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I have lost hope in the future. Guantanamo is still open, the NSA is as powerful as ever, a partisan puppet has been installed at the CIA, and Trump has all of

I have lost hope in the future. Guantanamo is still open, the NSA is as powerful as ever, a partisan puppet has been installed at the CIA, and Trump has all of these tools at his disposable. The UK just codified all of their past illegal surveillance activities. I don't think I will have children.

mattnewton 10y ago
I wish you do adopt children and read 1984 and Brave New World to them. It will take more than a generation to drive us into the ground, and I like to believe it's not too late to forcefully swing the pendulum back.
- geomark 10y ago
  Until the day that reading 1984 gets you arrested. Think that's impossible? That's what happens in Thailand [1] where you also get arrested for the hunger games salute among other things. Think that won't happen in America? I hope you are right. [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/asia/thailand/articles/Sandwich-eating-and-1984-8-things-that-can-get-you-arrested-in-Thailand/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/asia/thailand...
- einrealist 10y ago
  I fear, swinging the pendulum back will not be happen without violence, this time. Too many hate-trains are on collision course with kindness and logic.
- eternalban 10y ago
  Please don't read 1984 to your children. The message of that book is 'resistance is futile'. Nothing, not even love (per Mr. Blair) is strong enough to resist the power structure. It is propaganda designed to completely crush the spirit without offering even a single remedy.
  - pmcginn 10y ago
    That is 100% not the message.
    - eternalban 10y ago
      What is the message then? How does the "hero" end up in 1984? Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me. Tell me it ain't so, pmcginn.
      - aoeu345 10y ago
        That one sentence is not the message, the message is An extreme totalitarian surveillance state will eventually converge to punishing acts like extra marital sex or keeping a diary with personalized torture until victims are broken beyond any thought of hostility towards their authority figures. Which is a damn good thing for children to think about. People really are that bad, so hold your freedoms close.
        Create 10y ago
        oh dearism http://www.dw.com/en/david-petraeus-the-washington-elite-have-lost-touch-with-a-lot-of-america/a-36415543 http://www.dw.com/en/david-petraeus-the-washington-elite-hav...
        eternalban 10y ago
        Horses for courses. I'll read Lord of The Rings to my kids and let thoughts of Frodo give them the courage and the hope, and I suppose you can terrorize your kids by reading them about "rat face cages" and betrayals and fear culminating in a sit down in Chestnut Tree cafe drinking Victory Gin.
      - kafkaesq 10y ago
        What is the message then? It's right there in The Party's second-favorite slogan: Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. The task of finding similarities to current events in the world (and the U.S. in particular, this past year) is left as an exercise for the reader.
- wallace_f 10y ago
  >It will take more than a generation to drive us into the ground It did take more than a generation to drive us into the ground. >A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both Nothing you can do about it. Trump and Clinton had the same motivations: they both want to own you, enrich themselves and their friends, and they don't care about anything else. With regard to foreign policy, they support the same nations abroad, will keep sending them money, some of which abuse human rights, and deamonize the same enemies. Obama never gave a shit about civil liberties or human rights. Largest criminal investigation against journalists ever in the entire history of America. Guantanamo still open. Administration uses newspeak to criminalize Snowden. Largest funding sent to militarized human-rights-abusing foreign nation states in history of the country. Increased military presence throughout the world despite the fact Americans are at least over 50 times more likely to be killed by our own domestic police officers than by a terrorist. Jesus christ.
exo762 10y ago
> Guantanamo is still open, the NSA is as powerful as ever, a partisan puppet has been installed at the CIA, and Trump has all of these tools at his disposable. So, corrupted insiders installed all those tools. Now an outsider gets elected into White House. You know what are the requirements for the post, right? At least 35 years old, American. All parts of that corrupted clique, from Hillary to Jon Stewart, fought tooth and nail to prevent him from being elected. Hillary was known evil. Trump is basically a big unknown. Why can't you give this man a chance? EDIT. I guess I'm judging American politics by European standards. America are so deep in superficial fluff that it can't see what really happened. Left has lost everything because of bullshit of its progressive wing. Outsider has won White House. And you people are talking about Trump being racist - a "fact" discovered during the most vicious presidential campaign of last 50? years.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Yes, the corrupted clique led by Jon Stewart. Very persuasive!
  - exo762 10y ago
    I've watched The Daily Show from other hemisphere, growing up. Really love the dude. But please, he returned from retirement just to lambast a presidential candidate! Reducing his whole carrier of awesomeness to nothing more than being an agent of influence, media hitman for hire! And nowhere in his mind were the "let the people decide, they are not cattle". Yeah, he is charming, smart, did a lot of great things. But during those few months of presidential campaign he lost all moral weight he had in my eyes. Trump is garbage candidate. Hillary is to blame you have him. In Trump vs Bernie race Trump would had a really hard time.
    - hash-set 10y ago
      The Daily Show was never anything but conservative hate given legitimacy by being "comedy." It was a form of political attack that could be denied since it is comedic.
hash-set 10y ago
Listen: If anyone is going to do something about the surveillance state it is Trump! It certainly was not going to be the Clintons!
- tptacek 10y ago
  I think it's likely that people who believe "we must secure the existence of white people and a future for white children", which you quoted warmly elsewhere on the thread, also believe Trump will fix the surveillance state. I'm not sure many other people believe that, though.
- y_u_no_rust 10y ago
  No doing something about it going to be something we have to do ourselves.
- notahacker 10y ago
  “I think Snowden is a terrible threat, I think he’s a terrible traitor, and you know what we used to do in the good old days when we were a strong country — you know what we used to do to traitors, right?” ~Donald Trump I can't imagine anything Trump decides to "do about" the surveillance state being considered an improvement by the average HNer
hackuser 10y ago
I'm also worried about what will happen, but the best way to predict the future is to invent it. We're not a helpless bystanders. Organize with others and do something about it.
- aoeu345 10y ago
  > thing
rdtsc 10y ago
What's worse, is with every discovery and every leak, if nothing is done, it just emboldens the perpetrators. Binney came out and told everyone what's was happening. Nothing happened. Snowden appeared, there was a lot of talk but not much has been done. Did Obama put an end to it? No. They just implemented a buddy-system (like "no-lone" zones in nuclear silos) to prevent rogue whistleblowers from doing what he did. But besides that that, they of course learned, people in large agree with it and tacitly approved, so might as well double down on surveillance.
vonklaus 10y ago
wikileaks was compromised. there is some evodence they have been served a NSL.
- reefoctopus 10y ago
  [citation needed]
- williamle8300 10y ago
  Since when did they care about National Security Letters?
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
The Democrats and Obama had eight long years to do something so that we wouldn't be in a situation where a fanatic like Trump would have this at his disposal and ... nothing. That's what I'm really upset about. Neither party is for us anymore.
- 75j 10y ago
  He made the situation far worse. Under Obama we have increased police militarization, expansion of the surveillance state, unchecked abuse at CIA black sites, consolidation of executive power, new undeclared wars, and more. No one even made a peep when Obama signed the 2012 NDAA that allows for indefinite detention of American citizens without trial. And now there is a precedent, ripe for abuse under fascist Donald Trump, of killing American citizens without trial (Obama signed off on the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16 year old grandson by drone). To be clear, I find it just as horrific when non-American citizens are jailed indefinitely and killed extra-judicially, but to me those last two examples reveal that Obama doesn't even follow the moral code that he pays lip service to. He's empty, a badly disguised wolf in sheep's clothing, but nearly everyone fell for it.
  - wallace_f 10y ago
    >He made the situation far worse. Under Obama we have increased police militarization, expansion of the surveillance state, unchecked abuse at CIA black sites, consolidation of executive power, new undeclared wars, and more. It appears that the majority of Americans are very focused on the election drama and inconsequential distractions while the elite in this country can do anything they want, raping children and getting away with it. You think that's an exaggeration, don't you? http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/who-is-jeffrey-epstein-a-study-of-the-man-linked-to-worlds-of-celebrity-politics-and-royalty-9954397.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/who-is-jeff... One of Bill Clinton's best friends with connections to Bitish Royalty was convicted for raping children. Many said he should have been sent away for most of his life. Served 13 months, special cell, nights only, allowed to leave from 7am - 11pm. Officers in charge of investigation resigned. Imagine what people are not getting caught for. This is too insane to be true.
williamle8300 10y ago
If you have really lost hope, you are worthless to America. In this country we fight. Our rhetoric is one of hard-fought victory. Not capitulation.
secfirstmd 10y ago
I said this jokingly recently at a talk about what effect Snowden has had and people laughed then actually said it makes sense. Fundamentally the Snowden relations haven't lead to serious legal or operational change. Why is that? Because knowing all the technical information about PRISM etc is interesting for techies but it hasn't resonated with policymakers. They act on personal interests and those personal interests are dictated by a fear of looking soft on terrorism, crime or child porn etc. So in theory what should a new Edward Snowden do in the future in make policy change? Well having worked in Westminster Parliament, I think (if possible) he should release one month's worth of communications (email, SMS, web history) between MPs or House Members/Senators in the USA.. Why? Because that will change the personal risk calculous for policymakers. Without wanting to be crude, if you have ever worked in a parliament, a huge chunk of parliamentarians have something to hide - they are fucking someone else, they do coke like it's going out of fashion, they vote against things when they secretly do it themselves etc. Parliamentarians always write bills with added protection for themselves which their citizens are not privy too (the Wilson Rule in the UK for example). Now at times that privilege is important (e.g speaking rights without threat of libel etc) but often it serves parliament to pass laws safe in the knowledge that they won't be subject to them. Think I'm being ridiculous? Maybe I am, but remember what happened with the Senate Intelligence Committee over Snowden revelations (not much) and compare that to what happened when the CIA got caught spying on the Senate and interfering with the route report (people got torn a new asshole). That's because the US parliamentarians suddenly felt the same sense of violating that they were happy to allow citizens to be targeted by. ...anyway this is just a thought experiment but happy for others to point other ridiculous ideas - cos change is getting further away than ever.
- gajjanag 10y ago
  This is definitely not a ridiculous idea. Basically, this will make politicians have more "skin in the game". Otherwise, there is a misalignment of incentives for the elected representatives as you point out. For an (unrelated) example of this misalignment, N.N Taleb outlines in his works why most financial "news" or "recommendations" are completely useless - the people peddling the "news" are trying to sell a story. If they actually put their own money (like their personal savings account) based off their recommendations, a lot of them would disappear very quickly. At the moment, most of them have no "skin in the game".

mattnewton 10y ago

I wish you do adopt children and read 1984 and Brave New World to them. It will take more than a generation to drive us into the ground, and I like to believe it's not too late to forcefully swing the pendulum back.

geomark 10y ago
Until the day that reading 1984 gets you arrested. Think that's impossible? That's what happens in Thailand [1] where you also get arrested for the hunger games salute among other things. Think that won't happen in America? I hope you are right. [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/asia/thailand/articles/Sandwich-eating-and-1984-8-things-that-can-get-you-arrested-in-Thailand/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/asia/thailand...
einrealist 10y ago
I fear, swinging the pendulum back will not be happen without violence, this time. Too many hate-trains are on collision course with kindness and logic.
eternalban 10y ago
Please don't read 1984 to your children. The message of that book is 'resistance is futile'. Nothing, not even love (per Mr. Blair) is strong enough to resist the power structure. It is propaganda designed to completely crush the spirit without offering even a single remedy.
- pmcginn 10y ago
  That is 100% not the message.
  - eternalban 10y ago
    What is the message then? How does the "hero" end up in 1984? Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me. Tell me it ain't so, pmcginn.
    - aoeu345 10y ago
      That one sentence is not the message, the message is An extreme totalitarian surveillance state will eventually converge to punishing acts like extra marital sex or keeping a diary with personalized torture until victims are broken beyond any thought of hostility towards their authority figures. Which is a damn good thing for children to think about. People really are that bad, so hold your freedoms close.
      - Create 10y ago
        oh dearism http://www.dw.com/en/david-petraeus-the-washington-elite-have-lost-touch-with-a-lot-of-america/a-36415543 http://www.dw.com/en/david-petraeus-the-washington-elite-hav...
      - eternalban 10y ago
        Horses for courses. I'll read Lord of The Rings to my kids and let thoughts of Frodo give them the courage and the hope, and I suppose you can terrorize your kids by reading them about "rat face cages" and betrayals and fear culminating in a sit down in Chestnut Tree cafe drinking Victory Gin.
    - kafkaesq 10y ago
      What is the message then? It's right there in The Party's second-favorite slogan: Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. The task of finding similarities to current events in the world (and the U.S. in particular, this past year) is left as an exercise for the reader.
wallace_f 10y ago
>It will take more than a generation to drive us into the ground It did take more than a generation to drive us into the ground. >A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both Nothing you can do about it. Trump and Clinton had the same motivations: they both want to own you, enrich themselves and their friends, and they don't care about anything else. With regard to foreign policy, they support the same nations abroad, will keep sending them money, some of which abuse human rights, and deamonize the same enemies. Obama never gave a shit about civil liberties or human rights. Largest criminal investigation against journalists ever in the entire history of America. Guantanamo still open. Administration uses newspeak to criminalize Snowden. Largest funding sent to militarized human-rights-abusing foreign nation states in history of the country. Increased military presence throughout the world despite the fact Americans are at least over 50 times more likely to be killed by our own domestic police officers than by a terrorist. Jesus christ.

exo762 10y ago

> Guantanamo is still open, the NSA is as powerful as ever, a partisan puppet has been installed at the CIA, and Trump has all of these tools at his disposable. So, corrupted insiders installed all those tools. Now an outsider gets elected into White House. You know what are the requirements for the post, right? At least 35 years old, American. All parts of that corrupted clique, from Hillary to Jon Stewart, fought tooth and nail to prevent him from being elected. Hillary was known evil. Trump is basically a big unknown. Why can't you give this man a chance? EDIT. I guess I'm judging American politics by European standards. America are so deep in superficial fluff that it can't see what really happened. Left has lost everything because of bullshit of its progressive wing. Outsider has won White House. And you people are talking about Trump being racist - a "fact" discovered during the most vicious presidential campaign of last 50? years.

tptacek 10y ago
Yes, the corrupted clique led by Jon Stewart. Very persuasive!
- exo762 10y ago
  I've watched The Daily Show from other hemisphere, growing up. Really love the dude. But please, he returned from retirement just to lambast a presidential candidate! Reducing his whole carrier of awesomeness to nothing more than being an agent of influence, media hitman for hire! And nowhere in his mind were the "let the people decide, they are not cattle". Yeah, he is charming, smart, did a lot of great things. But during those few months of presidential campaign he lost all moral weight he had in my eyes. Trump is garbage candidate. Hillary is to blame you have him. In Trump vs Bernie race Trump would had a really hard time.
  - hash-set 10y ago
    The Daily Show was never anything but conservative hate given legitimacy by being "comedy." It was a form of political attack that could be denied since it is comedic.

hash-set 10y ago

Listen: If anyone is going to do something about the surveillance state it is Trump! It certainly was not going to be the Clintons!

tptacek 10y ago
I think it's likely that people who believe "we must secure the existence of white people and a future for white children", which you quoted warmly elsewhere on the thread, also believe Trump will fix the surveillance state. I'm not sure many other people believe that, though.
y_u_no_rust 10y ago
No doing something about it going to be something we have to do ourselves.
notahacker 10y ago
“I think Snowden is a terrible threat, I think he’s a terrible traitor, and you know what we used to do in the good old days when we were a strong country — you know what we used to do to traitors, right?” ~Donald Trump I can't imagine anything Trump decides to "do about" the surveillance state being considered an improvement by the average HNer

hackuser 10y ago

I'm also worried about what will happen, but the best way to predict the future is to invent it. We're not a helpless bystanders. Organize with others and do something about it.

aoeu345 10y ago
> thing

rdtsc 10y ago

What's worse, is with every discovery and every leak, if nothing is done, it just emboldens the perpetrators. Binney came out and told everyone what's was happening. Nothing happened. Snowden appeared, there was a lot of talk but not much has been done. Did Obama put an end to it? No. They just implemented a buddy-system (like "no-lone" zones in nuclear silos) to prevent rogue whistleblowers from doing what he did. But besides that that, they of course learned, people in large agree with it and tacitly approved, so might as well double down on surveillance.

vonklaus 10y ago

wikileaks was compromised. there is some evodence they have been served a NSL.

reefoctopus 10y ago
[citation needed]
williamle8300 10y ago
Since when did they care about National Security Letters?

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

The Democrats and Obama had eight long years to do something so that we wouldn't be in a situation where a fanatic like Trump would have this at his disposal and ... nothing. That's what I'm really upset about. Neither party is for us anymore.

75j 10y ago
He made the situation far worse. Under Obama we have increased police militarization, expansion of the surveillance state, unchecked abuse at CIA black sites, consolidation of executive power, new undeclared wars, and more. No one even made a peep when Obama signed the 2012 NDAA that allows for indefinite detention of American citizens without trial. And now there is a precedent, ripe for abuse under fascist Donald Trump, of killing American citizens without trial (Obama signed off on the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16 year old grandson by drone). To be clear, I find it just as horrific when non-American citizens are jailed indefinitely and killed extra-judicially, but to me those last two examples reveal that Obama doesn't even follow the moral code that he pays lip service to. He's empty, a badly disguised wolf in sheep's clothing, but nearly everyone fell for it.
- wallace_f 10y ago
  >He made the situation far worse. Under Obama we have increased police militarization, expansion of the surveillance state, unchecked abuse at CIA black sites, consolidation of executive power, new undeclared wars, and more. It appears that the majority of Americans are very focused on the election drama and inconsequential distractions while the elite in this country can do anything they want, raping children and getting away with it. You think that's an exaggeration, don't you? http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/who-is-jeffrey-epstein-a-study-of-the-man-linked-to-worlds-of-celebrity-politics-and-royalty-9954397.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/who-is-jeff... One of Bill Clinton's best friends with connections to Bitish Royalty was convicted for raping children. Many said he should have been sent away for most of his life. Served 13 months, special cell, nights only, allowed to leave from 7am - 11pm. Officers in charge of investigation resigned. Imagine what people are not getting caught for. This is too insane to be true.

williamle8300 10y ago

If you have really lost hope, you are worthless to America. In this country we fight. Our rhetoric is one of hard-fought victory. Not capitulation.

secfirstmd 10y ago

I said this jokingly recently at a talk about what effect Snowden has had and people laughed then actually said it makes sense. Fundamentally the Snowden relations haven't lead to serious legal or operational change. Why is that? Because knowing all the technical information about PRISM etc is interesting for techies but it hasn't resonated with policymakers. They act on personal interests and those personal interests are dictated by a fear of looking soft on terrorism, crime or child porn etc. So in theory what should a new Edward Snowden do in the future in make policy change? Well having worked in Westminster Parliament, I think (if possible) he should release one month's worth of communications (email, SMS, web history) between MPs or House Members/Senators in the USA.. Why? Because that will change the personal risk calculous for policymakers. Without wanting to be crude, if you have ever worked in a parliament, a huge chunk of parliamentarians have something to hide - they are fucking someone else, they do coke like it's going out of fashion, they vote against things when they secretly do it themselves etc. Parliamentarians always write bills with added protection for themselves which their citizens are not privy too (the Wilson Rule in the UK for example). Now at times that privilege is important (e.g speaking rights without threat of libel etc) but often it serves parliament to pass laws safe in the knowledge that they won't be subject to them. Think I'm being ridiculous? Maybe I am, but remember what happened with the Senate Intelligence Committee over Snowden revelations (not much) and compare that to what happened when the CIA got caught spying on the Senate and interfering with the route report (people got torn a new asshole). That's because the US parliamentarians suddenly felt the same sense of violating that they were happy to allow citizens to be targeted by. ...anyway this is just a thought experiment but happy for others to point other ridiculous ideas - cos change is getting further away than ever.

gajjanag 10y ago
This is definitely not a ridiculous idea. Basically, this will make politicians have more "skin in the game". Otherwise, there is a misalignment of incentives for the elected representatives as you point out. For an (unrelated) example of this misalignment, N.N Taleb outlines in his works why most financial "news" or "recommendations" are completely useless - the people peddling the "news" are trying to sell a story. If they actually put their own money (like their personal savings account) based off their recommendations, a lot of them would disappear very quickly. At the moment, most of them have no "skin in the game".