eom

The vote today was about just that. Are all Americans now suspects? Or must there be probable cause before we are suspects. The constitution says there must be probable cause for the government to spy on you. Obama doesn't think the constitution matters so much as what the nsa wants.

eom

in which case disgust rather than sadness is the appropriate reaction to them

Nor does it make me feel safe. Quite the opposite. We've done the same things at each and every technological advance from the telegraph on and it's been abused each and every time.

This will end no differently.

This week, we have a dick. And a baby. And all our privacy advocates are busy cheering on how great spying on people's lives is when it involves someone's nudie pics, or a hospital door half a world away.

You need to keep up better. Get with the program!

eom

I have always had problems keeping things prioritized...

Glad I could help.

Since 2002 the nation has been asleep

To others, not so much. It's really not even a scandal. Betrayal is more like it.

I'm shocked that you didn't know this was happening.

It is all Bush's fault.

You would be thinking differently if one of your family members was injured in Boston.

What have you got to hide?

I trust our President.

What are you? A Paulite?

Your hair is on fire.

There is no escaping modern technology. Learn to live with it.

Snowden is a traitor.

beatings, 7400+ arrests, FBI getting fringe members drunk and offering them bomb-making materiel (Cleveland), taking political prisoners (No NATO protests, Chicago), and seen the FBI approach climate activists in the PNW, jailing grand jury resistors (Anarchists), TransCanada teaching police to recognize peaceful climate activists through shared files and to treat them as terrorists...and DHS and the FBI spying on Occupy from day one...and journalists finding their sources clamming up due to calls and emails being logged and stored by NSA...know things are far worse than those who have been sitting in their armchairs may imagine. No offence to them, just facts.

Challenge the (1%) status quo, be attacked. This is the definition (FBI and "patriot act&quot of domestic terrorism. The US government has engaged in force and the threat of force/jail against the civilian population for political/economic purposes. And Obama keeps bailing out the banksters while applying "austerity" (sequestration) upon the little folk.

Take a look at the "democratic" national convention:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002710303

Instead of sending out the mockers and the shit slingers to insult everyone who arrogantly resents a little government transcriptionist's joining their daily interactions, they ought to be playing up the caretaking angle of all this.

I mean, the government wouldn't spy on us and catalogue our every move unless they CARED about us, right?

They are targeting us based on key words anyway. It wouldn't be hard to expand the program to zero in on Americans who would benefit from a little extra caretaking and attention. Imagine how warm and comforting it would be, if you were writing an email to your sister about your constipation, if a note popped up immediately from Clapper or from your Senator, or even from Obama, saying how sorry they are that you are in such pain and maybe even giving a little recipe for an enema that might work.

Clearly it's *all* about protecting and taking care of Americans, so why not play that up?

Not to mention the 4th Amendment.