
Obama and the N.S.A.: Why He Can't Be Trusted - ruswick
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2014/01/obama-and-the-nsa-why-he-cant-be-trusted.html
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ctdonath
The Founding Fathers of the USA were concerned about writing a Bill Of Rights
because any natural right not enumerated therein might be construed as not
being a right at all. This is where we are with pervasive surveillance: being
incapable of imagining/comprehending a surveillance system of this scale, it
never dawned in them to protect anything more than "persons, papers and
effects". At a time when just overhearing a conversation was hard enough to
require concerted effort, they could not dream of a day when a significant
percentage of every conversation among 300,000,000 people could be monitored
and catalogued automatically at a not-prohibitive cost. Methinks: had they
known, they would have not hesitated to prohibit it as explicitly as they did
infringement of arms possession. Alas, the courts adhere only to the letter of
the Constitution, not its spirit.

~~~
pstack
Unfortunately, our education system does not teach us that the Constitution is
a framework setting form constraints upon the government, but as a framework
establishing and itemizing a list of freedoms citizens are allowed.

So, we have an entire population that assumes if it is not enumerated in the
Constitution, you do not have that right. For example "hey, the Constitution
doesn't say privacy is a right". Well, no. It doesn't need to. You already
have that right, without a piece of paper declaring it.

Unfortunately, I'm afraid that this understanding of the Constitution has
become so pervasive that it can not be changed, thereby completely reversing
the entire intention of the founding fathers in constructing it. Thereby
giving the government _all the rights_ and citizens _only_ the rights
specifically declared in it (and, these days, not even that).

It's kind of stomach-turning to see that reversal.

~~~
x0054
Though this is slightly unrelated, today I tried to buy some Antibiotic eye
droplets for my dog. It's not possible without a prescription. For a DOG! I
love my dog, he is awesome. But legally, he is my property. I can kill him if
I want to, sell him to a research center to be experimented on, or just let
him go blind from the eye infection he picked up. But I can not buy meds for
him without first taking him to an undereducated, glorified nurse (vet). So I
had to go to a vet, pay $50 so he can poke my dog around with his finger, and
then write me a prescription for the exact fucking drug I was trying to buy in
the first place!

The point is, like you mentioned, the constitution enumerates the Power of the
federal government, not JUST the limitations on the said government! This
means, if it's NOT in the constitution, then the government does NOT have that
power, and I DO. The constitution says nothing about regulation of drugs, mass
surveillance, or privacy. This means I HAVE those rights and the government
has NO right to infringe my rights. Pretty soon I'll have to consult with a
"licensed professional" to take a shit, and the NSA will have a camera at the
bottom of my toilet, thus completing their constitutionally prescribed mission
of crawling up the ass of every American, to make sure that no terrorists hide
there, of course.

~~~
zizzer
The restriction on antibiotics is for the protection of everyone, it's not
just to screw you out of $50.

If people are allowed to throw antibiotics at any problem they think might be
cured with them, then they eventually lose their effectiveness (as is becoming
the case already). It doesn't matter that they were for your dog either, the
same antibiotics are often used to treat human and animals, so misuse in one
group can still cause problems for the other.

~~~
x0054
The overprescription of antibiotics is indeed a problem. But notice, it's
still a problem, even though you can only get antibiotics with prescription.
This is mostly due to the fact that many doctors, and most veterinarians I
have ever had the displeasure of meeting are woefully incompetent. I am 30,
and used antibiotics twice in my life, and needed it twice for my dog (because
he has a genetic condition that effects his eyes). How about just educating
people about the dangers of antibiotics, and letting them make up their own
mind. The situation couldn't get any worse than it already is. Right now
doctors give out steroids and antibiotics as if they were candy, especially in
large hospitals. But now we are getting off topic, sorry for the rant, it was
just a touchy subject today.

~~~
a3n
"How about just educating people about the dangers of [thing], and letting
them make up their own mind."

Most of us are stupid, not by birth but by training and experience. It's not
our fault. Most of us don't do anything for a living that requires us to be
more than stupid.

Staking your future and safety on the actual abilities of the actual
population is pretty damn risky, I think.

------
PythonicAlpha
Obama just got to much trust in advance. Everybody seemed to think, because
his predecessor was such a catastrophe, Obama must be some kind of savior.

But he isn't. He even got the peace noble price just for his announcements.
Nothing more. Still his announcement is there, that he will close Guantanamo.
It is announced but nothing done. He is the savior of announcements.

Also people thought, that he would finish up with the bad ruling of his
predecessor. But even the known cases of torture in Iraq did not have any
consequences (besides those of letting some stupid low level soldiers be the
escape goats). One of the first doings of Obama was a big amnesty for any
wrongdoings of intelligence people. That already showed a foreshadow what we
could expect of Obama.

I guess, either Obama is a Wolfe in savior-skin, or he is a sheep in a wolfs-
skin and so much under pressure from some side, that he has to obey and shut
up, no matter what he really wanted in the first place ...

I also guess, that we should internalize the thought, that the really mighty
in this world are not on the cover pages of the newspapers and those on the
cover pages are less mighty as we shall think.

~~~
moocowduckquack
_There was a mood of immense excitement thrilling through all of them.
Together and between them they had gone to and beyond the furthest limits of
physical laws, restructured the fundamental fabric of matter, strained,
twisted and broken the laws of possibility and impossibility, but still the
greatest excitement of all seemed to be to meet a man with an orange sash
round his neck. (An orange sash was what the President of the Galaxy
traditionally wore.) It might not even have made much difference to them if
they 'd known exactly how much power the President of the Galaxy actually
wielded: none at all. Only six people in the Galaxy knew that the job of the
Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention away from
it._

 _Zaphod Beeblebrox was amazingly good at his job._

~~~
PythonicAlpha
Fits very much. Thank you!

~~~
moocowduckquack
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy has a lot of good social satire in it.
They cut far too much of that from the film.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
I think, that's the reason, they cut it!

------
00rion
There's another possibility. The NSA has blackmailed Obama into protecting
their interests. If Obama makes substantial changes to the NSA and then is
outed for something that the NSA would have known about, he may have been
blackmailed.

~~~
hga
Well discussed in this related topic sub-thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7070045](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7070045)

I and many others simply don't buy that premise in our modern no shame
culture.

------
smoyer
Quite a few people didn't trust him enough to vote for him during the last two
presidential elections ... since he can't run for another term, I'm guessing
he doesn't care if the people that did vote for him trust him anymore.

------
obblekk
In the NYT article it mentioned something about him trusting himself not to go
too far. I guess it's this feeling of enlightened ruler that always goes too
far.

~~~
pstack
Unfortunately, so many citizens feel this way, too. It never occurs to them
that the government never gives power back. Look at the Patriot Act. It just
keeps going and going and going.

It never occurs to them that when you give a president some obscene unchecked
powers (and especially when you have a legislative branch that abandons their
responsibility to be a check and balance and becomes a bunch of bi-partisan
yes-men, you are giving that power to _every_ president that comes afterward.
Including the next Nixon. Which I guess is what we have today, when you think
about it.

We like to blame "the government", but I'd blame most of our current situation
on an entire population that we have failed to educate on civics and how
government works. They don't even know the basics and they give up or dismiss
so much, because they don't know better.

~~~
hga
" _Including the next Nixon. Which I guess is what we have today, when you
think about it._ "

Not just "think"; my political awareness begins with Nixon's first term, and
Obama "feels" a lot like him, certainly a lot more than any following
president. Check around, many other of us older types have noticed this.

Just look at the analogous IRS situations, only in Nixon's days they mostly
ignored his requests.

~~~
pstack
That's why I said it is what we have today. Right down to spying on dissidents
and political adversaries and blackmailing and extorting them for personal,
political, and economic gain.

------
wturner
I don't mean to sound conspiratorial but I get the impression that when
someone becomes president their is a manner by which the intelligence
community implicitly says "Ok , you're the president now...here's how the
world really fucking works".

The end result being a host of very convincing cultural assumptions that are
hard to argue with if you're on the inside and driving the wheel.

~~~
hga
Actually, as a candidate, at some point they start getting read in on national
security matters, so this "indoctrination" begins even before the election.

------
moocowduckquack
Is very hard to trust _anyone_ over pervasive suveillance. That is partly why
it is so poisonous. Public political figures are obvious intelligence targets,
if only for budget protection.

