Amerika, I disappointedFollow

The flip side straw man being that when those other legal methods are used, some people will inaccurately label them as "warrantless wiretaps of private citizens" and then argue exclusively about how wrong it is to do that. There is a happy medium between "no ability for government to protect its citizens" and "unrestricted surveillance state". Problem is that far too many people are caught up in their "side" of some political argument that they simply label the other guy with one of those extremes and move on from there.


And just to answer angrymonk's question, we decide what the rules are by passing laws via the same process we use to decide all other legal aspects of our society. I think it's a bit of a cop out to make it seem like this is some special case where there's some extra difficult process involved in determining these laws versus all the other ones that we allow ourselves to be bound by. It's not. So saying "who decides <the law>?" really isn't a terribly effective argument IMO. We have laws. We absolutely should hold ourselves and our government to those laws (and of course, argue for legal changes where necessary). I just don't think it's helpful to present vague claims of violation and then demand we all get upset about it. And to me, Snowden's actions were pretty much entirely about tapping into those vague allegations and not much at all about blowing the whistle on actually illegal activity. Most people just don't know the difference though, which is why it tends to work.

Snowden's actions weren't vague allegations, they were highly specific. If you'd read the material, rather than listening or reading to opinion pieces you'd know this.

Many of the issues had to do with oversight, ie, that their wasn't enough, Some programs were either operating in the grey or explicitly unconstitutional, but they could not be rendered as such by the courts nor voted upon by congress due to the nature of their implementation. This led to misappropriating of intelligence resources, and virtually no oversight over the costs of these program by the people who's job it is to spend your tax dollars wisely. Granted, it's not a burdensome percentage of the federal budget, but I'd have thought your affinity towards fiscal conservatism might be be piqued.

Roughly about the time he said he'd stop posting if you fucks would stop responding to him.

He's never said he'd stop posting if people stopped responding, so not the same at all.

And I've responded to him maybe 5 times in the last year, so I'm not the fuck you should be after.

I'm not certain that the horrible arguments posited by gbaji and alma are worse than arguing about who fed the beast. Make interesting topics and the chaff will fall away.

That's your opinion and you're entitled to be wrong.

Probably because what he was championing was the privacy right of citizens. I feel like this argument is circular, but with a many bizarre on-ramps.

Careful, somebody might see that as justification to let varus back in!

I like how you smoothly switch topics. Care to add abortion and gun control into the mix?

Who makes the law is irrelevant when the President decides how the laws are enforced.

Have you not heard, he is the law. L'État, c'est moi!

Edited, Apr 28th 2015 8:22pm by angrymnk