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Unsurprising, but still disappointing. Actually I'm glad someone is trying to hold them accountable. It seems silly tho that we need to pass a law to uphold wha

Unsurprising, but still disappointing. Actually I'm glad someone is trying to hold them accountable. It seems silly tho that we need to pass a law to uphold what's already written into the constitution. It highlights that the constitution only has teeth in some legal contexts, primarily where a court case is being heard on a citizen being prosecuted. Conditionality seems to not have any bearing on preventing agencies from violating the constitution or stopping them when they're found out, nor punishing those responsible for the violation.

mc32 5y ago
We gotta thank the Bush admin for this. Obama had the opp to make things right, but passed and instead gave them a wink. Trump was never going to act against these interests even if he’d wanted to given all the other aspects he was embroiled in. And now Biden. No way is he going to buck the establishment. Unfortunately Ron Paul nor anyone like him will make it into office to dismantle this surveillance-industrial complex.
- HumblyTossed 5y ago
  Don't you mean Ron Wyden and not Ron Paul? Otherwise you're pretty much spot on.
  - adventured 5y ago
    They mean making it into the White House I believe. Ron Paul would certainly attempt to dismantle it, and he'd fail miserably (he'd never win election to begin with though). The larger confusion on the part of the parent is thinking the President is in charge of much of anything or has the power to dismantle any of these deep state perma structures that have been built up in the post WW2 era; these are structures that survive any given administration, regardless of political agenda, and which nobody really dares to challenge. That includes the always expanding spying systems and military industrial complex. Any President that tries it will be burned out of DC every which way possible. Instant lame duck, crippled by their own party, on the outs with the news media (which is entirely a pet of the deep state), lambasted coming and going, tripped up in staged scandals set up by deep state opponents in the FBI or CIA, probably get impeached a few times for relatively trivial things (vs, say, starting wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya that got a million plus people killed; you know, things you should actually get impeached for). The President is more of a token figurehead today than not.
    - atatatat 5y ago
      > he'd never win election to begin with though How do you persevere in the face of this type of media blacklisting? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMdrwhDoZjQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMdrwhDoZjQ
      - adventured 5y ago
        I didn't watch your link (I rarely follow stray YouTube links). However regarding Ron Paul, I don't envy what he has endured in his lifetime from moronic opponents on both sides of the political aisle. The YouTube video of him being harangued & attacked by zombie anti-drug zealots on the Morton Downey Jr show is enough to feel sorry for him for a lifetime. Persevere, though? Anyone that dares to tell the truth today is begging for a blacklisting. That's what building the big tech censorship systems is all about (which will be America's version of the great firewall), being able to dictate what the supposed truth is for any given topic at any given moment in time. It's a martyrs game, telling the truth, I assume Ron Paul has known that for a long time.
        nobody9999 5y ago
        >Persevere, though? Anyone that dares to tell the truth today is begging for a blacklisting. Indeed. Liz Cheney's fate[0] is a great example of that. [0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/05/12/liz-cheney-live-vote-updates-gop-house-leadership/5031048001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/05/12/liz-...
      - vlan0 5y ago
        Yep. We saw it with Andrew Yang as well. Either being left out completely, or media outlets taking about 'him' without actually saying his name.
        NotSammyHagar 5y ago
        I'm skeptical of this media blackout. I heard lots of people talking about this, he was on podcasts, I saw him interviewed. Look at how much discussion there is about him running in NYC. I think it was much more that there were a whole lot of credible people running and there wasn't enough air in the room for him to get much. I saw every losing group complain of the election being stolen from them in some way, Warren, Sanders, Yang.
- CWuestefeld 5y ago
  Yes, blame GWB. But I'm not sure why you're giving a pass to Obama, Trump, and Biden. Their failure to address it is every bit as bad as anything that was (presumably) set up under Bush.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- jtdev 5y ago
  Uhhhh... Obama doubled down on this bullshit.
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  >Trump was never going to act against these interests even if he’d wanted to given all the other aspects he was embroiled in. Yet another person completely unaware that Trump let the Patriot Act expire: https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/27/politics/house-vote-fisa/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/27/politics/house-vote-fisa/inde... Can't say I'm surprised, the left didn't want to make huge news about it because it made Trump look good (and the establishment left supports the Patriot Act), and the right establishment/military supports the Patriot Act as well so they didn't want to raise a hubbub about it.
  - howenterprisey 5y ago
    Just in case anyone sees that and thinks it was due to any sort of principles or concerns about mass surveillance, a quote from the article: "Thank you to our GREAT Republican Congressmen & Congresswomen on your incredibly important blockage last night of a FISA Bill that would just perpetuate the abuse that produced the Greatest Political Crime In the History of the U.S., the Russian Witch-Hunt. Fantastic Job!"
    - koolba 5y ago
      Who would have a better understanding of the issue at hand than someone who’s campaign was spied on by political operatives leveraging FISA powers?
      - throwaway8581 5y ago
        Umm, orange man bad.
      - howenterprisey 5y ago
        The campaign was certainly surveilled. Have you seen any indication it was unwarranted? I found https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/03/doj-fbi-review-of-surveillance-applications-finds-almost-all-errors-are-minor-391101 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/03/doj-fbi-review-of-s..., which suggests nothing untoward was going on. As I said, I don't think Trump was approaching this in a particularly well-considered way.
clairity 5y ago
i'd go one step further and prohibit our government from surveilling any non-governmental foreigner without an auditable warrant, and strictly prohibit corporations with heavy sanctions from sharing any non-governmental surveillance with the government whatsoever (on top of existing privacy laws of course). the government should be in service, not in command, of the people.
- c3534l 5y ago
  The government only has the powers granted to it by the constitution. If the power for the executive to unilaterally conduct searches was not given to it, then it doesn't have it. Just because it doesn't say the government can't surveil foreigners doesn't mean they can - it has to specifically say the government is granted the right to surveil foreigners. And there's really very little reason to think that a power never granted to the government in the first place in the case of Americans was actually, somehow in secret, granted in the cases of non-Americans.
  - andred14 5y ago
    The 2020 election is proof that currently what is written in the constitution does not matter
  - salawat 5y ago
    Note: military surveillance should notcross with Law Enforcement surveillance. They are two different things in the eyes of the judiciary. The military can get away with surveillance under the mandate of defending the United States from all threats, foreign and domestic. The product of that surveillance, however, is not permissible as far as I know in a court of law unless it's specifically UCMJ. Not a lawyer though. If one is around willing to enlighten us on this odd question, it'd be much obliged.
  - clairity 5y ago
    i'd also generally agree with this, but not everyone does, so let's spell it out more clearly, even if somewhat redundantly.
  - 5y ago
babesh 5y ago
Surveillance is a form of power. Power does not give up power. Law is enforced via power. When it meets a greater power then the law is contravened. Look at the US and how it broke international law to force a plane down that it thought had Snowden.
- edoceo 5y ago
  Huh, TIL.. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incide...
  - fanatic2pope 5y ago
    Assange deliberately leaking false information is a very interesting admission.
    - tpmx 5y ago
      Given the extreme asshattery history of Assange, it seems just as probable that he was mostly trying to get some attention with guesses and then later claimed that it was a deliberate disinformation campaign.
      - TheTester 5y ago
        Unless you are quite rich and powerful, saying that what Assange has done is mostly "asshattery" is dishonest, yes he has had flukes but consider the mental state of someone being prosecuted and hunted by the most powerful and corrupt people in our planet, mostly what Assange has done s good and denying and calling him an asshat is dishonest and shows a clear bias on your part
        tpmx 5y ago
        Unless you are quite rich and powerful, saying that what Assange has done is mostly "asshattery" is dishonest Why do you think it wouldn't be dishonest if I were quite "rich and powerful"?
mywittyname 5y ago
> It seems silly tho that we need to pass a law to uphold what's already written into the constitution. The constitution only grants or limits power of various branches of government, it doesn't prescribe punishments for breaking the rules. That's a job of Congress (or courts, for civil cases).
- 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
  Even if the Constitution did prescribe punishments (what's a law without enforcement? wishful thinking.), everyone seems to think that just because there's some lines in the constitution that the matter is settled. We've been debating the constitution since it was written. We need laws to be tested in order to find out if they can or should be changed, or if we need to do something else.
- billytetrud 5y ago
  Yes, but it could have defined punishments for violating it. IMO it should have.
WalterBright 5y ago
The Constitution is just a piece of paper. It is powerless if people ignore it. It's the same with presidents, kings, and dictators. If people just stopped doing what they said, they become nothing. There's an incident in Soviet history where Stalin was sure they were coming to arrest and execute him. He was shaking and completely powerless. But they were just coming to affirm his power. The Arab Spring came about because people stopped following orders. When Nixon was on his way out, the military decided to not follow his orders (so I've read). The US will end when people just decide Constitution Shmonstitution. Gun control is neither here nor there for me personally, but what greatly concerns me is if the Bill of Rights is ignored wrt the 2nd Amendment, then what about the rest of the Bill of Rights? Is that next?
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  > It is powerless if people ignore it. Indeed we just had a bit of a lesson in the recent past which showed exactly how dependent our country is (and probably most other countries as well) on shared values and tradition. The Constitution isn't all-powerful as a piece of paper, its real power is as an idea.
  - Frost1x 5y ago
    The real power is consensus in an idea. Hopefully that idea is good but ultimately, you need critical mass to accept an idea or reject it. If people in the US really want to grab back power to the citizens of this country it can be done (peacefully even). All it really takes is a large enough consensus of voters to upend all the garbage we're being subjected to. The issue is that the consensus is more difficult to reach due to the scale of the US voter population combined with tactics like gerrymandering and overall difficulty of orchestrating movements to support ideals most people seem to support (which isn't oppressing a minority unless we classify power and wealth hungry individuals as a protected minority which we currently seem to do). Reaching consensus amongst citizens is far far more difficult these days, giving an edge to those already sitting in positions of concentrated power with fewer players, lending itself more likely to reach a consensus. It doesn't help that those in power actively try and divide the general voter population and set us against one another making it even more difficult to reach a consensus.
phkahler 5y ago
>> It seems silly tho that we need to pass a law to uphold what's already written into the constitution. The argument is probably pretty simple. These companies will sell your data to anyone for the right price, why would a government agency be any different. It's probably not a search or seizure, just a purchase between parties that don't even include any specific member of the public. First congress needs to make all this data selling and trading illegal, then we'll see how the government goes about obtaining it and weather that's legal or not. But too many lobbyists represent companies that make a ton of money on it, and of course these agencies would prefer to just purchase the data "legally", so I'm not terribly optimistic.
baybal2 5y ago
In other news: - More than 120 retired generals and admirals wrote to Biden appearing to back a false election conspiracy and questioning his mental health - https://www.businessinsider.com/former-generals-admirals-letter-question-election-biden-health-2021-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/former-generals-admirals-let... - An open letter by former officers calling the president a “Marxist” dictator is a greater threat to U.S. democracy than the ouster of Liz Cheney. - https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/05/12/joe-biden-military-revolt-liz-cheney/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/05/12/joe-biden-military-revo... - Over 120 retired generals and admirals signed on to a letter falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen in a move other veterans say erodes democratic norms. - https://sofrep.com/news/retired-officers-question-2020-election-and-bidens-health-in-an-open-letter/ https://sofrep.com/news/retired-officers-question-2020-elect... 30 Brigadiers, 16 Lietenant Generals, 42 Major Generals. In any other normal country, at this stage people will call a military putsch brewing an inevitability.
- xvector 5y ago
  There are over a million service members in our armed forces. A couple of retired, senile crazies does not indicate a “military putsch brewing.”
  - baybal2 5y ago
    The number is significant. The statutory limit on US army general staff is 241, and most of those guys are quite recent retirees. Countries had putsches with much lesser portion of generals mutinying, and some times made without general staff involvement as such. In fact there are almost as much succesful putches on record by majors, and colonels, than generals.
fredgrott 5y ago
it is often stated that locks are not for honest people, but to keep dishonest people out. can be applied to US constitution as additional laws needed not for those who WANT to uphold the US constitution but those who want to violate it. Most of you probably already saw a Michigan-congress rep submit a bill to violate the US constitution by trying to force twitter posters to register with Michigan to post facts because he wanted to prevent others from outing him in the form of fact checking.
- vernie 5y ago
  Isn't it the other way around?
- danans 5y ago
  > it is often stated that locks are not for honest people, but to keep dishonest people out. The saying goes the other way: "Locks are for honest people", implying that criminals aren't deterred by locks, and will just break a window if they want to get in.
seaourfreed 5y ago
Congress is corrupt (via lobbyist money) which causes this problem. The DoD tracks large scale threats to our nation. When the economy is rigged, then the establishment worries about the citizen base turning on the establishment. Congress corruption (via lobbyiests) happens by: a) Wall Street rigged economy HF front-running trades, b) Wall Street is rigged c) 2008 Mortgage crisis theft d) Pharma is rigged e) Medical costs are out of control. Every price fixes are killed by lobbyists): Hillary, Obama cost controls, etc.
- parineum 5y ago
  What lobby is lobbying for warrantless surveillance?
  - seaourfreed 5y ago
    DAVOS had the economic elites paranoid about a citizen uprising due to a rigged economy. The rigged economy would be fixed by congress (if they didn't sell out to lobbyists, to not fix it). DoD doesn't do surveillance due to lobbying. They do it because they view a potential risk in citizen uprising due to the rigged economy. DoD and Davos attendees share a worry about a risk from the citizen base.
Black101 5y ago
> It seems silly tho that we need to pass a law to uphold what's already written into the constitution. What makes you think that they will respect new laws?
- billytetrud 5y ago
  Great question. Unless there are consequences, some will simply ignore it and do what they want.
1cvmask 5y ago
The Supreme Court and constitution have always been irrelevant. Ask any former black slave or many laws etc that were trampled on by Presidents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_v._Georgia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_v._Georgia The constitution and Supreme Court do not consider Blacks humans or citizens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford
- billytetrud 5y ago
  I very much disagree. Yes the constitution has been violated many times. But without the constitution, its tenants would be violated constantly everywhere in the country. Nothing is perfect, and the outcomes brought the constitution being imperfect is no indictment of the document.

mc32 5y ago

We gotta thank the Bush admin for this. Obama had the opp to make things right, but passed and instead gave them a wink. Trump was never going to act against these interests even if he’d wanted to given all the other aspects he was embroiled in. And now Biden. No way is he going to buck the establishment. Unfortunately Ron Paul nor anyone like him will make it into office to dismantle this surveillance-industrial complex.

HumblyTossed 5y ago
Don't you mean Ron Wyden and not Ron Paul? Otherwise you're pretty much spot on.
- adventured 5y ago
  They mean making it into the White House I believe. Ron Paul would certainly attempt to dismantle it, and he'd fail miserably (he'd never win election to begin with though). The larger confusion on the part of the parent is thinking the President is in charge of much of anything or has the power to dismantle any of these deep state perma structures that have been built up in the post WW2 era; these are structures that survive any given administration, regardless of political agenda, and which nobody really dares to challenge. That includes the always expanding spying systems and military industrial complex. Any President that tries it will be burned out of DC every which way possible. Instant lame duck, crippled by their own party, on the outs with the news media (which is entirely a pet of the deep state), lambasted coming and going, tripped up in staged scandals set up by deep state opponents in the FBI or CIA, probably get impeached a few times for relatively trivial things (vs, say, starting wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya that got a million plus people killed; you know, things you should actually get impeached for). The President is more of a token figurehead today than not.
  - atatatat 5y ago
    > he'd never win election to begin with though How do you persevere in the face of this type of media blacklisting? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMdrwhDoZjQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMdrwhDoZjQ
    - adventured 5y ago
      I didn't watch your link (I rarely follow stray YouTube links). However regarding Ron Paul, I don't envy what he has endured in his lifetime from moronic opponents on both sides of the political aisle. The YouTube video of him being harangued & attacked by zombie anti-drug zealots on the Morton Downey Jr show is enough to feel sorry for him for a lifetime. Persevere, though? Anyone that dares to tell the truth today is begging for a blacklisting. That's what building the big tech censorship systems is all about (which will be America's version of the great firewall), being able to dictate what the supposed truth is for any given topic at any given moment in time. It's a martyrs game, telling the truth, I assume Ron Paul has known that for a long time.
      - nobody9999 5y ago
        >Persevere, though? Anyone that dares to tell the truth today is begging for a blacklisting. Indeed. Liz Cheney's fate[0] is a great example of that. [0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/05/12/liz-cheney-live-vote-updates-gop-house-leadership/5031048001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/05/12/liz-...
    - vlan0 5y ago
      Yep. We saw it with Andrew Yang as well. Either being left out completely, or media outlets taking about 'him' without actually saying his name.
      - NotSammyHagar 5y ago
        I'm skeptical of this media blackout. I heard lots of people talking about this, he was on podcasts, I saw him interviewed. Look at how much discussion there is about him running in NYC. I think it was much more that there were a whole lot of credible people running and there wasn't enough air in the room for him to get much. I saw every losing group complain of the election being stolen from them in some way, Warren, Sanders, Yang.
CWuestefeld 5y ago
Yes, blame GWB. But I'm not sure why you're giving a pass to Obama, Trump, and Biden. Their failure to address it is every bit as bad as anything that was (presumably) set up under Bush.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
jtdev 5y ago
Uhhhh... Obama doubled down on this bullshit.
HideousKojima 5y ago
>Trump was never going to act against these interests even if he’d wanted to given all the other aspects he was embroiled in. Yet another person completely unaware that Trump let the Patriot Act expire: https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/27/politics/house-vote-fisa/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/27/politics/house-vote-fisa/inde... Can't say I'm surprised, the left didn't want to make huge news about it because it made Trump look good (and the establishment left supports the Patriot Act), and the right establishment/military supports the Patriot Act as well so they didn't want to raise a hubbub about it.
- howenterprisey 5y ago
  Just in case anyone sees that and thinks it was due to any sort of principles or concerns about mass surveillance, a quote from the article: "Thank you to our GREAT Republican Congressmen & Congresswomen on your incredibly important blockage last night of a FISA Bill that would just perpetuate the abuse that produced the Greatest Political Crime In the History of the U.S., the Russian Witch-Hunt. Fantastic Job!"
  - koolba 5y ago
    Who would have a better understanding of the issue at hand than someone who’s campaign was spied on by political operatives leveraging FISA powers?
    - throwaway8581 5y ago
      Umm, orange man bad.
    - howenterprisey 5y ago
      The campaign was certainly surveilled. Have you seen any indication it was unwarranted? I found https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/03/doj-fbi-review-of-surveillance-applications-finds-almost-all-errors-are-minor-391101 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/03/doj-fbi-review-of-s..., which suggests nothing untoward was going on. As I said, I don't think Trump was approaching this in a particularly well-considered way.

clairity 5y ago

i'd go one step further and prohibit our government from surveilling any non-governmental foreigner without an auditable warrant, and strictly prohibit corporations with heavy sanctions from sharing any non-governmental surveillance with the government whatsoever (on top of existing privacy laws of course). the government should be in service, not in command, of the people.

c3534l 5y ago
The government only has the powers granted to it by the constitution. If the power for the executive to unilaterally conduct searches was not given to it, then it doesn't have it. Just because it doesn't say the government can't surveil foreigners doesn't mean they can - it has to specifically say the government is granted the right to surveil foreigners. And there's really very little reason to think that a power never granted to the government in the first place in the case of Americans was actually, somehow in secret, granted in the cases of non-Americans.
- andred14 5y ago
  The 2020 election is proof that currently what is written in the constitution does not matter
- salawat 5y ago
  Note: military surveillance should notcross with Law Enforcement surveillance. They are two different things in the eyes of the judiciary. The military can get away with surveillance under the mandate of defending the United States from all threats, foreign and domestic. The product of that surveillance, however, is not permissible as far as I know in a court of law unless it's specifically UCMJ. Not a lawyer though. If one is around willing to enlighten us on this odd question, it'd be much obliged.
- clairity 5y ago
  i'd also generally agree with this, but not everyone does, so let's spell it out more clearly, even if somewhat redundantly.
- 5y ago

babesh 5y ago

Surveillance is a form of power. Power does not give up power. Law is enforced via power. When it meets a greater power then the law is contravened. Look at the US and how it broke international law to force a plane down that it thought had Snowden.

edoceo 5y ago
Huh, TIL.. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incide...
- fanatic2pope 5y ago
  Assange deliberately leaking false information is a very interesting admission.
  - tpmx 5y ago
    Given the extreme asshattery history of Assange, it seems just as probable that he was mostly trying to get some attention with guesses and then later claimed that it was a deliberate disinformation campaign.
    - TheTester 5y ago
      Unless you are quite rich and powerful, saying that what Assange has done is mostly "asshattery" is dishonest, yes he has had flukes but consider the mental state of someone being prosecuted and hunted by the most powerful and corrupt people in our planet, mostly what Assange has done s good and denying and calling him an asshat is dishonest and shows a clear bias on your part
      - tpmx 5y ago
        Unless you are quite rich and powerful, saying that what Assange has done is mostly "asshattery" is dishonest Why do you think it wouldn't be dishonest if I were quite "rich and powerful"?

mywittyname 5y ago

> It seems silly tho that we need to pass a law to uphold what's already written into the constitution. The constitution only grants or limits power of various branches of government, it doesn't prescribe punishments for breaking the rules. That's a job of Congress (or courts, for civil cases).

0xbadcafebee 5y ago
Even if the Constitution did prescribe punishments (what's a law without enforcement? wishful thinking.), everyone seems to think that just because there's some lines in the constitution that the matter is settled. We've been debating the constitution since it was written. We need laws to be tested in order to find out if they can or should be changed, or if we need to do something else.
billytetrud 5y ago
Yes, but it could have defined punishments for violating it. IMO it should have.

WalterBright 5y ago

The Constitution is just a piece of paper. It is powerless if people ignore it. It's the same with presidents, kings, and dictators. If people just stopped doing what they said, they become nothing. There's an incident in Soviet history where Stalin was sure they were coming to arrest and execute him. He was shaking and completely powerless. But they were just coming to affirm his power. The Arab Spring came about because people stopped following orders. When Nixon was on his way out, the military decided to not follow his orders (so I've read). The US will end when people just decide Constitution Shmonstitution. Gun control is neither here nor there for me personally, but what greatly concerns me is if the Bill of Rights is ignored wrt the 2nd Amendment, then what about the rest of the Bill of Rights? Is that next?

rootusrootus 5y ago
> It is powerless if people ignore it. Indeed we just had a bit of a lesson in the recent past which showed exactly how dependent our country is (and probably most other countries as well) on shared values and tradition. The Constitution isn't all-powerful as a piece of paper, its real power is as an idea.
- Frost1x 5y ago
  The real power is consensus in an idea. Hopefully that idea is good but ultimately, you need critical mass to accept an idea or reject it. If people in the US really want to grab back power to the citizens of this country it can be done (peacefully even). All it really takes is a large enough consensus of voters to upend all the garbage we're being subjected to. The issue is that the consensus is more difficult to reach due to the scale of the US voter population combined with tactics like gerrymandering and overall difficulty of orchestrating movements to support ideals most people seem to support (which isn't oppressing a minority unless we classify power and wealth hungry individuals as a protected minority which we currently seem to do). Reaching consensus amongst citizens is far far more difficult these days, giving an edge to those already sitting in positions of concentrated power with fewer players, lending itself more likely to reach a consensus. It doesn't help that those in power actively try and divide the general voter population and set us against one another making it even more difficult to reach a consensus.

phkahler 5y ago

>> It seems silly tho that we need to pass a law to uphold what's already written into the constitution. The argument is probably pretty simple. These companies will sell your data to anyone for the right price, why would a government agency be any different. It's probably not a search or seizure, just a purchase between parties that don't even include any specific member of the public. First congress needs to make all this data selling and trading illegal, then we'll see how the government goes about obtaining it and weather that's legal or not. But too many lobbyists represent companies that make a ton of money on it, and of course these agencies would prefer to just purchase the data "legally", so I'm not terribly optimistic.

baybal2 5y ago

In other news: - More than 120 retired generals and admirals wrote to Biden appearing to back a false election conspiracy and questioning his mental health - https://www.businessinsider.com/former-generals-admirals-letter-question-election-biden-health-2021-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/former-generals-admirals-let... - An open letter by former officers calling the president a “Marxist” dictator is a greater threat to U.S. democracy than the ouster of Liz Cheney. - https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/05/12/joe-biden-military-revolt-liz-cheney/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/05/12/joe-biden-military-revo... - Over 120 retired generals and admirals signed on to a letter falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen in a move other veterans say erodes democratic norms. - https://sofrep.com/news/retired-officers-question-2020-election-and-bidens-health-in-an-open-letter/ https://sofrep.com/news/retired-officers-question-2020-elect... 30 Brigadiers, 16 Lietenant Generals, 42 Major Generals. In any other normal country, at this stage people will call a military putsch brewing an inevitability.

xvector 5y ago
There are over a million service members in our armed forces. A couple of retired, senile crazies does not indicate a “military putsch brewing.”
- baybal2 5y ago
  The number is significant. The statutory limit on US army general staff is 241, and most of those guys are quite recent retirees. Countries had putsches with much lesser portion of generals mutinying, and some times made without general staff involvement as such. In fact there are almost as much succesful putches on record by majors, and colonels, than generals.

fredgrott 5y ago

it is often stated that locks are not for honest people, but to keep dishonest people out. can be applied to US constitution as additional laws needed not for those who WANT to uphold the US constitution but those who want to violate it. Most of you probably already saw a Michigan-congress rep submit a bill to violate the US constitution by trying to force twitter posters to register with Michigan to post facts because he wanted to prevent others from outing him in the form of fact checking.

vernie 5y ago
Isn't it the other way around?
danans 5y ago
> it is often stated that locks are not for honest people, but to keep dishonest people out. The saying goes the other way: "Locks are for honest people", implying that criminals aren't deterred by locks, and will just break a window if they want to get in.

seaourfreed 5y ago

Congress is corrupt (via lobbyist money) which causes this problem. The DoD tracks large scale threats to our nation. When the economy is rigged, then the establishment worries about the citizen base turning on the establishment. Congress corruption (via lobbyiests) happens by: a) Wall Street rigged economy HF front-running trades, b) Wall Street is rigged c) 2008 Mortgage crisis theft d) Pharma is rigged e) Medical costs are out of control. Every price fixes are killed by lobbyists): Hillary, Obama cost controls, etc.

parineum 5y ago
What lobby is lobbying for warrantless surveillance?
- seaourfreed 5y ago
  DAVOS had the economic elites paranoid about a citizen uprising due to a rigged economy. The rigged economy would be fixed by congress (if they didn't sell out to lobbyists, to not fix it). DoD doesn't do surveillance due to lobbying. They do it because they view a potential risk in citizen uprising due to the rigged economy. DoD and Davos attendees share a worry about a risk from the citizen base.

Black101 5y ago

> It seems silly tho that we need to pass a law to uphold what's already written into the constitution. What makes you think that they will respect new laws?

billytetrud 5y ago
Great question. Unless there are consequences, some will simply ignore it and do what they want.

1cvmask 5y ago

The Supreme Court and constitution have always been irrelevant. Ask any former black slave or many laws etc that were trampled on by Presidents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_v._Georgia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_v._Georgia The constitution and Supreme Court do not consider Blacks humans or citizens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford

billytetrud 5y ago
I very much disagree. Yes the constitution has been violated many times. But without the constitution, its tenants would be violated constantly everywhere in the country. Nothing is perfect, and the outcomes brought the constitution being imperfect is no indictment of the document.