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Well, nsa mass surveillance and legalized torture were never repelled by any side. In fact, the patriot act has been prolongued 5 times, no matter the administ
by BiteCode_dev 6y ago
Well, nsa mass surveillance and legalized torture were never repelled by any side.
In fact, the patriot act has been prolongued 5 times, no matter the administration, and is still in effect.
As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind.
Fighting for either seems so futile from here.
Of course, we have similar problems as well so I'm not going to pretend I have a solution.
- wtn 6y agoSome of the programs originally from the USA PATRIOT Act expired in March 2020.
- ancarda 6y agoDo you happen to know which ones?
- hundchenkatze 6y agoI believe it was the far-reaching section 215, which allowed bulk collection of phone records and other data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_summary_of_the_Patriot_Act,_Title_II#Section_215:_Access_to_records_and_other_items_under_FISA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_summary_of_the_Patriot...
- nitrogen 6y agoMaybe the growing obsolescence of the legacy telephone network is why those provisions lapsed, and now we are seeing the fight for a replacement.
- vxNsr 6y agoNope they lapsed bec trump was upset that they were illegally used against him and he didn’t want anyone else to suffer the same fate.
- yonaguska 6y agoSection 215 is the major one. Allows government to obtain secret warrants for surveillance via a secret court system(FISC, FISA). Lindsey Graham(R) tried to extend this- but Trump has been somewhat vocally against this extension due to his own allegations that the FISA courts were misused to spy on him.
- raxxorrax 6y agoTrump as savior? People would be shocked.
- suizi 6y agoThe House and Senate are fighting to get it reauthorised.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoTrump threatened to veto the Patriot renewal bill, which includes the FISA court, despite bipartisan support. The bill is now withdrawn pending rewrite.
- mschuster91 6y ago> As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. To be fair, us Europeans have the same issues with our politicians, with the exception of socialists, communists and Greens. Just look for the article13 fiasco. We're all being fucked.
- ollo 6y agoThe socialists voted in favour of Article 13.
- raverbashing 6y agoS&D was 50/50 more or less (other left-wing groups had less pro votes) https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8wayjf/infographic_how_the_parties_voted_on_the_eu/ https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8wayjf/infographic_... So, not really.
- mschuster91 6y agoS&D are not socialists, they're social democrats. Big difference.
- glenda 6y agoExactly, we need way more political parties with direct representation. However, power seems to do a great job of consolidating itself so that won't be an easy task.
- ericd 6y agoFirst past the post voting tends toward a two party system, because there are strong incentives for smaller parties to consolidate to get to a majority.
- nitrogen 6y agoSince this is a subject I find fascinating, I'll add this link that I first encountered here on HN long ago: http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ It's a mathematical model and accompanying explanation that shows that simple plurality (first past the post) voting produces bi-polarization, while other voting methods like approval voting do not. It also shows that the instant-runoff voting method that people are trying to replace FPTP with is non-monotonic, meaning that gaining a few points of support can actually hurt a candidate.
- ollo 6y ago> As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. As a european, I don't see any party that actually have european people's interest in mind.
- AsyncAwait 6y agoSure, but I think the U.S. even worse. It's basically right-wing (Democrats) and off the spectrum (Republicans).
- gabrielfv 6y ago> As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. As a human, I don't see any party that actually have regular people's interest in mind.
- techntoke 6y agoApparently caring about people more than money is a bad thing.
- pphysch 6y agoDefine "regular people's interest". American values? Health and security? There are governments that are pro-people (as opposed to pro-money) but they are generally not big global players, or if they are, they are designated Enemies of the West and it is enormously politically incorrect to discuss critically about them.
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- coffeemaniac 6y agoYou're correct, in the US we have two fundamentally right-wing parties, which allows them to effectively consolidate power by offering a controlled "resistance" party which disagrees on petty issues mostly regarding representation but which agrees on all major issues including those you mentioned, healthcare, military, foreign policy.
- thayne 6y ago> As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. As an American, I don't see any party that has my interests in mind. Elections always seem to be having to choose the lesser of two evils.
- lukifer 6y agoObligatory plug for electoral reform. Lesser evils aren't inevitable; they're a product of a bad voting system. https://www.fairvote.org/rcv https://www.fairvote.org/rcv https://www.fairvote.org/alternatives https://www.fairvote.org/alternatives Maine has converted to RCV already and it's stood up in court; 49 to go.
- CamperBob2 6y agoLesser evils aren't inevitable; they're a product of a bad voting system. Other countries with other systems don't really do much better. The fundamental problem is that the people who want this sort of power are the last ones who should ever be allowed to wield it. When people are willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to get a job that pays $500K a year, you have to wonder what's really going on.
- a1369209993 6y agoDoes "select a president [senator, etc] uniformly at random from the voting population" count as a voting system? I feel like that's about the only way to fix things at this point. (I'm partial to approval voting (vote "yes" or "no" for each cantidate separately and if the winner doesn't have at least 50% "yes", the office is vacant until the next election), but I suspect the party line would immediately become "you're a traitor if you approve anyone but the Party's candidate".)
- JoshTriplett 6y ago> Does "select a president uniformly at random from the voting population" count as a voting system? Not voting, but it is a real election system, known as Sortition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition). It was used in ancient Athens. Also, yes, approval voting is a great approach and we should absolutely use it. We'd still get people who vote party-line, and it'd take a while for people to truly internalize that they can safely vote for other candidates they like, but it'd be a massive improvement.
- AmericanChopper 6y agoAs an American, I don’t see any country in the world that doesn’t have exactly the same problems. The EU has been considering similar anti-encryption legislation for years. Primarily supported by France, UK and Germany. The main opponents to it in the EU have been NGOs, which mirrors the American experience on this issue. The cynic in me speculates the reason the EU parliament hasn’t pushed the issue further is simply because it’s waiting for it’s influential members states (or the US) to pass the legislation required to gut these services, so that they won’t have the potentially unpopular task of doing so themselves.
- JAlexoid 6y agoEU doesn't have the authority to deal with things like encryption. American federal government is much more powerful and much less dependent on the states. Also Germany is very, very, pro privacy. Germans would probably lynch any government official that suggested anything resembling Stazi surveillance programs.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago> EU doesn't have the authority to deal with things like encryption. It most certainly does. Security and Justice are very clearly established as areas of “shared responsibilities” in the EU, granting the EU parliament has full authority legislate. > Also Germany is very, very, pro privacy. Germans would probably lynch any government official that suggested anything resembling Stazi surveillance programs. Sorry to disappoint, but... https://www.theregister.com/2017/06/15/germany_joins_antiencryption_posse/ https://www.theregister.com/2017/06/15/germany_joins_antienc... The EU has also explored a number of backdoor-by-another-name options, including a very concerning Function Encryption initiative [0], and forcing E2EE service providers to refresh secrets to insert government actors into conversations. [0]: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/780108 https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/780108 My primary motivation for posting the parent comment was that any EU resident who thinks their governments are above this sort of thing is absolutely wrong, and if you’re complacent and fail to hold your governments to account, this is exactly the sort of thing that’s going to happen. You can’t just read the feel-good press releases and hope for the best. European politicians are politicians too, and if there’s anything politicians of all stripes have always been good at, it’s accumulating power and lying.
- dyslexit 6y agoTorture was heavily repelled by Democrats, and was only "legalized" in that John McCain intentionally put in loop holes into his own bill that allowed the CIA to continue it because Bush threatened to veto the bill otherwise. Those loop holes were later closed under Obama both by legislation and an executive order. This was very much a partisan issue.