2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: 15 Fundamental DIFFERENCES Between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton [View all]JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Clinton supports the surveillance program. That's big for me. I do not want Hillary Clinton getting the reports from the surveillance program when citizens, the rest of us, have no way to challenge the decisions that are made about our lives based on those surveillance reports.
If warrants are to be issued, we should have the right to challenge not just the issuance of the warrants and the grounds for those issuances while represented by counsel and in a court of law but there should be a check and balance on interpretations of the information and the conclusions drawn from the data and texts obtained through surveillance.
Hillary is very weak on this issue. Very weak. She has no depth of understanding with regard to why we need checks and balances, strong ones on any internal surveillance program.
Hillary -- just a problem, and a serious one in the making, on this.
The collection of personal information is OK until it is subjected to human evaluation. This second step necessarily involves the application of philosophical and political values to the neutral information that is collected. That is where problems arise. And that is where all warrants and subpoenas need to be requested from and issued by a public court whose decisions provide a public record that citizens can review.
The power of secret surveillance is the marker, the identifying factor in dictatorships. In our society, we need far more extensive supervision of our police including of agencies that have the means and authority to put our lives and actions and words under surveillance.
Hillary Clinton can have an employee who makes sure the bathroom is emptied before she goes in there. Nothing wrong with that. But it seems odd to me that a person who values her privacy to the extent that she waits to go to the bathroom until it is emptied, and has someone stand outside to make sure no one enters until she if finished, does not understand the desire of others to be able to communicate on the phone and internet without the possibility of being recorded or viewed. That is the hubris and abuse of power right there.
So that issue in and of itself is enough to cause me to oppose Hillary.