Saying its "Fighting terrorism" can get you anything

[rcnaylor]

I am so disappointed in what a bunch of short sighted, knee shaking "please-give-me-maximum-protection-at-any-cost" Americans we have become:

http://www.newser.com/story/169282/majo ... pying.html

A founding father said, anyone who trades liberty for security shall have neither. 56% of Americans are too badly educated, too naive or too afraid of their own shadows to deserve to be called freedom loving Americans.

[paulr]

oooo! Politics! On a Lawn website.

They aren't citizens anymore, they are sheeple.

[rcnaylor]

Yeah, just a little venting.

But, we are giving this country away in the name of getting protection.

[bpgreen]

Frontline on PBS covered this recently.

By recently, I mean May of 2007.

[ Post made via Android ]

[rcnaylor]

Ha ha!

It is us citizens that need to be more aware and smarter.

Sadly too many are happy to give the power to the govt to abuse someone else, not realizing someday, it may be us they are abusing. That could never happen here, never happen to me... yeah, right.

[schreibdave]

I am so disappointed in what a bunch of short sighted, knee shaking "please-give-me-maximum-protection-at-any-cost" Americans we have become:

http://www.newser.com/story/169282/majo ... pying.html

A founding father said, anyone who trades liberty for security shall have neither. 56% of Americans are too badly educated, too naive or too afraid of their own shadows to deserve to be called freedom loving Americans.

I am one of the 56% who is badly educated, naive and afraid of my own shadow, which must explain why I generally support the collection of data on phone calls.

I think that we as a country have to decide what balance we want to have between security and privacy. We can have 100% of one and zero of the other or we can meet in the middle somewhere. Personally, I am in favor of meeting in the middle somewhere, but others might reasonably choose 100% privacy or 100% security. I can understand (though not agree) how someone might come down on one extreme or the other. Doesnt make that person dumb or evil - just wrong IMHO.

Where in the middle we choose to be can vary from time to time. Pre 9/11 we were and should have been closer to the 100% privacy extreme. After 9/11 and so long as people are conspiring to kill us, it probably makes sense to move the slider closer to the 100% security extreme. Not all the way to 100% security, but closer in that direction. Once that threat recedes (and it will eventually) our political system allows us to move the slider back in the direction of 100% privacy. To me, that just makes sense.

As for the program of collecting data on phone calls ... I think that makes perfect sense. They are not collecting the content of the call, just the number called, duration, location, etc. Having that data allows the people who are trying to protect us to connect one bad guy to another bad guy and possibly save the lives of innocent Americans. Yes, it also gives the government clues about whether you are cheating on your wife, thinking about changing employers, involved in a political campaign, committing a crime, obsessed with your lawn, etc etc etc. Are you really that afraid of being outed on any of those activities that you are willing to risk the lives of other innocent Americans? Really? Is your right to privacy that much more important than someone elses right to stay alive? That's the trade-off.

FYI - the quote you mangled is from Benjamin Franklin and he said it during a time when the colonists were spying on each other to ferret out those loyal to the King. And do you know what they did with the ones they caught? Very bad things. Once that threat had passed, the pendulum swung back in the other direction.

[GeorgiaDad]

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
~Benjamin Franklin

[HoosierLawnGnome]

Give me liberty or give me death!

I'm tired of our freedoms being chipped way out by the fear mongers.

There is no such thing as safety. I prefer the tempestuous sea of liberty.

[Jmac30]

War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
-- John Stuart Mill

[ Post made via iPhone ]

[HoosierLawnGnome]

Does anyone else recognize the self-defeating belief that by giving up liberty you can protect it?

We need to turn that tables on those that would take liberty from others, and drive them to alter their lifestyle to protect freedom instead of altering our lifestyle to accommodate tyranny in its many forms.

Who needs a foreign, occupying force when we will happily alter our lifestyle towards their vision on our own volition?

[schreibdave]

Does anyone else recognize the self-defeating belief that by giving up liberty you can protect it?

I do. I would never willing surrender my liberty in exchange for safety. But there has to be a balancing act. Does the cop on the beat threaten your liberty when he tells you that you cant park in a no parking zone? Or when he looks inside the vehicle before he tells you to move? Yea, to some degree he does. But not by much.

What we are talking about here is the NSA having a database of what number I called, how long I talked and where I was when I called it. If you knew my dog's name you could log onto my verizon account and get that info any time you wanted. It's on the bill that I leave on my desk when I go home at night. It's in verizon's database for any customer service Rep to pull up and it's available to my village's cops if I get pulled over for talking on the phone while driving and I demand a trial. If anybody from an amateur hacker to the cleaning lady in my office wanted that info, they would have it already. The NSA having that info multiplied by what ... probably 500 million people in the US and abroad doesn't reduce my liberty any more than the cop telling me that I cant park someplace.

[rcnaylor]

Which can do you more damage, 10 guys in a jet very infrequently, or hundreds (thousands?) of government agents with unlimited funds operating 24/7?

[schreibdave]

Which can do you more damage, 10 guys in a jet very infrequently, or hundreds (thousands?) of government agents with unlimited funds operating 24/7?

Different kinds of damage. 10 guys in a jet once with a dirty bomb could make Dallas permanently uninhabitable. What specifically would be the equivalent worst case scenario that would come from the NSA knowing who you called,how long you spoke, and where you were when you made the call?

[pwking]

I'm glad this is out in the open now...at least the public can have the debate. This shouldn't be decided by a President or the NSA bureaucrats and spooks.

[schreibdave]

I'm glad this is out in the open now...at least the public can have the debate. This shouldn't be decided by a President or the NSA bureaucrats and spooks.

That's probably right. The truth is that we are probably just finding out something that the bad guys have known for a long time. I am sure that those guys assume that we are using every technological advantage available to us to track their activities.

I heard former CIA Director Michael Hayden on NPR once explain it this way, he said (and I am paraphrasing) "I can give you 100% security or 100% privacy, but I cant give you both. It is the job of the political establishment to tell the security establishment where in between those two extremes we need to be. It can be 50/50 or 25/75 or 75/25 but it cant be 100/100."

The obvious problem is that we dont have a political establishment that works well enough to have an intelligent, mature debate about this issue and then come to some sort of consensus. We get shrill, politically motivated tantrums from both sides and an intelligent middle ground never develops.

[pwking]

Ya - our options suck! But out of our options, the only group that should decide is the people, through their Reps and Senators. I'm wondering if we will get the information we need to make an informed decision. I'm betting not.

[schreibdave]

Ya - our options suck! But out of our options, the only group that should decide is the people, through their Reps and Senators. I'm wondering if we will get the information we need to make an informed decision. I'm betting not.

I am less worried about having the information and more worried about the capacity of our elected representatives to examine a difficult issue and pick the best of a range of bad options. The qualities that make some one good at that sort of decision making are not the sort of skills that get you elected to congress.

[rcnaylor]

Different kinds of damage. 10 guys in a jet once with a dirty bomb could make Dallas permanently uninhabitable. What specifically would be the equivalent worst case scenario that would come from the NSA knowing who you called,how long you spoke, and where you were when you made the call?

Really? How do you think "terrorist" have ever been capable of getting a radioctive device on a commercial plane even when our security guys were using reasonably limited powers to investigate Americans?

And, frankly, if its a choice between worrying about a handful of radcical kooks occasionally of licking the backside of powerful government agents and officials because we have abdicated our rights and freedoms to them in the name of them protecting us from those boggiemen, I'll take the worry about the occasional extremist. I'll fight them if needed. The power we give away we can't even fight for.