14 ms·

Would anybody else vote on this one issue? Any candidate who said flat out "your government is spying on you through giant corporations and they're all lying ab

Would anybody else vote on this one issue? Any candidate who said flat out "your government is spying on you through giant corporations and they're all lying about it, and I'm going to Washington to put a stop to it" would have my vote.

rosser 9y ago
It's not his only issue, but Ron Wyden (D-OR) is pretty reliably one of the "good guys" on surveillance.
- ComputerGuru 9y ago
  Ron Wyden, Al Franken, and Rand Paul are the only consistently good guys on this, imho. I believe Wyden and Paul have worked across the aisle many times. Paul was set to filibuster the PATRIOT act extension until both dems and republicans banded together to vote to block the filibuster, limiting discussion to 30 hours.
  - duckMuppet 9y ago
    Don't forget Amash
astronautjones 9y ago
It's coming. not in the 2018 elections, but the 2020 democrat party will be forced from below and unpredictable other sides to be far more leftist and treat privacy as a crucial issue
- ibeckermayer 9y ago
  I don't see the leftists treating privacy as a crucial issue... Far more leftist = authoritarian sjw's does it not? I haven't heard a peep about privacy from the left since Obama dropped it as an issue (and quietly expanded surveillance).
  - lern_too_spel 9y ago
    Obama quietly expanded privacy as an issue? That doesn't parse. Edit: parent fixed his parenthetical to be merely factually incorrect instead of grammatically incorrect. As I recall, he publicly discussed privacy as an issue and both privately (until the Snowden leaks showed his cancellation of email metadata collection) and publicly (phone metadata) shut down data collection programs.
    - kakarot 9y ago
      His regime was brutal against whistle-blowers. Look at Chelsea Manning. In his last few years as president, he did not exert much effort at all to shut down the NSA program, as he surely already mostly knew the extent of it and was fine with it. Obama does not care about doing the right thing here.
      - lern_too_spel 9y ago
        > His regime was brutal against whistle-blowers. Look at Chelsea Manning. Walking free. After she blew the whistle on what, exactly? The heavily edited Collateral Murder video that conveniently left out the RPG[1]? What do the cable leaks have to do with that? > In his last few years as president, he did not exert much effort at all to shut down the NSA program. He shut down the email metadata collection program two years after taking office. [1]https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/2010/04/2007-iraq-apache-attack-as-seen-from-the-ground/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/2010/04/2007-iraq... Edit: > I didn't say anything about cable leaks or what Manning leaked, that is a different conversation.... Nice strawmanning, though. You literally pointed to Manning as an example of how Obama was brutal to whistleblowers. I quoted you. I pointed out that the actions she took do not count as whistleblowing, and you appear to have conceded that point. > I'm implicitly referring to the NSA spying programs leaked by Snowden. How does that example show Obama's brutality to whistleblowers? Snowden is not a whistleblower, and Obama didn't treat him brutally. Out of the millions of documents that Snowden leaked, only phone metadata collection was found to be illegal. If you leak millions of documents from any government agency or any private company for that matter, you're bound to find at least one instance of illegal activity.
- duncan_bayne 9y ago
  Both left and right dug the US - and your allies like Australia, where I live - deeper into this hole. It is a bipartisan problem.
- uptown 9y ago
  Nope. Both parties are unified on this issue.
  - rektide 9y ago
    "We Must Fight Even Harder Against Trump's Authoritarian Impulses Now That We've Voted To Enable Them" is another true to life, accurate Onion article. Obama administration certainly made no effort to correct any of the Bush DoJ authorized spying programs, until Wired and then Snowden forced some kind of response, resulting in FISA. Which seems to be a star court that refuses to answer any questions from congress or deny any request. https://politics.theonion.com/pelosi-we-must-fight-even-harder-against-trumps-autho-1822205559 https://politics.theonion.com/pelosi-we-must-fight-even-hard... It's a shit show everywhere. Very very few congress-people seem to have any backbone what-so-ever. Ron Wyden of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is one of the only people that seems to even try to ask questions, and he is shut down and denied by the military at every turn. https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/dont-pass-surveillance-legislation-dark#.WlX-vO2BQqo.twitter https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/dont-pass-surv...
    - DrScump 9y ago
      Which seems to be a star court Did you mean a "star chamber" court?
    - patrickg_zill 9y ago
      I may be wrong, but I am pretty sure that FISA has been around for 20 years or more. Wiki says it was established 1978 as part of an act passed that same year.
      - rayiner 9y ago
        The FISA Act was an attempt to reign in domestic spying. It didn’t create it.
  - guelo 9y ago
    No they are not unified. Going by the congressional vote about 25% of Republicans and 70% of Democrats voted against the spying. If this issue is important to you you're generally better off voting Democrat unless you have a Ron Paul type of Republican.
- boomboomsubban 9y ago
  Personally, I find it more likely that the NSA or another organization ends up leaking some sort of damning info about Trump. This would give them a huge opinion boost, and the Democrats would end up owing the organization for their victory. We're already seeing this, the Democrats seem to love Comey despite his role in mass surveillance.
  - duncan_bayne 9y ago
    Why "despite"? Mass surveillance is a legacy of both the Democrats and the Republicans.
  - MaxBarraclough 9y ago
    > huge opinion boost You think people would warm to the NSA if only they demonstrated an inability to keep secret the findings of their domestic spying, and revealed they'd been spying on the president? You don't think that would make them look like they were illegally meddling in partisan politics?
    - makomk 9y ago
      This doesn't seem too unlikely to me. Fighting Trump has become something that seems to override concerns about democracy or any other principle for a wide swathe of people. Supporting intelligence agency meddling in partisan politics is one of the milder, more widely normalised and expected parts of being anti-Trump today; the more extreme fringe views involve support for tactics like a literal military coup.
    - boomboomsubban 9y ago
      >You think people would warm to the NSA if only they demonstrated an inability to keep secret the findings of their domestic spying, and revealed they'd been spying on the president? They may not need to make it domestic or seem like they were spying on the president, finding some sort of scandal involving a different nation doesn't seem that hard. Or they could use some intercepted knowledge from a foreign spy agency. As a whole though, I suspect they'd see an opinion boost even if it came from domestic surveillance. The hatred of Trump is ridiculous, Democrats have even praised Bush following his attacks on Trump. Plus, Mark Felt did basically did this and just got had a movie made about him.
- finnthehuman 9y ago
  The dems getting their shit together has been "just around the corner" for decades. At some point you've gotta admit they're just scrambling to be slightly less detestable than the GOP, to just enough voters to win elections.
  - astronautjones 9y ago
    > At some point you've gotta admit they're just scrambling to be slightly less detestable than the GOP, to just enough voters to win elections. absolutely. i'm arguing that that has finally (obviously) become untenable, the shift left will be bolstered by the vivid, insurmountable gulf in inequality
lern_too_spel 9y ago
Why would someone who says that lie have your vote? Unless you're under investigation or living somewhere like Iraq, the government is not spying on you through giant corporations, as both the law and Snowden's leaks show.
- whatshisface 9y ago
  Through a sufficiently creative definition of spying, nobody has been spied on in human history. Otherwise, we're forced to contend with the fact that we are being caught in the same dragnets that were advertised to catch the next Osama. (Not advertised to us, of course - we had no serious chance to vote on it.)
  - lern_too_spel 9y ago
    Which dragnets? Be specific. The phone metadata dragnet doesn't exist anymore, and the way it was used according to Snowden's documents when it did exist could hardly be called spying on OP.
    - whatshisface 9y ago
      Here's a detailed writeup. It had been claimed that the phone tracking was reduced, the rest clearly remains: https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/privacy-and-surveillance/nsa-surveillance https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/privacy-and-su... I understand that some disagree with the other (and past) positions of the ACLU and may be disinclined to trust its website. Fortunately this issue isn't a particularly party-based one. Here's another good source, although it also says a lot about the history of the leaks: https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying If there is any accurate secondary source that is clearly conservative, It'd be welcome for me to see it in a reply. There's no particular reason why we'd have to porkbarel this issue - presumably there would be no party affinity at all. Edit: I know that there is lots of text behind those links, but the issue is an expansive one. I sincerely invite you to read them!
      - 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
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throwaway773 9y ago
If such a person had the credentials to back up their sincerity, then yes. A Chelsea Manning type who has suffered for their beliefs or otherwise demonstrated stalwart commitment to dismantling the security state would get my vote and money. A career politician riding whatever Zeitgeist there may be as a lesser evil would not. Surveillance and securitization may not be a big issue to many people, but it is a very big issue to some of us. At the very least, those representatives who continue to vote for the powers of these agencies (like in this previous 702 spying bill) will never see a primary or general election vote from me or my peers (who I can vouch for) regardless of how much "less worse" you are. I won't hold out hope that this is a popular issue but I would love to see someone take a stand.
- reverius42 9y ago
  Chelsea Manning is actually running for Senate, if you'd like to put your money where your mouth is: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/01/13/chelsea-manning-files-to-run-for-us-senate-seat-in-maryland.html http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/01/13/chelsea-manning-f...
deleted 9y ago
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bastijn 9y ago
You do realize this is exactly what made Trump president right? Shout one thing the public wants, shout it hard and repeatedly to mask your incompetence in all the other things that are important to have a prospering nation. The public will vote for one thing in plain sight and complain about their own choice the day after because all the other things in their life suddenly take a bad spin. TL;DR; do not vote blindly on a single action point. Do not bewilder others to do so. Instead vote for the complete package and learn others to do so as well.
- deleted 9y ago
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- deleted 9y ago
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- icebraining 9y ago
  I've read a lot of criticism of Trump, but that he was a single-issue candidate is a new one. If anything, he was accused of saying everything and its opposite. What was that "one thing" you're saying he shouted?
  - nerdponx 9y ago
    He wasn't a single-issue candidate. He picked a bunch of issues that mattered to single-issue voters. The presentation is different, the overall effect is the same.
    - bastijn 9y ago
      True. Though I would argue immigration was his spearhead, especially with his lack of political correctness on the matter. Banning various trade agreements to further arouse his voters was important but the repeated message on immigration probably dominated his position. Disclaimer: seen from a foreign standpoint. This is what reached us oversees. For every other article on non-immigration there were 10 on his immigration rants.
  - deleted 9y ago
hellbanner 9y ago
Wouldn't it be nice if political canidates were contractually obliged to fulfil what they said they would do?
- bootlooped 9y ago
  I think this would backfire. If two large enough groups of legislators both said they would go to Washington and do opposing and mutually exclusive things it would create a deadlock where neither group has the ability to compromise.
  - moonka 9y ago
    Plus it would remove any capability to change stances as new information comes to light.
    - hellbanner 9y ago
      That's a good point but.. it sucks that politicians can promise 1 thing and do another once elected :)
olfactory 9y ago
This is the main issue for me as well, because most of what we take for granted about a free society falls apart with the existence of a secret police and surveillance program.

rosser 9y ago

It's not his only issue, but Ron Wyden (D-OR) is pretty reliably one of the "good guys" on surveillance.

ComputerGuru 9y ago
Ron Wyden, Al Franken, and Rand Paul are the only consistently good guys on this, imho. I believe Wyden and Paul have worked across the aisle many times. Paul was set to filibuster the PATRIOT act extension until both dems and republicans banded together to vote to block the filibuster, limiting discussion to 30 hours.
- duckMuppet 9y ago
  Don't forget Amash

astronautjones 9y ago

It's coming. not in the 2018 elections, but the 2020 democrat party will be forced from below and unpredictable other sides to be far more leftist and treat privacy as a crucial issue

ibeckermayer 9y ago
I don't see the leftists treating privacy as a crucial issue... Far more leftist = authoritarian sjw's does it not? I haven't heard a peep about privacy from the left since Obama dropped it as an issue (and quietly expanded surveillance).
- lern_too_spel 9y ago
  Obama quietly expanded privacy as an issue? That doesn't parse. Edit: parent fixed his parenthetical to be merely factually incorrect instead of grammatically incorrect. As I recall, he publicly discussed privacy as an issue and both privately (until the Snowden leaks showed his cancellation of email metadata collection) and publicly (phone metadata) shut down data collection programs.
  - kakarot 9y ago
    His regime was brutal against whistle-blowers. Look at Chelsea Manning. In his last few years as president, he did not exert much effort at all to shut down the NSA program, as he surely already mostly knew the extent of it and was fine with it. Obama does not care about doing the right thing here.
    - lern_too_spel 9y ago
      > His regime was brutal against whistle-blowers. Look at Chelsea Manning. Walking free. After she blew the whistle on what, exactly? The heavily edited Collateral Murder video that conveniently left out the RPG[1]? What do the cable leaks have to do with that? > In his last few years as president, he did not exert much effort at all to shut down the NSA program. He shut down the email metadata collection program two years after taking office. [1]https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/2010/04/2007-iraq-apache-attack-as-seen-from-the-ground/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/2010/04/2007-iraq... Edit: > I didn't say anything about cable leaks or what Manning leaked, that is a different conversation.... Nice strawmanning, though. You literally pointed to Manning as an example of how Obama was brutal to whistleblowers. I quoted you. I pointed out that the actions she took do not count as whistleblowing, and you appear to have conceded that point. > I'm implicitly referring to the NSA spying programs leaked by Snowden. How does that example show Obama's brutality to whistleblowers? Snowden is not a whistleblower, and Obama didn't treat him brutally. Out of the millions of documents that Snowden leaked, only phone metadata collection was found to be illegal. If you leak millions of documents from any government agency or any private company for that matter, you're bound to find at least one instance of illegal activity.
duncan_bayne 9y ago
Both left and right dug the US - and your allies like Australia, where I live - deeper into this hole. It is a bipartisan problem.
uptown 9y ago
Nope. Both parties are unified on this issue.
- rektide 9y ago
  "We Must Fight Even Harder Against Trump's Authoritarian Impulses Now That We've Voted To Enable Them" is another true to life, accurate Onion article. Obama administration certainly made no effort to correct any of the Bush DoJ authorized spying programs, until Wired and then Snowden forced some kind of response, resulting in FISA. Which seems to be a star court that refuses to answer any questions from congress or deny any request. https://politics.theonion.com/pelosi-we-must-fight-even-harder-against-trumps-autho-1822205559 https://politics.theonion.com/pelosi-we-must-fight-even-hard... It's a shit show everywhere. Very very few congress-people seem to have any backbone what-so-ever. Ron Wyden of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is one of the only people that seems to even try to ask questions, and he is shut down and denied by the military at every turn. https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/dont-pass-surveillance-legislation-dark#.WlX-vO2BQqo.twitter https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/dont-pass-surv...
  - DrScump 9y ago
    Which seems to be a star court Did you mean a "star chamber" court?
  - patrickg_zill 9y ago
    I may be wrong, but I am pretty sure that FISA has been around for 20 years or more. Wiki says it was established 1978 as part of an act passed that same year.
    - rayiner 9y ago
      The FISA Act was an attempt to reign in domestic spying. It didn’t create it.
- guelo 9y ago
  No they are not unified. Going by the congressional vote about 25% of Republicans and 70% of Democrats voted against the spying. If this issue is important to you you're generally better off voting Democrat unless you have a Ron Paul type of Republican.
boomboomsubban 9y ago
Personally, I find it more likely that the NSA or another organization ends up leaking some sort of damning info about Trump. This would give them a huge opinion boost, and the Democrats would end up owing the organization for their victory. We're already seeing this, the Democrats seem to love Comey despite his role in mass surveillance.
- duncan_bayne 9y ago
  Why "despite"? Mass surveillance is a legacy of both the Democrats and the Republicans.
- MaxBarraclough 9y ago
  > huge opinion boost You think people would warm to the NSA if only they demonstrated an inability to keep secret the findings of their domestic spying, and revealed they'd been spying on the president? You don't think that would make them look like they were illegally meddling in partisan politics?
  - makomk 9y ago
    This doesn't seem too unlikely to me. Fighting Trump has become something that seems to override concerns about democracy or any other principle for a wide swathe of people. Supporting intelligence agency meddling in partisan politics is one of the milder, more widely normalised and expected parts of being anti-Trump today; the more extreme fringe views involve support for tactics like a literal military coup.
  - boomboomsubban 9y ago
    >You think people would warm to the NSA if only they demonstrated an inability to keep secret the findings of their domestic spying, and revealed they'd been spying on the president? They may not need to make it domestic or seem like they were spying on the president, finding some sort of scandal involving a different nation doesn't seem that hard. Or they could use some intercepted knowledge from a foreign spy agency. As a whole though, I suspect they'd see an opinion boost even if it came from domestic surveillance. The hatred of Trump is ridiculous, Democrats have even praised Bush following his attacks on Trump. Plus, Mark Felt did basically did this and just got had a movie made about him.
finnthehuman 9y ago
The dems getting their shit together has been "just around the corner" for decades. At some point you've gotta admit they're just scrambling to be slightly less detestable than the GOP, to just enough voters to win elections.
- astronautjones 9y ago
  > At some point you've gotta admit they're just scrambling to be slightly less detestable than the GOP, to just enough voters to win elections. absolutely. i'm arguing that that has finally (obviously) become untenable, the shift left will be bolstered by the vivid, insurmountable gulf in inequality

lern_too_spel 9y ago

Why would someone who says that lie have your vote? Unless you're under investigation or living somewhere like Iraq, the government is not spying on you through giant corporations, as both the law and Snowden's leaks show.

whatshisface 9y ago
Through a sufficiently creative definition of spying, nobody has been spied on in human history. Otherwise, we're forced to contend with the fact that we are being caught in the same dragnets that were advertised to catch the next Osama. (Not advertised to us, of course - we had no serious chance to vote on it.)
- lern_too_spel 9y ago
  Which dragnets? Be specific. The phone metadata dragnet doesn't exist anymore, and the way it was used according to Snowden's documents when it did exist could hardly be called spying on OP.
  - whatshisface 9y ago
    Here's a detailed writeup. It had been claimed that the phone tracking was reduced, the rest clearly remains: https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/privacy-and-surveillance/nsa-surveillance https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/privacy-and-su... I understand that some disagree with the other (and past) positions of the ACLU and may be disinclined to trust its website. Fortunately this issue isn't a particularly party-based one. Here's another good source, although it also says a lot about the history of the leaks: https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying If there is any accurate secondary source that is clearly conservative, It'd be welcome for me to see it in a reply. There's no particular reason why we'd have to porkbarel this issue - presumably there would be no party affinity at all. Edit: I know that there is lots of text behind those links, but the issue is an expansive one. I sincerely invite you to read them!
    - 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

throwaway773 9y ago

If such a person had the credentials to back up their sincerity, then yes. A Chelsea Manning type who has suffered for their beliefs or otherwise demonstrated stalwart commitment to dismantling the security state would get my vote and money. A career politician riding whatever Zeitgeist there may be as a lesser evil would not. Surveillance and securitization may not be a big issue to many people, but it is a very big issue to some of us. At the very least, those representatives who continue to vote for the powers of these agencies (like in this previous 702 spying bill) will never see a primary or general election vote from me or my peers (who I can vouch for) regardless of how much "less worse" you are. I won't hold out hope that this is a popular issue but I would love to see someone take a stand.

reverius42 9y ago
Chelsea Manning is actually running for Senate, if you'd like to put your money where your mouth is: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/01/13/chelsea-manning-files-to-run-for-us-senate-seat-in-maryland.html http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/01/13/chelsea-manning-f...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

bastijn 9y ago

You do realize this is exactly what made Trump president right? Shout one thing the public wants, shout it hard and repeatedly to mask your incompetence in all the other things that are important to have a prospering nation. The public will vote for one thing in plain sight and complain about their own choice the day after because all the other things in their life suddenly take a bad spin. TL;DR; do not vote blindly on a single action point. Do not bewilder others to do so. Instead vote for the complete package and learn others to do so as well.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
deleted 9y ago
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icebraining 9y ago
I've read a lot of criticism of Trump, but that he was a single-issue candidate is a new one. If anything, he was accused of saying everything and its opposite. What was that "one thing" you're saying he shouted?
- nerdponx 9y ago
  He wasn't a single-issue candidate. He picked a bunch of issues that mattered to single-issue voters. The presentation is different, the overall effect is the same.
  - bastijn 9y ago
    True. Though I would argue immigration was his spearhead, especially with his lack of political correctness on the matter. Banning various trade agreements to further arouse his voters was important but the repeated message on immigration probably dominated his position. Disclaimer: seen from a foreign standpoint. This is what reached us oversees. For every other article on non-immigration there were 10 on his immigration rants.
- deleted 9y ago

hellbanner 9y ago

Wouldn't it be nice if political canidates were contractually obliged to fulfil what they said they would do?

bootlooped 9y ago
I think this would backfire. If two large enough groups of legislators both said they would go to Washington and do opposing and mutually exclusive things it would create a deadlock where neither group has the ability to compromise.
- moonka 9y ago
  Plus it would remove any capability to change stances as new information comes to light.
  - hellbanner 9y ago
    That's a good point but.. it sucks that politicians can promise 1 thing and do another once elected :)

olfactory 9y ago

This is the main issue for me as well, because most of what we take for granted about a free society falls apart with the existence of a secret police and surveillance program.