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President Obama’s Dragnet
- mtgx 13y agoIt should be mentioned that it was written by the Editorial Board of NYT.
- ISL 13y agoI'd 's/mentioned/emphasized/' . The first 1.7 paragraphs read like they're straight out of the WSJ.
- sillysaurus 13y agoWhat's the significance of this?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- hyperbovine 13y agoThe NYT tends to criticize Obama less harshly than the WSJ. Of course, the exact opposite was true during the Bush years. No American paper commenting on the more interesting issue of why it took a UK news organization to uncover this.
- chimeracoder 13y agoThe New York Times is known for being incredibly loath to criticize Obama, particularly on issues related to due process, wiretapping, the PATRIOT act, the "state secrets" doctrine, drone assasinations, etc[0]. The fact that Obama has been doing this isn't news; the fact that even the NYT is coming out and criticizing him for it is. The Wall Street Journal has historically been the polar opposite, from an editorial perspective. (Also, the other significance is that this is the editorial team, whose purpose is to opine - this is not the news team, which are supposed to attempt to remain 'objective'). [0] Basically, a large part of the foreign policy for which Bush was criticized during his presidency and which Obama has doubled down on.
- kmfrk 13y agoCriticizing a president for wire-tapping puts the NYT in an incredibly awkward spot, as they forced their reporter to shelve the Bush wire-tapping scoop until after the 2004 election, back when privacy violations were still something people could get up in arms about.
- jpdoctor 13y ago> What's the significance of this? I cannot remember (I'm 49yo) the NYT ever going from endorsing a candidate [1] to "The administration has now lost all credibility." That's quite a fall politically. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/barack-obama-for-president.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/barack-obam... Edit: I have to agree with them, but I hold out hope that this will cause several high-profile firings in the administration.
- dkulchenko 13y ago> I hold out hope that this will cause several high-profile firings in the administration. Why would it? It's pretty obvious Obama's complicit in this - why would he fire those who are implementing policies that he's supporting?
- philwelch 13y agoIn politics, you fire those below you to save yourself. Even if they did right by you.
- jellicle 13y agoPeople would only be fired if this program is scandalous to the American public. All the evidence suggests that the American public doesn't mind privacy violations as long you say "child pornographer" and "terrorist" a lot when you talk about them.
- philwelch 13y agoJustifications for some, sacrificial firings for others. Just like Abu Ghraib.
- jpdoctor 13y agoWhen presented with new data, some people change course. I am hoping Obama falls into that class.
- forgotAgain 13y agoIf the NYT publicly states that his administration "has now lost all credibility" it should be significant. They are the flagship liberal / progressive newspaper in the country. Their blunt outrage signifies an important element of his party's support is rebelling against the President's actions. However he will probably be able to just shrug it off. US citizens have become too fat and lazy to give a damn about anything but tax cuts and their entitlement. They've forgotten that this is still a world where you have to fight for what is important.
- emin_gun_sirer 13y agoThis article would have been stronger if it had contained a bit of introspection. Why did it require a UK paper to uncover this operation?
- kai-zer 13y agoUK reporter can't be subpoenaed? edit: nevermind, guess the reporter is an American...
- Amygaz 13y agoBecause he knows where to get good fish and chips?
- Amygaz 13y agoYou guys are such idiots! Please more bad karma I beg for it!
- Umalu 13y agoThe "UK reporter" is Glenn Greenwald, an American: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald
- smackfu 13y agoThink he lives in Brazil though.
- longone 13y agoI agree. Investigative reporting in the US has been on a downturn for the last 15 years or so. Many newspapers have had to cut back on resources because of declining readership and its hard to expect decent investigative news from any of the network news stations because they are just pandering to their own audiences for ratings and whatnot. It also doesn't help the president Obama and his administration have been incredibly hard on journalists and those who leak information as we have learned over the last month. Even though it was the Guardian that was the paper that reported it, Glenn Greenwald, an American, is the author of the original article. Either way, I'm just happy this has come to the public eye and has confirmed many suspensions. I hope that this rallies enough support so either amendments to the Patriot Act can be made it can be repealed entirely.
- sneak 13y agoKeep paying US taxes and voting. That should work. (But seriously. It's time. Pack your belongings and leave. Vote with your tax dollars, please.)
- dkulchenko 13y agoLeave where? Everyone always says that, but where would be better (mainly in terms of civil liberties)?
- jlgreco 13y agoYeah, leaving doesn't work. The solution is sadly not that simple. But neither does voting. How could voting work when the public is not even suppose to be aware of this sort of thing? This sort of secrecy is incompatible with democracy. Without being able to make an informed decision the best you can do is vote for the candidate that assures you that they will have a transparent administration.... oh wait.
- sneak 13y agoYes, it works great. I know because I tried it.
- jlgreco 13y agoLeaving works for individuals fortunate enough to be in a position where it is feasible. Unfortunately it is not a solution that can be applied across the board. Even assuming every concerned American had the means to leave, such a mass exodus of Americans would surely cause concern in any country they might wish to flee too.
- sneak 13y agoOnly the innovators need emigrate for the plan to work, fortunately.
- tokenizer 13y ago
- merraksh 13y agoSaturday Morning Breakfast Cereal says it well: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2961#comic http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2961#c... but also: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2974#comic http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2974#c...
- vijayboyapati 13y agoQuestion: At what point does the average statist admit that the libertarians (s)he has been belittling for so many years as tin-foil hat crackpots were far more savvy about the nature of the state than they were? Answer: never
- wonderzombie 13y agoStopped clocks, once a day, etc. ;) In all seriousness, though: civil liberties are one of the very few areas where libertarians and liberals (I presume "statist" was meant to be a jibe) can agree. Liberals were in fact among the groups pissed off about the PATRIOT Act, FISA, et al, during the Bush years. By this point, nearly a decade later, I'd resigned myself to the fact that nobody cared. I can't decide if I'm pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised that this is finally getting more attention.
- _delirium 13y agoYes, civil-liberties advocates have been on this particular horse since before the term "libertarian" even came into widespread usage. Various kinds of attempts at dragnet surveillance, at various scales, have been an active issue of controversy going back decades (e.g. in the McCarthyist era), and civil-liberties groups like the ACLU have been pretty consistent in opposition.
- te_chris 13y agoYes, never, because a completely unaccountable corporatocracy is not a suitable replacement. Social democrats like myself believe in the power of a transparent, strong, supportive, accountable and fundamentally democratic state and are not going to give up fighting for it. This isn't an argument to blow up the state in favour of an alternative which has proven itself often to be worse than the state in matters of privacy and libterty, it's a call to increase the public pressure for reform.
- adventured 13y agoGood luck combining a strong government, with an accountable one. Political power tends to corrupt toward not wanting to be accountable.
- mtoddh 13y agoFrom the article: "The defense of this practice offered by Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is supposed to be preventing this sort of overreaching, was absurd. She said today that the authorities need this information in case someone might become a terrorist in the future." That second sentence is the one that really caught my eye: She said today that the authorities need this information in case someone might become a terrorist in the future. Wow. Just wow.
- khuey 13y agoFeinstein is one of the worst people in the Senate on civil liberties issues, and one of the foremost advocates of the national security state.
- wslh 13y agoI really think of Obama government as populism (disclaimer: I live in another country with a lot of populism). The IRS scandal is part of that. He plays nice cards in public but in secret he has another agenda. At one point you connect the dots when he plays the same tricks.
- sp332 13y agoFrom what I've seen, Obama is pretty peeved about the IRS thing. Mainly because it spent a lot of political capital he needed for other projects... like this one.
- adventured 13y agoNo, they're not peeved at all. If he was, he'd be burning the IRS alive. They've spent all their effort so far on deflection, lying, covering-up, etc.
- cglace 13y agoPretty peeved they were caught?
- pvnick 13y agoSaid Jim Sensenbrenner, who introduced the Patriot Act: “As the author of the Patriot Act, I am extremely troubled by the F.B.I.’s interpretation of this legislation,” he said in a statement. “While I believe the Patriot Act appropriately balanced national security concerns and civil rights, I have always worried about potential abuses.” He added: “Seizing phone records of millions of innocent people is excessive and un-American.”
- Everlag 13y agoWhen the fellow who introduced the Patriot act goes against something in the name of American privacy you know you've crossed the line that is political suicide. And they don't have a 9/11 as an excuse this time.
- wonderzombie 13y agoWell, you know what they say: failure is an orphan. Warrantless wiretapping has been going on for however many years, and now he's got a problem with it? OK, bro, whatever you say.
- caseysoftware 13y agoYes, absolute political suicide. That Obama guy will never be elected to any office ever again! Oh, wait..
- anigbrowl 13y agoYou're assuming a degree of intellectual and ethical consistency which I am extremely reluctant to ascribe to a sitting legislator.
- scrabble 13y agoPolitical suicide? Maybe in the past.
- crusso 13y agoAs much as I am glad that the guy is at least admitting that the phone record seizure is troubling, I can't help but be PISSED that many of us knew this was the inevitable result of the Patriot Act and this trend to let Government take care of us and protect us at the expense of our Liberties. If only democracies or republics had a more immediately exercisable "I told you so" button.
- drawkbox 13y agoThe 'Patriot' Act was written 8 days after 9/11. It is time for it to go and be rewritten in saner times. The founders and framers of the Constitution and Bill of Rights knew the tyranny that can happen, but they have never seen what abuse of technology can be in terms of privacy. The people that say 'they have nothing to hide' don't realize that personal, business, ideas, private, market information can really be used in many other ways beyond helping fight terrorism. Strong anonymization and approvals to access the individuals responsible for the info need to be rethought and it should be a public discussion if all our data will be accessible.
- flyinRyan 13y agoOr how about scrap it and don't rewrite anything. Terrorism is no threat to the US, just stop making a big deal about it. The boston bombers killed 3 people. That's like 1 car crash.
- pessimizer 13y agoAren't you suddenly getting terrified about what the dossier created by data mining every phone call, every email, every article on every website you read, every comment you've ever left, every book you ever bought, every library book that you ever took out, the magazines that you subscribe to, every cent you've ever spent by card and where it was spent, every place you've ever lived, every place where you worked, every place you ever made a phone call from, every classmate you've ever had, how much electricity you use, and the same things about all of your probable friends - w/different data sources starting 7-15 years ago? Are you even more terrified of the executive summary? Is it just me?
- angersock 13y agoBut remember, we have to disarm, because guns are evil you see. And because we can trust big brother, you see. The government knows what's best for us--after all, it knows everything about us. This is the sort of reason the wingnuts cry about guns and gubberment, and unfortunately, they're looking a bit less alarmist with each passing day.
- anigbrowl 13y agoBe realistic, neither the political right or the NRA exhibited the least bit of opposition to the Patriot Act at the time of its adoption; 2nd amendment types were too busy printing and buying bumper stickers such as the one below for their cars. http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f258/heyman1104/My%20Riviera/Federal_Terrorist_Hunting_Permit_Bu.jpg http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f258/heyman1104/My%20Rivie...
- angersock 13y agoAn accurate and unfortunate picture--consider how many similarly silly baubles and propaganda pieces (Darwin fish, anyone?) are sold to people on the other side of the aisle. People are dumb and silly and tacky regardless of ideology. I'm being perfectly realistic. Every time the topic comes up here on HN--one of the more rational places of discussion I've encountered--we see the same strong anti-gun sentiment come out, very frequently with the caveat that it's okay for the .gov and .mil to be armed while the citizenry is not. We can't at once both be outraged at the erosions of privacy and civil liberties and at the same time flabbergasted at the idea that people lack the faith in their government to grant them a monopoly on force.
- jurassic 13y ago> The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Yes. Fuck you Mr. Obama, Mr. Bush, and everyone who ever voted for the PATRIOT Act. Failed promises on Gitmo, mideast conflicts, drone murders, and civil liberties/domestic spying. I hope they impeach him for failing to uphold the Constitution. I'm cynical, so I suspected this was probably happening all along. But my anger over this is still white hot. Our whole government is broken when leaders of both major parties blatantly lie and conspire to undermine our Constitution.
- angersock 13y agoDid you vote for Ron Paul or one of the minority parties, or were you complicit in this farce?
- rhizome 13y agoFlip all the parties next go 'round. In a reliably red district and/or state? Vote Democrat, and vice-versa. Vote the bums out, especially the Yes on PATRIOT Act ones. The law of averages will keep the distribution we have now.
- flyinRyan 13y agoNo, no no! Vote fucking independent in all cases. Fuck republican/democrat. They are a different view of the same database table.
- yk 13y agoI did grow up in West Germany during the 80ies, and at that time I was told that we were on the right side of the wall, because our government does not kill people, does not torture people and does not spy on its own population. Sometimes I wonder who won the cold war.
- Riesling 13y agoI think with the fall of the rivaling system, the need for the western world to differentiate itself just went away.