Move over, Big Brother, NSA is doing it far more efficiently...

Americans hate terrorists and love our kids, right? So you might be shocked to know that preschoolers with guns have taken more lives so far this year than the single U.S. terrorist attack, which claimed four lives in Boston.

This is admittedly tongue-in-cheek, but one has to wonder if the NSA's PRISM program would have saved more lives had it been monitoring toddlers - or gun owners - rather than suspected terrorists.

In 2010, 13,186 people died in terrorist attacks worldwide, while 31,672 people were killed with firearms in America alone, reports CNN's Samuel Burke.

Then ponder this: Americans suffer assaults on their privacy — they are groped in public and wiretapped en masse — and surrender their constitutional protections against unwarranted searches in the name of the war on terror, yet they cannot muster the will to protect children from mass murder with military-style weapons. We have spent more than $1 trillion on homeland security since Sept. 11, 2001, yet have withheld annual funding of less than $3 million for research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on gun violence.

Why are the First, Fourth and Fifth amendments subject to erosion in the name of homeland security, but the Second Amendment is beyond compromise in the name of saving innocent lives?

The risks of terrorism are not so much greater than the risks of gun violence that a disproportionate response is justified. Between 1969 and 2009, according to a 2011 Heritage Foundation study, 5,586 people were killed in terrorist attacks against the United States or its interests abroad. By comparison, about 30,000 people were killed by guns in the United States every year between 1986 and 2010. This means that about five times as many Americans are killed every year by guns than have been killed in terrorist attacks since Richard Nixon took office.

If you think GCHQ spying revelations don't matter, it's time to think again
by John Naughton

Will the revelation that GCHQ taps every internet communication that enters or leaves the UK mark the moment when ordinary citizens stop and say: "Oh, now I get it." A moment when people realise that the stuff that nerds and activists had been droning on about might actually affect them?

My hunch is that it isn't such a moment. Most people will just shrug their shoulders and get on with life. They will accept the assurances of those in authority and move on. If they do, then they will have missed something important. It is that our democracies have indeed reached a pivotal point. Ever since it first became clear that the internet was going to become the nervous system of the planet, the 64 billion dollar question was whether it would be "captured" by giant corporations or by governments. Now we know the answer: it's "both".

The parts of their reports that are deemed "publishable" are presented to Parliament. The non-publishable parts are, er, secret. In the last two weeks, the adjective "Orwellian" has been widely deployed. But "Kafkaesque" seems more appropriate to the situation in which we find ourselves. The conversation between the state and the citizen has been reduced to a dialogue that the writer would have recognised. It goes like this.

State Although intrusive surveillance does infringe a few liberties, it's necessary if you are to be protected from terrible things.

Citizen (anxiously) What terrible things?

State Can't tell you, I'm afraid, but believe us they are truly terrible. And, by the way, surveillance has already prevented some terrible things.

Citizen Such as?

State Sorry, can't go into details about those either.

Citizen So how do I know that this surveillance racket isn't just bureaucratic empire building?

State You don't need to worry about that because it's all done under legal authority.

Citizen So how does that work?

State Regrettably, we can't go into details because if we did so then the bad guys might get some ideas.

What it comes down to, in the end, is: "Trust us." And the trouble with that is that in recent decades our political elites have done precious little to deserve our trust. Now we're being asked to suspend our disbelief as they eavesdrop on all of our online activities – to trust them, in a way, with the most intimate details of our social and private lives. And all on the basis of laws that they – or their security apparatuses – wrote in order to rationalise and legitimate their snooping.

What we're witnessing is the metamorphosis of our democracies into national security states in which the prerogatives of security authorities trump every other consideration and in which critical or sceptical appraisal of them is ruled out of court.

I Have Mono wrote:I had to research gun violence and depending on how guns are reduced depends on how successful it is. Australia and England very, New York, Chicago, Illinois, California not so much where you can just go to Indiana or Arizona and walk out with a Ak-47
If done properly I support it but not half ass the way it is done now but let's not get off topic now

I Have Mono wrote:And nothing about journalism today makes me trust the Media exactly like the Walter Cronkite era. I have to deal with idiots like Bill Riley, Anderson cooper, Glen beck, etc where anyone can end up on tv or "publish an article"
People trust Jon Stewart and Stephan Colbert more which says a lot.

I Have Mono wrote:The American citizen of today are a lot better armed then the German citizen of the 40's so it would be hard to do that on a nationwide scale, one reason why Americans like their guns.

rwo power wrote:@Swanhends

You underestimate how allergic Germans are to surveillance. We had that twice within the last 80 years in two totalitarian regimes and that is why people are fighting with teeth and nails for their privacy here.

Swanhends wrote:Im shocked at how strong the illusion of privacy is in this thread...The only place real privacy exists is in your thoughts and (to a small extent) your home, and that shift began before even 9/11: Drastically increased technological capabilities + organizations realizing the value of data = kiss your "privacy" goodbye

In terms of the government: when toeing the line between over-surveillance and under-surveillance, the government will err on the side of over-surveillance 100% of the time

Monitor too closely and you might annoy a portion of the public

Monitor too loosely and suffer a large-scale terrorist attack and everyone will freak out...like they said in men in black: "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."

....easy decision for the feds to make





Not saying I agree with it; personally I would gladly sacrifice quite a bit of security for the sake of liberty, but I accept and respect that my outlook on life seems to be quite different than most, and there are plenty of people who would not make that choice....I just think there is some serious naivety in this thread as to the nature of privacy in the 21st century

M99 wrote:I'm with bhends here, why are people so surprised?

NSA is probably watching this thread too

There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to."
George Orwell, 1984

(Reuters) - The United States taps half a billion phone calls, emails and text messages in Germany in a typical month and has classed its biggest European ally as a target similar to China, according to secret U.S. documents quoted by a German newsmagazine.
The revelations of alleged U.S. surveillance programs based on documents taken by fugitive former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden have raised a political furor in the United States and abroad over the balance between privacy rights and national security.

Exposing the latest details in a string of reputed spying programs, Der Spiegel quoted from an internal NSA document which it said its reporters had seen.

The document Spiegel cited showed that the United States categorized Germany as a "third-class" partner and that surveillance there was stronger than in any other EU country, similar in extent to China, Iraq or Saudi-Arabia.

"We can attack the signals of most foreign third-class partners, and we do it too," Der Spiegel quoted a passage in the NSA document as saying.

It said the document showed that the NSA monitored phone calls, text messages, emails and internet chat contributions and has saved the metadata - that is, the connections, not the content - at its headquarters.

On an average day, the NSA monitored about 20 million German phone connections and 10 million internet data sets, rising to 60 million phone connections on busy days, the report said.

McLewis wrote:The Patriot Act, lady and gents.

Bush's admin created it, Obama's admin continues it. The GOP championed it. 

Now they don't recognize it.

I Have Mono wrote:The supreme court has always been the law of the land but ita biased. If the supreme court justices are impartial like they are supposed to be why does it matter if they are all white, all mexican, all black, all men, or all women, they are not impartial thats why.
So to tell me something that gets passed 5-4 by Biased judges can not be bent a little is ridiculous.

The us constitution is so outdated its not even funny, what founding father had to foresight to think in 250 years we would have giant satillites, the ability to instantly communicate with each other, automatic weapons.

The country is so divided its basically impossible to amend the constitution with anything valid. So yes I'm ok with bending the rules a little bit.

Spoiler: