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Another movie I saw on Netflix that I found both intriguing and disturbing. I have concerns about privacy (that is, not paranoia, but just plain non-intrusiveness.)

One of the best examples in my opinion was someone who kept doing a Google search for something like 'how do I have my wife killed' and the police showed up. He was a writer doing a television show where a man, guess what?

I wonder which government agency that isn't invading our privacy tipped the cops off?

Controversial cybersecurity bill passed with resounding Senate support

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, because these are NOT the droids you are looking for!

(this message sponsored by the Department of Truth)

How do the powers-that-be say "F*ck you"? Answer: "Trust me, I'm from the government."

If you want to mess with the powers that be, just embed "hot" terms into your email messages — such as bomb, Allah, ammonium nitrate, ....
Then listen to crackling on your phone, watch for strange vehicles in the neighborhood, ....

In Canada we just turfed a federal government who had in their platform the implementation of a Snitch Line for neighbours to report other neighbours if they believed barbaric cultural practices were taking place.

Let's get the quote right:

"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help. "
- Ronald Reagan

Did anyone watch the movie? They raise some much bigger issues. It's not just 'pre-crime' stuff.

And if you think that the USA is the only culprit and European countries are more protective of privacy, think again. Europe Is Spying on You

How about if EVERY dissident includes at least a snippet of incendiary language in EVERY e-mail?

Can a government suffer sensory overload?

Geez! That's straight out of Hitler Youth.

Watch it, Grelber. You know they are monitoring these forums. Wait for the knock on your door…

Doncha jes luv it?!
Makes 'em allocate resources in useless ways. Everybody wins.

Yup…and the banished Prime Minister was described, in one article I read, as: "The last remnant of George Bush in North America."

I am wondering if this is related to the recent government requests to Apple, Microsoft, etc. for an "encryption back door available only to government agencies"? (Of course all the developers pointed out that any "back door" would be an obvious vulnerability and leave all encrypted data — including the government's — open to hackers worldwide and would serve to significantly degrade rather than enhance systems security.)

I have long used reasonable security precautions including DNSCrypt as a defense against hackers and other malefactors but it is stuff like this coming out of congress that is causing me to seriously consider activating FileVault and using PGP for outgoing emails.

When are these agencies going to realize that absolute security and freedom are mutually exclusive concepts? Haven't they read George Orwell's 1984, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States? Maybe they dismiss them as "liberal propaganda" but more likely they are operating out of a profound sense of fear that "they" might lose control and lack the self confidence to deal with change or uncertainty.

I don't know about the other items on your suggested reading list, but it's been pretty obvious for some time that there are an awful lot of Americans who don't like the Constitution because it impedes their ability to do things "their way".

Cloward-Piven, overwhelm the system. They got those black vans North of the 49th?

HAS ANYONE WATCHED THE MOVIE?
It is not limited to what we are discussing here. There are big (imho) legal issues when you press 'I Agree' and you are agreeing to a contract that says it is effective in perpetuity AND the terms can be changed at any time without your consent.

FTFY

Seriously, that's not a valid excuse for taking away citizens' rights. But that's what it always boils down to. Then they try to make it look like a safety issue instead, "think of the children" and all that crap. But this is what it really comes down to - our rights make their jobs more difficult, and they see taking away our rights as the correct solution to their problem. They'd much rather sit at their desk and listen to your phonecalls than get out on the street and do some traditional investigation.

That deserves at least a handful of unappreciative adjectives, but I'll limit myself to "condescending" and "presumptuous".

No! My statement absolutely did not need fixing, and your purported "fix" seriously weakens it.

Judging from your exposition of the problem, I've got to assume that you've never seen a right-to-life flyer that complained in BIG block letters about "NINE PEOPLE WHO WEREN'T EVEN ELECTED TO THEIR JOBS", a particularly odious example, or paid attention to the others that come across the wire every day.

No, again! The problem does NOT lie with elected or appointed officials, rather it lies with the constituencies that elected them…enabled their appointment…the MANY Americans who've forgotten - if they ever knew - why their ancestors came here and would inflict, albeit perhaps unwittingly, the same evils their ancestors fled on other Americans.

Your opinions are always welcome, appreciated in fact, but please don't express them by denigrating mine.

(I'll bet that you've got no idea that 6 minutes after you posted here you responded to another post of mine in which I said .)

One of the interesting things about "citizens rights" is that the government often doesn't have to take them away. People are eager to sign them away when they deal with corporations.

A great example: We probably all know that a basic right in the United States is the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Most people know that phrase--"petition the government for a redress of grievances"--but I noticed to my surprise recently in a conversation on an online forum that very, very few people can tell you what that means.

Do you have a credit card? If you do, odds are good you have willingly signed away your basic human right to petition the government for redress of grievances when you signed up.

It means that if you have a grievance (someone has done something wrong to you), you have the right to ask the court (petition the government) for compensation (redress). If you sell your car to your neighbor and your neighbor refuses to pay for it, you have a grievance (your neighbor didn't pay for the car) and you have the right to petition the government for redress (by taking your neighbor to court and getting a court order to pay up).

So, that credit card you have. And the cell phone service you signed up for and a lot of other things. Buried in the contract in 4-point type is an "arbitration clause." It says you willingly give up your right to petition the government for redress if the company does something wrong to you, and instead agree that the problem will be heard by an arbitrator, chosen and paid by the company. The arbitrator's decisions are final. Your credit card company hit you with late fees even though you paid your bill? Your cell phone company cut you off but is still billing you? You gave up your right to petition the government for redress. You instead can ask a company employee or contractor to fix the problem. If they say no, that's it, you're done. Good luck!

We're so fixated on "the gummint" taking our rights that we don't even notice when we give them away. Hmm.

Personally, if I were king of the world, I would say that if a nation's laws and constitution guarantee basic rights, you can not sign a contract that gives them up--no matter what the contract says, you still have those rights. But that's just me.

Not surprising that folk "go postal" now and again.
Another instance of Gaia clearing the clutter.

Labor unions have long recognized this principle. For example, if a labor contract says you will be compensated x for doing job y, you cannot voluntarily agree to do job y for less than x. You might be motivated to help the company in difficult times and take less pay, but labor has said "you cannot waive your rights". There is a collective—a collective bargaining agreement (e.g., the Constitution)—and individual preferences must be dealt with in that context.

That reminds me of my career as a teacher. If anything was done gratis in the past, even without contractual sanction, it was legally expected to occur in the future unless negotiated out. This was called "past practice". The result was that nobody volunteered to do anything. The common witicism in my school was that if you farted at 1:17, you were contractually obligated to fart at the same time every day.

I’m surprised at your response to V1 above, since his comments struck me as essentially agreeing with yours. Apparently you don’t seem to think so, calling (something in) his opinion ‘denigrating’ yours. I cannot see anything other than his color highlighting of your text as a ‘purported fix’, so please explain how his highlighting is ‘condescending’ or ‘presumptuous’ let alone ‘denigrating’, given his additional comments. To me it’s just ‘a quote of a quote’.

And on the topic, I have to disagree with your stance that elected or appointed officials are not to blame for the problem, but only their constituencies. To me that sounds like a Get Out Of Jail Free card. In my book they both carry responsibility, and the officials perhaps even more so because of their delegated authority. Lumping them both together, I must say that I personally have a major beef with those who can’t wait to abrogate others’ rights to impose their own, and particularly those who flout the existing rules (or refuse to enforce them) in doing so. You want examples? The ‘American Taliban’ comes to mind as particularly egregious.