Letters to the Editor
prunes
Published Letters: 784
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@walter_map
[Read the article: The banality of the surveillance state]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Or 37% too low:
(1 - 19/30) * 100 ~= 37%
Not so good with numbers either, apparently.
Wow, walter, you're really in a bad mood today. I was clearly comparing the percentages additively, not as percentages of each other. geez. If my grammar is too sloppy and not precise enough for you to disambiguate the cases, surely you could grant me the concession of not assuming I'm a complete idiot. The difference between 19/100ths and 30/100ths is about 10/100ths.
Try addressing the question this time.
Oops, I forgot to finish that sentence. Doctors in China are accessing western medical journals through BBSs, which are not filtered by the Great Firewall. Kids in Cuba are massively trading USB drives to get foreign news, to blog, to pirate videos and music. Russia has probably the greatest concentration of serious hackers in the world, there is virtually no effective regulation of the internet there, that's why the Russian mob has moved so heavily into the electronic fraud and piracy market.
These all seem to me to be examples of the technology making things HARDER to regulate. It could be that these trends will not continue, but it seems to me like they will.
Which is no doubt why you keep your money in a mattress.
You would really be surprised, my friend. I do not own any credit/debit cards, or a cell phone, and do all my transactions by cash or check. Checks are for bills only. In case of check fraud, at minimum, I can walk down the branch and show them my checkbook in person. This may seem like a lot of work for some people, I grew up pretty poor and am used to not needing plastic for every little stick of gum.
1) You don't believe the US can devolve into totalitarianism, and yet you see it happening before your very eyes. Cognitive dissonance isn't pretty.
No, I believe totalitarianism is unsustainable in the long run. Our views of "long run" may differ.
2) You state that "It can very easily be used for ad-hoc abuse, profiling, and fraud." But strangely enough, you're somehow you're unable to see the connection between information technology as a tool for "abuse, profiling, and fraud" and its use as a tool of totalitarian coercion and control.
There's no paradox: systems like this are as much a security threat for the people who temporarily benefit from it as those who are initially targeted by it. Like I said upthread, how many blackmails against CEOs or public officials do you think it will take before they change their minds about the matter?
If the system can be abused, it will be. There is nothing exempting the cash flow of the people who run the system from being interrupted by the presence of this system.
It's just a bad idea all around, and eventually the people who love the idea now will grow to hate it.
I won't be the one to convince you of the soundness of my argument against neoconservative totalitarianism. They will.
But by then it may be too late. It may already be too late.
Geez, if only I would agree that totalitarianism will soon descend for a thousand-year reich, thanks to the power of technology! Then this crisis would be averted!
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@Bees
[Read the article: The banality of the surveillance state]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You've not understood me, probably my fault for being unclear.
you want it both ways. The Federal government is both stupid and hopelessly dull AND super secret inscrutable.
No, they'd like to be the latter, but they're invariably the former.
It can't be both. fact is they're rather bad at these grand scheme projects, everyone is. but if it makes you more comfortable to be paranoid i wish you well with that.
If they were very, very good at these projects, there would be little to worry about. It is because they are malcompetent that the program represents a threat.
There is zero chance of this program catching a realistic terrorist threat.
There is a near-certain chance of this program flagging an innocent person as a terrorist.
That is incompetence. Incompetence on this scale is dangerous.
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@Good Ol' Celery no settle for a salary
[Read the article: The banality of the surveillance state]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks for the Dana Priest poem!
I do not often respond to you, but I read and enjoy every one of your comments.
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@Elephantman
[Read the article: Exclusive capitulation report: House Democratic leadership circulates FISA bill]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If Glenn Greenwald and his supporters keep fighting the good fight for truthjusticeandtheamericanway...
...and my side keeps winning votes, I'm good with that.
That's exactly the problem. You care more about your "side" (who would sell your kidneys and leave you in a bathtub of ice if the return on investment was as good as they're getting now) than you do the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. You have absolute faith that if your party leader tells you something, it's true.
You're a grown-up. Use your own brain. The Republicans haven't done a thing they said they would since they took power in 2000, they've blown up the government bigger than Clinton, they've accrued far, far more debt than Clinton, they've intruded on our rights more than Clinton, (and I HATED Clinton!) they've done everything possible to be as ANTI-conservative as can be, and you still love it.
If you don't see what's seriously, seriously wrong in the Republican party by now, you're as big a sucker as there is. They've done nothing but lie to your face for 8 years, and as long as they say "terror", you eat it up.
What's wrong with you?