Galt's Gulch

Libertarian Party response to 2014 State of the Union address

Posted by Snoogoo 10 years, 9 months ago to Government
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I thought I would share this since I was reading an article about ways to avoid the NSA spying on your smart phone. The number of comments from people saying essentially "Hey, I have nothing to hide, so I don't mind." is just disgusting. Have we learned nothing from history? One reason I like the Libertarian party is that they seem to be the only party today that stays true to its philosophy. I don't even understand how we can "debate" whether its OK or not for the government to spy on the general populace. Certain things are black and white and non-negotiable. Some things are just plain evil, and when we fail to recognize that we have a huge problem.
SOURCE URL: http://www.lp.org/news/press-releases/libertarian-party-response-to-2014-state-of-the-union-address?utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Libertarian%20Party&utm_content=20140128+SOTU+Response

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  • Posted by $ winterwind 10 years, 9 months ago
    I have never understood why the gathering-and-storage question is always coupled with the innocence or guilt of any person, especialy a person objecting, Spyng on us is just plain WRONG, period. It doesn't matter if every single person in the subject group is guilty .Not to mention that pesky "innocent until proven guilty" thing
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 10 years, 9 months ago
    This article makes me dream of the MSM covering this, talking about it, and asking experts. I don't care if many of the experts say the US gov't needs more money b/c we have our finger in the dike against drugs, poverty, and evil-doers around the world. Let's at least have that debate.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 10 years, 9 months ago
    Those "I have nothing to hide" people should also add they are confident that no one the gov't entrusts with that power will ever abuse it for personal gain. They should also have a webcam installed over their toilet and bed if they have nothing to hide.
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  • Posted by $ AJAshinoff 10 years, 9 months ago
    First, I am not validating or condoning what the NSA has done. Second, I have no problem whatsoever with the NSA spying on those outside our country and those in communication with those "parties" within our borders.

    A while back, maybe a decade or so, I read of the program called Carnivore which was designed to syphon all manner of web traffic, automatically evaluate it by assign points to every word, and then flag anything that met a certain threshold based on those number values (I called it Omnivore in my book). The entire process, which has probably been in place for quite some time, is entirely automated and humans are not looking at the massive amount of data unless it meets that high threshold of probability.

    Should this type of information and be gathered by the NSA? I think yes, but only if their "machine" is looking beyond our borders for the wellspring of their data to evaluate. I swore to protect this country against all enemies foreign and domestic. I would think, outside the US government itself, the large majority of the threat to American comes from outside our borders.
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    • Posted by Snoogoo 10 years, 9 months ago
      I understand your point and thank you for replying. You bring up an important point which is the definition of the enemy. If you declare war on a particular terrorist organization, then I get that this is the 21st century and warfare is not quite as straightforward as it used to be. The system you speak of seems to be a much more directed attack from an outside threat. Filtering through data is one thing, but collecting and then storing data that did not meet the filter requirements seems dangerous to me. I was listening to an argument the other day where the government was having a hard time finding a vendor to store the massive amounts of data the NSA has collected on Americans and foreigners. That means that all the information is just sitting there and can be mined at any point in time for any purpose.
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 10 years, 9 months ago
    Bah.

    There IS no response to SOTU.

    SOTU is an address by the President to Congress. It's not a political debate.
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