Obama admits this is "to restore public confidence" not to fix a broken system. He doesn't even think there is an actual problem. This is all about PR and very little, if anything, about reform.
Our power-mad leaders never give up any of their power without a long protracted fight. We have to continue to keep the pressure on until this is actually fixed.
I don't want to do the usual ranting thing, mostly because of how pathetically sad it all is.
I will say as a disinterested observer (I do not support either major political party in the U.S.) I'm curious to see if any candidates will run on an anti-surveillance state message in the upcoming presidential elections.
We could end up with the same assholes who support all this nonsense going back out and making a bunch more speeches about how bad it all is -- just so they can get elected and continue things as before.
People say cynical voters are a problem, but you watch enough of how politics actually works (and has worked over the centuries) and if you don't become refreshingly cynical you're an empty-headed fool and more of a danger to yourself and others than anything else.
> I'm curious to see if any candidates will run on an anti-surveillance state message in the upcoming presidential elections.
The danger of this (from a politician's POV) is that it paints a giant target on your head, to the extent that the public is spooked about bad guys. Especially if something bad happens while you're in power, and the public rises up demanding the ability to catch all the bad guys whatever it takes. If we could learn to not freak out every time J Random Lunatic does a public bad thing, then we wouldn't be handing pro-surveillance politicians the tools to so easily defeat their opponents.
Basically this isn't just politicians being evil, it's the symptom of widespread irrationalism.
You point out the excellent reasons for politicians not taking any action -- who wants to be the guy that changed the rules so the next 9-11 could happen? But my point is more along the lines of happy-talk: red meat to throw at some energetic segment of the population to get them to donate and come out and vote.
We see this same pattern on many issues, take for instance welfare for Republicans. They'll talk up their objections, including making all sorts of nuanced arguments, but at the end of the day nobody is going to vote to throw grandma off a cliff.
I'd be ten bucks we same some of this same crap with security. Somebody will make impassioned, reasoned speeches -- probably explaining things just as you have done, and making a case for something that sounds great but is more of a marketing blurb than anything else. Maybe it'll be "peace through reasonable security" or something. (Be assured that it will be heavily poll-tested.)
But in the end, it'll just be more whitewashing. My curiosity is just how banal and pandering the politicians will get. From a rhetorical and philosophical viewpoint alone, it's always interesting to watch these verbal and policy gymnastics. What'll be the catchphrase? Will the tech community come out and support a politician even when it's blatantly obvious he or she is just beating a pinata and isn't serious about real change? I suspect so.
Maybe. I'll also be curious to see if politicians will go against surveillance in their campaign speeches.
Although the cynical side of me asks, if a politician goes against the surveillance state, who has both the motive and opportunity to sabotage that politician's career? Answer: the surveillance state.
> The man who promised to closed Guantanamo Bay... And didn't.
Yeah, I mean its not like Congress passed a law specifically prohibiting the actions the President proposed in order to close the detention facility at Guatanamo Bay. [1]
[1] They didn't pass a law, but several, on different occasions.
There is an important point in this: The American public (i.e. citizenry) must look itself in the face and question what it has begotten.
Our "leaders" really mostly follow. They follow votes. They follow money. Increasingly, the influence of money (and the votes, and redistricting into "safe" districts, that it can buy) appears to be superceding that of raw, individual votes.
But it is still the citizens who cast those votes.
It's not just "them." It is "us." (For U.S. citizens. And for non-citizens who have various forms of influence upon U.S. policy, directly or in response to it.)
In that sense, it might be argued we have very much gotten the government we deserve.
If we think we deserve better, it is up to us. Not them.
You mean they passed a law specifically blocking the actions the President took: he gave the executive order to close Guantanamo 2 days after the inauguration.
Sure, he could find a way to push it through, but given the Republicans' historical success at demanding the world from a Democrat with a mandate (e.g. cutting capital gains tax by a third in exchange for childrens' health care), I'm sure their asking price was high.
My point was not that Dems as a party were blameless, only that Obama could plausibly lie anywhere on the fault spectrum for this issue. You're correct to observe that the real fault lies with the political system that encourages the use of bargaining chips, but the people blaming Obama were the only ones saying otherwise.
I used CHIP as an example of congress opposing a mandate in order to win concessions. The CHIP issue almost certainly had roughly similar party lines, but given a few hours I'm sure I could dig up 10 examples of party X opposing party Y's mandate to extract concessions regardless of whether X==Y or X!=Y, if that would make you happy.
I don't think we got the person we elected in 2008 and 2012 ... what makes you think that Palin would be worse? Have you noticed that after all the "Tea Partyism" during the last election, the Republican party seems to have congealed back into its original form?
I really don't see how we elect change without a third party - yet I think the way elections are run (especially financially) virtually guarantees we'll never get that third party. The only possible solution is to pray for grid-lock.
Yes ... I really am THAT cynical. But I'm older than most of this crowd and my idealism is spent.
It's interesting to me that this is exactly the person that the Republicans didn't want to see elected in 2008 (In 2012 I think they wanted him to win, because Romney never had a chance).
That so many young people who idealistically embraced him can't stand him now doesn't mean he changed, just that they woke up to who he really was all along.
Seriously, no surprises here. If you believed the impossible promises he made on the 2008 campaign trail, I'm sorry, but you were warned.
(Incidentally I intend to pay a lot of attention to the negative reporting done on candidates I support in the future, because it represents a worst-case scenario if the pundits actually turn out to be right)
I agree completely ... and I never said I voted for him but rather that the "corporate we" elected him. On the other hand, I AM a bit surprised that so few of his 2008 promises were even attempted, and that more people didn't revolt over his lack of commitment in 2012. People may not have recognized the impossible promises, but they would have expected an attempt at enacting those policies.
As someone who voted for Obama twice (once for change and once against Romney) I will be voting from now on for anyone and everyone who would be new to DC. At this point that's the best hope for change that I can see.
> As someone who voted for Obama twice (once for change and once against Romney) I will be voting from now on for anyone and everyone who would be new to DC.
Actually, unfocussed churn in elected policymakers just means that the unelected powerbrokers -- who are very much not interested in change -- increase in power relative to the rotating classes of novice elected officials.
Especially given the limitations of our electoral system in providing choices and effective representation, educated voting on substance alone without effort outside of voting is insufficient to do much to produce desired change, but reducing the effort involved to just voting blindly for novelty will be even less effective.
It's a tough thing. If you vote for someone with no ties to Washington, you are "voting for someone with no experience." If you vote for someone entrenched in DC, you are "voting for a career politician." It's a lose/lose proposition haha
Obama came from Chicago politics. He was "new to DC" like John Carmack is "new to Occulus Rift". He might be working with a different crew now, but he's bringing a lot of "experience" to bear.
Any comments submitted here may be stored in for-profit corporate databases ran by the likes of Booz Allen Hamilton. Your comments are not data, they are meta-content. No data is collected to be stored in this database, any incidental data that does get stored in the database will be carefully minimized so a worker has to press a key to expose the information.
This data will be pitched to the likes of US Chamber of Commerce[1] via firms like Hunton & Williams[2] as to be used to attack/stifle/undermine political dissidents, journalists like Glenn Greenwald[3], and _THEIR FAMILIES_[4][5]. These comments may be used against you by any nation-state that pays, or entity that leaks information from the database.
All of this foretold in the details (meta-content) of the 2011 anonymous leaks.
edit: Oh eat me anonymous down-voter. Anyone that wishes to learn more about the for-profit interests often created by the NSA or their past employees can read Telecomix's BlueCabinet[1] or Barrett Brown's Project PM[2]. Free Barrett Brown.
> Any comments submitted here may be stored in for-profit corporate databases ran by the likes of Booz Allen Hamilton
...
> These comments may be used against you by any nation-state that pays, or entity that leaks information from the database
Uhm...HN comments are by design available to anyone in the world who wants to read them. What is the point of leaking something that is freely available from the original source?
Same reason many corporations make a pretty penny off easily accessible public data? Slick presentation, rich tools to use the data with, and integration into existing work-flow?
The comment was more a gesture at how all this public/semi-public/private/extremely private data can end up being used. Or indeed how it has been used or pitched to be used. When you have NSA affiliates like Palantir mucking about with firms like Hunton & Williams. Teaming up to do attack work on generally anyone who opposes the persons who make up the facade that is US Chamber of Commerce, you have a shipwreck in progress.
How much you are targeted by these entities is a matter of how much of a nail you are to their hammer.
"NSA affiliates like Palantir mucking about with firms like Hunton & Williams [teaming up to attack] anyone who opposes the persons who make up the facade that is US Chamber of Commerce" is brilliant. You're hitting some Robert Anton Wilson notes here. 23 Skidoo!
That's OK, I sometimes like to respond to people's comments without reading the articles linked as well.
Palantir, known to be funded by the CIA[1] was indeed mucking around with US Chamber of Commerce via Hunton & Williams. The work being solicited was indeed offensive in nature, not just collecting information on activists.
I am not sure what your problem is but you can not respond further if you wish to engage me like this.
I can't tell you how much I am enjoying this narrative about the US Chamber of Commerce being the secret controllers of the levers of power. Keep going with this! It's gold.
US Chamber of Commerce is indeed a facade for it's individual components, the businesses within. Nothing secret about it. No levers of power, just persons driving involvement and direction of the lobby group. It is rather nasty seeing their solicitation of work with companies having national security clearance, CIA/military ties, aimed at journalists/activists like Glenn Greenwald or bank protestors. I'm sorry if you see colorful language used to describe the fuckwad of conflict of interests as conspiratorial ramblings, but I actually don't think you do. I think you are bored.
This method of belittling peoples out the side of your digital mouth is detrimental most of the time. Rah rah tptacek you are the master of this here at HN, have fun with that.
I will ignore you continuing to be a prick, and instead provide further details upon the topic you are clearly emotive about. Thinking it such "gold." From the now dead Michael Hastings:
"Barrett Brown, another investigative journalist who has written for Vanity Fair, among others publications, exposed the connections between the private contracting firm HB Gary (a government contracting firm that, incidentally, proposed a plan to spy on and ruin the reputation of the Guardian’s Greenwald) and who is currently sitting in a Texas prison on trumped up FBI charges regarding his legitimate reportorial inquiry into the political collective known sometimes as Anonymous[1]."
Is this something to insulting about when a journalist is referencing the situation and the players involved? Or just when I link to the material myself?
Yes, the Rolling Stone journalist whose car was taken over by NSA satellites and crashed because he was sticking up for the heroin addicted blogger-cum-journalist whose most important scoop publishing the credit card numbers of everyone who ever signed up for STRATFOR. Seriously, where's Hagbard Celine? Hail Eris!
Yes, because "NSA satellites" is exactly what I talking about. The best you can do to not acknowledge Hastings reporting being entirely contextual to what I have been saying is to make a slight about his death being a conspiracy?
That's pretty fucked up.
As for Barrett Brown, the entities at the top of the warrant's list were HBGary, Infragard, and NSA affiliate/botnet information using Endgame Systems[1]. You seem to conflate Brown with the person who hacked the firm and leaked the data. Brown was a person who reported on the contents and helped coordinate research on those companies the warrant names amongst others.
About Stratfor, court documents for Sabu the FBI snitch show that the leaked data was directed to an FBI server when the site was hacked and the data ex-filtrated. Instead of pinning the credit card information that was uploaded directly to the FBI as being disseminated by Brown (Hammond was the Stratfor hacker), perhaps you should ask how it was allowed to leave the FBI's control after the data landed on their forensically secure server[2].
But no, Mr Brown used drugs so of course that is what you latch onto as to diminish work done or waffle away from discussing this topic at all. Classic tptacek character attack. Relent on being such a dick, purposefully exaggerating/contorting the subjects as to dismiss them and perhaps we can discuss this topic, as so far you have just been making snotty comments.
Our power-mad leaders never give up any of their power without a long protracted fight. We have to continue to keep the pressure on until this is actually fixed.