Ivan Kara wrote:
Can you list some instances of the NSA using this program against Americans in an unethical way? The NSA has been eating up all the data they can for decades and there has been how many verified instances of misconduct? Your arguments against their data mining can be word switched to include anything related to law enforcement or security. Until there have been cases of the government using metadata to crack down on Americans I am going to put it in same category I put fear over the census being used to arrest people or gun registries being used to take away my guns. Do you refuse to fill out census forms because the government might arrest you at night? Do you refuse to tell the IRS about any assets you have? Liberal paranoia.
As society becomes more complex and new technology develops the government must expand to meet the world's new challenges. The military's known system are met with millions of attacks a day. So are our banks, water treatment plants, internet businesses, and everything else connected to the world wide web. In order to meet this new threat the government is going to have to increase its involvement in telecommunications. It is an inevitable fact.
Finally, absolutely no American should complain about the NSA's spying of foreign governments. The NSA, CIA, DoD, and every other piece of the government machine owes nothing to to anyone not American. Unless they are members of NATO, they should be spied on. Everyone watches everyone else. We should be proactive in our development of spying technology. Saying otherwise is naive pacifism.
As I'm sure you well know, the casualties of programs like these do not become known until years (and sometimes decades) later. I'm sure the farcical hysterity of the USS Maine and the Gulf of Tonkin and abuses of COINTELPRO and the HUAC and even the PATRIOT ACT were found and discussed as those events were going on, right? I can prove instances within the last 7 years of people on these forums saying the same things to me about the myriad privacy-reducing laws passed after 9/11 attacks. IT happens. It's naive to think these laws are used to stop terrorism more than they are used for domestic enforcement against US citizens taking part in activities wholly unrelated to terrorism. The proven record is these laws are passed in moments of panic and hysteria under the auspices of stopping terrorism or bad guys but used far more against American citizens engaging in dissent than the stated original intent of the law. That's historical fact. I'm not sorry to assume this is more of the same.
Yes, hand-collected data by going door-to-door as the census interviewers do is the same as big data mining. That's like saying dropping a line into a lake is the same thing as casting a net across a lake and trawling the whole thing. It's not the same dude.
I'm complaining about DOMESTIC spying. I thought that was clear. Get your red herring out of here. For what it's worth, we spy on NATO countries and strategic partners too. I don't really have a problem with it except for the fact it's not targeted spying...it's data collection across the board.
Finally, would you really like to debate the actual merit of programs like these?
Dilbert_X wrote:
USA carries out industrial espionage, to benefit US companies, against NATO members.
Woah bro. You like, totally blew my mind with that one. The US promotes it's corporate interests, even against military allies? No way dude!? Any other insight from the wizened esoteric mind of the resident boob?
