4 ms·

Every time this comes up, I'm again surprised how many people expect that Democrats will somehow have better policy for privacy. Folks, it ain't so. The Democr

Every time this comes up, I'm again surprised how many people expect that Democrats will somehow have better policy for privacy. Folks, it ain't so. The Democrats won't protect us in this regard any more than the Republicans will.

kmonsen 9y ago
Sure democrats are not perfect on this, but they are still as good/slightly better than republicans which are a shitshow on more or less every issue. One of the reasons democrats feel able to be horrible here is that there is just no alternative.
- noobermin 9y ago
  Not sure why this is downvoted.
ep103 9y ago
The parent comment literally shows that Democrats protect us for privacy more than Republicans do. 125 Democrats voted to add privacy protections, 55 did not. By Contrast 58 Republicans voted to add privacy protections, 178 did not. By definition, that means Democrats were better about privacy protections. Stop peddling this both-parties-are-the-same nonsense. Its amazing this can even be said with a straight face during the Trump administration.
- vuln 9y ago
  The last President was a Democrat and he sure didn't care about American's Privacy even though he used it on his campaign trail to get elected... Please don't act like _only_ Republicans do this... From my comment down thread >Unfortunately Obama almost quadrupled funding to these agencies[1]. Throughout his administration he allowed the Alphabet boys to try and steal more american's data without warrants (See FBI v Apple and the FBI attempting to get access to your browser history with out warrants)[2][3]. Obama even EXPANDED surveillance on his way out of office[4]. Obama also said he was pro whistle blowers we all know what happened to Chelsea. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/surveillance-in-the-obama-era-1496683972 https://www.wsj.com/articles/surveillance-in-the-obama-era-1... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/29/apple-vs-fbi-all-you-need-to-know.html https://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/29/apple-vs-fbi-all-you-need-to... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-wants-access-to-internet-browser-history-without-a-warrant-in-terrorism-and-spy-cases/2016/06/06/2d257328-2c0d-11e6-9de3-6e6e7a14000c_story.html?utm_term=.48131f786a8d https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-w... [4] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/obama-expands-surveillance-powers-his-way-out https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/obama-expands-surveill...
  - aaronbrethorst 9y ago
    Obama also said he was pro whistle blowers we all know what happened to Chelsea. Obama commuted her sentence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Manning#Commutation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Manning#Commutation
    - vuln 9y ago
      Do you remember how she was treated during her 7 year stay in prison? I am sure it will be easy for her to explain "Violating the Espionage Act, stealing government property, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, multiple counts of disobeying orders" on her job application. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-manning-cruel-inhuman-treatment-un https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-mannin...
      - noobermin 9y ago
        There is a nuance here. The Dems are better. They are better than republicans on this, but they certainly aren't good enough. That is the unfortunate part. But if you definitely want a better chance for civil liberties, voting for R's will hurt you worse than if you vote for D's, significantly so.
        CWuestefeld 9y ago
        But if you definitely want a better chance for civil liberties, voting for R's will hurt you worse than if you vote for D's I suppose that depends which civil liberties are more important to you. You'll find that Democrats are pretty awful if you value your right to self-defense, or if you don't think the government should be able to use eminent domain to take your property and give it to a wealthy supporter. Some of the details may be different, but they're both different sides of the same coin. I don't see that one side is significantly better than the other overall.
        aaronbrethorst 9y ago
        Chelsea Manning seems to agree that the Democrats are better, too. Otherwise, I don't think she'd be running for Senate as one: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/chelsea-manning-files-us-senate-bid-maryland https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/chelsea-manning-files-us-...
- whatshisface 9y ago
  Both parties are the same in that in neither case should "party" be taken as sufficient evidence of someone being worthy of office. It would improve the quality of your votes if you ignored party entirely and forced yourself to find out what your representatives actually believed.
  - philipov 9y ago
    It doesn't matter what they believe. What matters is the power structure and incentives/disincentives to which they are subject once they have the job. Regardless of what they believe, a politician's first priority is reelection, and it is partisan campaign committees that hold the reigns to the resources required for that. Even if you are independently wealthy and can finance your own campaign, you can't accomplish anything in office if you get ostracized by everyone who doesn't have that luxury. Cooperate with the cartel leadership, or you'll be denied funding, voter data, and committee seats.
- Feniks 9y ago
  Doesn't matter. US political system only has 2 parties. If you don't like blacks, browns and gays but DO like privacy were do you go? Exactly. There is no alternative to the Republicans. If the US had 15 parties in Congress the game would be a LOT more interesting. Half of America has no choice to support Trump because the alternative is literally Satan. So here we are: the endless stalemate.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > US political system only has 2 parties. More accurately, the US electoral system supports only two competitive parties at a time; the US political system has several dozen political parties.
- ComputerGuru 9y ago
  Oh please. Nitpick much? The party line in both parties was anti-privacy. Yes, there are more good apples in the bunch on the left side of the fence. The GP’s point still stands. Your reply comes across as very defensive and in denial. While technically correct, it is absolutely dishonest to try and portray the Democratic Party as a whole as actually giving a damn about this issue.
- mwilliaams 9y ago
  I think you're missing the bigger picture. I think that for most of these politicians, it's really not about the issue itself (privacy in this case). It's about gaining power for your own party and removing power from the opposing party. Of course the Democrats are likely to vote against a bill that gives a Republican administration more power. And of course the Republicans are likely to vote for a bill that gives a Republican administration more power. That's what I see happening here. Democrats had plenty of opportunity to strengthen privacy laws during the previous administration, but they didn't. Instead they strengthened the surveillance powers of the government. Now that a Republican controls the executive branch and all of these agencies, they want those powers weakened. The US is experiencing the terrible pitfalls of a two-party system, just as the founding fathers warned. Instead of making progress, the parties mostly just fight each other, at our expense.
  - refurb 9y ago
    This is really true. How many times have you seen a party vote against an issue, only to turn around and vote for it it's their own party leadership leading the charge?
elihu 9y ago
Neither the Democratic party nor the Republican party are monolithic. This is an issue where party affiliation isn't as predictive of behavior as some others, but there clearly are a lot of politicians who have strong opinions about surveillance. Just because those differences don't exactly fall along party lines doesn't mean that Democrats and Republicans are all the same. I don't have much faith in the Democratic party as an institution to protect privacy, but many Democrats are trying to do so.

kmonsen 9y ago

Sure democrats are not perfect on this, but they are still as good/slightly better than republicans which are a shitshow on more or less every issue. One of the reasons democrats feel able to be horrible here is that there is just no alternative.

noobermin 9y ago
Not sure why this is downvoted.

ep103 9y ago

The parent comment literally shows that Democrats protect us for privacy more than Republicans do. 125 Democrats voted to add privacy protections, 55 did not. By Contrast 58 Republicans voted to add privacy protections, 178 did not. By definition, that means Democrats were better about privacy protections. Stop peddling this both-parties-are-the-same nonsense. Its amazing this can even be said with a straight face during the Trump administration.

vuln 9y ago
The last President was a Democrat and he sure didn't care about American's Privacy even though he used it on his campaign trail to get elected... Please don't act like _only_ Republicans do this... From my comment down thread >Unfortunately Obama almost quadrupled funding to these agencies[1]. Throughout his administration he allowed the Alphabet boys to try and steal more american's data without warrants (See FBI v Apple and the FBI attempting to get access to your browser history with out warrants)[2][3]. Obama even EXPANDED surveillance on his way out of office[4]. Obama also said he was pro whistle blowers we all know what happened to Chelsea. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/surveillance-in-the-obama-era-1496683972 https://www.wsj.com/articles/surveillance-in-the-obama-era-1... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/29/apple-vs-fbi-all-you-need-to-know.html https://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/29/apple-vs-fbi-all-you-need-to... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-wants-access-to-internet-browser-history-without-a-warrant-in-terrorism-and-spy-cases/2016/06/06/2d257328-2c0d-11e6-9de3-6e6e7a14000c_story.html?utm_term=.48131f786a8d https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-w... [4] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/obama-expands-surveillance-powers-his-way-out https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/obama-expands-surveill...
- aaronbrethorst 9y ago
  Obama also said he was pro whistle blowers we all know what happened to Chelsea. Obama commuted her sentence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Manning#Commutation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Manning#Commutation
  - vuln 9y ago
    Do you remember how she was treated during her 7 year stay in prison? I am sure it will be easy for her to explain "Violating the Espionage Act, stealing government property, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, multiple counts of disobeying orders" on her job application. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-manning-cruel-inhuman-treatment-un https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-mannin...
    - noobermin 9y ago
      There is a nuance here. The Dems are better. They are better than republicans on this, but they certainly aren't good enough. That is the unfortunate part. But if you definitely want a better chance for civil liberties, voting for R's will hurt you worse than if you vote for D's, significantly so.
      - CWuestefeld 9y ago
        But if you definitely want a better chance for civil liberties, voting for R's will hurt you worse than if you vote for D's I suppose that depends which civil liberties are more important to you. You'll find that Democrats are pretty awful if you value your right to self-defense, or if you don't think the government should be able to use eminent domain to take your property and give it to a wealthy supporter. Some of the details may be different, but they're both different sides of the same coin. I don't see that one side is significantly better than the other overall.
      - aaronbrethorst 9y ago
        Chelsea Manning seems to agree that the Democrats are better, too. Otherwise, I don't think she'd be running for Senate as one: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/chelsea-manning-files-us-senate-bid-maryland https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/chelsea-manning-files-us-...
whatshisface 9y ago
Both parties are the same in that in neither case should "party" be taken as sufficient evidence of someone being worthy of office. It would improve the quality of your votes if you ignored party entirely and forced yourself to find out what your representatives actually believed.
- philipov 9y ago
  It doesn't matter what they believe. What matters is the power structure and incentives/disincentives to which they are subject once they have the job. Regardless of what they believe, a politician's first priority is reelection, and it is partisan campaign committees that hold the reigns to the resources required for that. Even if you are independently wealthy and can finance your own campaign, you can't accomplish anything in office if you get ostracized by everyone who doesn't have that luxury. Cooperate with the cartel leadership, or you'll be denied funding, voter data, and committee seats.
Feniks 9y ago
Doesn't matter. US political system only has 2 parties. If you don't like blacks, browns and gays but DO like privacy were do you go? Exactly. There is no alternative to the Republicans. If the US had 15 parties in Congress the game would be a LOT more interesting. Half of America has no choice to support Trump because the alternative is literally Satan. So here we are: the endless stalemate.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > US political system only has 2 parties. More accurately, the US electoral system supports only two competitive parties at a time; the US political system has several dozen political parties.
ComputerGuru 9y ago
Oh please. Nitpick much? The party line in both parties was anti-privacy. Yes, there are more good apples in the bunch on the left side of the fence. The GP’s point still stands. Your reply comes across as very defensive and in denial. While technically correct, it is absolutely dishonest to try and portray the Democratic Party as a whole as actually giving a damn about this issue.
mwilliaams 9y ago
I think you're missing the bigger picture. I think that for most of these politicians, it's really not about the issue itself (privacy in this case). It's about gaining power for your own party and removing power from the opposing party. Of course the Democrats are likely to vote against a bill that gives a Republican administration more power. And of course the Republicans are likely to vote for a bill that gives a Republican administration more power. That's what I see happening here. Democrats had plenty of opportunity to strengthen privacy laws during the previous administration, but they didn't. Instead they strengthened the surveillance powers of the government. Now that a Republican controls the executive branch and all of these agencies, they want those powers weakened. The US is experiencing the terrible pitfalls of a two-party system, just as the founding fathers warned. Instead of making progress, the parties mostly just fight each other, at our expense.
- refurb 9y ago
  This is really true. How many times have you seen a party vote against an issue, only to turn around and vote for it it's their own party leadership leading the charge?

elihu 9y ago

Neither the Democratic party nor the Republican party are monolithic. This is an issue where party affiliation isn't as predictive of behavior as some others, but there clearly are a lot of politicians who have strong opinions about surveillance. Just because those differences don't exactly fall along party lines doesn't mean that Democrats and Republicans are all the same. I don't have much faith in the Democratic party as an institution to protect privacy, but many Democrats are trying to do so.