Majority Views NSA Phone Tracking as Acceptable Anti-terror Tactic | Pew Research Center for the People and the Press

Posted by gwcalvert 11 years, 5 months ago to Politics
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This is just effing scary... 27% of Americans following NSA story very closely. 35% not following closely at all... Most Americans are okay with the government snooping into their private lives? WHY???
SOURCE URL: http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/10/majority-views-nsa-phone-tracking-as-acceptable-anti-terror-tactic/


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  • Posted by BeyondTopSecret 11 years, 5 months ago
    We The People (as a whole) get the government we deserve. We are so tripping towards absolute tyranny... But we're too busy writing our "BFF's" on our i-Phones about the latest American Idol results, whilst listening to Pandora, to notice.
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    • Posted by $ Mimi 11 years, 5 months ago
      We are in the apathy stage as suggested in the following quote (which scholars still fight over who wrote.)
      "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: 'From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.'"
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      • Posted by khalling 11 years, 5 months ago
        whoa, whoa there. selfishness has never been a problem. we are not a democracy. we are supposed to be a constitutional representative republic. if spirituality lead to wealth and freedom, the middle east would be the freest, wealthiest in the world. I would ding you, but I want the conversation. I'm thinking about making you do a little time out
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        • Posted by $ Mimi 11 years, 5 months ago
          Spirituality leads to courage according to the above recipe. I like the first part of the quote more than the last. I do think that lobbyist, special-interest groups, unions and the likes definitely fulfill the definition of voters who will vote in those who will help them benefit most from the public treasury. The last part, the march of civilization through varying stages, is open to interpretation. You and I have a unique perspective; we can see the merit in selfishness, but if we allow for other views, we can see what the writer was inferring to is a period in which a society lives in excess. BeyondTopSecret’s remarks about tripping towards absolute tyranny reminded me of the quote.
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          • Posted by khalling 11 years, 5 months ago
            I get the march to destruction after the bloom of freedom, but I disagree with so much on the surface of that quote. Overall, it's straight up religious and advocating for altruism which is how we got into the welfare mess in the first place. Dollars to donuts, I'll bet the poor were not clamoring for welfare, but politicians were. I like M Freidman's quote better.
            "There is all the difference in the world, however, between two kinds of assistance through government that seem superficially similar: first, 90 percent of us agreeing to impose taxes on ourselves in order to help the bottom 10 percent, and second, 80 percent voting to impose taxes on the top 10 percent to help the bottom 10 percent -- William Graham Sumner's famous example of B and C decided what D shall do for A. The first may be wise or unwise, an effective or ineffective way to help the disadvantaged -- but it is consistent with belief in both equality of opportunity and liberty. The second seeks equality of outcome and is entirely antithetical to liberty."
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  • Posted by Rocky_Road 11 years, 5 months ago
    They are not getting anything close to the whole story, unless they are willing to take some effort to ferret out the truth.

    Anytime that you see an 'on the street' interview about political issues, you will be astounded as to how little the average person knows.

    These are the 'useful idiots' that this administration depends upon for their endorsement....
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    • Posted by $ Susanne 11 years, 5 months ago
      I was listening to the radio about the recent "leaks" and it was amazing how the "government spokesman" was blatantly lying - and the interviewer was feeding the lie - on mic. It was about 60% factual based, 40% absolute fabrication geared to make you think the guy is a lone nut psycho degenerate dropout who shouldn't be allowed to hold a broom, let alone a security clearance...
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      • Posted by Rocky_Road 11 years, 5 months ago
        Talk radio may be the last standing bastion of political truth, but it takes some effort to turn the dial...an effort that 90% of the voters can't seem to muster up!

        Talk radio is the champion of our First amendment right, and Fox News is the cable's champion.
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          • Posted by $ Susanne 11 years, 5 months ago
            They're all in business to boost ratings... and to promote the government message of the day. The whole political leaning of any of them is to hold a target audience, and sell ad time... but I've mentioned this here before.
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            • Posted by Rocky_Road 11 years, 5 months ago
              Too broad a brush...and doesn't work if you look at the cable ratings.

              FOX News slaughters the rest, and they are the only one that doesn't lip-synch the DNC talking points. That can only mean that the majority of people who seek their news on cable are not going to the stations that enable this administration. If you were correct, they would all be moving towards the bigger audience for the bottom line.

              But they don't. They have an ideological agenda no less devoted than the West Wing...and they are willing to forgo profits over message.
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        • Posted by cseidman 11 years, 5 months ago
          I actually don't think you are kidding, and that's a shame. Limbaugh is a pretty slick radio comedian, but that's all he is. And Glenn Beck is religious fanatic. Ayn Rand would carve this guy up in a minute with his irrational apocalyptic, phony BS. He's no different from those old TV ministers like Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, etc., ("If you don't send money now, this ministry will end!") but they were at least entertaining.
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            • Posted by $ Mimi 11 years, 5 months ago
              He’s a charlatan. I use to love to watch the guy, David, but when he made the announcement he secretly knew that the Boston bombings were an inside job and that he was going to expose the WH if they didn’t come clean he went to far with the farce for me to even stomach.
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                • Posted by Rocky_Road 11 years, 5 months ago
                  No such link...but a major misunderstanding?
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                  • Posted by $ Mimi 11 years, 5 months ago
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                    • Posted by Rocky_Road 11 years, 5 months ago
                      You need to watch your link.

                      Beck never, in any of the 16:15 minutes, claims that the government played a hand in the bombing.

                      What he says in the segment is that the declared third person of interest...the Saudi national in the hospital...went from the status of known terrorist, to the status of immediate deportation to Saudi Arabia practically overnight. This happened before our intelligence departments could question him...and right after a Saudi diplomat met with Obama at the White House.

                      Bottom line: Beck says just what I remembered him to have said, that the White House was protecting this Saudi national from being linked to the crime. And that the White House was making an effort to minimize the Islamic connection.

                      No where does Beck accuse our government with the event itself.

                      Watch it for yourself....
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                      • Posted by $ Mimi 11 years, 5 months ago
                        I shouldn’t have said that he said it was an inside job. You are right, but... He implied that a person of interest, someone he knew to be a very, very bad person was aided out of the country by the White House administration, no? If there was any truth to this story there would have been no way for the mainstream news not to remark on it.The fact that they didn’t even have the brothers in custody yet, and the country was still in shock with the images that had been broadcasted.He exploited the Boston bombings for his own purposes. I’m totally okay with the fact Glenn Beck fans will ding me (khaling’s word) if I say he makes me sick, only because I have been there. I use to love his program. I allowed him to suspend my reality I chose to believe he was exposing the hidden truths, but he is not.On more than one occasion I watched as he had one figure coming out of his mouth while a different figure was on the chalkboard behind him. I often wondered if he did it on purpose to show his crew that people would believe anything he said even with the contradiction staring them right in their face. He’s good. Real good.
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          • Posted by Rocky_Road 11 years, 5 months ago
            You'll know when I joke, if you hang around long enough.

            And if you think that Rand would let this Republic go to Hades, just to rebuke Beck being a Mormon, then you don't understand her political worldview. Rush, and Beck, are both self made successful 'producers', and offer the other side of the political debate.

            You left FOX out? Or were you saving them for another post....
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            • Posted by $ Susanne 11 years, 5 months ago
              Rush understood years and years ago you have to create your target audience and then hold them to you at all costs; in that end, he took niche message delivery to an artform with his EIB thing, and created his fortune doing it. Most of the rest of them are riding the EIB coattails.
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      • Posted by Rocky_Road 11 years, 5 months ago
        Neither does Bill O'Reilly!

        Jay does it for the comedy, and Bill does it to make a sad point. And that point couldn't be any more telling as to why we are where we are.

        There was a point where the Founding Fathers debated as to limiting the vote to property owners. Their reasoning was sound, but fell prey to a more eclectic proposal. We are witnessing the result of that decision....

        I wonder if any Gulch proponents here could equate 'property ownership' to being a producer?

        I could.
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          • Posted by Rocky_Road 11 years, 5 months ago
            You may be right about the finished document.

            I know that the Founding Fathers gave a huge leeway for the individual states to determine their own voting rules, and attempted to not centralize it in Washington.

            I'm going to do some digging...!
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  • Posted by $ Susanne 11 years, 5 months ago
    Our federal and state govt's have been indoctrinating our children for 50+ years now... part of the reason the majority of "young" adults don't care, is they've been slowly and steadily converted to easily led sheeple... Ask them the reasons we fought WW2, and you will frequently get blank stares, as there's little difference between the type of government our forefathers fought and died to defeat and the ones running our country now...

    Another example - look at how the same subgroup of Americans view firearm ownership. Most either abhorr them or look at them as a scary talisman of power and awe, requiring numerous permissions of gov to even look upon, let alone touch. And to own?? Those who own a firearm are considered anti-social dangerous criminals...

    Shall I add that they've been fed the dot gov socialist mind-menu via broadcast since at least the 1970's, if not before. They know kids watch 6 hours of TV a day; why not use that 6 hours to make compliant subjects of the future... kind of like the programming in Brave New World...
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  • Posted by BeyondTopSecret 11 years, 5 months ago
    Uh... Does anyone notice that the content of this web site, post-login, is UNENCRYPTED?! ("HTTPS://" and/or "golden padlock" doesn't appear on this web page) That means that the NSA is likely reading the entire of contents of this web site as I author this. Talk about profiling... *chuckles to self*
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      • Posted by $ Susanne 11 years, 5 months ago
        Um... I think they've proven that they have enough of their own, um, yeah, to have to save the gas station dumps.

        Everything else, of course, is fair game. As long as the Sheeple never find out about it.
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      • Posted by BeyondTopSecret 11 years, 5 months ago
        True... But I don't think they've gotten quite far enough to decrypt HTTPS in promiscuous mode ("everything on the Internet") in real-time. Yet.

        The Nevada Data Center is supposed to eventually house the power to brute-force decrypt HTTPS en-masse (from, say a Tier 1 pipe - they should be able to do the same for AES-256, in the case of data-at-rest and file-level stuff). Until then, they could, of course, just store all raw network data from the NAPs (Network Access Points - straight from the biggest ISPs) until they get the clock cycles to retroactively plow through it all. I think real-time decryption of HTTPS at this point requires focusing on a specific site ("target") of interest.

        Of course, this would be an excellent site to target, if one's intent was to identify and track possible future subversives... ;-)
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    • Posted by Rocky_Road 11 years, 5 months ago
      "Uh... Does anyone notice that the content of this web site, post-login, is UNENCRYPTED?! ("HTTPS://" and/or "golden padlock" doesn't appear on this web page) That means that the NSA is likely reading the entire of contents of this web site as I author this. Talk about profiling... *chuckles to self* "

      This comment almost sounds like an attempt to intimidate us into paranoid 'silence'.

      What say you? Did you have a good reason to remind us that we are being 'watched'? Who benefits if even one member decides to hold back their opinion?

      Your 'boss'?
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