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It's quite unfortunate that so few lawmakers take lead on opposing mass surveillance (Ron Wyden and Ran Paul come to mind). This issue is without doubt way more

It's quite unfortunate that so few lawmakers take lead on opposing mass surveillance (Ron Wyden and Ran Paul come to mind). This issue is without doubt way more important than most issues politicians choose to demagogue about ("cancel college debt", e.g. Sigh).

bitcharmer 6y ago
>so few lawmakers take lead on opposing mass surveillance There is even a bigger problem underneath it - US government institutions were also proven (on numerous occasions) to unlawfully spy on citizens without any repercussions. No amount of law will rectify the issue unless the law gets enforced.
- colordrops 6y ago
  How is this any different from a totalitarian state?
  - phobosanomaly 6y ago
    It doesn't actually affect the daily life of the vast majority of Americans in a way that visibly alters the trajectory of their life to a degree that they care enough to get upset about it. The CIA isn't dropping-in to ship Fred down the street off to a reeducation camp for committing thoughtcrime. Cops might shoot you for reaching into the glove compartment for your insurance and registration during a traffic stop over a broken taillight though. So, people were pretty willing to riot in the streets. Because it actually affects them in a meaningful way (at least the way they see it).
  - rayiner 6y ago
    It’s completely different? > adjective relating to a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state. The word “totalitarian” has a meaning—the root “total” reflects the intrusion of government and enforcement of behavioral norms in every facet of life. Even snooping on the content of everyone’s calls, which the US never did, wouldn’t make it a “totalitarian state.” Snooping in everyone’s calls and prosecuting everyone who said anything bad about the President would be closer to the real meaning of the word.
    - Lammy 6y ago
      "of or relating to a political regime based on subordination of the individual to the state and strict control of all aspects of the life and productive capacity of the nation especially by coercive measures (such as censorship and terrorism)" Is it only "total" if it's explicit visible control of some aspect of my life? An even more effective way to control my life would be to control the set of possibilities that come to my mind for a particular decision, because then I'll probably think the result of that artificially-constrained choice was my idea and may even fight to defend my choice from people who picked a different iOS/Android, Xbox/Playstation, PC/Mac, Reddit/Instagram than me.
  - therockspush 6y ago
    I think Inverted Totalitarianism explains it better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
  - refurb 6y ago
    The fact we’re here freely discussing it is probably a big hint we don’t live in a totalitarian state?
- coliveira 6y ago
  Not only that, but whistleblowers have been severely persecuted and punished.
  - phobosanomaly 6y ago
    I agree, and I want to rant it out a bit further. People make a lot of noise about the Second Amendment, but, what, they gonna shoot down a predator drone with their semi-auto AR-15? They gonna stop a SWAT team from disappearing them at 3am? They gonna be able to lead a decent life if all of their bank accounts get frozen? Local police departments acquiring armored vehicles and driving around wearing tactical gear are slowly morphing into a network of sketchy paramilitary forces. Whistleblowers, however, really are on the front-lines of protecting us from actual, meaningful government corruption, overreach, and misconduct. They're what head-off 1984 before it turns into 1984. If you have to worry about stockpiling ammunition in your basement, things have already gone way too far. Whistleblowers and the press are mechanism by which we don't get to that point.
    - base698 6y ago
      In some civil wars it was neighbor vs neighbor. In the Lebanese civil war people were pulled out of cabs and shot. This wasn't the state you have to worry about. How would you compare the success of guerilla war in the last few decades against larger powers?
      - phobosanomaly 6y ago
        What a wonderful point. Guerilla warfare is asymmetric warfare fought by a small minority against a more powerful enemy. It typically emerges in situations like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan where you have a large, technologically advanced invading force that you are resisting. In the United States, there is very low risk of an exogenous actor occupying US soil, so we don't really have to worry about that. Rather, we have to worry about our own government, and our best option is to take full advantage of our democratic system to head tyranny off at the pass. Lebanon was a Civil War in the context of a failed state. The state no longer had a monopoly on the use of violence. A more recent analogy you could draw that would be more apropos would perhaps be Mexico where large swathes of the country are outside of state control, and rather in the hands of transnational criminal organizations. I would again, argue that we should worry about preventing our country from becoming a failed state. The effort of preparing for the worst case scenario could perhaps be better spent through political engagement and activism to ensure that our country does not reach the point of being a failed state. As you see right now, the current presidential administration is in the process of attempting a coup. It is not the lone citizen with an AR-15 that has prevented it. It is our institutions. What stands between the current administration staying in office for the next four years in full defiance of the voters as they would very much like to do? It's our institutions, including the whistleblowers, the free press, the judiciary, congress, state legislatures, and a military with a good head on its shoulders. In fact, I have hundreds of rounds of 7.62x39 in my garage and a few thousand of 9mm. But, I have it because it's cheap in bulk, not because I have any aspirations to shoot another human being in any conceivable scenario. I believe in the strong institutions of my country, rather than my ability to murder my fellow Americans. I bear no ill will, however, towards those who choose to 'trust in Allah, but tie up your camel.' I only ask that they consider giving their time to mending the patchwork of our society rather than simply preparing for when it rips.
dataflow 6y ago
> This issue is without doubt way more important than most issues politicians choose to demagogue about ("cancel college debt", e.g. Sigh). I feel like if you asked people whether it's more important to them to cancel college debt than to end mass surveillance, the results would not tilt toward the latter.
- randomchars 6y ago
  Well, more proof that demagoguery works as usual.
  - bayindirh 6y ago
    In my uneducated guess, it can be a sense of immediacy too. They can feel the college debt, but not the mass surveillance. People think that they have nothing to worry if they do nothing wrong, which is not correct obviously. So the issue of surveillance is very hard to understand at once. On the other hand, they can see their college debt and feel their effects first hand. A prioritization similar to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
    - leppr 6y ago
      This prioritization of issues (where for a rational actor, economics will most often be at the top), is why democratic republic systems don't allow democracy to permeate less "important" issues. Citizens don't get to vote on how much surveillance they want, they chose from 2 big bundles of unrelated positions, with surveillance-related positions buried within. The 2 parties might both have unpopular opinions on surveillance, the issue is comparatively not pressing enough to have any influence on their candidacy.
      - bayindirh 6y ago
        So, can we say that we hit the scalability limits of indirect democracy?
        6y ago
nerdponx 6y ago
Canceling > $1 trillion in debt isn't exactly a small issue either.
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  Letting young people shoulder such a sum sounds just insane to be honest.
  - rplst8 6y ago
    About 43 million people in the US hold that debt collectively. That's an average of $23,000 per person. The median is likely much lower as many doctors, lawyers, and other post-grads have $100-300k in debt. I don't think that it's an arduous sum at all. I came from a working class family and I had nearly twice that amount ~$40,000 when I got out of college in 2001. I set up a payment plan and paid it off with about 5-6% interest.
    - hue3 6y ago
      The good ol’ classic “if I did it, anyone can do”. Funny you say you got out of college in 2001, when the entire global and domestic political-economic scenario were different and the social value of a degree was much higher than today.
un4tun8 6y ago
What’s unfortunate given the covid response, kids in cages, inequality is the public belief those in charge of government are anything more than self serving humans. The impact of industrial pollution on the climate has been measurable for over a century. “Free market? Sure, after we hand our friends trillions of dollars for you all to feud over freely in hopes of receiving some.” Come on: https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/27/business/job-insecurity-of-workers-is-a-big-factor-in-fed-policy.html https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/27/business/job-insecurity-o... China has a technology firewall but American oligarchs have a historical one: https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/8793/what-did-james-madison-try-to-say-when-talking-about-agrarian-reform https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/8793/what-did-j...
rayiner 6y ago
> In fact, “one of those 61 orders resulted in the production of information that could be characterized as information regarding browsing,” Mr. Ratcliffe wrote in the second letter. Specifically, one order had approved collection of logs revealing which computers “in a specified foreign country” had visited “a single, identified U.S. web page.” Is this “mass surveillance?”
- peterkelly 6y ago
  It's running a query over a database that mass surveillance systems have already compiled.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    No, read the actual correspondence. It’s clearly talking about FISA orders that compel ISPs to produce records: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/wyden_dni_letters.pdf https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/wyden... Even civil litigation allows you to compel ISPs to produce data based on targeted searches.
brundolf 6y ago
I was with you until the last line. It takes either incredible ignorance or incredible callousness to suggest that the crushing, impossible-to-pay debt hanging over tens of millions of Americans is a less of an immediate problem than web surveillance.
- SpaceRaccoon 6y ago
  Loans should not be federally guaranteed. Let them default.
  - xyzzyz 6y ago
    They shouldn’t, but it’s too late, they already are. If they default now, it will be one of the most regressive wealth transfer in history, with tens of millions of college graduates, most of whom having good jobs and no problem paying off their student debt (which on average is on the order of a price of a good new car, which plenty of college graduates do draw additional loans on) being the beneficiaries. It would be horrendous policy built upon a terrible one.
    - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
      Better to just allow those loans to be discharged in bankruptcy the way they used to be. The great majority would still be paid back, but those for whom it really is crushing would get relief.
      - xyzzyz 6y ago
        For those for whom it is really crushing there are plenty of relief available, most importantly income based repayment program. I simply don’t see why allowing bankruptcy, which is redistribution favoring college graduates, is needed.
        amanaplanacanal 6y ago
        The same reason we allow other debts to be discharged. Unless you think that college loans should be privileged for some reason. Or unless you are against the idea of personal bankruptcy completely.
tsjq 6y ago
Why not an "and" ?
raxxorrax 6y ago
You can have both, why play these issues against each other? That isn't helpful at all.
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago
  A whole, big comment thread all based upon a logical fallacy of whataboutism.
rplst8 6y ago
Don't forget Russ Feingold. The only original vote against the Patriot Act - and who lost in the 2010 mid-term while the act was extended/reauthorized in 2011.
Can_Not 6y ago
> mass surveillance vs cancel college debt This dichotomy sounds completely made up, is there a basis for implying pro free college politicians are quiet about mass surveillance?

bitcharmer 6y ago

>so few lawmakers take lead on opposing mass surveillance There is even a bigger problem underneath it - US government institutions were also proven (on numerous occasions) to unlawfully spy on citizens without any repercussions. No amount of law will rectify the issue unless the law gets enforced.

colordrops 6y ago
How is this any different from a totalitarian state?
- phobosanomaly 6y ago
  It doesn't actually affect the daily life of the vast majority of Americans in a way that visibly alters the trajectory of their life to a degree that they care enough to get upset about it. The CIA isn't dropping-in to ship Fred down the street off to a reeducation camp for committing thoughtcrime. Cops might shoot you for reaching into the glove compartment for your insurance and registration during a traffic stop over a broken taillight though. So, people were pretty willing to riot in the streets. Because it actually affects them in a meaningful way (at least the way they see it).
- rayiner 6y ago
  It’s completely different? > adjective relating to a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state. The word “totalitarian” has a meaning—the root “total” reflects the intrusion of government and enforcement of behavioral norms in every facet of life. Even snooping on the content of everyone’s calls, which the US never did, wouldn’t make it a “totalitarian state.” Snooping in everyone’s calls and prosecuting everyone who said anything bad about the President would be closer to the real meaning of the word.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    "of or relating to a political regime based on subordination of the individual to the state and strict control of all aspects of the life and productive capacity of the nation especially by coercive measures (such as censorship and terrorism)" Is it only "total" if it's explicit visible control of some aspect of my life? An even more effective way to control my life would be to control the set of possibilities that come to my mind for a particular decision, because then I'll probably think the result of that artificially-constrained choice was my idea and may even fight to defend my choice from people who picked a different iOS/Android, Xbox/Playstation, PC/Mac, Reddit/Instagram than me.
- therockspush 6y ago
  I think Inverted Totalitarianism explains it better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
- refurb 6y ago
  The fact we’re here freely discussing it is probably a big hint we don’t live in a totalitarian state?
coliveira 6y ago
Not only that, but whistleblowers have been severely persecuted and punished.
- phobosanomaly 6y ago
  I agree, and I want to rant it out a bit further. People make a lot of noise about the Second Amendment, but, what, they gonna shoot down a predator drone with their semi-auto AR-15? They gonna stop a SWAT team from disappearing them at 3am? They gonna be able to lead a decent life if all of their bank accounts get frozen? Local police departments acquiring armored vehicles and driving around wearing tactical gear are slowly morphing into a network of sketchy paramilitary forces. Whistleblowers, however, really are on the front-lines of protecting us from actual, meaningful government corruption, overreach, and misconduct. They're what head-off 1984 before it turns into 1984. If you have to worry about stockpiling ammunition in your basement, things have already gone way too far. Whistleblowers and the press are mechanism by which we don't get to that point.
  - base698 6y ago
    In some civil wars it was neighbor vs neighbor. In the Lebanese civil war people were pulled out of cabs and shot. This wasn't the state you have to worry about. How would you compare the success of guerilla war in the last few decades against larger powers?
    - phobosanomaly 6y ago
      What a wonderful point. Guerilla warfare is asymmetric warfare fought by a small minority against a more powerful enemy. It typically emerges in situations like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan where you have a large, technologically advanced invading force that you are resisting. In the United States, there is very low risk of an exogenous actor occupying US soil, so we don't really have to worry about that. Rather, we have to worry about our own government, and our best option is to take full advantage of our democratic system to head tyranny off at the pass. Lebanon was a Civil War in the context of a failed state. The state no longer had a monopoly on the use of violence. A more recent analogy you could draw that would be more apropos would perhaps be Mexico where large swathes of the country are outside of state control, and rather in the hands of transnational criminal organizations. I would again, argue that we should worry about preventing our country from becoming a failed state. The effort of preparing for the worst case scenario could perhaps be better spent through political engagement and activism to ensure that our country does not reach the point of being a failed state. As you see right now, the current presidential administration is in the process of attempting a coup. It is not the lone citizen with an AR-15 that has prevented it. It is our institutions. What stands between the current administration staying in office for the next four years in full defiance of the voters as they would very much like to do? It's our institutions, including the whistleblowers, the free press, the judiciary, congress, state legislatures, and a military with a good head on its shoulders. In fact, I have hundreds of rounds of 7.62x39 in my garage and a few thousand of 9mm. But, I have it because it's cheap in bulk, not because I have any aspirations to shoot another human being in any conceivable scenario. I believe in the strong institutions of my country, rather than my ability to murder my fellow Americans. I bear no ill will, however, towards those who choose to 'trust in Allah, but tie up your camel.' I only ask that they consider giving their time to mending the patchwork of our society rather than simply preparing for when it rips.

dataflow 6y ago

> This issue is without doubt way more important than most issues politicians choose to demagogue about ("cancel college debt", e.g. Sigh). I feel like if you asked people whether it's more important to them to cancel college debt than to end mass surveillance, the results would not tilt toward the latter.

randomchars 6y ago
Well, more proof that demagoguery works as usual.
- bayindirh 6y ago
  In my uneducated guess, it can be a sense of immediacy too. They can feel the college debt, but not the mass surveillance. People think that they have nothing to worry if they do nothing wrong, which is not correct obviously. So the issue of surveillance is very hard to understand at once. On the other hand, they can see their college debt and feel their effects first hand. A prioritization similar to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
  - leppr 6y ago
    This prioritization of issues (where for a rational actor, economics will most often be at the top), is why democratic republic systems don't allow democracy to permeate less "important" issues. Citizens don't get to vote on how much surveillance they want, they chose from 2 big bundles of unrelated positions, with surveillance-related positions buried within. The 2 parties might both have unpopular opinions on surveillance, the issue is comparatively not pressing enough to have any influence on their candidacy.
    - bayindirh 6y ago
      So, can we say that we hit the scalability limits of indirect democracy?
      - 6y ago

nerdponx 6y ago

Canceling > $1 trillion in debt isn't exactly a small issue either.

raxxorrax 6y ago
Letting young people shoulder such a sum sounds just insane to be honest.
- rplst8 6y ago
  About 43 million people in the US hold that debt collectively. That's an average of $23,000 per person. The median is likely much lower as many doctors, lawyers, and other post-grads have $100-300k in debt. I don't think that it's an arduous sum at all. I came from a working class family and I had nearly twice that amount ~$40,000 when I got out of college in 2001. I set up a payment plan and paid it off with about 5-6% interest.
  - hue3 6y ago
    The good ol’ classic “if I did it, anyone can do”. Funny you say you got out of college in 2001, when the entire global and domestic political-economic scenario were different and the social value of a degree was much higher than today.

un4tun8 6y ago

What’s unfortunate given the covid response, kids in cages, inequality is the public belief those in charge of government are anything more than self serving humans. The impact of industrial pollution on the climate has been measurable for over a century. “Free market? Sure, after we hand our friends trillions of dollars for you all to feud over freely in hopes of receiving some.” Come on: https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/27/business/job-insecurity-of-workers-is-a-big-factor-in-fed-policy.html https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/27/business/job-insecurity-o... China has a technology firewall but American oligarchs have a historical one: https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/8793/what-did-james-madison-try-to-say-when-talking-about-agrarian-reform https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/8793/what-did-j...

rayiner 6y ago

> In fact, “one of those 61 orders resulted in the production of information that could be characterized as information regarding browsing,” Mr. Ratcliffe wrote in the second letter. Specifically, one order had approved collection of logs revealing which computers “in a specified foreign country” had visited “a single, identified U.S. web page.” Is this “mass surveillance?”

peterkelly 6y ago
It's running a query over a database that mass surveillance systems have already compiled.
- rayiner 6y ago
  No, read the actual correspondence. It’s clearly talking about FISA orders that compel ISPs to produce records: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/wyden_dni_letters.pdf https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/wyden... Even civil litigation allows you to compel ISPs to produce data based on targeted searches.

brundolf 6y ago

I was with you until the last line. It takes either incredible ignorance or incredible callousness to suggest that the crushing, impossible-to-pay debt hanging over tens of millions of Americans is a less of an immediate problem than web surveillance.

SpaceRaccoon 6y ago
Loans should not be federally guaranteed. Let them default.
- xyzzyz 6y ago
  They shouldn’t, but it’s too late, they already are. If they default now, it will be one of the most regressive wealth transfer in history, with tens of millions of college graduates, most of whom having good jobs and no problem paying off their student debt (which on average is on the order of a price of a good new car, which plenty of college graduates do draw additional loans on) being the beneficiaries. It would be horrendous policy built upon a terrible one.
  - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
    Better to just allow those loans to be discharged in bankruptcy the way they used to be. The great majority would still be paid back, but those for whom it really is crushing would get relief.
    - xyzzyz 6y ago
      For those for whom it is really crushing there are plenty of relief available, most importantly income based repayment program. I simply don’t see why allowing bankruptcy, which is redistribution favoring college graduates, is needed.
      - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
        The same reason we allow other debts to be discharged. Unless you think that college loans should be privileged for some reason. Or unless you are against the idea of personal bankruptcy completely.

tsjq 6y ago

Why not an "and" ?

raxxorrax 6y ago

You can have both, why play these issues against each other? That isn't helpful at all.

eeZah7Ux 6y ago
A whole, big comment thread all based upon a logical fallacy of whataboutism.

rplst8 6y ago

Don't forget Russ Feingold. The only original vote against the Patriot Act - and who lost in the 2010 mid-term while the act was extended/reauthorized in 2011.

Can_Not 6y ago

> mass surveillance vs cancel college debt This dichotomy sounds completely made up, is there a basis for implying pro free college politicians are quiet about mass surveillance?