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That of course presumes that all of this - indiscriminate spying, secret courts, gag orders, war on whistle blowers, redefinition of concepts like privacy & fre
by r0h1n 13y ago
That of course presumes that all of this - indiscriminate spying, secret courts, gag orders, war on whistle blowers, redefinition of concepts like privacy & freedom - would have come to pass and the world will be much freer than it is today (which is how we look back at the McCarthy era today, right?).
But what if it doesn't end that way, and things are much worse 50 years from now?
- javajosh 13y agoPatience! I keep saying this but it's worth repeating: the US has had a lot of evil policies, even eviler than this one, IMHO, in the past, but they haven't lasted. Indian genocide and slavery were the worst, but there were also Prohibition, MacCarthyism, Jim Crow laws, etc. After doing tremendous damage to people, we eventually moved on. We are moving on from sexual/familial freedom and drug freedoms, and we will certainly move on from this. Think of 9/11 like a severe blow to the head. It just so happens that some of us (Feinstein, Alexander) have taken longer to come out of the security-daze. And they may never. But they will eventually be out of office, let us hope sooner rather than later. Personally, I don't believe that any policy is irreversible, unchangeable. Life is change. People change.
- droopyEyelids 13y agoThat attitude assumes that the quantitative change in abilities that computerized surveillance brings about never turns into a qualitative change. I believe that is totally possible though. Surveillance used to be limited by manpower, and look how well it worked. Before today, the amount of information the NSA's computers were sifting was only conceivable as the omniscience of God.