...then you have made the assumption that the U.S. rules the world. At least that's one point of view.

However, I agree that we probably should show some deference to other countries if only to hold ourselves out as more noble in intent.

OTOH, we have far too many ignoble Americans in our midst but it would be a nice thought to think we could demonstrate a sense of higher ethics to others.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Don't ever underestimate the long-term effects of a good night's sleep.[/center][/font][hr]

But unilaterally stripping all people of privacy is... respecting their customs?

I'm going to be honest when I say that I'm really not getting your argument here.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Can you please show me the part where is says "Oh, but only if they are born in America"? It isn't illegal, but it sure as hell isn't standing up for our founding principles.

I really don't get how we can could call ourselves anything but evil if we are determined to hold the entire world in 1984 style internet surveillance for our safety.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't show them a better way to behave. But that's not the type of world we live in right now. Maybe we can become that 'better nation'.

I wouldn't mind basically stopping all spying activities, closing down all our military bases and offering our 'services' under the auspices of the U.N. or self-defense only.

I kind of doubt that would fly with a good part of the country, though.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Don't ever underestimate the long-term effects of a good night's sleep.[/center][/font][hr]

You know the kind who think the world just might be a better place if we stopped spying on everyone then blowing them up.

But yes, I think if we committed ourselves to exclusively engage in self-defense and tried to actually live by the lofty principles of freedom that we talk about, then we'd probably find our place in the world much more secure and we wouldn't have to become tyrants to defend ourselves.

But I insist on looking at things as objectively as possible.

Even in a corporate-ruled world, peace should be a more desirable outcome than war. War is only a temporary lift in munitions profits. We all get more out of peace.

Paradoxically, the Internet is bringing about the 'great connection' that, I think, will make this a more stable planet overall. Maybe then we can start leaving all the spy and war relics behind.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Don't ever underestimate the long-term effects of a good night's sleep.[/center][/font][hr]

He's arguing that the Being A Raging Dick To Everyone Theory of Foreign Policy has some major flaws to it.

Oh and if we do it others, what on earth is going to stop anyone from doing it to us?

Spies spy.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Don't ever underestimate the long-term effects of a good night's sleep.[/center][/font][hr]

And attempting to create a surveillance network for every living human being (with access to the internet) on this earth. If you have evidence of china running an equivalent program for Americans, I'd love to see it.

Even if China was doing the exact same thing back to us, is every nation on earth? Do you really think New Zealand is constructing a system to monitor all American online activity? This is a global system for christ sake. If we are doing this to the entire world first, haven't we sacrificed our ability to complain about anyone doing it back to us? That sounds like a pretty good reason for not doing it in the first place.

If we were a good and decent nation interested in preserving liberty, we'd be trying to secure the global communications network against the very kind of underhanded shit we are doing. We certainly shouldn't get into contests with dictatorships about who can more effectively destroy world privacy.

But we also share our foreign intelligence with other countries. Those other countries cooperate with us for the 'privilege' of having the data we provide them.

It may not be right or noble or ethical but that's how things work right now.

Sure, I'd love to see America behave better. Stand as a true beacon of honor to the rest of the world. OTOH, there are really insane people in this world, including, unfortunately, many in Congress, that make that ideal more difficult to find.

I don't know if there is a way out of this morass other than to wait until we have all become so intertwined that all countries become as states to one united planet.

I don't know.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Don't ever underestimate the long-term effects of a good night's sleep.[/center][/font][hr]

No one is saying to shut down all foreign intelligence operations, I think you'd agree that attempting to spy on everyone with an internet connection is several steps too far though.

In my opinion, what we should be doing is working with other governments to develop systems to prevent this kind of mass surveillance. I don't believe that the right to privacy has to disappear from modern life, but it will if good people do nothing to protect it.

But if we were to basically retreat from the world, would that be a good thing or a bad thing? Like it or not, much of the world depends on our military presence to keep stability.

And as long as we have a military presence, we will need to engage in spying of some sort. At least that's how I see it.

I would have no problem with someone figuring out a way that we could withdraw militarily from the world and not have it collapse into chaos.

But is that possible?
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Don't ever underestimate the long-term effects of a good night's sleep.[/center][/font][hr]

Some here condemn Snowden for exposing US Government spying on foreign citizens, as if that's a bad thing. No, he should be praised.

It isn't right to do to Americans, it isn't right to do to anyone.

And I most certainly don't want it being done in my name as an American.

Are DUers really this naive or do you guys just play at it to see what kind of reaction you get?

Are you saying I'm naive for not wanting to construct a global surveillance network for 96% of the world population, including many of my friends and family. Or are you calling people who don't believe it will be used against Americans naive?

If you recall (no one here does nor does anyone here really care) Obama was going to rake the Chinese over the coals for their far more intrusive government sponsored hacking of private companies and their trade secrets before that paragon American citizen blew that all up with his revelations. So we already know foreign govts are coming into US networks and getting everything they can off of them.
You're probably naive enough to believe Snowden's timing was coincidental as well. I used to think well, I'm probably talking to folks who are a lot younger. Then someone ran a poll, and I saw that two-thirds of the posters are 50s or older, so that's not the case. But somehow simple practically self-evident and very publicly available facts seem to completely elude the posters here. Very odd.

It'd be IMPOSSIBLE, absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to try and secure the global communications network from this kind of interference. No, clearly our only course of action is to get into dick waving contests with dictatorships over who can violate more fundamental human rights quicker.

What about New Zealand and all our other allies? Quick put them into the surveillance gulag before China does, it is for their own protection!



Yeah no, If china is doing it we should be fighting it. We shouldn't take that as an excuse to do it back and to other people who have absolutely nothing to do with what china is doing.

It is apparently naive to not want your nation to become big brother for 96% of earth.

Across the top it lists other countries with whom we are running this intelligence: Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. Might be one other that I'm missing.
Anyways, point is, the idea that foreign govts aren't doing the same thing is just hopelessly naive. You are less than the dust beneath anyone's chariot wheels anyway, they're looking for trade secrets, official intelligence, all that kind of thing.
As for who might be looking for you, well, that would be Facebook and all the rest, but you already knew that, I'm sure.
Oh, and by the way, here's that eehhvulll PRISM:

I remember reading in some book by a former spook, don't remember which now, he said the first thing in their routine was to do the "checkables", that is, all the stuff that's publicly available about your target. Said there was a ridiculous amount you could find out just from doing a thorough job with that. That, it appears, is what PRISM does for the spooks. And not just them. Note that it's available to any organization, public or private, that wants to aggregate publicly available info and create a database of it for whatever purpose they have in mind.
So, given that, and given what can be found out about you from what you post here and elsewhere, well, I can't for the life of me come up with a reason for why the ordinary person cares about what Snowden "revealed". If you were really going out on the Internet thinking what you posted was going to be private, well, I don't know what to say. Foreign govts are already hacking into everyone else's networks, but they're not looking for you. The folks who are interested in you are using PRISM and other very similar tools to put all your info into a massive database the better to sell to you their stuff, or maybe check who you are before they hire you, all that kind of thing. None of which should be news to anyone.

Yes we must break all privacy on the planet, otherwise we are hopelessly naive. Human rights are so 20th century.

I'm really going to ask this as nicely as possible, how on earth do you call yourself a progressive if you're advocating for a world wide surveillance state because... other bad people want to do it so we need to do it first?

I mean you asked "Are DUers really this naive?". If you support putting every single person on this planet under surveillance and you find DUers hopelessly naive on what horrible things need to be done in the name of security, isn't there a some kind of authoritarian underground you could be posting on instead?

It is simply a fact that all of this is out there. It is a fact that PRISM isn't a top-secret program, but is in fact a commercially available database tool that looks at publicly available data. It is a fact that Snowden pulled his little act right before we were going to get on the Chinese for their hacking into our private companies, which they do to a far greater extent than anything we manage. Or to put that a little more clearly: the USG doesn't do industrial espionage, because that's not what they're interested in. China does, because for them there is no line between the public and the private. But our effort to get them to rein in their spying on our private companies was railroaded by Snowden.
Why? Clearly Snowden is a turncoat. His actions prove that very clearly to anyone paying the least attention. No one here seems to care, but that doesn't mean it isn't a fact.
Sorry, facts are facts.

XKeyscore is a global surveillance system that can be used against nearly every living human being on this earth. I really want to know, do you believe that every single online communication should be cataloged for a government to search? If you do I don't think we're going to find much common ground. If you don't how on earth can you defend this program?

This is the world you live in:

1 - Anything you do at work can be looked at by your employer. You have no privacy there.
2 - At home, everything you do goes over a network and the metadata is cataloged. Notice that the PRISM description I posted specifically notes that it can collect metadata. How is it that private companies can collect metadata using PRISM? Because the courts have repeatedly ruled that metadata collection is legal because you, dear Kurska, have no expectation of privacy when it comes to your metadata.
3 - So, any foreign govt can already very very easily collect all of this stuff without even breaking a sweat. As for XKeyscore, it looks to be just another level of detail far as getting more into the metadata. There's a lot of wild claims being made as to what it can do, but it's early; I'll wait a while and see what really shakes out as the truth about it. I see one poster getting into the issue of breaking into the encryption on VPNs, which would then allow actual content to be spied on as it passes over these private networks. Possible. Unlike you, I don't just assume that the USG is doing industrial espionage, so the purpose of this would be very different from what the Chinese would do with it. I do assume the Chinese are using any capability they may have developed in this direction for industrial espionage, as that was already proven before Obama was going to meet with them and ask them to stop, an effort that Snowden very conspicuously and very consciously, I'm quite sure, sabotaged. But you're not interested in that, are you? You're just interested in beating up on the US for what it's doing without regard for the FACT that the Chinese are doing far worse. Which seems to be SOP here on DU.

We should stop fighting for them.

No actually, I won't.

Thanks for the suggestion though.

I am pointing out the "checkables": the actual realities of the actual world you actually live in. Along with every other citizen of this planet. Regardless of what finally shakes out from all this, your privacy is still going to be hanging by a thread.

There is one valid point in Snowden's revelations, a single bone he threw out whilst providing our enemies with reams of data on our sources and methods: the overly broad reach of the FISA warrants. So, if you want your rights safeguarded, that's where to start.

in the event of it becoming a dictatorship or any type of system other than what the US Constitution and Bill of Rights requires.