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Who cares how long it’s been going on, you need to take severe umbrage that at multiple points in our nation’s history the Government has taken the 4th amendmen
by iamdave 13y ago
Who cares how long it’s been going on, you need to take severe umbrage that at multiple points in our nation’s history the Government has taken the 4th amendment out back and beat it with a lead pipe. The difference is now, a court is allowing them to get away with it. That’s a scary proposition, because before you know it, it’ll be you going outside for some love taps from the FBI. And after that, it’ll be your kids. You don’t trade Constitutionality for antiquity. It’s wrong now, just as much as it was wrong then because if you found out about it then, you'd have been just as mad about it as you are now.
- tptacek 13y agoThe court is allowing NSA to get away with something different than what Hoover's FBI got away with.
- rayiner 13y agoThe problem is the "slippery slope," "it always gets worse," "the government is hopelessly broken," ranting that has become pervasive on HN lately. In the middle of the last century, the Supreme Court allowed the federal government to put tens of thousands of japanese americans in internment camps, including U.S. citizens. In the early 2000's, the same court said that even non-citizens caught in Afghanistan fighting against the U.S. had certain due process and habeas rights as long as they were on U.S. soil.
- rdl 13y agoIt seems like punctuated equilibrium with a slight downward slippery slope -- it generally gets worse (due to investigators pushing the limits little by little) until legal decisions or technological changes push back and make big changes one way or another (not always for the better).
- timr 13y ago"It seems like punctuated equilibrium with a slight downward slippery slope -- it generally gets worse." Istanbul has been in the grips of a military crackdown of a peaceful protest about a park. In Syria, something like 90,000 people have died fighting an authoritarian regime, with no end in sight. In Iran, people won't even vote in the election (where voting is compulsory) because they know that the elections are rigged. On the other side of the coin, in the UK, you're subject to government surveillance in every public space. It's a trade-off, and the choices aren't as clear as you might believe if you limited your knowledge to what you read on Reddit and HN. My point is that you have to be pretty cynical to suggest that the USA -- where we let the Occupy protesters linger in front of federal buildings until they were nothing but de facto homeless encampments -- has been on an endlessly downward slippery slope. We live in one of the most free and privileged countries on earth, and it's important to keep a sense of perspective on these things. I don't necessarily like that the NSA is tracking phone calls, but I'm also keenly aware of the fact that they aren't dragging people out of their homes in the middle of the night, and that we don't have cars exploding daily in New York City. All things considered, we have it pretty damned well.
- rdl 13y agoMy point was that things get worse steadily at a pretty slow rate, day over day, and then occasionally there are big shifts for the better (or for the worse), generally in the form of legal decisions or major tech changes. The overall trend might even be net positive (especially for women/minorities in the US over the past 100 years, if not white males). There's not a monotonically nondecreasing level of freedom, though. It's like 100 98 98 97 96 130 (ITAR limited) 125 120 120 119 90 (Patriot) 89 88 140 (default to HTTPS) 135 135 133 etc.