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> everytime you give up a right it's taken away forever. This is tin foil hat nonsense. The US has implemented martial law before. Those rights weren't taken a

> everytime you give up a right it's taken away forever. This is tin foil hat nonsense. The US has implemented martial law before. Those rights weren't taken away forever.

mardifoufs 7y ago
Wasn't the same said after 9/11 and the patriot act? I'd guess it was just a tin foil hat conspiracy to think several three letter agencies would use the provisions from the patriot act to track pretty much all communications? You can't just accuse people of being conspiracy theorists over and over again and tell them that this time would be different because... Reasons? Also, who needs martial law when you can just do the same with duly passed laws?
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  "Every time you give up a right, it's taken away forever" is still hyperbole. People gave up the right to fly at all after 9/11. That was re-instituted for almost everyone in short order.
  - SahAssar 7y ago
    There is no right to fly. There was a right to privacy (at least as argued before the supreme court) and I think it could be said that is revoked because of the three-letter-agencies data collection that was justified by 9/11.
- lern_too_spel 7y ago
  > I'd guess it was just a tin foil hat conspiracy to think several three letter agencies would use the provisions from the patriot act to track pretty much all communications? It was and still is. How do you believe this nonsense? Also, several provisions from the Patriot Act haven't been renewed, so your example proves my point.
GordonS 7y ago
Sorry, but we are long past the point of calling out privacy advocates as "tinfoil hat wearers" - just look at everything that came out after Snowden. Beforehand, most people would have derided others for mentioning "such conspiracy nonsense" (I likely would have myself), and yet the truth was wilder than even hard-core, paranoid conspiracy theorists could have dreamt up. Since 9/11 in particular, the Western world has seen constant attempts to increase mass surveillance, lower the burden of proof, and dampen human rights, always in the name of whatever they have the public most fearful of at the time - drugs, terrorists, paedos, criminals, the Russians, the Chinese, the Mexicans, communists, Islam, foreigners taking our jobs, the boogey man de jour. I'm absolutely certain that we'll see politicians try to use coronavirus as an excuse for their Orwellian schemes.
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  Business as usual has come after Snowden; that's the reason people who have a default-antagonistic reaction to any new technology that could be employed by a government for tracking get labeled "tinfoil-hat wearers." The future of society isn't no surveillance. That's not tractable. Genie's out of the bottle (as this release of a population tracking tool as open source demonstrates). The question isn't how to stop it; it's how to live with it.
  - GordonS 7y ago
    > Business as usual has come after Snowden I can't disagree with that; honestly, it felt like the media and politicians conspired to bury it. Revelation after revelation was made after outlets like The Intercept went through the evidence, yet hardly anything made the mainstream news, and when it did, it was fleeting. The CIA destroyed evidence and lied to congress, but there was little impact. > The question isn't how to stop it; it's how to live with it This I disagree with. We've been shown that the supposedly "benevolent" Western governments of today can't be trusted with laws that permit over-arching mass surveillance and the dampening of civil liberties and human rights, and we've seen the inevitable creeping escalations - who knows what a worse government of tomorrow might do?

> everytime you give up a right it's taken away forever. This is tin foil hat nonsense. The US has implemented martial law before. Those rights weren't taken away forever.

mardifoufs 7y ago

Wasn't the same said after 9/11 and the patriot act? I'd guess it was just a tin foil hat conspiracy to think several three letter agencies would use the provisions from the patriot act to track pretty much all communications? You can't just accuse people of being conspiracy theorists over and over again and tell them that this time would be different because... Reasons? Also, who needs martial law when you can just do the same with duly passed laws?

shadowgovt 7y ago
"Every time you give up a right, it's taken away forever" is still hyperbole. People gave up the right to fly at all after 9/11. That was re-instituted for almost everyone in short order.
- SahAssar 7y ago
  There is no right to fly. There was a right to privacy (at least as argued before the supreme court) and I think it could be said that is revoked because of the three-letter-agencies data collection that was justified by 9/11.
lern_too_spel 7y ago
> I'd guess it was just a tin foil hat conspiracy to think several three letter agencies would use the provisions from the patriot act to track pretty much all communications? It was and still is. How do you believe this nonsense? Also, several provisions from the Patriot Act haven't been renewed, so your example proves my point.

GordonS 7y ago

Sorry, but we are long past the point of calling out privacy advocates as "tinfoil hat wearers" - just look at everything that came out after Snowden. Beforehand, most people would have derided others for mentioning "such conspiracy nonsense" (I likely would have myself), and yet the truth was wilder than even hard-core, paranoid conspiracy theorists could have dreamt up. Since 9/11 in particular, the Western world has seen constant attempts to increase mass surveillance, lower the burden of proof, and dampen human rights, always in the name of whatever they have the public most fearful of at the time - drugs, terrorists, paedos, criminals, the Russians, the Chinese, the Mexicans, communists, Islam, foreigners taking our jobs, the boogey man de jour. I'm absolutely certain that we'll see politicians try to use coronavirus as an excuse for their Orwellian schemes.

shadowgovt 7y ago
Business as usual has come after Snowden; that's the reason people who have a default-antagonistic reaction to any new technology that could be employed by a government for tracking get labeled "tinfoil-hat wearers." The future of society isn't no surveillance. That's not tractable. Genie's out of the bottle (as this release of a population tracking tool as open source demonstrates). The question isn't how to stop it; it's how to live with it.
- GordonS 7y ago
  > Business as usual has come after Snowden I can't disagree with that; honestly, it felt like the media and politicians conspired to bury it. Revelation after revelation was made after outlets like The Intercept went through the evidence, yet hardly anything made the mainstream news, and when it did, it was fleeting. The CIA destroyed evidence and lied to congress, but there was little impact. > The question isn't how to stop it; it's how to live with it This I disagree with. We've been shown that the supposedly "benevolent" Western governments of today can't be trusted with laws that permit over-arching mass surveillance and the dampening of civil liberties and human rights, and we've seen the inevitable creeping escalations - who knows what a worse government of tomorrow might do?