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No one would confuse NSA data collection as effective at stopping potential criminal attacks. If the government was truly worried about US deaths, it would be

by imglorp 11y ago

No one would confuse NSA data collection as effective at stopping potential criminal attacks. If the government was truly worried about US deaths, it would be looking at drunk driving, lung cancer, and heart disease in earnest, some half million deaths a year. No, both the NSA and Chinese efforts are aimed at identifying and suppressing dissent. We're not that different.

mikeash 11y ago
How does the NSA program suppress dissent? Seems to me that it's about stopping deaths. The reason they don't go after drunk driving and heart disease is because different kinds of deaths are valued differently. And while that's obviously crazy from a rational perspective, it's how the public views things.
- EC1 11y ago
  Wow, how precious, someone who believes in the system! It suppresses dissent subconsciously. You start censoring yourself. If you think there is a shred of humanity within any of the NSA or any of the alphabet boys, you're in for a ride.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    I don't believe in the system, I just don't see how the NSA's program suppresses dissent. There's no punishment for dissent, so how would it be suppressed? I'm sure they can and do listen in on people who want to overturn Citizens United or replace the government with a monarchy or whatever, but if there's no punishment that follows, then how does anything get suppressed?
    - dublinben 11y ago
      >There's no punishment for dissent, so how would it be suppressed? Surely you're joking. The United States government is eager to punish dissent to a lethal degree.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki
      - mikeash 11y ago
        First, I assumed "suppressing dissent" meant domestic dissent. Second, planning terror attacks is not "dissent." I mean, if this guy is your poster boy for the goals of NSA surveillance, then you're arguing that it is about fighting terrorism.
      - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
        You think he was punished for dissent? He was punished for actively working to kill people. That's a bit beyond merely "dissent".
    - tomlongson 11y ago
      While not directly connected to the NSA, it's plausible the prosecution of Aaron Swartz amounted to suppressing dissent. It's hard to say what the root cause was prosecutorial overreach or a real effort to suppress a powerful political organizer. Either way, he became a target for his ideas and activism.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  > How does the NSA program suppress dissent? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/nsa-surveillance-chilling-effects https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/nsa-surveillance-chill... https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131108/10430625184/22-examples-nsa-surveillance-creating-chilling-effects.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131108/10430625184/22-ex... http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/17/chilling-effect-nsa-surveillance-internet http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/17/chillin... http://motherboard.vice.com/read/nsa-chilling-effect http://motherboard.vice.com/read/nsa-chilling-effect http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/15/1263032/-Now-It-s-Official-60-Minutes-NSA-Propaganda-Piece-Confirms-We-re-a-Banana-Republic http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/15/1263032/-Now-It-s-O...
aub3bhat 11y ago
Well USA does fund National Institutes of Health for Cancer, Heart Disease, etc.
- imglorp 11y ago
  Not in earnest, compared to around $1T security budget, no, it's not vaguely close. http://www.pogo.org/our-work/straus-military-reform-project/defense-budget/2014/americas-one-trillion-national-security-budget.html http://www.pogo.org/our-work/straus-military-reform-project/...
  - tosseraccount 11y ago
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2011.png/800px-U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2011.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/U.... U.S. Federal government spends more on health care than defense.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      Which is pretty much irrelevant; "health care" and "health research" aren't the same thing. Anyhow, in terms of health care to defense ratio the US -- despite spending more of the nation's GDP, and far more per capita, in public health care than many other developed countries providing universal, all-public care (and even though the nation spends more than the same amount, in addition, in private healthcare spending) -- is still lower than most countries in the world. So, even looking at health care rather than health research, the US spends relatively little proportional to its defense budget when compared to other nations. Then again, the US not too long ago was outspending the rest of the planet on defense, and is still at a bit over a third of the planet's total military spending, so compared to other nations the US spends relatively little on anything compared to defense.
- lostlogin 11y ago
  Compare that budget to the budgets spent on 'terrorism'.
refurb 11y ago
If the government was truly worried about US deaths, it would be looking at drunk driving, lung cancer, and heart disease in earnest, some half million deaths a year. This is a silly statement. Fighting terror is more than just preventing deaths. It's preventing the destabilization of a society, of markets, etc. Not all deaths have an equal impact.
- imglorp 11y ago
  The only impact terrorism has had on our society has been to open the door for a security versus rights discussion. The power grabbing government is destabilizing society, not the terrorists.
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    The families of the 3000 dead on 9/11 might disagree with you. Look, I agree with you in general. We over-reacted, and it has hurt us. But to say that terrorism has had no impact is overstating your case.
    - imglorp 11y ago
      It sucks, of course, but such things are extreme outliers compared to other harmful things going on. Just looking at terrorism related deaths in the US in the last 15 years, let's round up to 4000. Now compare to the actually preventable deaths as I indicate in another comment: around 7.5 million. Terrorism is down in the noise and it's certainly not worth giving up our liberties or our democracy over.
    - tedks 11y ago
      I grew up right outside DC (a few blocks from NIH) and while I didn't lose anyone on 9/11, I came pretty close and know plenty of people who did. The freedom we lost on 9/11 make the lives we lost pale in comparison. People grieve but get over the loss of their loved ones. Death is a normal part of life, however horrific, and people can cope with it. The things I've seen since 9/11, some of them I find harder to cope with. Police carrying submachine guns on street corners; every government building sprouting snipers and anti-tank barricades and razor wire; oblique-angled antennae-sprouting APCs and god knows what else carrying legions of power-armored riot police at every protest. America looks scarier now. It's hard to feel safe in an environment like this, where you feel besieged by an invisible enemy. Of course, this is exactly the intention of the people carrying out these policies, and ironically, also the intention of the terrorists. Politics make strange bedfellows indeed -- it's not hard to see how the Pentagon has seized on terrorism as a way to increase its own power, and conversely, as the Pentagon acts against "global terror," "global terror" is able to ratchet up the propaganda and recruit even more jihadists to the cause. Terrorism has had an impact because people in the United States wanted it to.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

by imglorp 11y ago

mikeash 11y ago

How does the NSA program suppress dissent? Seems to me that it's about stopping deaths. The reason they don't go after drunk driving and heart disease is because different kinds of deaths are valued differently. And while that's obviously crazy from a rational perspective, it's how the public views things.

EC1 11y ago
Wow, how precious, someone who believes in the system! It suppresses dissent subconsciously. You start censoring yourself. If you think there is a shred of humanity within any of the NSA or any of the alphabet boys, you're in for a ride.
- mikeash 11y ago
  I don't believe in the system, I just don't see how the NSA's program suppresses dissent. There's no punishment for dissent, so how would it be suppressed? I'm sure they can and do listen in on people who want to overturn Citizens United or replace the government with a monarchy or whatever, but if there's no punishment that follows, then how does anything get suppressed?
  - dublinben 11y ago
    >There's no punishment for dissent, so how would it be suppressed? Surely you're joking. The United States government is eager to punish dissent to a lethal degree.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki
    - mikeash 11y ago
      First, I assumed "suppressing dissent" meant domestic dissent. Second, planning terror attacks is not "dissent." I mean, if this guy is your poster boy for the goals of NSA surveillance, then you're arguing that it is about fighting terrorism.
    - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
      You think he was punished for dissent? He was punished for actively working to kill people. That's a bit beyond merely "dissent".
  - tomlongson 11y ago
    While not directly connected to the NSA, it's plausible the prosecution of Aaron Swartz amounted to suppressing dissent. It's hard to say what the root cause was prosecutorial overreach or a real effort to suppress a powerful political organizer. Either way, he became a target for his ideas and activism.
fweespeech 11y ago
> How does the NSA program suppress dissent? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/nsa-surveillance-chilling-effects https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/nsa-surveillance-chill... https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131108/10430625184/22-examples-nsa-surveillance-creating-chilling-effects.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131108/10430625184/22-ex... http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/17/chilling-effect-nsa-surveillance-internet http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/17/chillin... http://motherboard.vice.com/read/nsa-chilling-effect http://motherboard.vice.com/read/nsa-chilling-effect http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/15/1263032/-Now-It-s-Official-60-Minutes-NSA-Propaganda-Piece-Confirms-We-re-a-Banana-Republic http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/15/1263032/-Now-It-s-O...

aub3bhat 11y ago

Well USA does fund National Institutes of Health for Cancer, Heart Disease, etc.

imglorp 11y ago
Not in earnest, compared to around $1T security budget, no, it's not vaguely close. http://www.pogo.org/our-work/straus-military-reform-project/defense-budget/2014/americas-one-trillion-national-security-budget.html http://www.pogo.org/our-work/straus-military-reform-project/...
- tosseraccount 11y ago
  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2011.png/800px-U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2011.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/U.... U.S. Federal government spends more on health care than defense.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    Which is pretty much irrelevant; "health care" and "health research" aren't the same thing. Anyhow, in terms of health care to defense ratio the US -- despite spending more of the nation's GDP, and far more per capita, in public health care than many other developed countries providing universal, all-public care (and even though the nation spends more than the same amount, in addition, in private healthcare spending) -- is still lower than most countries in the world. So, even looking at health care rather than health research, the US spends relatively little proportional to its defense budget when compared to other nations. Then again, the US not too long ago was outspending the rest of the planet on defense, and is still at a bit over a third of the planet's total military spending, so compared to other nations the US spends relatively little on anything compared to defense.
lostlogin 11y ago
Compare that budget to the budgets spent on 'terrorism'.

refurb 11y ago

If the government was truly worried about US deaths, it would be looking at drunk driving, lung cancer, and heart disease in earnest, some half million deaths a year. This is a silly statement. Fighting terror is more than just preventing deaths. It's preventing the destabilization of a society, of markets, etc. Not all deaths have an equal impact.

imglorp 11y ago
The only impact terrorism has had on our society has been to open the door for a security versus rights discussion. The power grabbing government is destabilizing society, not the terrorists.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  The families of the 3000 dead on 9/11 might disagree with you. Look, I agree with you in general. We over-reacted, and it has hurt us. But to say that terrorism has had no impact is overstating your case.
  - imglorp 11y ago
    It sucks, of course, but such things are extreme outliers compared to other harmful things going on. Just looking at terrorism related deaths in the US in the last 15 years, let's round up to 4000. Now compare to the actually preventable deaths as I indicate in another comment: around 7.5 million. Terrorism is down in the noise and it's certainly not worth giving up our liberties or our democracy over.
  - tedks 11y ago
    I grew up right outside DC (a few blocks from NIH) and while I didn't lose anyone on 9/11, I came pretty close and know plenty of people who did. The freedom we lost on 9/11 make the lives we lost pale in comparison. People grieve but get over the loss of their loved ones. Death is a normal part of life, however horrific, and people can cope with it. The things I've seen since 9/11, some of them I find harder to cope with. Police carrying submachine guns on street corners; every government building sprouting snipers and anti-tank barricades and razor wire; oblique-angled antennae-sprouting APCs and god knows what else carrying legions of power-armored riot police at every protest. America looks scarier now. It's hard to feel safe in an environment like this, where you feel besieged by an invisible enemy. Of course, this is exactly the intention of the people carrying out these policies, and ironically, also the intention of the terrorists. Politics make strange bedfellows indeed -- it's not hard to see how the Pentagon has seized on terrorism as a way to increase its own power, and conversely, as the Pentagon acts against "global terror," "global terror" is able to ratchet up the propaganda and recruit even more jihadists to the cause. Terrorism has had an impact because people in the United States wanted it to.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]