The US House "Representatives" says NSA Spying... here to STAY

Secret government agents are not suitable members of humanity for either the acquisition or dissemination of knowledge about my personal affairs.

We are not talking about "observation" in general, but spying and peeping and file compiling by one's government. The actions of a government are by definition exertions of power and manipulations and the like - "observation" by such an entity is a threat. Threats are a form of abuse.

There is nothing irrational about wariness of government secrecy and surveillance. We have hundreds of years and an entire planet's civilizations to provide us with basis for rational objections there.

In this case I grant you anger would be more appropriate than fear, and acting against the perps more rational than intimidated acquiescence.

And there you have Michael's grasp of economics. The value of gold is real, the value of fiat currency exists only in the mind? Wow.

It would be merely amusing, but this type of "thinking" has quite a bit of influence in our real life federal government. These children have their hands on real power.

 

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You mean like this? Are you ready for the Mall? Can you say collusion and win-win?

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/10/dig...e_contractors_who_analyze_your_personal_data/



Isn't this fascism at work?

 

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That is a field mark or characteristic of fascistic governance, yes. The general approach is common to authoritarian governments of other ideologies as well - monarchies in old Europe often hired mercenaries for their spying and counter-terrorism efforts, for example.

Nobody was suggesting that the people amassing the "knowledge" should be fearful. It's the rest of us who have worries here.

Why would you use the word "we"? There isn't any "we" in this secret and classified government file compiling, and there isn't any "we" in the addressing of any social or environmental dynamics that results. That's all sequestered in a body of secret government spies, informants, and mercenary field agents. We are by contrast prevented from acquiring this information, and the targets rather than the enactors of the addressing.

 

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And iceaura displays both a share of ignorance while creating a strawman - yet, again.

The values of gold and fiat currency - only exist in a person's mind.

If you recall, my argument was that we, so-called 'free' Citizens, should be 'free' to utilize ANY currencies we so choose to, in a free-market. Some of those currencies may be money, but none of them CAN be fiat. Do you understand that? Seriously, do you understand what the "Fiat" in Fiat Currency actually means??? It's not possible to have a fiat currency IN a free-market. To say such a thing is an oxymoron.


For the love of the Gods, the State Public School sure is getting one thing right - that much is for sure.

 

B I N G B O N G.

You win a point. Our ENTIRE economy is Fascistic.

 

You mean we should be worried that the government is emulating the behavior of the private sector? Isn’t that the antithesis of fascism?

Meet the NSA’s private sector counterparts.

The contractors analyzing your private finances.

The contractors analyzing your private medical information.

The contractors analyzing your private postal traffic.

The contractors analyzing your private internet activity.

The contractors analyzing your private utility usage.

The contractors analyzing your private residential conditions.

Because “WE” are the intended beneficiaries of the accumulation and use of such knowledge. National security and law enforcement agencies are ideally using collected data to enhance our security, if other entities such as qualified scientific researchers can make use of these resources, then it would be wise to give them access as well.

 

Not emulating: outsourcing function to, and secretly collaborating with. Actually emulating would of course be even worse.

No, it's a central characteristic of fascist governance, one of the central distinctions between leftwing and rightwing regimes in general.

Or, in my somewhat more accurate terms, the targets of the spying and the subjects of the manipulations attendant on it.

That is not the same thing as being the ones accumulating the knowledge, or the ones addressing the social and environmental dynamics. There is no "we" there. We are not them. We are the ones left ignorant, and unable to address social and environmental dynamics, and vulnerable to being pushed around by secretive and unaccountable people who know all about us while remaining anonymous themselves.

And those of us who do not wish to be ignorant and helpless and under continual surveillance regard the prospect of that as a threat, and the creation of such a situation as abusive behavior.

There is no such thing as a "fascistic economy". The capitalistic economic structure central to fascistic governance is also adaptable to a variety of other governing ideologies - fascism has no exclusive claim on it.

You've never made an argument. You've spent your entire time here making childish assertions in a private language, based on fantasies of economic analysis and political history with little basis in physical reality.

 

When private organizations collect data to maximize their success it’s considered good operational efficiency, why would you expect less of an effort from government? And how do expect a government to function without the material and financial assets of its associated private sector?

The citizenry is always the object of manipulation, but is ideally from a governmental prospective, always the subject of collective benefit. You can’t manage problems and solutions without adequate data and control.

The vast majority of information accessible to the NSA isn’t operationally useful to them, but it very well could be to other disciplines. Surveillance isn’t just about people, it’s about our total environment, and to be able to collate such a mass collection of data would certainly be a boon to many sciences.

How would expect such surveillance be used against you?

 

I don't want good operational efficiency among those who spy on my life and make files. I want inefficiency, operational dysfunction, and possibly jail time.

If my government finds that after 200 years of successful management without it can no longer function without spying on me and compiling files on my private life, it's proper response would be to dissolve itself so I can replace it with a better one at minimal expense. Having to get rid of it is costly and troublesome.

The notion that this invasion of my privacy and abuse of my life might be handed around to anyone who wants to get a look at it is yet another - wholly redundant - objection to this bizarre governmental malfunction.

The government can keep its perspective out of my life, unless specifically and narrowly brought in by me for some task. If there's beneficial spying to be done, it will be by me on my government, to make sure it's taking care of business and not turning its powers to abuse and foolishness.

Use of governmental resources to spy on me and keep files on everything I do is already against me. We don't even have to consider the potential employment of such abuses.

 

So there is no possible benefit to documenting the behavior of you and everything around you. Should your physician use this same strategy when assessing the state of your health? Should scientists follow this lead when assessing the state of our planet?

 

That's your third or fourth employment of that particular technique. On a science forum that's called lying - dishonest representation of other people's arguments etc is not allowed by the rules.

Time to find out what you're up to: Who do you work for?

If my physician were to be caught spying on my daily life and creating files on everything I do without my permission or even knowledge, secret files and secret spying that I could not even transfer to another physician of my choice or use to monitor my own health care, I would have him arrested and jailed.

Scientists who wish to study aspects of my life in pursuit of greater understanding of something or another are welcome to ask for my permission, which I may or may not provide depending, and required by law to provide me with complete information about what they have done and found. Scientists who use their instruments to spy on my life and make files of my behavior without my knowledge or permission would of course be arrested and jailed as soon as discovered.

 

A physician armed with your complete history, rather than the one you recall or are willing to share, would be better equipped to treat your ailments.

To shield individuals from ignominy, I guess it would be wise to provide a degree of anonymity with the data available for general consumption, so unless it's a question of personal or national security, you or any other citizen should have access to such data.

The existing set of sensor data open to surveillance doesn’t cover much of one’s nonpublic behavior, but with the increasing prevalence of lifelogging these personal details will become more accessible. Whether the sharing of such personal data should be voluntary or compulsory is dependent on the willingness of society to embrace significant advancement.

 

So? That has nothing to do with secret government agents spying on my life and compiling agenda-driven unaccountable files in anonymous impunity from the abuses they inflict thereby.

All of this data is being collected under the blanket excuse of "national security", none of it is available to me, none of it can be challenged, modified, or destroyed at my behest, and the only way to ensure personal security in such a bogus situation would be to physically prevent it from being accessible to government agencies or their private contractors. Allowing the compilation of such files and making them accessible to government agents and secret, anonymous private contractors is the most serious compromise of my personal security imaginable from such a program.

Bullshit.

More bullshit. It is being imposed on unwilling people right now, its scope and nature concealed from them, and its "sharing" governed by secret policies enacted by anonymous people completely independent of anyone else's preferences or embracings.

 

the truth about NSA.

 

The point is that just as a more complete body of information can provide superior health when used by health care professionals, the same can be said about any other professionals, including those involved with national security.

Not to say that the NSA isn’t capable of archiving every scrap of data they sift through, but realistically, what relevance could the vast majority of it have in regards to their task of monitoring national security threats? Their job is looking for security related needles, not warehousing cattle feed. But for those who are concerned with cattle feed, let them have a crack at the data that is not associate with national and personal security. There are ways to use collected data considered personal by individuals that does not compromise their public reputation.

Unless most people are in the habit of broadcasting the mundane behavior of their private lives, the NSA isn’t collecting those personal details.

The data collection programs and the personnel managing them are authorized to operate as legally prescribed, and there is no evidence that by and large they function outside the bounds of their authority, any more than other government agencies do. If at some point a connection to the programs can be tied to cases of malfeasants, then those grievances can be addressed.

I’m still waiting for someone to give specific examples as to how they think this collected information will be maliciously used against them.

 

Capitalism is not central to Fascism.

What is Capitalism?
What are free markets?
What is the difference between fiat currency and currency?

There's a reason why the NSA is spying on Americans and this spying MUST happen. You want The Government to provide you with inefficient services (socialism) you can't be bothered paying for in a free market (capitalism) then you don't get to leave your children a free country - one that doesn't spy on each and every thing they do, they don't get to live in a free society. Instead they will live in a highly regulated militarized society with even less freedom of movement then now and one that spy's on them.

Ever read about feudal societies? I used to wonder how they evolved. How did it end up being the case where humans had to ask permission to leave their farms from their Lords?



Don't worry icneaura, you'll get your "Free" roads and "Free" ObamaCare. "Your" government is going to take care of you and your grand kids (should you have any) will live like serfs. Lucky them.

 

It is when Big Corporations And Big Banks run the world!

 

Yes, it is. You have to have capitalistic corporations before you can have a conjoinment of such corporations and political(military) power - what Eisenhower called the "military/industrial complex", and one of the defining characteristics of fascistic governance.

Instead of wondering, you might have looked into the matter - especially in a context of a stratifying capitalistic society that features inherited wealth and increasing prominence of privately owned millitary forces.

So what? The price is far too high.

Nobody with any sense would abandon their privacy and risk their civil liberties and agree to live in the shadow of government surveillance their whole lives in exchange for the unenforceable promise of a little extra "security", any more than someone would agree to have their entire lives monitored and secret data bases compiled on them in return for their doctor having the advantage of more complete information than they would willingly have provided. That's tyranny, and a little insecurity or medical inefficiency is a very small price to pay to avoid it.

If allowed secrecy and not carefully curbed, their job in spying on whoever they want to spy on however they want to spy one them is whatever the individual agents decide to do.

And there are ways to use that data to impose tyranny and oppress entire populations. History is quite clear about which is most likely to become the norm, in the US - the FBI's use of wiretap info to try to blackmail Martin Luther King into abandoning his political efforts is only one of many, many examples.

Bullshit.

Time to cancel that "authorization", whatever it is (we are not allowed to know)

Of course there is - their insistence on secrecy and avoidance of accountability. Governments very seldom behave well unless openly and publicly monitored, and never for long. Assuming they have been, or will, is silly.

The collection of such information is already malicious use of governmental powers against me. I don't care if they never do anything with it - its collection is abusive and tyrannical and completely without my consent.

 

Actually, it was the State that bailed out the banks and big corporations. The would have went bust in 2007-8. The STATE did this.

Which is what you wanted and so now you can live with it. When the Sociopaths that run the State draft you to go fight and die under their Leadership in the military industrial machine, just remember this is what you wanted. You did not want to live in a volentaristic society but instead one based on force. That's exactly what we have so I do hope you enjoy it to its full conclusion. Go volunteer to fight and die for FREEdom.

maybe you should vote for Obomb-a again or Hillbillery - even better.

 

Their being able to tap government funds - no strings attached, hundreds of billions on demand - is proof of the power of those banks and corporations. The State, having failed to govern and regulate the financial markets in the first place and tax the proceeds in the second, found itself borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars to hand over to bankers who then refused to provide an accounting of how they spent the money.

Which is essentially similar to the consequences of deregulating financial markets throughout history and around the world. Living and learning about banking man, a new lesson whenever the old victims have died off.

Notice that the main bankers involved in these scandals are safe from prosecution because it's almost impossible to get evidence on them - they do not have to worry about NSA surveillance of their phones, the way the rest of us do.