And here you are behaving this way, right on cue as well.

ROFL smileys and guffawing at abuse of power, particularly ironic after treestar's little lecture above. How embarrassing for the smear machine, but it's the level of engagement we have learned to expect.

Post by Luminous Animal:

Automated Mass Surveillance is Unconstitutional, EFF Explains in Jewel v. NSA
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025716826#post11

Today EFF filed our latest brief in Jewel v. NSA, our longstanding case on behalf of AT&T customers aimed at ending the NSA’s dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans’ communications. The brief specifically argues that the Fourth Amendment is violated when the government taps into the Internet backbone at places like the AT&T facility on Folsom Street in San Francisco.

As it happens, the filing coincides with the theatrical release of Laura Poitras’ new documentary, Citizenfour. The Jewel complaint was filed in 2008, and there’s a scene early in the film that shows the long road that case has taken. In footage shot in 2011, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit hears argument in Jewel, and an attorney from the Department of Justice tries to convince a skeptical court that it should simply decide not to decide the case, leaving it to the other branches of government.

But the court did not agree to step aside. EFF prevailed on the issue, and the case continued, albeit very slowly. Now, years later, Poitras’ film underscores just how much the conversation around mass surveillance has changed. Americans are overwhelmingly concerned with government monitoring of their communications, and we hope to (finally) have a constitutional ruling in Jewel soon. (And another in Smith v. Obama, and still another in First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA.)

Even so, the government continues to try to avoid a decision that any of its various means of mass surveillance is unconstitutional. The current procedural context is this: in July, EFF filed a partial motion for summary judgment requesting that the court rely on uncontested evidence that the NSA taps into the Internet backbone and collects and searches ordinary Americans’ communication to rule that the government is violating the Fourth Amendment. The technology at issue, which the government calls “upstream,” is illustrated here.

Under this surveillance, the government makes a full copy of everything that travels through key Internet backbone locations, like AT&T’s peering links. The government says that it then does some rudimentary filtering and searches through the filtered copies, looking for specific “selectors,” like email addresses.

The government filed its opposition to our motion in September. In our reply, we note that the government is effectively trying to sidestep the Fourth Amendment for everything that travels over the Internet. We explain:


There's more here:https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/10/automated-mass-surveillance-unconstitutional-eff-explains-jewel-v-nsa

Right on cue.

YOU CALLED ME A DOG!!!1
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5716195

How predictable the talking points in defense of mass surveillance are...

+100000 Of course you are correct that the word, "authoritarian" is accurate here,

and necessary. Mass surveillance by governments of their own citizens is authoritarian by definition. So are propaganda and smear campaigns on behalf of it.

Authoritarians have been trying to reclassify that inconvenient descriptor as an epithet for some time now:

'YOU....YOU CALLED ME A DOG!!!!11!!1'
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3171893

I've seen this tactic in several posts lately ... Authoritarians don't like being called what they are, and since they can't yet prohibit words and restrict others to an approved Newspeak Dictionary, they settle for flailing at and attempting to discredit the individual words they dislike.

...When someone uses an accurate word to describe what you are doing or advocating, just put the word in quotation marks, add some exclamation points, and try to neutralize it by pretending it's an epithet instead of an accurate descriptor. We have all seen it here 1,000 times. A person's politics are described as Third Way, and he or she rears up in indignation, expressing shock at the "namecalling."

Well, no. "Third Way" means something. It is not an epithet, but rather descriptive shorthand for a clear and specific set of political values and policies. You can see what "Third Way" means by going to the Third Way website, where the goals and policies - liberal on the social issues unimportant to the One Percent but corporate and authoritarian on virtually everything else - are clearly delineated.

Those who embrace the policies don't want to admit it, so they try to make the term an epithet...something to be banned by a jury so that it can't be accurately applied to them on the forums. And now we are hearing the same sort of defensive attempts to discredit the word when authoritarianism is called "authoritarianism."

Of course "authoritarian" means something. Brazen defense of a government's spying on its own citizens is indisputably authoritarian.

I always picture an indignant poodle rearing up in outrage and exclaiming, "What?! You called me a DOG?!"

Orwell was right. Defending against authoritarianism *requires* defending language, because authoritarians will try to twist, discredit, or take away the words that are necessary for us to describe what is being done to us.

Good question. I have asked this, too.

Isn't it.

Corporate Republicans NEED to be batshit crazy,

so that corporate Democrats can continue to move rightward.

That's the beauty for the One Percent of owning both parties.

With the Republican Party, you get all this PLUS mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds!

Mass spying on Americans? Both parties support it.
Handing the internet to corporations? Both parties support it.
Austerity for the masses? Both parties support it.
Cutting social safety nets? Both parties support it.
Corporatists in the cabinet? Both parties support it.
Tolling our interstate highways? Both parties support it.
Corporate education policy? Both parties support it.
Bank bailouts? Both parties support it.
Ignoring the trillions stashed overseas? Both parties support it.
Trans-Pacific Job/Wage Killing Secret Agreement? Both parties support it.
TISA corporate overlord agreement? Both parties support it.
Drilling and fracking? Both parties support it.
Wars on medical marijuana instead of corrupt banks? Both parties support it.
Deregulation of the food industry? Both parties support it.
GMO's? Both parties support it.
Privatization of the TVA? Both parties support it.
Immunity for telecoms? Both parties support it.
"Looking forward" and letting war criminals off the hook? Both parties support it.
Deciding torturers are patriots? Both parties support it.
Militarized police and assaults on protesters? Both parties support it.
Indefinite detention? Both parties support it.
Drone wars and kill lists? Both parties support it.
Targeting of journalists and whistleblowers? Both parties support it.
Private prisons replacing public prisons? Both parties support it.
Unions? Both parties view them with contempt.
Trillion dollar increase in nuclear weapons. Both parties support it.
New war in Iraq. Both parties support it.
New war in Syria. Both parties support it.
Carpet bombing of captive population in Gaza. Both parties support it.

One-third of Americans a paycheck away from homelessness.

Free? I don't think so.

Our "Justice" Department

K&R Here's nashville_brook's perfect summary

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5688165
37. eggsactly -- the hope is to keep us in our lower brain functions - limbic systems rather than cerebral cortex.

One nation, manipulated by sociopaths who treat us like goddamned fools.

New cuts in food stamps freshly signed from the president's desk!