Zonie63
Posts: 2826
Joined: 4/25/2011
From: The Old Pueblo
Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Esinn
This has nothing to do with privacy, nor has it ever. IT is about power. It is about the governments ability to remain above the law and beyond accountability. While meeting in secret withing an ivory tower beyond public approach & opinion to decide when they are situationally able to ignore the constitution, "social/ethical" contracts, global contracts (UKUSA) or agreements and law.
One side is going to win and the other lose. The question is not have I done anything wrong or do I care about what is going on. Rather, do we control government or is government accountable to a different standard of law & control us.
These are not really new questions, nor are they strictly political. Government surveillance has been a fact of life for as long as the technology has existed. Both political parties have used it, so when either side complains about it, it's nothing more than the pot calling the kettle black.
The question of who controls government and government accountability are important, but the government's activities and the organizations in question have existed with the tacit approval and authorization of the American people. Of course, not all Americans have gone along with this, but enough of them to support the policy. Some might argue that the "sheeple" have been tricked and manipulated by the government and their propaganda, but that would be a discredit to the Fourth Estate and not so much against the actual apparatus of the government.
Why does this apparatus exist at all? Because enough people were convinced that we needed it and insisted that the government protect us from whatever "enemies" we might have, whether foreign and domestic. I think WW2 and the Cold War were the major turning points. Prior to WW2, there was no NSA or CIA, and the actual machinery for government surveillance and spying was quite limited. Even the FBI was still rather small, relatively speaking. But World War II changed all that, and the people fully supported that war and the subsequent Cold War due to our fears of what we perceived to be malignant, expansionist tyrannies possibly taking over the world.
Whether or not that was actually true is beside the point, since the public bought into it, ostensibly approving of whatever it took to protect America from all these "enemies" we seem to have all over the world. Of course, not all Americans bought into it, and there eventually grew a crescendo of opposition to the government's activities, tactics, and methods both within America and around the world. There has been ongoing, extensive public debate and discussion about how far the government should be allowed to go and how much oversight and public control there should be, and that debate continues today.
The problem that I've seen in most of these debates is that the focus seems to invariably be on what the government does and how, without much focus on why they do it. They do it because the people wanted them to do it, so in essence, it can be reasonably argued that the people are controlling the government and that the government is carrying out the will of the people. As far as what the government does and how they do it, many people would say "Leave that to the professionals," which is a sacred mantra in our culture as of late.
Many Americans believe that there are enemies all around the planet out to get us. Many of us have been conditioned to believe this since birth. The media have pushed that view on people for generations, and the politicians we elect tend to reflect that view (to one degree or another, allowing for personality differences and ideological/regional styles).
So, in other words, even if "we" did control the government and the government was fully accountable to "us," I don't think it would amount to a hill of beans in difference than what we have now.
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*****, your government is the enemy NSA - 
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