5 ms·

Not sure why this is any surprise. It is only a matter of time before it is done in the US as well (at least done openly)

alexasmyths 9y ago
The NSA is watching, but they are not censors.
- asquabventured 9y ago
  The problem is that the NSA is watching us all, and we know it, so we self censor. The question is: Do you trust your/any government in 'x' years to not treat your communication and thoughts sent today as criminal in the future?
  - johncolanduoni 9y ago
    If people are self-censoring their opinions about the US government currently, it's hard to imagine how strongly they really feel.
  - alexasmyths 9y ago
    " so we self censor." I don't. I mean - you'd have to literally indicate you wanted to cause harm to a government official to get in trouble with the US Feds - and it's not unreasonable they do come after you as that is rightly a crime. But you can say almost anything you want against Trump or the US Government otherwise, and nobody will care.
- code_duck 9y ago
  The NSA collects the data - they're not the ones who take action about it. They supply the info to the CIA, FBI, DEA, and so forth. Their data sharing was expanded just before Obama left office: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/nsa-gets-more-latitude-to-share-intercepted-communications.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/nsa-gets-more... "Previously, the N.S.A. filtered information before sharing intercepted communications with another agency, like the C.I.A. or the intelligence branches of the F.B.I. and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The N.S.A.’s analysts passed on only information they deemed pertinent, screening out the identities of innocent people and irrelevant personal information. Now, other intelligence agencies will be able to search directly through raw repositories of communications intercepted by the N.S.A. and then apply such rules for “minimizing” privacy intrusions."
  - opportune 9y ago
    Constitutionality aside, while this does make some sense for the FBI and CIA - because they have people skilled enough to analyze the data and "legitimate" uses in counter-terrorism - it makes no sense to give all that data to agencies like Homeland Security and the DEA, and I also have little confidence that their agents are good enough to even make sense of basic raw data. Just imagine some TSA agent finding a knife you left in your bag and then getting passed to some moron who detains you for hours because he saw that you liked some communist memes on FB and your friend sent you a 9/11 joke.
  - alexasmyths 9y ago
    The CIA, FBI, DEA etc are not 'censors' either. They are law enforcement. Censorship of US citizens for the purposes of state propaganda is a whole other different thing than anything the CIA/FBI/DEA does. And FYI the CIA may be proactively involved involved in propaganda, like helping some Hollywood movies ... but they are not running around tell you not to say bad things about Trump on Facebook, is my point.
    - code_duck 9y ago
      My point is that if there were to be any censor/like actions conducted by the government, it would not be the NSA carrying it out. It would be law enforcement.
indubitable 9y ago
We're already experiencing the start of this. This [1] article discusses an event when prosecutors in New York simultaneously subpoenaed Reason Magazine for information on commenters to an article, and also gagged them preventing them from being able to discuss it. The commenters were upset about the judge who chose to sentence Ross Ulbricht, founder of Silk Road, to life without the possibility of parole -- a sentence even greater than what the prosecution was seeking. The comments range from innocuous like "I hope there is a special place in hell reserved for that horrible woman" to ones that are more vile, but still come nowhere near even remotely close our 'imminent criminality' first amendment exception. Given what happened the first time that line was stated, I'm hesitant to quote it. What freedom... [1] - https://reason.com/reasontv/2015/07/07/ken-white-on-how-he-broke-reason-subpoen https://reason.com/reasontv/2015/07/07/ken-white-on-how-he-b...
musage 9y ago
> Now the police dreams that one look at the gigantic map on the office wall should suffice at any given moment to establish who is related to whom and in what degree of intimacy; and, theoretically, this dream is not unrealizable although its technical execution is bound to be somewhat difficult. If this map really did exist, not even memory would stand in the way of the totalitarian claim to domination; such a map might make it possible to obliterate people without any traces, as if they had never existed at all. -- Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism" But it can't happen here, regardless of where "here" is. And when it does happen, it can't be discussed or resisted, especially when "here" became everywhere. > We’re going to live in a world unless we do something quickly in which our media consume us and spit in the government’s cup. There will never have been any place like it before and if we let it happen, there will never be any place different from it again. and > What will they say when they realize that we lived at the end of a thousand years of struggling for freedom of thought. At the end, when we had almost everything, we gave it away, for convenience, for social networking. Because Mr. Zuckerberg asked us to. Because we couldn’t find a better way to talk to our friends. Because we loved the beautiful pretty things that felt so warm in the hand. Because we didn’t really care about the future of freedom of thought, because we considered that to be someone else’s business. Because we thought it was over. Because we believed we were free. Because we didn’t think there was any struggling left to do. That’s why we gave it all away. > Is that what we're gonna tell them? > Free thought requires free media. Free media requires free technology. We require ethical treatment when we go to read, to write, to listen and to watch. Those are the hallmarks of our politics. We need to keep those politics until we die. Because if we don’t, something else will die. Something so precious that many, many of our fathers and mothers gave their life for it. Something so precious, that we understood it to define what it meant to be human; it will die. -- both by Eben Moglen in "Freedom of thought requires free media"
hungerstrike 9y ago
It won't be done in the US because they're going to use China as a model for a new world government and that can't happen until we're gone.
- pavlov 9y ago
  Who is they?
  - hungerstrike 9y ago
    The international financiers that hold leverage over every nation - http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-12/new-world-order-takeover-very-real-and-will-begin-germany-and-china http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-12/new-world-order-tak...

alexasmyths 9y ago

The NSA is watching, but they are not censors.

asquabventured 9y ago
The problem is that the NSA is watching us all, and we know it, so we self censor. The question is: Do you trust your/any government in 'x' years to not treat your communication and thoughts sent today as criminal in the future?
- johncolanduoni 9y ago
  If people are self-censoring their opinions about the US government currently, it's hard to imagine how strongly they really feel.
- alexasmyths 9y ago
  " so we self censor." I don't. I mean - you'd have to literally indicate you wanted to cause harm to a government official to get in trouble with the US Feds - and it's not unreasonable they do come after you as that is rightly a crime. But you can say almost anything you want against Trump or the US Government otherwise, and nobody will care.
code_duck 9y ago
The NSA collects the data - they're not the ones who take action about it. They supply the info to the CIA, FBI, DEA, and so forth. Their data sharing was expanded just before Obama left office: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/nsa-gets-more-latitude-to-share-intercepted-communications.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/nsa-gets-more... "Previously, the N.S.A. filtered information before sharing intercepted communications with another agency, like the C.I.A. or the intelligence branches of the F.B.I. and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The N.S.A.’s analysts passed on only information they deemed pertinent, screening out the identities of innocent people and irrelevant personal information. Now, other intelligence agencies will be able to search directly through raw repositories of communications intercepted by the N.S.A. and then apply such rules for “minimizing” privacy intrusions."
- opportune 9y ago
  Constitutionality aside, while this does make some sense for the FBI and CIA - because they have people skilled enough to analyze the data and "legitimate" uses in counter-terrorism - it makes no sense to give all that data to agencies like Homeland Security and the DEA, and I also have little confidence that their agents are good enough to even make sense of basic raw data. Just imagine some TSA agent finding a knife you left in your bag and then getting passed to some moron who detains you for hours because he saw that you liked some communist memes on FB and your friend sent you a 9/11 joke.
- alexasmyths 9y ago
  The CIA, FBI, DEA etc are not 'censors' either. They are law enforcement. Censorship of US citizens for the purposes of state propaganda is a whole other different thing than anything the CIA/FBI/DEA does. And FYI the CIA may be proactively involved involved in propaganda, like helping some Hollywood movies ... but they are not running around tell you not to say bad things about Trump on Facebook, is my point.
  - code_duck 9y ago
    My point is that if there were to be any censor/like actions conducted by the government, it would not be the NSA carrying it out. It would be law enforcement.

indubitable 9y ago

We're already experiencing the start of this. This [1] article discusses an event when prosecutors in New York simultaneously subpoenaed Reason Magazine for information on commenters to an article, and also gagged them preventing them from being able to discuss it. The commenters were upset about the judge who chose to sentence Ross Ulbricht, founder of Silk Road, to life without the possibility of parole -- a sentence even greater than what the prosecution was seeking. The comments range from innocuous like "I hope there is a special place in hell reserved for that horrible woman" to ones that are more vile, but still come nowhere near even remotely close our 'imminent criminality' first amendment exception. Given what happened the first time that line was stated, I'm hesitant to quote it. What freedom... [1] - https://reason.com/reasontv/2015/07/07/ken-white-on-how-he-broke-reason-subpoen https://reason.com/reasontv/2015/07/07/ken-white-on-how-he-b...

musage 9y ago

> Now the police dreams that one look at the gigantic map on the office wall should suffice at any given moment to establish who is related to whom and in what degree of intimacy; and, theoretically, this dream is not unrealizable although its technical execution is bound to be somewhat difficult. If this map really did exist, not even memory would stand in the way of the totalitarian claim to domination; such a map might make it possible to obliterate people without any traces, as if they had never existed at all. -- Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism" But it can't happen here, regardless of where "here" is. And when it does happen, it can't be discussed or resisted, especially when "here" became everywhere. > We’re going to live in a world unless we do something quickly in which our media consume us and spit in the government’s cup. There will never have been any place like it before and if we let it happen, there will never be any place different from it again. and > What will they say when they realize that we lived at the end of a thousand years of struggling for freedom of thought. At the end, when we had almost everything, we gave it away, for convenience, for social networking. Because Mr. Zuckerberg asked us to. Because we couldn’t find a better way to talk to our friends. Because we loved the beautiful pretty things that felt so warm in the hand. Because we didn’t really care about the future of freedom of thought, because we considered that to be someone else’s business. Because we thought it was over. Because we believed we were free. Because we didn’t think there was any struggling left to do. That’s why we gave it all away. > Is that what we're gonna tell them? > Free thought requires free media. Free media requires free technology. We require ethical treatment when we go to read, to write, to listen and to watch. Those are the hallmarks of our politics. We need to keep those politics until we die. Because if we don’t, something else will die. Something so precious that many, many of our fathers and mothers gave their life for it. Something so precious, that we understood it to define what it meant to be human; it will die. -- both by Eben Moglen in "Freedom of thought requires free media"

hungerstrike 9y ago

It won't be done in the US because they're going to use China as a model for a new world government and that can't happen until we're gone.

pavlov 9y ago
Who is they?
- hungerstrike 9y ago
  The international financiers that hold leverage over every nation - http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-12/new-world-order-takeover-very-real-and-will-begin-germany-and-china http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-12/new-world-order-tak...