Time for me to say goodbye to DU. Wish you all well It isn't for me anymore /nt

[Zorra]

159. Maybe if the government put forth a clear, sincere, comprehensive, and acceptable explanation

for its actions, this what you appear to consider wild unsourced speculation by mobs of unreasonable progressives might stop.

Most liberals are intelligent, perceptive, and many are educated, and have knowledge of history, and are aware that highly invasive spying is the hallmark of authoritarian, totalitarian regimes. Often very nasty, aggressive fascist regimes.

Liberals may have a tendency to get over emotional when they are told by those purporting to be Democrats

"You won't have anything to worry about if you have nothing to hide".

Who are the irrational ones in this scenario? I lost my innocence and naivete regarding the nobility and trustworthiness of governement from many hard lessons learned beginning in the Vietnam War era and through to the present. As did many of the other liberals here, who are as concerned as I am about the very real danger of unfettered information gathering by this government.

We are alarmed at the apparent cluelessness of the DU contingent who support unlimited spying on us in our public lives and our daily lives. It has caused many of us to consider that we are dealing with a group of conservative personalities who do not have the intellectual and perceptual abilities to understand, or care about, unrestricted spying on our population. They are letting the wolves in our door. I personally consider them as much threat to my freedom to pursue of life, liberty and happiness as I do the GOP.

After suffering through 8 horrifying, repressive years of the quasi-fascist Bush/PNAC regime, liberals may have a tendency to get over emotional when their privacy is seriously invaded by their government, especially after no effort at a serious, credible explanation for this and other related occurrences has been attempted by representatives of the government.

Well, except for this one:

Transcript Here

I don’t understand why anyone would think that it’s somehow okay for the Department of Defense to get every single one of our call records regardless of who we are, regardless of whether we are innocent or guilty of anything. I venture to say that there are Americans who have never even had a parking ticket; yet the Defense Department is pulling their call records as well. Eventually, we will find out whether the NSA’s own document is misleading and whether the NSA is not pulling email accounts and emails and photos and VoIP calls on people who are Americans, because, if you read this document, it sure looks like they are.

This is not the first time that we have had this problem. This is not the first time that the government has entered into surveillance on people without probable cause. Many of us remember that there was FBI surveillance of Martin Luther King, including the wiretapping and bugging of his personal conversations. I thought, perhaps naively, that we had moved beyond that. In some sense, we have moved beyond that because now they’re doing it to everyone. In fact, one could well say that we are reaching the point at which Uncle Sam is Big Brother.

I submit to you that this program, although the proponents picked it as American as ‘‘apple spy,’’ is an anti-American program. We are not North Koreans. We don’t live in Nazi Germany. We are Americans and we are human beings, and we deserve to have our privacy respected. I have no way to call my mother except to employ the services of Verizon or AT&T or some other telephone company. I’m not going to string two cups between my house and her house 70 miles away. That doesn’t mean that it’s okay with me for the government—and specifically the Department of Defense—to be getting information about every telephone call I make to her. It’s not okay with me.

I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, it’s probably not okay with you, and I know that, for most of the people who are listening to me.

It wasn't OK when the Bush fascists were doing it, and it's not OK now.