The dangers of our new normal...

[Magox]

 

Incorrect. Your failure to read the material I've given you or led you to is not the same as me not presenting anything. The government has been and is continuing to breach our constitutional rights in the name of fighting terror.

 

This is undeniable, as is the truth that these programs are terrible at doing their stated purpose in the first place.

 

No, it's a failure on your behalf to make your case in an effective manner and to provide proof, just copy and paste something that backs up your assertion that the government is systemically with coordination spying on its own citizens for purposes outside of its intended stated goals which are for homeland security.

 

You asked why governments would be interested in collecting data. I answered it.

 

The why isn't mysterious, nor are the obvious pitfalls and dangers, unless you're completely trying to evade the pertinent issues of the debate.

 

No, you were making this argument because that was the case you were making which was that since virtually all governments spy on its citizens for purposes of power, the NSA collection program is just another cog in the evolution of the governments across the world spying on its citizens for purposes of information and power, in your view. Don't be coy about it, that is the argument you were making, don't run from it, stand by it.

 

 

Despite the reams of information proving that our constitutional rights are being violated that have come to light in the past 16 years -- let alone the last 3 -- you still disagree.

 

That's the definition of willful ignorance. No amount of discussion will turn your head when it's buried in the sand.

 

Incorrect. You're conflating the worst case scenario, which I have brought up, with my actual position on the matter.

 

"[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and noWarrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

 

If you aren't a conspiracist thats the key word, "unreasonable". Reasonable people can argue that collecting peoples emails, phone records etc in a lock box could constitute a breach in one personal privacy rights, not so much that it is occurring at this time but could be used against its citizens down the road if the wrong person comes into power.

 

Many people like myself, believe that it is reasonable to look into peoples emails and phone records if there is suspicion of harm to the homeland or serious crimes.

 

My position is that we need to be having this discussion without the cloud of terrorism hovering over it because it's a distraction. We need more oversight and more transparency, not less. This thread was started when the Patriot Act was being put up for renewal for that specific purpose.

 

But this isn't where you are taking this argument, you believe that the governments NSA data collection program has no to little interest in protecting the homeland and that they are spying on its citizens for reasons you really don't know and that you could only speculate on. YET, in your mind even though you can only speculate on the reasons (in which you've backed away from the one you provided) it is a fact that the government created the NSA data collection program not for its stated reasons. What's worse is that you have yet to provide a shred of evidence that comes close to backing up your claim. That is not only illogical, but conspiratorial. If you are making the claim, and you are being challenged on that claim the onus is on you to prove your claim. You can't reasonably say, "Hey, I told you it exists, you need to find it. Do your homework"

 

Thats silly.

 

Everything else is speculative on my part, admittedly so, in an effort to not only have the conversation we need to have, but to open the eyes of folks who are unaware this type of malfeasance is ongoing.

 

At least here we are entering into a more honest part of the discussion. Which is that everything you've said is speculative. It's fine to make your case with some information that falls into a story line, but it doesn't make it so until you or anyone actually provides ACTUAL definitive proof that

 

A) The government has lied about the motivation in the creation about the NSA's data collection program.

 

B) That the government doesn't truly have an interest in using the NSA data collection program to protect the homeland.

 

C) That the government has some desire to spy on its citizens (you had stated as an example for "power") for some unknown reason outside the scope of its intended purpose.

 

I don't have a problem with having more effective oversight. My concern is when you have a bunch of politically motivated politicians who are pushing their brand and coming out with faux hearings and bills that help them garner votes more so than actually looking for solutions to a very sensitive matter.

 

 

That's a question for the government, is it not? I can only speculate. Which I have, in great length and detail, because there has been virtually no substantial debate on this issue in government or within our national conversation. The war on terror is the perfect tool to distract and derail any meaningful debate on these issues because selling fear is easier than telling the truth.

 

The facts are pretty simple if you're willing to look at the issue with an open mind which, so far, you've yet to demonstrate the willingness to do.

 

Fact: Mass data collection and surveillance was sold to the American public as a necessary means to fighting and preventing terrorist attacks on US soil and abroad.

 

Fact: The collection programs in question are so vast, the data collected so voluminous, that to this day they are unsuitable for their stated job.

 

(Recent events prove this beyond a shadow of a doubt: Boston, Brussels, Paris, San Bernadino -- all instances where the perpetrators were on the radar of various intelligence services around the globe before they acted yet the powers that be were unable to stop them -- even with these massive programs for which we're being asked to willingly surrender constitutional rights our ancestors died to give us.)

 

Fact: We've seen a very recent example of our government waging war against private US citizens purely for ideological reasons. The IRS going after Tea Party and right leaning organizations should be an eye opener to the ways in which this massive collection of data (the overwhelming majority of which is irrelevant to the war on terror) can be misused by our government.

Knowing those three facts, how much do you really trust the government not to overstep their constitutional limits within a system that has little to no oversight or transparency?

You have a problem not understanding the difference between Fact and opinion.

Fact: a thing that is indisputably the case

Opinion: a view or judgment formed about something

What you call facts are actually opinions.

The bedrock principle this nation was founded upon was the notion that it's our job to watch out for governmental overreach. Yet, within this discussion, that entire ethos has been flipped on its head. The government is arguing it has to monitor every American citizen, privacy and due process rights be damned, because every US citizen is a potential threat. Not to the people or property -- but to the government itself. That's antithetical to everything this country is supposed to stand for.

The government is not monitoring every American citizen. And your arguing that the government is in self-protection mode, and that the motives are not for homeland security but preservation of power. This is twice now you have made the explicit insinuation of this being the basis of your argument. Good, embrace the conspiracy.

Once governments begin to think and approach surveillance with that mentality, it's a short, slippery slope into the abyss of totalitarian oppression. History proves this to be true 100% of the time. To think it'll be no different in modern day America is to be willfully ignorant of not only history but human nature. The simple act of being observed changes how people think, write, speak and act. It doesn't even matter if they're being actively observed or not, just knowing that it's possible they are being observed has a chilling effect on all forms of communication and thought that run contrary to the establishment. This kills democracy and free thought. Orwell and Huxley wrote extensively about these issues decades ago more eloquently than I ever could.

That slide into a totalitarian state wherein every ideological thought that runs contrary to the establishment is censored and/or repressed is the worst case scenario of how this all ends up. I'm not arguing it's the world we're living in today. We still do live in a democracy -- I think -- and we have the ability... no the duty to find a middle ground between protecting our vital civil liberties and keeping our country safe from acts of terror.

That requires being honest about what's happening and why. I'm not, and have never been, arguing that this is a Machiavellian plot to steer us into a totalitarian future. I genuinely believe that the majority of politicians and officers working in NSA or any other alphabet soup agency are motivated by the desire to protect Americans. I know too many of them to think otherwise. But unexpected consequences happen all the time, and the unintended consequences of these programs are obvious yet they're often dismissed by politicians and officers alike because it's too uncomfortable to think about. If we're unable to even discuss these issues without having the fear mongering hawks derailing the conversation with apocalyptic language about what will happen should we abandon these programs, then we've already lost the battle before it's even begun.

The bolded part runs counter to your belief that the NSA data collection program is not intended to help our efforts in protecting the homeland.

Aside from this, I actually agree with you here. My reservations with the NSA data collection program aren't with whats going on today, but with the "slippery slope" you previously alluded to. I do believe it is a potential slippery slope as you say, I do believe it could be used in a way against its citizens. So I do want more oversight, but anyone who has followed me on this board over the past 8 years knows that I want effective solutions to our problems not these political play to the base "solutions".

Yes, !@#$ ups happen. No one or no agency is perfect. But we're not talking about one or two instances were these programs which were supposed to stop terror have failed. We're talking about the loss of hundreds of lives that these programs promised to prevent and yet, as we've seen, they have literally no hope of doing so. If these systems are not able to prevent terrorist acts, even when we know the names and locations of the suspects, is it not fair to question their purpose if not their effectiveness?

 

We've had this discussion before, I've shown my proof and you've shown your proof of instances where it has failed and succeeded. I do agree with you that it is very voluminous the information they gather and that they haven't been as effective up to date as hoped. Doesn't mean it is "unsuitable" it just means that they need to get better. All the NSA data collection program is, just a tool. We just need to learn how to use that tool more effectively.

 

We're being asked as US citizens to trust that the government will use this data only with the proper oversight and constitutional restrictions while the evidence is undeniable that's never been the case. There is little to no oversight, there are little to no thoughts given to our constitutional rights to due process and privacy. The data is not being stored in a lock box, it is being pilfered and used in various ways each and every day by the very government who's asking us to trust them.

 

These are not speculations, these are proven facts. And they are a grave threat to not just our democracy, but democracies around the world.

 

Until you provide actual proof that backs up this claim, they will remain speculative.

 

 

As stated above (and in many, many, MANY other of my posts) this has never been my argument. But you don't need "everybody" to turn into Lex Luthor. Just a handful.

 

 

Incorrect. I've linked Snowden's docs, Binney's testimony, countless other opinion pieces and videos. They're not a single source and not everyone presumes evil acts are ongoing.

 

 

 

I'd love to hear how Snowden's leaks have caused more harm than good (especially for people who live in truly repressive lands). Truth isn't harmful, it's empowering.

 

I enjoy the discussion Greg, and I share some of the concerns that you have, specifically the slippery slope aspect of it all and the need for more oversight. But as of right now, there is no definitive proof that shows that the government's NSA data collection program is spying on its citizens for purposes outside of its intended goal and that the motive to create such a program was for reasons not related to the defense of the homeland. That sir, is A fact. Doesn't mean that at the end of the day that is the correct position, just that what has been released doesn't prove that case.

 

I think some people lose sight that the NSA data collection program is just a tool. Sort of like the debate about guns, does a gun kill people or do people kill people? Often people want to go after ways of regulating gun control with the hopes of reducing crime (or playing to their political base). And the other side blames it on the people in the hopes of preserving their gun rights. It's not a perfect analogy but I see the NSA data collection as something similar, the collection of data in itself doesn't do anyone harm. It's how that collection of data is to be used where the problems can arise.

 

My view of the government is that often times its very incompetent and that politicians with their advocacies, proposed bills and moments of broadcasted faux rage can make things worse. But by in large, I believe that the overall intent of the government is to try to do some good. We aren't talking about a despot government but a government that has many checks and balances in place and a very curious privately owned media that helps in this regard as well.

 

Its good that the media is shining a light on this, I welcome that. Helps keeps things more honest.

Edited April 23, 2016 by Magox

[Deranged Rhino]

Yale Law School report shows rapid growth of domestic watch lists:

 

A new analysis from the American Civil Liberties Union and a clinic at the Yale Law School is calling attention to the hundreds of thousands of individuals who have been placed on a variety of domestic terror watchlists. The report, “Trapped in a Black Box: Growing Terrorist Watchlisting in Everyday Policing,” details how the ACLU and the clinic at Yale Law School view this expansion of domestic watchlists as a potential threat to privacy and liberty.

The researchers reviewed 13,000 pages of information, including pages released from the Federal Bureau of Investigations via a Freedom of Information Act request and lawsuit by the ACLU and the Civil Liberties and the Civil Liberties and National Security Clinic at the law school. The team also studied information obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the government’s Watchlisting Guidance.

They found that there were less than 10,000 entries in 2003 as part of the Violent Gangs and Terrorist Organizations File, but by 2008 that number grown to 272,198 individuals under a successor category, the Known or Suspected Terrorist File. The report states that the KST list, “is part of a vast system of domestic surveillance of people whom law enforcement labels suspect based on vague and loose criteria, with serious constitutional and privacy implications for those who are included in the file.”

“Such individuals may be stigmatized as potential terrorists and are vulnerable to increased law enforcement scrutiny, often without knowing that they are on a secret watchlist, and without a meaningful way to confirm or contest their inclusion,” the report said.

http://www.activistpost.com/2016/04/new-yale-law-school-report-shows-rapid-growth-of-domestic-watchlists.html

[boyst]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/reliable-source/wp/2016/04/24/widowed-former-senator-remarries-at-90-this-time-to-a-man/

 

 

When they first met on a beach in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., former senator Harris Wofford was 75 and his soon-to-be husband, interior designer Matthew Charlton, was just 25.

Now, 15 years later, the Washington couple plans to tie the knot April 30, exactly three weeks after Wofford’s 90th birthday and 68 years after his first wedding, to Clare Wofford, to whom the former politician was happily married for 48 years before her death.

didn't know where else to put this, but i think it's hilarious.

[Deranged Rhino]

Yeah, this is definitely the wrong thread.

[boyst]

Yeah, this is definitely the wrong thread.

where else can i put it?

[Joe Miner]

where else can i put it?

You should have just tried the tip first.

[Deranged Rhino]

where else can i put it?

Anywhere but the thread on mass surveillance? I'm not sure why you thoug this was the appropriate thread for that story or your slightly homophobic giggle fest.

[Deranged Rhino]

In "waaah" news:

 

Spy chief complains that Snowden sped up encryption proliferation by 7 years.

 

“As a result of the Snowden revelations, the onset of commercial encryption has accelerated by seven years,” James Clapper said during a breakfast for journalists hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

The shortened timeline has had “a profound effect on our ability to collect, particularly against terrorists,” he said.

When pressed by The Intercept to explain his figure, Clapper said it came from the National Security Agency. “The projected growth maturation and installation of commercially available encryption — what they had forecasted for seven years ahead, three years ago, was accelerated to now, because of the revelation of the leaks.”

Asked if that was a good thing, leading to better protection for American consumers from the arms race of hackers constantly trying to penetrate software worldwide, Clapper answered no.

“From our standpoint, it’s not … it’s not a good thing,” he said.

 

https://theintercept.com/2016/04/25/spy-chief-complains-that-edward-snowden-sped-up-spread-of-encryption-by-7-years/

 

This of course is utter and complete bullshite, as evidenced by former NSA/CIA director Hayden's comments on encryption during the Apple v FBI fiasco. Eliminating encryption makes the country less safe, not more. Clapper's words underscore the point that NSA isn't really concerned with protecting Americans as much as they are with keeping the digital spigot open and uninterrupted.

[Deranged Rhino]

Activist Post warning: Censored, Surveilled, Watch Listed And Jailed. Freest Country In The World?

 

In past ages, those who dared to speak out against tyranny—viewed as an act of treason—were blinded, castrated, disfigured, mutilated, rendered mute by having their tongues cut out of their heads, and ultimately crucified.

In the American police state, the price to be paid for speaking truth to power (also increasingly viewed as an act of treason) is surveillance, censorship, jail and ultimately death.

It’s a diabolically ingenious tactic for muzzling, disarming and ultimately eliminating one’s critics or potential adversaries.

However, where many Americans go wrong is in assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or challenging the government’s authority in order to be flagged as a suspicious character, labeled an enemy of the state and locked up like a dangerous criminal.

In fact, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, all you really need to do is use certain trigger words, surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, drive a car, stay at a hotel, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, question government authority, or generally live in the United States.

With the help of automated eyes and ears, a growing arsenal of high-tech software, hardware and techniques, government propaganda urging Americans to turn into spies and snitches, as well as social media and behavior sensing software, government agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports aimed at snaring potential enemies of the state.

It’s the American police state’s take on the dystopian terrors foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick all rolled up into one oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package.

(snip)

The following activities are guaranteed to get you censored, surveilled, eventually placed on a government watch list, possibly detained and potentially killed.

Laugh at your own peril. (snipped, the article has a longer list)

Use harmless trigger words like cloud, pork and pirates: The Department of Homeland Security has an expansive list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats. While you’ll definitely send up an alert for using phrases such as dirty bomb, Jihad and Agro terror, you’re just as likely to get flagged for surveillance if you reference the terms SWAT, lockdown, police, cloud, food poisoning, pork, flu, Subway, smart, delays, cancelled, la familia, pirates, hurricane, forest fire, storm, flood, help, ice, snow, worm, warning or social media.

Attend a political rally: Enacted in the wake of 9/11, the Patriot Act redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience were considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.

Express yourself on social media: The FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies are investing in and relying oncorporate surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to identify potential extremists and predict who might engage in future acts of anti-government behavior. A decorated Marine, 26-year-old Brandon Raub was targeted by the Secret Service because of his Facebook posts, interrogated by government agents about his views on government corruption, arrested with no warning, labeled mentally ill for subscribing to so-called “conspiratorial” views about the government, detained against his will in a psych ward for having “dangerous” opinions, and isolated from his family, friends and attorneys.

Serve in the military: Operation Vigilant Eagle, the brainchild of the Dept. of Homeland Security, calls for surveillance of military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, characterizing them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.” Police agencies are also using Beware, an “early warning” computer system that tips them off to a potential suspect’s inclination to be a troublemaker and assigns individuals a color-coded threat score—green, yellow or red—based on a variety of factors including one’s criminal records, military background, medical history and social media surveillance.

Stare at a police officer: Miami-Dade police slammed the 14-year-old Tremaine McMillian to the ground, putting him in a chokehold and handcuffing him after he allegedly gave them “dehumanizing stares” and walked away from them, which the officers found unacceptable.

http://www.activistpost.com/2016/04/censored-surveilled-watch-listed-and-jailed-freest-country-in-the-world.html

********************

 

And, just to get a rise out of some folks here (I kid), here's the teaser trailer for Stone's upcoming Snowden. Personally, I expected a bit stronger of a teaser trailer from this flick, but we're still 8 months out.

 

[Deranged Rhino]

*************

 

I thought that teaser trailer was kind of weak, I posted the wrong one. Here's the one that dropped today. JGL does a pretty convincing Snowden voice.

 

 

 

[DC Tom]

 

Stare at a police officer: Miami-Dade police slammed the 14-year-old Tremaine McMillian to the ground, putting him in a chokehold and handcuffing him after he allegedly gave them “dehumanizing stares” and walked away from them, which the officers found unacceptable.

 

 

Of course, if the police give someone a "dehumanizing stare" and walk away, it's a hate crime requiring the creation of safe spaces and the resignation of the police chief...

[Deranged Rhino]

Governments can reduce our dignity to that of tagged animals:

(book forward)

 

We now have the largest unchallenged military machine in the history of the world, and it is backed by a political system that is increasingly willing to authorise any use of force in response to practically any justification. In today’s context that justification is terrorism, but not necessarily because our leaders are particularly concerned about terrorism in itself or because they think it is an existential threat to society. They recognise that even if we had a 9/11 attack every year, we would still be losing more people to car accidents and heart disease, and we don’t see the same expenditure of resources to respond to those more significant threats.

What it really comes down to is the reality that we have a political class that feels it must inoculate itself against allegations of weakness. Our politicians are more fearful of the politics of terrorism – of the charge that they do not take terrorism seriously – than they are of the crime itself.

As a result, we have arrived at this unmatched capability, unrestrained by policy. We have become reliant upon what was intended to be the limitation of last resort: the courts. Judges, realising that their decisions are suddenly charged with much greater political importance and impact than was originally intended, have gone to great lengths in the post-9/11 period to avoid reviewing the laws or the operations of the executive in the national security context and setting restrictive precedents that, even if entirely proper, would impose limits on government for decades or more. That means the most powerful institution that humanity has ever witnessed has also become the least restrained. Yet that same institution was never designed to operate in such a manner, having instead been explicitly founded on the principle of checks and balances. Our founding impulse was to say: “Though we are mighty, we are voluntarily restrained.”

When you first go on duty at CIA headquarters, you raise your hand and swear an oath – not to government, not to the agency, not to secrecy. You swear an oath to the constitution. So there is this friction, this emerging contest between the obligations and values that the government asks you to uphold, and the actual activities that you are asked to participate in.

 

These disclosures about the Obama administration’s killing programme reveal that there is a part of the American character that is deeply concerned with the unrestrained, unchecked exercise of power. And there is no greater or clearer manifestation of unchecked power than assuming for yourself the authority to execute an individual outside a battlefield context and without the involvement of any sort of judicial process.

Traditionally, in the context of military affairs, we have always understood that lethal force in battle could not be subjected to ex ante judicial constraints. When armies are shooting at each other, there is no room for a judge on that battlefield. But now the government has decided – without the public’s participation, without our knowledge and consent – that the battlefield is everywhere. Individuals who don’t represent an imminent threat in any meaningful sense of those words are redefined, through the subversion of language, to meet that definition.

Inevitably, that conceptual subversion finds its way home, along with the technology that enables officials to promote comfortable illusions about surgical killing and nonintrusive surveillance. Take, for instance, the holy grail of drone persistence, a capability that the US has been pursuing forever. The goal is to deploy solar-powered drones that can loiter in the air for weeks without coming down. Once you can do that, and you put any typical signals-collection device on the bottom of it to monitor, unblinkingly, the emanations of, for example, the different network addresses of every laptop, phone and iPod, you know not just where a particular device is in what city, but you know what apartment each device lives in, where it goes at any particular time, and by what route.

Once you know the devices, you know their owners. When you start doing this over several cities, you are tracking the movements not just of individuals but of whole populations.

By preying on the modern necessity to stay connected, governments can reduce our dignity to something like that of tagged animals, the primary difference being that we paid for the tags and they are in our pockets. It sounds like fantasist paranoia, but on the technical level it is so trivial to implement that I cannot imagine a future in which it won’t be attempted. It will be limited to the war zones at first, in accordance with our customs, but surveillance technology has a tendency to follow us home.

Here we see the double edge of our uniquely American brand of nationalism. We are raised to be exceptionalists, to think we are the better nation with the manifest destiny to rule. The danger is that some people will actually believe this claim, and some of those will expect the manifestation of our national identity, that is, our government, to comport itself accordingly.

Unrestrained power may be many things, but it is not American.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/03/edward-snowden-assassination-complex-governments-tagged-animals-drone-warfare-whistleblower

[Tiberius]

Governments can reduce our dignity to that of tagged animals:

(book forward)

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/03/edward-snowden-assassination-complex-governments-tagged-animals-drone-warfare-whistleblower

[Deranged Rhino]

 

You're a liar and an asshat. Your opinion is about as worthwhile as the tp I just flushed...

[Deranged Rhino]

The Chilling Effect of Mass Surveillance Quantified:

 

There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. but at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You have to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

George Orwell, 1984

 

(snip)

 

The numbers appear to back up the claims of many journalists and researchers in the wake of the Snowden leaks. Glenn Greenwald, writing for The Intercept, adds the anecdotal evidence back into the mix.

 

The fear that causes self-censorship is well beyond the realm of theory. Ample evidence demonstrates that it’s real – and rational. A study from PEN America writers

found

that 1 in 6 writers had curbed their content out of fear of surveillance and showed that writers are “not only overwhelmingly worried about government surveillance, but are engaging in self-censorship as a result.” Scholars in Europe have been

accused of being terrorist supporters

by virtue of possessing research materials on extremist groups, while British libraries

refuse to house any material on the Taliban

for fear of being prosecuted for material support for terrorism.

Some journalists and researchers can assert definitively there's a chilling effect. Many of those associated with the Snowden leaks have experienced everything from constant security harassment (and detainment) at airports to the government actually stopping by the office anddestroying computers.

For others, it's a gloom that never encroaches past the horizon, but also never fully dissipates. The feeling that something may trigger a detainment at an airport or an unseen investigation is always there. Even in my work for Techdirt, I've second-guessed Google searches that have resulted in warnings about illegal activity (related to posts about various child porn defendants) or accusations I'm a robot (searches for specific document types containing certain wording). I don't feel I'm actively on anyone's radar, but it wouldn't take much for someone to assemble my internet history and use it to build a case against me. Even if it fell apart immediately, I would still have to deal with an arrest, searches/seizures of my electronics, and the possibility of losing my other job.

And what I research isn't that all uncommon, considering the subject matter we cover here. There are plenty of writers, researchers and journalists out there treading into even murkier waters -- some of whom have been second-guessing their own efforts since the Snowden leaks, if not earlier.

It's no longer a case of peering out the blinds and seeing a van sitting at the end of the street, one that's never been there before. The surveillance is largely passive. The NSA gathers a ton of data and sifts through it, ensuring as many people as possible are caught in its nets, even if most of them are released after an algorithmic examination. The FBI and other DOJ agencies partake in this data haul and local law enforcement agencies are increasing their own use of passive, keyword-oriented internet surveillance.

The problem goes much deeper than the NSA and its bulk surveillance. We've seen the FBI build terrorism cases out of nothing and cops raid houses because someone purchased something from a gardening supply store. We've seen people's lives destroyed by bogus espionage cases built on nothing any rational person would consider "evidence" -- except that all rational thought is immediately thrown out the window the moment someone says "national security." It's no surprise that some of those in these fields have just said "!@#$ it" and wandered off into safer areas. Why roll the dice on your own lives/livelihoods? The odds of the government dragging you down may be low, but they're far from nonexistent.

 

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160429/07512934314/chilling-effect-mass-surveillance-quantified.shtml

[Tiberius]

Maybe you should unplug from the net

[Deranged Rhino]

[Tiberius]

Got Minion?

[Deranged Rhino]

[DC Tom]

Got Minion?

 

Really, you !@#$ing nitiwit. If I wanted a minion, I think I could do better than Greg.