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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#56351: Jun 11th 2013 at 7:27:11 AM

Here's the thing: courts and lawmakers have for a long time maintained distinctions between physical intrusion and electronic intrusion, between your possessions and information about you, between things you own that are held by you and things you own that are held by others. Whether these distinctions are valid is a philosophical and legal conundrum that we likely won't solve in an obscure forum thread.

And again, it's somewhat hypocritical that we won't hold governments and businesses to the same standards, or at least compatible standards. The same people who rush to their bunkers in Montana at the first sign that Big Brother has access to their emails are often only too happy to defend the right of corporations to store your entire life history in their marketing databases, and vice versa.

Frankly, we live in an age of information. There is no getting around that: no stuffing the genie back in the bottle, no closing Pandora's box. The question is: do you own the information about you, or do the people who collect it own it? Right now, individuals are losing that battle. Making the conversation about NSA surveillance is a deliberate distraction tactic. It's a shiny, dangly toy designed to stir up outrage for political gain.

If we're really serious about information privacy, what we should be pushing for is a universal, consumer-friendly information privacy law. The reason we aren't is that lawmakers don't want to, because it would jeopardize the ability of their sugar daddy corporate interests to make vast sums of money from your data.

The NSA thing is only scary because we have a reflexive fear of dark-suited, sunglass-wearing men dragging people from their homes at night. Do you know how many people get affected by identity theft each year? It's thousands of times more than the number of political prisoners taken by the U.S. government.

edited 11th Jun '13 7:30:23 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Barkey Since: Feb, 2010 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
#56352: Jun 11th 2013 at 7:32:33 AM

^

The difference with corporations is that you are often playing in their backyard. If you're making an account on a businesses website, then I can see loose reasons for why they have it, it's transiting through their space.

However, what would be ethical is if they treated things like that the way the military treats "PII"(Personally Identifiable Information). There is a whole suite of rules on how you're supposed to handle other peoples information. Regulations on how to properly secure it when it is unattended, not to have it in plain view, not to throw documents with PII on them in the trash, et cetera. That's essentially what we need, PII regulations of a sort like that for commercial businesses, information protection standards that they are legally forced to uphold, and new legal infrastructure to keep commercial businesses from just handing it all to the government without a warrant.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Greenmantle V from Greater Wessex, Britannia Since: Feb, 2010 Relationship Status: Hiding
V
#56354: Jun 11th 2013 at 7:35:12 AM

Something like, or better than, Data Protection Act 1998?

This being Europe, there is also a regulator: In the UK it is the Information Commissioner's Office.

edited 11th Jun '13 7:36:55 AM by Greenmantle

Keep Rolling On
Barkey Since: Feb, 2010 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
#56355: Jun 11th 2013 at 7:44:35 AM

^

The "Consent" part is the problem here.

Lets put it this way, it needs to be stone-cold illegal for companies to sell or share your information without individual consent. You should be able to consent to them using your information within the company, but not selling it or sharing it with other companies/government.

Euodiachloris Since: Oct, 2010
#56356: Jun 11th 2013 at 8:30:55 AM

[up]It is. If you've not ticked the little box that actively lets them share with other companies, they can't. And, the watchdogs came down hard on automatically ticked boxes a few years ago (online) — and the minute, impossible-to-see disclaimers tucked somewhere at the bottom for the paper-version. tongue

Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#56357: Jun 11th 2013 at 8:54:01 AM

So that's why the auto ticked ones are now only for "would you like to revive our spam emails", though really, who reads the teams and conditions? I did it once when updating my iPad's IOS and discovered that you're not allowed to use it to run a nuclear reactor. But that's it.

edited 11th Jun '13 8:54:45 AM by Silasw

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
SgtRicko Since: Jul, 2009
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#56359: Jun 11th 2013 at 9:06:13 AM

It was already posted in another thread, which has been paralleling this one for a few pages. /shrug

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
NativeJovian Jupiterian Local from Orlando, FL Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
Jupiterian Local
#56360: Jun 11th 2013 at 11:18:17 AM

I don't really have much else to add that Fighteer didn't already say. If you want to pass a comprehensive information-age privacy law that forbids the sort of thing that the NSA (and Google, and Apple, and Microsoft, et all) are doing, then that's fine. I'd probably even support it. But as-is, the NSA hasn't done anything illegal, and I don't think they're doing anything wrong in the moral sense either. Certainly the system as it is now has potential for abuse, which is a concern, but I dislike the slippery slope argument implied there.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
GlennMagusHarvey Since: Jan, 2001
#56361: Jun 11th 2013 at 11:23:20 AM

I find the slippery slope argument applied all over the damn place when it comes to political issues (everything from broad-base data collection -> wiretapping -> Big Brother -> 1984, to gay marriage -> polygamy -> bestiality, to ammunition clip size regulations -> government takes away everyone's guns -> totalitarianism -> Stalinist dictatorship).

Is there a better way of assessing what exactly are:

  1. the probabilities of such slippery slopes actually happening in real life
  2. the reasons why such slippery slopes don't happen in real life

I think that #2, the reason, is often not "because there are people like us holding the line fighting against it", but activists who oppose a certain issue generally like to think it is, because it gives them a cause to fight for.

edited 11th Jun '13 11:24:47 AM by GlennMagusHarvey

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#56362: Jun 11th 2013 at 11:24:14 AM

In the end, it comes down to votes and the fact that the people whom we elect to govern are, in aggregate, not terrible monsters bent on controlling everyone. That, of course, doesn't mean that they always make good decisions, or have good influences.

Protests over controversial actions rarely carry enough weight to get major policy change, because they are transient by their very nature.

edited 11th Jun '13 11:25:29 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
GlennMagusHarvey Since: Jan, 2001
#56363: Jun 11th 2013 at 11:26:06 AM

not terrible monsters bent on controlling everyone

You're kidding, right? You mean that the people who run the government aren't brainwashed agents of foreign or alien powers, but are actually people like us?

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
GlennMagusHarvey Since: Jan, 2001
#56365: Jun 11th 2013 at 11:44:00 AM

There ought to be an Onion article on "Conspiracy theorist 'absolutely shocked' to discover that government is actually staffed by ordinary citizens like his neighbors".

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#56366: Jun 11th 2013 at 11:47:05 AM

Well, there's also the adage that stupid and/or apathetic people cause far more harm, in aggregate, than malicious people. Maybe Congress would actually function more efficiently with cackling villains at the helm; at least then maybe we could get The Trains Run on Time.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Pykrete NOT THE BEES from Viridian Forest Since: Sep, 2009
NOT THE BEES
#56367: Jun 11th 2013 at 12:26:46 PM

I wouldn't call them ordinary citizens by any stretch. We've got one party staffed largely by doctorate lawyers, and the other by millionaire business executives.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Meklar from Milky Way Since: Dec, 2012 Relationship Status: RelationshipOutOfBoundsException: 1
#56369: Jun 11th 2013 at 12:51:16 PM

And a lot of people disagree. But you can't just up and toss the rules out the window every time you disagree with them, or else there's no point in having them in the first place.
You also can't just go on blindly following them when they're having bad effects for bad reasons and generally screwing over the people that the government was originally supposed to be protecting.

For that matter, speaking of following the rules and doing things by the book, I would have thought that if the NSA authorities were actually interested in that (rather than furthering their own orwellian interests), they could at least get warrants for carrying out their espionage. You could argue that having Congress and/or some court tell them the warrantless data collection is okay means they're still technically following the rules, but I would say that's tantamount to changing the rules to suit them. Snowden did not have that ability. It's not only an asymmetrical scenario, it's one where the badguys have the advantage.

How in God's name does the average Congressman — or even the average member of the intelligence or security committees — benefit from the existence of Prism on a personal level?
A great deal of the power and wealth of the powerful, wealthy people who tend to populate Congress and the upper levels of intelligence agencies is generated by systems that screw over the general public. A surveillance state is most definitely something suitable for protecting and extending these systems. And these people are totally aware of that, even if they may still be convinced on some level that the systems and the surveillance state are morally justified.

Do you know how many people get affected by identity theft each year? It's thousands of times more than the number of political prisoners taken by the U.S. government.
Well, considering how often the american government complains about people hacking their computers, I'm sure putting all our personal private data onto said government computers is a really good way to protect against identity theft...

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NativeJovian Jupiterian Local from Orlando, FL Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
Jupiterian Local
#56371: Jun 11th 2013 at 2:15:11 PM

You also can't just go on blindly following them when they're having bad effects for bad reasons and generally screwing over the people that the government was originally supposed to be protecting.
True, but I don't think Prism is doing any of that.

they could at least get warrants for carrying out their espionage. You could argue that having Congress and/or some court tell them the warrantless data collection is okay means they're still technically following the rules, but I would say that's tantamount to changing the rules to suit them.
And I would say that that interpretation is sour grapes because you don't agree with what they're doing. When the rules say "you need court permission", and they get court permission, you can't call them out for not following the rules.

That doesn't mean that you have to like what they're doing, but the appropriate response is "we need to make this against the rules", not "they're bad and terrible people for breaking rules that don't exist but I think should".

A great deal of the power and wealth of the powerful, wealthy people who tend to populate Congress and the upper levels of intelligence agencies is generated by systems that screw over the general public. A surveillance state is most definitely something suitable for protecting and extending these systems. And these people are totally aware of that, even if they may still be convinced on some level that the systems and the surveillance state are morally justified.
That doesn't even approach answering the question. I asked a specific, concrete thing: how does the existence of Prism and similar programs benefit Congressmen on an individual, personal level. You answered "because they're bad and bad programs help bad people". That is not a legitimate response.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
DeviantBraeburn Wandering Jew from Dysfunctional California Since: Aug, 2012
Wandering Jew
#56372: Jun 11th 2013 at 2:25:09 PM

Representative Ted Poe (R-Texas) says NSA spying shows 'government spooks are drunk on power'

Everything is Possible. But some things are more Probable than others. JEBAGEDDON 2016
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#56373: Jun 11th 2013 at 2:26:55 PM

Did Poe vote for PATRIOT or any of the other bills authorizing extraordinary government powers? If so, he's a hypocrite.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#56374: Jun 11th 2013 at 2:29:20 PM

He wasn't in Congress for PATRIOT, but yeah he voted in favour of the extension of it.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#56375: Jun 11th 2013 at 2:30:26 PM

Right. So fuck him and his opinions. (For the record, I would apply the same standard to any Democrat who voted for PATRIOT.)

edited 11th Jun '13 2:37:20 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

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