citizens outside the jurisdiction of the United States (the people PRISM targets) has no constitutional protections.
Are you serious? Buy phone company metadata to find a place to bomb? How about you just bomb the security line at the airport of all the people waiting to be have their naked pictures taken and be groped. What are they going to do? Search you before you get in line to be searched?
And the 'check' private companies get is competition from another company. Did you not see Microsoft's 'scroogled' ads? Privacy was a selling point for MS. (meanwhile bending over backwards for the NSA)
Not all companies make their money by targeting ads at you or selling your data. Not every company is Google. Lavabit is the perfect example-- they sold privacy.
That was my attempt at fear-mongering. How'd I do ~ And like I said, I don't think people really care all that much about privacy in the hands of the private companies. Privacy concerns won't make someone search on Bing instead of Google, and it won't make someone change from Verizon to Sprint. I don't see the companies changing their practices either unless there is Congressional intervention. Google in particular is all about the targeted ads, if you take that away from them, they die.
"We've always been at war with Eastasia"
If they have always been around, then why do we suddenly need to give up our privacy? What's changed?
What changed was that they started to succeed. Before 9/11, they gave us a black eye here or there, but the damage was 1) mostly minimal, and 2) rarely within our borders. It was always a few fatalities here or there in international waters or in an embassy far far away. Then they started to hit us where we lived, and that forced us to respond. Because we responded, they're even trying harder to kill us. For the most part, both Bush and Obama have done a decent job of protecting us after 9/11.
Depends how much privacy for how many lives, obviously.
More importantly we need to be asking how well these programs work, if the are necessary, and what alternatives there are. Generally speaking I consider them to be the 'easy way out' of the problem if they work at all. PRISM didn't find the Boston Bombers, real detective work and cooperation with the public did.
And since 9/11 that's the only successful terrorist plot that I can even think of that occurred on U.S. soil. The reason why it was successful was because the Tsarnaevs were home grown and acted by themselves. They didn't consult with or contact anyone overseas to leave an obvious trail. I guess you can argue the FBI dropped the ball because they investigated them but cleared them anyways, but if I got pissed off at the government and decided to blow shit up on my own, it would likely be hard to track.
In 2012 alone, the Feds foiled 3 separate attempted terrorist plots. Each time, the terrorist thought he was working with or on behalf of AQ, and each time that person turned out to be an undercover agent. For the most part, the intelligence community has done a much better job post 9/11.
Janury 2012:
attempt to shoot up Tampa
February 2012:
attempt to blow up the U.S. capitol
October 2012:
attempt to blow up the federal reserve
So you agree that the problem is more the irrational panic and not the actual physical damage. Might as well put energies into calming people down instead of implementing a surveillance state. Shutting down an entire city for one stupid kid with a handgun is counterproductive.
When you measure the risk of death from a terrorist against the risk of death from any other threat, then yes, the fear is irrational. But I don't think that's particularly fair. We accept that accidents happen when we drive our cars. We accept that acts of god like hurricanes, tornadoes, and lightning bolts will at times kill us. But we're not Isreal; we haven't accepted having to deal with random terrorist attacks as we go about our lives. So yea, it is an emotional response that, if you are totally objective, is irrational. But try telling Americans that they should just accept the risk of death from a terrorist instead of trying to prevent it. The government is spending all this time, money, and energy on preventing terrorist attacks because the public demands it.
If the intel from these tips was obtained legally, then why hide where they came from and risk blowing cases? I suppose it's just a coincidence they started laundering this intel right after implementing these spy programs?
The same reason why everything else regarding anti-terrorism efforts are kept confidential. If you think its shit that they are creating an alternative evidence trail to conceal the origins of the tips, then I totally agree -- due process means you have the right to examine and confront evidence used against you, and you really can't do that if they are lying to you about where the evidence is coming from.
But if you start inferring that because they are secret, then that naturally means that the phone metadata is being shared, then you're veering into the realm of speculation. You're free to draw your own conclusions, but you should recognize that such conclusions are merely a guess, and shouldn't assume that it's been confirmed by the news outlets. I really don't blame you for doing that, by the way. When Reuters broke the story on SOD EVERYONE concluded that the metadata was being shared. Hell, even that Washington Post article made such an assumption, and had to later go back and make a correction.
