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It's now easier than ever for the political party in power to spy on the opposition. Imagine what Nixon would do if he had the NSA surveillance powers that are
by MichaelApproved 11y ago
It's now easier than ever for the political party in power to spy on the opposition. Imagine what Nixon would do if he had the NSA surveillance powers that are available to the current President.
Republican, Democrat, or independent. Do you want any party to have that much power while in office?
- avn2109 11y agoIf history is any guide, you've got the surveillance directionality mixed up here. Most fallen regimes that we have good records for - e.g. the Khmer Rouge, the Nazis, and (kind of) the East Germans had various factions competing overtly or covertly for power. Each faction had an intelligence service constructing dossiers on/blackmailing the chiefs and other interesting people associated with other factions. The nominal chief executives were spied on by everyone except their own ultraloyal people. I don't see any reason to expect different outcomes in America, so most likely the NSA would be closely watching Nixon and everyone else, while Nixon's people tried to do the same. And of course this isn't a special property of Nixon - it would be very naive to believe there aren't various dossiers on Obama floating around the Virginia/Maryland suburbs.
- Estragon 11y agoThis is a strange perspective on the history. Why are you emphasizing comparison to the Khmer Rouge and the Nazis, and dismissing the similarity to the East Germans? Why not look at what domestic intelligence has actually already done in the US, which seems quite reminiscent of the Stasi? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung
- avn2109 11y agoI just mean that the surviving Stasi records are incomplete. The Stasi parallels to our own surveillance state are indeed eerie.