

Nearly 50,000 People Ask Why The Government Is Seizing Their Digital Files - DiabloD3
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120629/14041319538/nearly-50000-people-ask-why-government-is-seizing-their-digital-files.shtml

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robomartin
What a strange year. Maybe I am completely off-base --and I am more than
willing to accept that I could be reading it completely wrong. I can't help
but feel that our (USA) government is turning a corner towards the "dark
side". I am not just talking about this administration. This has been a
disaster in the making for probably fifty years.

The Megaupload case is one example: Unceremoniously grab people's property (in
the form of their data) and offer no mechanism to get it back. Furthermore,
look through and examine all said data without a search warrant. Everyone is
assumed to be a criminal without any proof or due process.

Yes, these were MU servers and, yes, they probably had a bunch of pirated
stuff on there. Yet, I am sure that lots and lots of people had legitimate
files and data of their own on MU. Today these people have to face the very
real prospect of loosing it forever thanks to our now-totalitarian government.

Then there's the whole healthcare business. Don't get me wrong, I want
everyone to have access to healthcare --not just here, all over the world. We
can't evolve as a society when such a fundamental need is not accessible to
millions of people.

That said, the way we've done it is, well, nothing short of disgusting and,
yes, scary. I don't know about you, but I didn't sign-up for my
representatives to vote and pass laws without reading them. And that is
certainly true of something this complex. Something that affects so many
people for potentially more than one generation. In my book something this
important ought to have a very public extended debate period in order to
ensure that everyone involved has a chance to understand, contribute and know
what we are walking into.

This week's Supreme Court decision is also scary. Now, I'll admit that, as an
engineer, I am not well versed on the finer points of constitutional law.

This is what I understood: The Federal Government has the option to apply a
tax penalty to every citizen if they don't behave in a certain way. And the
Supreme Court just said that this is perfectly legal per the US Constitution.

If I am correct in my interpretation of the precedent they just set, this is
truly a scary moment in history.

Now, let's take a moment and leave the healthcare law out of the discussion.
Some emotionally connect with the "for" and "against" camps. I just want to
look at this issue of tax-if-you-don't-do-as-you-are-told issue.

This is scary and dangerous and not one US Citizen should tolerate it. If it
requires a constitutional amendment to fix, we probably need to fast-track in
that direction.

Why?

Per this ruling the Federal government could penalize you with a tax if:

    
    
      - You don't buy an electric car
      - You don't install solar panels on your roof
      - You don't buy government-approved "healthy" foods
      - You don't use mass transportation
      - You don't share all of your financial data with the government
      - In general, you don't do what they want you to do
    

Again, forget the healthcare law. The Supreme Court just told all of us that
the US Federal Government can tax the hell out of you if you don't behave as
they wish. That could be buying-into healthcare or anything else they decide
to come-up with. And, they aren't even required to actually read the laws they
pass or seek our approval to levy these new penalty taxes.

Back to MU. The government is now holding people's valuable data hostage to a
process that is probably illegal in some form. Being that lots of these
politicians are lawyers, they probably got us by the balls. They know very
well what they are doing and can have their way with us.

Pirates using MU should be hit hard. But, how about trampling all over
everyone else --without recourse-- while trying to get the few bad guys? It's
as if the cops decided to shoot everyone in sight in hopes of getting a few
bad guys hiding at a shopping center and, for good measure, they shoot the
shopping center ownership and management at the same time. Bullshit.

Regardless of your position on these issues, you should be horrified by what
is happening to our country. Your rights are being eroded one step at a time.
Very soon we will not be able to recognize where we are living.

~~~
bluedanieru
Why all the talk about the Constitution? Sure, it's nice to have a set of
principles that your government will operate by, but no piece of paper is
going to protect you if you don't do your fucking job as a citizen of a
democracy, and Americans have been asleep at the switch for _decades_.
Leftists love to bitch about the American ruling class (and they are pretty
terrible), but all they did was fill in the void left by the American public
when they decided that defeating communism, winning the War on Drugs, stopping
terrorism, and killing whatever other bullshit bogeyman they like to make up
to scare each other, was more important than self-rule. Americans love to
_talk_ about democracy, they've been brainwashed to after all, but so few of
them really know what it is, what it means, and most importantly what it
demands of them, that how can anybody be surprised when it stops working?

I mean, if you're not going to do the work to run your own fucking country,
how can you complain when someone else does it for you?

You mention health care, and I completely agree with you on the ruling, but
what you have to realize is that _this is the best America can do_. You had a
President who made it a centerpiece of his campaign, who came into office with
commanding leads for his party in both houses of Congress, with strong public
support in favor of reforming the system up to and including total
nationalization. All of this, and after 18 months of hyperventilating over
death panels, of talk about mass importing of drugs from Canada - a country
1/10th your size by population - as a matter of national policy (because
apparently just implementing the same price controls that Canada has is out of
the question), and my personal favorite "you can't legislate health insurance
companies out of existence, they'll all lose their jobs!" non-argument, _this
is the best you idiots could come up with_. You don't think there was "a very
public extended debate period" over health care? I suppose it depends on what
you mean by "debate", but in America, where not knowing what the fuck you're
talking about doesn't mean your opinion is any less important than that of an
expert, I'd say you got it.

So as for your supposition that you don't have a say in your government, yes
you are right that you basically don't and that sucks. It's not really
something that's instituted from the top down but rather the laziness,
indecisiveness, incuriousness, and acrimoniousness of the average American.
I'd say your government has shown considerable restraint, considering what it
has to work with. If a charismatic right-wing figure were able to seize
control of your government, put his political enemies to death, and rule with
an iron first, about 30-35% of your population would welcome him with open
arms. (These people are called Republicans.) Most of the brutal fascisms of
the twentieth century did more with less.

~~~
robomartin
> Americans love to talk about democracy, they've been brainwashed to after
> all, but so few of them really know what it is

We are not a democracy. We are a representative democracy, which is very
different.

I don't know about a single modern country that has a pure democratic
political system.

