> But while the changes may subject more Americans to warrantless surveillance, the last-minute timing of the announcement actually might have been designed to cut future privacy losses.
Obama has been immensely pro-mass-surveillance through-out his tenure, what could possibly inspire confidence in this drivel?
In upcoming news: Trump cuts back on emission caps for automakers so the next president cannot cut them back further!
Obama was pushing and voting for mass surveillance long before his presidency, as far back as 2006 when he voted to increase the powers and extend the timeline of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing the Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (USA PATRIOT).
I realized we lived in what almost is a one party state after Obama took power and not much changed.
Surveillance expansion continued or even accelerated, as did our endless wars. Obamacare is a Republican proposal even... it's based on Mitt Romney's Massachusetts insurance mandate.
The only shift was in the culture war issues. The Culture War Show is really just a distraction.
Trump won largely by styling himself as an actual alternative. Many people who didn't even like him personally voted for him on the idea that he might be a path out of the conventional corporate statist duopoly.
Personally I doubt it. Look at his picks. I predict that there will be a lot of noise but little actual change. His trolling will be a great distraction.
We've also seen a new season of the Culture War Show begin, featuring a plot involving the epic battle of Red Pill alt-righers vs the social justice warrior league. There will be much arguing on the Internet.
Meanwhile the consolidation of global corporate-state power will continue. Combatants on both sides of the culture war will see an expansion in surveillance and the student loan and mortgage debt indenture system.
Because all politicians serve the same interests: private interests in the military-industrial complex that has the whole of the US in its pockets and pays for their real salaries and retirement, and government interests in increasing their bureaucratic reach and thus their negotiating power with said complex and their comforts and power.
Their beef with Trump is more that he'll do the same things but with no manners and without respect for the 'rules of the game' -- and in that he hasn't kissed enough ass to get to do them so he's a little of a wild-card. Not that he's a crook and they aren't, because they are all crooks.
[ADDITION] And for the suckers on the sidelines, whether on the coasts or "flyover country" (what a dismissive, borderline racist, term, as if those rural people are a subspecies), there's the sideshow of the "cultural wars" (as some other commenter rightly calls them) to keep them occupied with a number of inconsequential crusades pro and against.
Those play into the eternally true fact that people on the rural areas will be a little (a decade or so) slower to adapt to major cultural changes -- so you can exploit the friction politically forever to gather your faithful, dems or reps against the other side.
(Of course those "progressive" city people only take up those issues en masse when they are already settled and tired and safe to identify with (e.g. not many fighting for gay rights in the 70s and 80s, but everybody and their dog do it now when most states have already voted them in, or are about to))
Your comment reminds me of being in school in the eighties, and seeing the group think bullies gossiping and shunning a lesbian couple. Daring to say "leave them alone" was met with "OMG you are a queer too", etc.
Fast forward to today, and the group think bullies will rail "OMG you are a hater too" if you suggest you leave religious people alone who have moral objections to gay marriage (or at least promoting it as identical to heterosexual marriage).
Bullies are always the same type of people, no matter the beliefs.
What absolute bullshit, with the Atlantic just credulously slurping up the spin of a former NSA attorney.
12333 is an executive order! By its very nature Trump can rescind or update it on a whim the moment he's in office. How can you completely uncritically present readers the argument this is a way to set the rules in stone when they're written on the White House Etch-a-Sketch?
And we of course get the "because 9/11" answer: The origin of these changes dates back, honestly, to just after 9/11. Now more than fifteen fucking years later, days before the guy these Dems all said was an unacceptable fascist threat walks into power, and because 9/11 we had to put the Obama stamp of approval on the "bcc: everyone" model of NSA dragnet surveillance sharing. Gotcha!
If I remembered correctly Obama already expanded surveillance powers after Bush laid down the foundation. Now he expanded it even more.
IMO this has nothing to do with Trump taking office, and everything to do with giving the NSA even more power before he (Obama) leaves the White House.
Trump's talked about reducing the number of intelligence agencies and in particular removing staff from the CIA. That's different from reducing their power, though.
> You guys realize that just because you get to walk down to the Blue Bottle with your 8-of-10 girlfriend and her Kate Spade purse to buy $4 scones
This is a form of name-calling, which you did again below ("people who'd rather play WoW and binge watch mindless Netflix shows") and which the site guidelines ask you not to do (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). It lowers the quality of discussion, so please don't do that.
Edit: perhaps it would be helpful to try to articulate how these things lower the quality of discussion. The point isn't that people are bad for breaking the rules. Nor does moderation exist to punish or shame bad behavior. Rather, think of it as more like an optimization algorithm. We're trying to optimize HN for signal/noise ratio, and need everyone to participate.
When you let loose a bunch of insulting images and denunciations as part of an argument, that feels satisfying because you're (temporarily) expelling something unpleasant out of your personal system. Unfortunately, though, now it's circulating in the community system. Among readers who happen to disagree with your view of the topic, some will inevitably feel like the insults and denunciations are directed at them, and react accordingly. The discussion then proceeds along two channels: one about the topic, and one about sending and receiving insults. From an HN point of view, that second channel is noise, not signal. Worse, it tends to overwhelm the first and to keep escalating.
This isn't as bad as a direct personal attack, but it's still destructive of discussion quality. The solution, IMO, is to recognize that we all have these irritants circulating in our system and we're each responsible for processing them instead of dumping them into the commons.
What he needed to be was, a leader. To inspire us to be our better selves, by taking some risks to support our ideals. Like not becoming a police surveillance state, and guaranteeing a trial.
Pragmatic is the name you give to what you end up doing because you haven't the courage of your convictions.
If I understand this correctly, a local policeman can now apply for access to anyone's internet and phone call history. So if a policeman is having a bad day when you bump into him on the street, you're an application away from that policeman uncovering every tiny detail of your private life.
"It can only be for foreign intelligence, or other enumerated purposes. So it’s not that those agencies will just be able to see whatever they want – it’s that they will be able to request, with particular justifications, access to more raw signals intelligence than they had before."
[+] [-] forgotpwtomain|9 years ago|reply
Obama has been immensely pro-mass-surveillance through-out his tenure, what could possibly inspire confidence in this drivel?
In upcoming news: Trump cuts back on emission caps for automakers so the next president cannot cut them back further!
[+] [-] cryptoz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] api|9 years ago|reply
Surveillance expansion continued or even accelerated, as did our endless wars. Obamacare is a Republican proposal even... it's based on Mitt Romney's Massachusetts insurance mandate.
The only shift was in the culture war issues. The Culture War Show is really just a distraction.
Trump won largely by styling himself as an actual alternative. Many people who didn't even like him personally voted for him on the idea that he might be a path out of the conventional corporate statist duopoly.
Personally I doubt it. Look at his picks. I predict that there will be a lot of noise but little actual change. His trolling will be a great distraction.
We've also seen a new season of the Culture War Show begin, featuring a plot involving the epic battle of Red Pill alt-righers vs the social justice warrior league. There will be much arguing on the Internet.
Meanwhile the consolidation of global corporate-state power will continue. Combatants on both sides of the culture war will see an expansion in surveillance and the student loan and mortgage debt indenture system.
[+] [-] wu-ikkyu|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldtea|9 years ago|reply
Their beef with Trump is more that he'll do the same things but with no manners and without respect for the 'rules of the game' -- and in that he hasn't kissed enough ass to get to do them so he's a little of a wild-card. Not that he's a crook and they aren't, because they are all crooks.
[ADDITION] And for the suckers on the sidelines, whether on the coasts or "flyover country" (what a dismissive, borderline racist, term, as if those rural people are a subspecies), there's the sideshow of the "cultural wars" (as some other commenter rightly calls them) to keep them occupied with a number of inconsequential crusades pro and against.
Those play into the eternally true fact that people on the rural areas will be a little (a decade or so) slower to adapt to major cultural changes -- so you can exploit the friction politically forever to gather your faithful, dems or reps against the other side.
(Of course those "progressive" city people only take up those issues en masse when they are already settled and tired and safe to identify with (e.g. not many fighting for gay rights in the 70s and 80s, but everybody and their dog do it now when most states have already voted them in, or are about to))
[+] [-] gedy|9 years ago|reply
Bullies are always the same type of people, no matter the beliefs.
[+] [-] bcuzitsppl8383|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] whelp|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] themgt|9 years ago|reply
12333 is an executive order! By its very nature Trump can rescind or update it on a whim the moment he's in office. How can you completely uncritically present readers the argument this is a way to set the rules in stone when they're written on the White House Etch-a-Sketch?
And we of course get the "because 9/11" answer: The origin of these changes dates back, honestly, to just after 9/11. Now more than fifteen fucking years later, days before the guy these Dems all said was an unacceptable fascist threat walks into power, and because 9/11 we had to put the Obama stamp of approval on the "bcc: everyone" model of NSA dragnet surveillance sharing. Gotcha!
[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3283349-Raw-12333-su...
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mindcrash|9 years ago|reply
IMO this has nothing to do with Trump taking office, and everything to do with giving the NSA even more power before he (Obama) leaves the White House.
[+] [-] Zhenya|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewclunn|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MichaelBurge|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] afterburner|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zhenya|9 years ago|reply
/S
[+] [-] ap22213|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dang|9 years ago|reply
This is a form of name-calling, which you did again below ("people who'd rather play WoW and binge watch mindless Netflix shows") and which the site guidelines ask you not to do (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). It lowers the quality of discussion, so please don't do that.
Edit: perhaps it would be helpful to try to articulate how these things lower the quality of discussion. The point isn't that people are bad for breaking the rules. Nor does moderation exist to punish or shame bad behavior. Rather, think of it as more like an optimization algorithm. We're trying to optimize HN for signal/noise ratio, and need everyone to participate.
When you let loose a bunch of insulting images and denunciations as part of an argument, that feels satisfying because you're (temporarily) expelling something unpleasant out of your personal system. Unfortunately, though, now it's circulating in the community system. Among readers who happen to disagree with your view of the topic, some will inevitably feel like the insults and denunciations are directed at them, and react accordingly. The discussion then proceeds along two channels: one about the topic, and one about sending and receiving insults. From an HN point of view, that second channel is noise, not signal. Worse, it tends to overwhelm the first and to keep escalating.
This isn't as bad as a direct personal attack, but it's still destructive of discussion quality. The solution, IMO, is to recognize that we all have these irritants circulating in our system and we're each responsible for processing them instead of dumping them into the commons.
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|9 years ago|reply
Pragmatic is the name you give to what you end up doing because you haven't the courage of your convictions.
[+] [-] pg_is_a_butt|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ccvannorman|9 years ago|reply
Murica!
[+] [-] gabyar|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fisherjeff|9 years ago|reply
"It can only be for foreign intelligence, or other enumerated purposes. So it’s not that those agencies will just be able to see whatever they want – it’s that they will be able to request, with particular justifications, access to more raw signals intelligence than they had before."
[+] [-] opless|9 years ago|reply