An alternative view from a “lackey butt-kissing shit”

[NuclearDem]

53. Well, first of all, let me say this is very well put-together OP

However, I've got issues with the content.

A) There are no clear parameters established for the NSA spying database, and it was erected in secret with very little oversight. I don't take issues with border checkpoints or monitoring financial transactions because they have very clearly-defined purposes and goals: the former to monitor and control immigration and drug trafficking, the latter to monitor illegal financial activity.

Those Border Patrol roadblocks are very fundamentally restricted by City of Indianapolis v. Edmond: such checkpoints have to serve a specific purpose. They cannot fall under "general law enforcement", a standard which should apply to all specialized law enforcement measures.

As you pointed out yourself, the Border Patrol checkpoints aren't shrouded in secrecy; it didn't take a whistleblower to reveal how the checkpoints work, or the fact they exist. The absolute opposite was true of PRISM and most other elements of the surveillance state. Border control policies also face open debate in the state and federal legislatures when it comes time to reform policy and make changes; surveillance programs do not.

B) This is a case where if it's worth monitoring or collecting data, it's convincing enough to a judge to get a warrant. The only other places where calls are monitored and recorded without prior approval are in prisons and classified lines on military installations. They have compelling needs to monitor phone calls: the former to monitor gang activity, the latter to control sensitive information.

Any sane judge would look at the broad scale of the NSA programs and other warrantless surveillance state apparati and deny requests based almost solely on overreaching and no clearly defined purpose.

D) This is the part I found the most egregious. It's eerily reminiscent of the "Americans don't know what poverty is, because people in Nigeria don't enough have cell phones" and "we'll allow them to build mosques here when we can build synagogues in Saudi Arabia" arguments we hear coming from the Right and Fox News. It's holding ourselves to abysmally-low standards to make our problems seem not as bad.

I'll grant you the United States doesn't necessarily have tanks rolling up and down the street to suppress protests (though if you were at Occupy Oakland or NATO Chicago, you wouldn't know it), and we don't have a secret police force knocking down our doors to drag us away and murder our family members (unless you live in one of the neighbors the DEA has a hate-on for). Our methods of controlling our citizens and suppressing dissent are more subtle, which makes them even more sinister.

But since we are bringing up foreign abuses, let's take a look:

Indonesia – too many ways to describe here but to suffice it to say that being labeled a communist after the attempted coup would get you in trouble.

Just like being labeled a communist at any time between 1917 and 1991 in the United States. Communists were jailed for protesting American involvement in WWI, were a popular target for Hoover's corrupt FBI, and were blacklisted in just about every profession. Again, it's more subtle and sinister because the government and media twisted the culture to view communists as the enemy, and it became acceptable at a personal level to distrust or outright hate someone who identified with a far-left ideology.

Malaysia – Not a great deal but they famously ruined one Islamic reformer by arresting him on a trumped up Sodomy charges.

Talk to any Occupy activist who has been held in legal limbo for months after arrest (often on trumped up charges) and subsequently terrified from returning to the streets to protest.

F) For the bajillionth time, just because I vehemently disagree with the President on the surveillance state, chained CPI, and other failures, doesn't mean I don't acknowledge and even praise what he's done right. I do generally support the actual liberal policies he pursues, but I do take just about anything that comes from an elected official with a grain of salt. Past history justifies this.