Bill Maher decides to permanently entrench himself on the wrong side of history

Yes, it does make me worry that my shit gets recorded. But I worry about the government more than Google, because the government can prosecute selectively, and (as with members of Occupy or civil rights groups in the sixties) they'll do that to stay in power politically. I'm not that worried for myself, I'm worried for radical politicians I would want to support being deterred from running for office. Or whatever. There are a lot of reasons why the ruling body shouldn't have a monopoly on surveillance. Do you disagree?

  On 1/22/2014 at 6:28 PM, eugene said:

 

  On 1/22/2014 at 6:23 PM, Brian Tregaskin said:

i believe that corrupting a government is as easy as corrupting the man in the street.

well you believe wrong because government is an organization with way, way more systems of oversight, control, self regulations and so on.

 

but the political decisions of a government can be influenced by private institutions (lobbies), can't they? for example, i can think of a particular lobby in france that all politicians are aligned with, when this allegiance makes no sense.

  On 1/22/2014 at 7:00 PM, A/D said:

Yes, it does make me worry that my shit gets recorded. But I worry about the government more than Google, because the government can prosecute selectively, and (as with members of Occupy or civil rights groups in the sixties) they'll do that to stay in power politically. I'm not that worried for myself, I'm worried for radical politicians I would want to support being deterred from running for office. Or whatever. There are a lot of reasons why the ruling body shouldn't have a monopoly on surveillance. Do you disagree?

no i definitely worry much more about various corporations having my data whose purpose is to make as much money as possible than the government which in general is working for public benefit (at least in the west). it doesn't take much to imagine the ways in which various corporation can exploit your data to your detriment, and they have much less oversight and regulations than the govnmt.

ideally there shouldn't be surveillance at all (though collecting data is not exactly surveillance when you don't really have direct acess to this data) but when there's agreement that surveillance is needed then the first body i would entrust it with is definitely the governmet and not some corporation. realistically it's not the case anyway because both have access to it (if what snowden and gg are saying is true).

  On 1/22/2014 at 7:03 PM, Brian Tregaskin said:

 

  On 1/22/2014 at 6:28 PM, eugene said:

 

  On 1/22/2014 at 6:23 PM, Brian Tregaskin said:

i believe that corrupting a government is as easy as corrupting the man in the street.

well you believe wrong because government is an organization with way, way more systems of oversight, control, self regulations and so on.

 

 

but the political decisions of a government can be influenced by private institutions (lobbies), can't they? for example, i can think of a particular lobby in france that all politicians are aligned with, when this allegiance makes no sense.

 

everyone can be influenced by everyone, but we're talking about systemic differences. there are inbuilt mechanisms within the government that can supervise this stuff to some degree and, statistically speaking, moderate its detrimental influence to the public, this isn't true just for any organization or man on the street.

surveillance states are good things

  On 1/22/2014 at 7:37 PM, eugene said:

everyone can be influenced by everyone, but we're talking about systemic differences. there are inbuilt mechanisms within the government that can supervise this stuff to some degree and, statistically speaking, moderate its detrimental influence to the public, this isn't true just for any organization or man on the street.

Are these 'inbuilt mechanisms' in your 'government' concept incorruptible?

that's a stupid question that has nothing to do with what i was talking about with tregaskin. there are two system in questions: one with such mechanisms and one without and the question is what systems is more effective in preventing abuse.

  On 1/22/2014 at 7:03 PM, Brian Tregaskin said:

 

  On 1/22/2014 at 6:28 PM, eugene said:

 

  On 1/22/2014 at 6:23 PM, Brian Tregaskin said:

i believe that corrupting a government is as easy as corrupting the man in the street.

well you believe wrong because government is an organization with way, way more systems of oversight, control, self regulations and so on.

 

 

but the political decisions of a government can be influenced by private institutions (lobbies), can't they? for example, i can think of a particular lobby in france that all politicians are aligned with, when this allegiance makes no sense.

 

political decisions can be influenced by definition. that's the point of politics. influence and corruption are not the same. (and influence and money shouldn't be equal either...shouldnt!) In an ideal political system all stakeholders have equal opportunity at influencing political decision making. political decision making can not, and should not happen in a complete vacuum.

O, and A/D, I think you forgot to mention Maher being a dick in your summary of good points.

edit.: not happy about how i tried to explain this, btw. but the main point is that influence isn't bad by definition.

  On 1/22/2014 at 8:31 PM, eugene said:

that's a stupid question that has nothing to do with what i was talking about with tregaskin. there are two system in questions: one with such mechanisms and one without and the question is what systems is more effective in preventing abuse.

You're making it a little difficult for me to understand. You're saying "there are two system in questions" - what is this sentence? Do you mean, "there are two systems in question"?

The first 'system' is your concept of a 'government', the one that has those 'inbuilt mechanisms' which prevent corruption, abuse; the second system being 'the man on the street'. The latter system is much easier to corrupt. Is that not what you are advocating?

if so, are those inbuilt mechanisms incorruptible? It's not a stupid question, it's a very good question the one I am asking you.

the main issue is what system is better in preventing abuse, of course everything is corruptible but there's still a better chance for a system that has such mechanisms (even if those are corruptible) than a system that doesn't have those to begin with to prevent abuse. i'm talking about ideal types obviously.

man you guys really need to stop feeding the troll, and yes at this point the denial has gotten to such an extreme that Eugene is straight fuckin trolling

  On 1/22/2014 at 6:35 PM, triachus said:

just want to point out that Bill Maher hasn't been mentioned in the last two pages


keep it on topic guys

Bill Maher is a fucking brown-shirt cunt

please don't insult cunts by comparing them to bill maher.

i was using the british vernacular, bill maher doesn't deserve to be compared to the beauties of female anatomy

the public opinion polls now show that Eugene's point of view is mostly held by generic democrats and or people over the age of 65, is it worth debating with someone who holds a minority view on the dangers of the surveillance state when it's so plainly obvious now to the general public?
absolutely not. The people here who have been paying attention already understand what's happening, but no matter how bad things get there will always be those who hold onto a false reality even till the bitter end. the games over, now we move on to the next stage, what are we going to do about this horrible abuse of power?

classic aweshittane: spews out some ridiculous, baseless conclusions, accuses me of trolling because of his inability to see valid criticism of his conclusions, thinks he's right all of the time. 10/10.

Disp making lots of good points in this thread.

  On 1/22/2014 at 9:19 PM, John Ehrlichman said:

i was using the british vernacular, bill maher doesn't deserve to be compared to the beauties of female anatomy

 

the public opinion polls now show that Eugene's point of view is mostly held by generic democrats and or people over the age of 65, is it worth debating with someone who holds a minority view on the dangers of the surveillance state when it's so plainly obvious now to the general public?

not that it matters at all but democrats together with people above 65 are not a minority

  On 1/22/2014 at 9:33 PM, eugene said:

 

  On 1/22/2014 at 9:19 PM, John Ehrlichman said:

i was using the british vernacular, bill maher doesn't deserve to be compared to the beauties of female anatomy

 

the public opinion polls now show that Eugene's point of view is mostly held by generic democrats and or people over the age of 65, is it worth debating with someone who holds a minority view on the dangers of the surveillance state when it's so plainly obvious now to the general public?

not that it matters at all but democrats together with people above 65 are not a minority

 

read: generic democrats

of all the things to pick at...

generic or not chances are it's very close to 50%+i got all the elderly republicans

  On 1/22/2014 at 11:10 PM, eugene said:

of all the things to pick at...

generic or not chances are it's very close to 50%+i got all the elderly republicans

you'd be surprised how many republicans are upset about this. whether its merely because there is a democratic president is another issue...

yeah id post the poll, but not just so i can show eugene that he has most in common with a 65+ year old american, the poll is public easily google-able. too lazy, and also done wasting time

"when liberals and libertarians quibble" (great commentary on how liberals use the excuse of 'that's libertarian' to knee jerk react to complains about the national security state because libertarianism is a dirty word)
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/01/security-state-0

People magazine poll showing that the tide has turned and the majority of americans are against the NSA policies (not for Eugene but for the rest of the forum)
http://www.people-press.org/2014/01/20/obamas-nsa-speech-has-little-impact-on-skeptical-public/




newest pathetic smear attempt 'Edward Snowden is a Russian Spy' debunked
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/01/snowden-calls-russian-spy-story-absurd.html

I remember that time Google put me in jail, that sucked.

that one time Google infiltrated my eco activist group was pretty nasty too, i'm still burned that they trained the guy to make friends with all of us for years just to spy on us

when google audited me simply for my politics I got really pissed off too

Do you guys remember when Google encouraged us to bomb a bridge, sold us all inert explosives and then arrested us?

  On 1/22/2014 at 7:30 PM, eugene said:

 

  On 1/22/2014 at 7:00 PM, A/D said:

 

Yes, it does make me worry that my shit gets recorded. But I worry about the government more than Google, because the government can prosecute selectively, and (as with members of Occupy or civil rights groups in the sixties) they'll do that to stay in power politically. I'm not that worried for myself, I'm worried for radical politicians I would want to support being deterred from running for office. Or whatever. There are a lot of reasons why the ruling body shouldn't have a monopoly on surveillance. Do you disagree?

no i definitely worry much more about various corporations having my data whose purpose is to make as much money as possible than the government which in general is working for public benefit (at least in the west). it doesn't take much to imagine the ways in which various corporation can exploit your data to your detriment, and they have much less oversight and regulations than the govnmt.

 

ideally there shouldn't be surveillance at all (though collecting data is not exactly surveillance when you don't really have direct acess to this data) but when there's agreement that surveillance is needed then the first body i would entrust it with is definitely the governmet and not some corporation. realistically it's not the case anyway because both have access to it (if what snowden and gg are saying is true).

I actually agree that most of our government is benevolent infrastructure. But the problem with a tool like mass surveillance is that it could fall into the wrong hands and be used for any number of bad things. You're trusting not only everyone who uses it now but all the people who could use it in the future. I think that's wrong, and bad.

By the way, if you click that link from my post, you'll see that the NSA is reading the data, and they are passing it on to other government agencies - not to fight foreign enemies, but to prosecute American citizens for non-terrorism-related crimes.

  On 1/23/2014 at 12:04 AM, DerWaschbar said:

Do you guys remember when Google encouraged us to bomb a bridge, sold us all inert explosives and then arrested us?