Big Brother is Watching You

[Stinger]

They cut through fencing 'clearly' marked with "No Trespassing" signs that 'clearly' stated they would be trespassing on government property where they had no business being, and would be prosecuted if they disobeyed the 'clearly' posted sign.

Yeah, and the posted sign stated a maximum of one year in jail and a $100,000 fine.

You should have read the article.

[Stinger]

In my former job, That's still funny, I don't care who you are. it was common for the prosecution to tack on as many offemses as possible providing they related to why they were arrested.

Yeah, it's common for police to throw everything in the book on an application for a warrant or when arresting a suspect.

Then, it's standard procedure for the prosecutor to throw out the bullshit. However, in this case, the prosecutor amped up the BS.

Surprised that an astute lawman wannabe such as yourself was unaware of that.

[O Really]

US govt secretly collecting data on millions of Verizon users: Report

Bastards.

Not "new" and not "news."
You can complain, righteously. Anyone who voted for or supports PATRIOT, not so much.

[O Really]

Or voted for or supports Obama?

May be...but it's really hard to pull that camel's nose back out from under the tent, or stuff the genie back into the bottle, or regain virginity or stop falling until you've hit the ground or whatever lame cliche you like. You'd probably be surprised (or not) at what NSA has been up to for decades.

[Ombudsman]

Or voted for or supports Obama?

May be...but it's really hard to pull that camel's nose back out from under the tent, or stuff the genie back into the bottle, or regain virginity or stop falling until you've hit the ground or whatever lame cliche you like. You'd probably be surprised (or not) at what NSA has been up to for decades.

You mean the "No Such Agency"?

[O Really]

You mean the "No Such Agency"?

Yep - that's the one. I have some personal experience with "No Such Agency."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Sta ... ty_Service

[neoplacebo]

Or voted for or supports Obama?

May be...but it's really hard to pull that camel's nose back out from under the tent, or stuff the genie back into the bottle, or regain virginity or stop falling until you've hit the ground or whatever lame cliche you like. You'd probably be surprised (or not) at what NSA has been up to for decades.

And you can't squeeze toothpaste back into the tube....the wingnuts don't know how to react to this revelation; Lindsay Graham is all for it (and he says he's a Verizon customer) but Rand calls it an outrageous assault on the Constitution. Democrats fall on both sides of it as well. The NSA has been it's own entity lo these long years; it's very probable that the sitting president is not informed of, or even aware of, what the NSA, CIA, DIA, etc do on a daily basis. I'd bet that the Osama mission was not made known to the president until a day or two before they carried it out, and only then to ask his approval (I don't think they would have even gone to ask Dubya about Osama since Dubya already gave the "wanted: dead or alive" mandate). The CIA would have just called Dubya after the mission was over and told him then.

[O Really]

Of course, ODS cons will be claiming their current outrage is nonpartisan and that they've always supported Americans' privacy and opposed intrusive and over-broad government spying. They're lying.

I think a more relevant demand would be to try to get a more full disclosure of what is collected, why, and how is it used before demanding an immediate end to the "over-broad government spying" that we know nothing about other than from places such as the Guardian. Not that anybody's actually going to disclose much, but demanding an end to something blind seems a bit pointless.

[neoplacebo]

Vrede is right about the feigned outrage some of the cons are professing; if I'm not mistaken, no sitting Republican member of Congress has voted against the Patriot Act (or any of its numerous extensions and additions), which, along with the FISA court, enables this effort. sigh.

[bannination]

Indeed, the very people that argued that we NEEDED the patriot act.

Det. Thorn:
You silly Americans!!!!!!!!!
So now tell me why would you Trust the Government? So I wonder WHO ordered this, I guess if the POTUS says he will get to the bottom of this it will go the way of Benghazi.
This is getting insane. Privacy is no more!

Soupy:
Is anybody really surprised by this? History tells us all Leftists regimes are paranoid and do this stuff as normal activities. Unfortunately, too many of our citizens cannot recognize the threat to freedom this type activity causes.

Det. Thorn:
Well when you start out with the 47% you only need a few more folk and they think it's just dandy. Sad isn't how people sell their soul just for an Obama Phone, Food stamps, Section 8 housing and so on.

Det. Thorn:
I don't know when this all started but the OBlamer News Networks are Blaming Bush. Funny how they forget Oblamer is the President and if he didn't like it he could have repealed it with the majority in both housed for four years.

[Stinger]

Det. Thorn:
Well when you start out with the 47% you only need a few more folk and they think it's just dandy. Sad isn't how people sell their soul just for an Obama Phone, Food stamps, Section 8 housing and so on.

That idiot. The Obama-phone bullshit's been explained to him numerous times, but he's just too stupid and full of it for reality to stick.

Fox has mentioned this TWICE while drumming incessantly on about Susan Rice and Benghazi. In their defense, I don't think the mainstream, more fairly balanced news services have done any better.

[O Really]

With apologies to my friends at ACLU and to Vrede, I find all the hand-wringing over the phone records to be laughable. It's not like the records were very confidential to start with. Verizon has them. Verizon, formerly part of the despised "Ma Bell" and now owned by Dow Jones. If you want to believe they'll act in the interest of the customers with regard to the information the collect and use, fine - be my guest. And then there's Google, that knows not only what you look for online, but where you live, how much you paid for it, whether you paid your taxes on it, where you had dinner last night and possibly with whom; American Express that knows what you ordered and whether you're a cheap tipper; CVS that knows all your medications and usually what you're being treated for and whether you ordered up any enhancing drugs for your night out; Amazon that knows what you read or browse through; Ingles that knows whether you shop mostly in the chip aisle or the produce aisle and what kind and how much beer you drink; and yada infinitim. Unless you're living totally off the grid, practically every aspect of your life is in a database held by some corporation or corporations that you probably don't even know the name of, or have any idea what they do with those records.

But let's scream about the phone records Neo is right. The phone records don't matter. It's PATRIOT that we should all be out with the pitchforks and torches over. Think we could get a little help from the right for that?

[Stinger]

...the 47%...

Still too stupid to understand that it always had to include all Medicare recipients, soldiers, cops and former cops, many veterans, and all retirees like "Reality", that the false claim contributed greatly to the GOP's loss, and that non-federal income taxpaying citizens still pay a greater proportion of their income in total taxes than the uber-rich he sucks up to do.

Too stupid to realize that his dufusgänger, Butt Ugly, is part of that 47%. What would be hilarious would be a Butt Ugly rant about the 47%.

[O Really]

Without PATRIOT, the spying wouldn't be much of an issue. To grossly oversimplify, the big civil rights danger in PATRIOT isn't about what information they can collect, but about how they can take away your rights by calling you a "terrorist." Without PATRIOT, they probably couldn't have gotten the records without probable cause, individual records would be subject to search and seizure limitations, but mainly, even if they found something they thought made you a criminal, they'd have to properly indict and prove it in a real court of law. With PATRIOT, once they call you a terrorist, you're no longer in Kansas anymore, Toto. Might as well be in Iran.

[bannination]

Verizon, Dow Jones, Google, American Express, CVS, Amazon, Ingles and yada infinitim certainly have the ability to mess with us, but they don't have the incentive to do so in the ways that government does and they don't have the ultimate power to do so in the ways that government does. Plus, they face the market restraint of consumers going elsewhere if they get caught going too far.

I'm for dumping PATRIOT, too, and we will not get a little help from the right for that other than from a few libertarians.

Except when those same companies are practically monopolies. There should be more consumer protections for privacy. Again though, I think we'll get little help from the cons.

[Stinger]

Too stupid to realize that his dufusgänger, Butt Ugly, is part of that 47%. What would be hilarious would be a Butt Ugly rant about the 47%.

He did, I made fun of him for it and others (including you?) did, too. That's the kind of repeated stupidity that led to Big Ugly/"Reality" running away to the nursemaid forum.

Probably, but it only takes wingnuts about fifteen seconds after exposure to reality to start re-regurgitating that same BS that just got debunked. Some of them not even that long.

I have a lifelong friend that I argue with on Facebook. He's an unhinged Obama-hater. Went through the usual wingnut BS of blaming the economic collapse on the Democrats taking control of Congress (that's an unusual occurrence -- usually wingnuts just blame it on Obama). I explained how the housing bubble began to collapse before the Democrats were sworn in in January 2007.

He did a good job for a wingnut. He found some article that said the Community Reinvestment Act caused the housing bubble to burst. I showed him some articles showing how most of the lenders involved weren't regulated under the CRA, and 90% of the bad loans weren't CRA loans.

Two days later, he's claiming again that the Democrats caused the recession.

That's just the way they roll.

[Stinger]

Again though, I think we'll get little help from the cons.

They're completely down with it.

And right after vehemently defending the Patriot Act, they will, on some other issue, trot out some version of Ben Franklin's, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Too bad irony isn't a valuable raw material.

[bannination]

Why this is coming out now is very interesting actually. Most of us has known this has been going on for a long time.

I'm actually kind of wondering if this isn't Obama's plan to have it abolished. He's done sneaky stuff like this before.

Either way, I'll be happy if the cons finally come over to ours and the ACLU's side.

[JTA]

More revelations:

U.S. intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program

The key question is was the data anonymous with no link to personal identities, like when iTunes makes you sign up anonymously for their shitty iTunes store with your credit card number.

[Stinger]

Either way, I'll be happy if the cons finally come over to ours and the ACLU's side.

They won't. The shepherds (Rush, Fox News, et al.) aren't leading their little gullible sheep in that direction. They're all too busy babbling about Benghazi and tyranny and the IRS.