4 ms·

They'll chisel away at the protection laws piece by piece until they get what they want. I sometimes feel that we're screwed no matter how hard we try to fight

by rdudek 11y ago

They'll chisel away at the protection laws piece by piece until they get what they want. I sometimes feel that we're screwed no matter how hard we try to fight.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Maybe not. If there is a force as strong as parts of government, it's other parts of government. Intelligence community is its own kingdom, with its own goals, but other areas of government run on a four year cycle and depend on public support. So if people will want restrictions in surveillance badly enough, politicians' pathetic pandering to public opinion could create a very powerful counter force.
chrismarlow9 11y ago
Roller coaster. Everythings a roller coaster. We will win for a few years, they will win for a few years, then back to us. You'll have long stretches where we win (golden age) and back to them winning for a long period (dark age), but it will always bounce back one way or the other. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age is a good article (obviously) covering this philosophy... All you can really do is try to increase the worth of what you leave behind to your future progeny so that in times of dark ages they are high in the council but remain moral, and in the golden ages they use science to create awesome things and ignore hysteria and FUD. Unfortunately too much shift one way or the other in a genealogy tree makes the family lazy or a war mongrel so it's hard to pull off.
jqm 11y ago
They will try to chisel away at rights (with some success), but if you think about what they are up against, they will always be playing wack-a-mole. No matter how good the surveillance teams are, they will never completely control humanity nor know everything at all times. They simply aren't capable of it. In addition, the wants are limitless but their budgets are constrained by what they can reasonably appropriate. As they make it harder to do business (by introducing security holes or ruining trust) the amount they can appropriate becomes less. In addition, they become buried by an ever increasing amount of information that their inefficiency can't handle. I have no doubt some of the best and brightest in the world work for for secret agencies. But operationally they are still bureaucracies. Thus, they have no shortage of lazy and stupid people... many of whom are in leadership positions. In fact I believe these pleas for unconstitutional shortcut tools are the pleas of lazy and unimaginative people. People who don't want to be found probably have much more reason to worry if the special pleading ever stops. Because at that point there may be truly more competent people running the program.

by rdudek 11y ago

They'll chisel away at the protection laws piece by piece until they get what they want. I sometimes feel that we're screwed no matter how hard we try to fight.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

Maybe not. If there is a force as strong as parts of government, it's other parts of government. Intelligence community is its own kingdom, with its own goals, but other areas of government run on a four year cycle and depend on public support. So if people will want restrictions in surveillance badly enough, politicians' pathetic pandering to public opinion could create a very powerful counter force.

chrismarlow9 11y ago

Roller coaster. Everythings a roller coaster. We will win for a few years, they will win for a few years, then back to us. You'll have long stretches where we win (golden age) and back to them winning for a long period (dark age), but it will always bounce back one way or the other. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age is a good article (obviously) covering this philosophy... All you can really do is try to increase the worth of what you leave behind to your future progeny so that in times of dark ages they are high in the council but remain moral, and in the golden ages they use science to create awesome things and ignore hysteria and FUD. Unfortunately too much shift one way or the other in a genealogy tree makes the family lazy or a war mongrel so it's hard to pull off.

jqm 11y ago

They will try to chisel away at rights (with some success), but if you think about what they are up against, they will always be playing wack-a-mole. No matter how good the surveillance teams are, they will never completely control humanity nor know everything at all times. They simply aren't capable of it. In addition, the wants are limitless but their budgets are constrained by what they can reasonably appropriate. As they make it harder to do business (by introducing security holes or ruining trust) the amount they can appropriate becomes less. In addition, they become buried by an ever increasing amount of information that their inefficiency can't handle. I have no doubt some of the best and brightest in the world work for for secret agencies. But operationally they are still bureaucracies. Thus, they have no shortage of lazy and stupid people... many of whom are in leadership positions. In fact I believe these pleas for unconstitutional shortcut tools are the pleas of lazy and unimaginative people. People who don't want to be found probably have much more reason to worry if the special pleading ever stops. Because at that point there may be truly more competent people running the program.