But not under Obama or (potentially Hillary)? What about Trump makes them so fearful now where they weren't under the current state of affairs.
I'm not saying that a Trump presidency isn't a great way to convince people to get a Signal account, but it strikes me that NSA spying and everything else that's gone on over the past decade should have been enough.
The increased fear is not based on the capabilities, which as you said have existed for awhile, but on what Trump will do with them. They feel he has fascist tendencies or intentions and does not respect for American traditions or law.
(I'm not trying to make partisan points; I'm only saying that there is a large cohort that feels that way. Obviously, many in the U.S. voted for Trump.)
Absolutely. And I don't doubt that Hillary wouldn't have expanded them further; if anything she's more hawkish than Trump.
That said, only one of these two people is asking for names of every government employee who has attended a climate science meeting in the past 5 years. The implications are truly chilling.
"Chilling" seems a bit histrionic. It's an interesting challenge to the customary, but as far as I know extraconstitutional, idea that cabinet departments operate independently of the sitting president rather than, like the rest of the executive branch, serving at his pleasure. If law exists to mandate this arrangement, I'd be obliged to anyone who wil make me aware of it; absent that, it seems like something that's purely de facto, albeit at this point quite longstanding, and open to challenge by any president who so chooses.
I'm not surprised to see Trump mount such a challenge, because he is likely ill accustomed to tolerating independent fiefdoms within an organization he nominally heads. But he's far from the first president to try it on, and I very much doubt he'll find more success than his predecessors - indeed the latest on this particular story seems to be that DOE has told him to go to hell, and if that sounds like hyperbole then it's no more so than a lot of the headlines I've just seen.
There are a number of things presidents technically /could/ do but do not because they are horrifying. The fact that he's technically legally allowed to do something bad does not mean it's okay that he is doing it -- the president can (and has) executed and indefinitely jailed citizens without trial or attorney, locked everyone in America of a certain race in camps and taken their belongings, sold arms to and trained terrorist groups, ordered torture, leaked the identity of a CIA operative in order to enact personal petty revenge on her husband, toppled and assassinated democratically elected world leaders, given out pardons in exchange for personal favors or money, criminalized drugs with the explicit stated purpose of going after cultural subgroups who chose to dissent but were doing so legally and could not be jailed, sent law enforcement to spy on and shut down peaceful legal protest groups including trying to convince MLK Jr. to commit suicide, to name a few.
Presidents have done and can legally do all these things. Trump could do each one of these things. The only hope we have is that he chooses not to out of a sense of not wanting to destroy the country, or out of some sense of morality and sense of what is right and wrong. Each one is a disgusting, horrifying abuse of power. So is demanding a list of federal employees who meet some political criteria with the explicit intention of an ideological purge (even worse, he's purging all people who believe in or are curious about science from a science agency). Next will he ask for a list of federal employees who have had an abortion? A list of those who have voted Democrat? A list of those who have posted an Internet comment critical of him? The next time he asks for a list, will we hear about it?
You have just equated a new president-elect inquiring into the staffing of one of his subordinate departments, and the mass internment in concentration camps of American citizens with Japanese ancestry.
In response to that, I cannot imagine what I might possibly be able to contribute.
I have done nothing of the sort, of course, which you know, but it's a common dishonest rhetorical tactic to suggest that mentioning two concepts in the same post is automatically drawing an equivalence between them. I've made an argument that because something a president does is /allowed/ or /legal/ does not mean that it's morally acceptable. If you think everything that is legal but immoral is equivalent, that's on you, not me.
The fact that he's doing horribly immoral things and the defense is -30 days into his presidency already "it's legal therefore it's okay" is a very, very bad sign for the future of his administration, because as I've shown abiding by actions which are 'legal' means almost nothing when it comes to federal executive power. That moral sense which we are depending on which prevents a president from abusing their power is, by the evidence we've seen, not present in him.
> Each one is a disgusting, horrifying abuse of power. So is [...]
How do you mean this to be taken if not to say that what he's done is as bad as all the other things you named? - that is, as a claim of moral equivalence.
It being disgusting and horrifying does NOT mean that it is the same as the holocaust or Japanese internment. It can still be disgusting and horrifying while simultaneously being less disgusting and horrifying than, say, genocide.
It is definitely true that many people believe Trump has fascist tendencies, but it is worth noting that many people believe HRC has similar tendencies, and would also greatly expand the surveillance state. Some of these two groups (who distrust each candidate) overlap, while many distrust one much more than the other.
> it is worth noting that many people believe HRC has similar tendencies
I disagree. Trump is the President-elect; she has no position in government. Also, depending on the definition of "many", I don't think it was true that 'many' thought that way. People widely called her corrupt and other things, but generally she didn't propose fascist policies, I don't recall seeing her called fascist, and I followed the election closely. If 'many' = 'some', we can find 'many people' who think anything.
I guess I just dislike relativistic statements, painting all sides as equal.
Not agreeing with people's apprehensions about Trump is one thing, but ignorance of why people are apprehensive isn't credible. I do not believe that you are cognizant of privacy issues but unable to see any qualitative difference between him and Obama (or HRC).
> Not agreeing with people's apprehensions about Trump is one thing, but ignorance of why people are apprehensive isn't credible. I do not believe that you are cognizant of privacy issues but unable to see any qualitative difference between him and Obama (or HRC).
The specter of Trump has been there the entire time. The danger of mass data collection isn't merely the current President, it's that we have an election every four years.
Go start encrypting everything now. Better late than never. But all the things you sent unencrypted during Obama's presidency, that you didn't stop them from keeping, now Trump will have all of it.
I agree with this 100%. Suddenly people care about mass deportation, for example, but where were they when Obama was deporting a record 2.5 million people? They are terrified of Trump's "deportation force", not realizing apparently that many such deportation forces (e.g. ICE) already exist.
Some things that the left should have cared about under Obama:
* initiating new undeclared wars
* expanding the surveillance state
* eliminating habeas corpus with the 2012 NDAA
* killing two American citizens extra-judicially
* fracking
* selling arms to radicals and brutal foreign regimes
* the Honduran coup
* CIA black sites / torture (forced rectal 'feeding' to the point of rectal prolapse, for example)
* prosecuting whistleblowers
* raiding legal dispensaries / grow ops and wholesale continuing the ludicrous war on drugs
* pro-corporate policies like the TPP, ACA, and the bailouts
* running up the national debt another 10 trillion or so
* contracting out development of astroturfing software from HBGary / Operation Earnest Voice
I could go on. The real left barely exists anymore in America.
I'm not saying that a Trump presidency isn't a great way to convince people to get a Signal account, but it strikes me that NSA spying and everything else that's gone on over the past decade should have been enough.