[BLKNSLVR]

So the US, with its Constitution protecting the people from its Government, is allowing this whilst also considering Edward Snowden a traitor?

It seems something has shifted 180 degrees since WW2, and the US Government has quietly won the game where the goal was to shit on the entirety of the history upon which it was built whilst, at precisely the same time, pointing to the Constitution as the reason why "America is Great!"

You're fucked. At least China isn't pretending to be free.

If this is how law enforcement agencies are allowed to operate, how can you expect citizens to respect any rule of law? The precedents are evaporating.

The West is dead, we're halfway through the transition to the next stage, which just means history will repeat itself - but will be recorded in higher definition so that maybe we'll learn it more thoroughly next time around.

[dang]

Please don't post generic ideological rants to HN. They're tedious, not what this site is for, and lead to worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[Enginerrrd]

Despite the fact that I agree with their sentiment, you're 100% in the right here. HN is great because it's NOT the place for that. Thanks for speaking out.

[nabnob]

Let's not act like the United States was a shining example of freedom and democracy before WWII, either. Slavery, destroying indigenous people and taking their land, followed by oppressive laws targeting black and indigenous people...

Liberal democracy is definitely a step forward from monarchy, but the freedoms it offers have always been built on the oppression of many. It's no surprise that the oppressive arm of imperialism, which has targeted the rest of the world since WWII, would start to turn inwards and target US citizens.

[tossAfterUsing]

> Let's not act like the United States was a shining example of freedom and democracy before WWII, either.

Maybe we don't bother mentioning these very obvious historical circumstances.

Instead, we can talk about what technological solutions exist already, or could exist in the near term, which would obviate these institutions of oppression.

I am very interested in tools like Whatsat[0] and Sphinx[1] which protect communications between participants...

but what about my browsing. Do i just need to migrate all my "real" searches to Tor (already pwnt) or Beaker (insufficient, frankly)?

How can we continue to define ourselves as free persons while we exist among these dark patterns?

0 - https://github.com/joostjager/whatsat 1 - https://sphinx.chat/

[claudeganon]

> Maybe we don't bother mentioning these very obvious historical circumstances. Instead, we can talk about what technological solutions exist already, or could exist in the near term, which would obviate these institutions of oppression.

These have never been solely technical problems, but political, moral, and organizational ones. States can simply make use or development of any technology illegal and bring the full force of its monopoly on violence to bear on those who run afoul of it. That has to be countered outside of just building things.

Ignoring history doesn’t make its lessons irrelevant.

[tossAfterUsing]

having technologists teaching the lessons to themselves is just jerking off... HN has more potential than that.

for everybody else to learn lessons is a great objective, but doesn't need to be the objective among this crowd.

[maerF0x0]

> migrate all my "real" searches to Tor (already pwnt)

Can you please explain for someone not up to speed on the topic?

[wpasc]

Not OP, but Tor uses proxy servers to hide your activity from snoopers as it is routed. Unfortunately, the FBI has seemingly found ways to track down users who used Tor (I think dread pirate Robert's of piratebay is the quintessential example)

[tossAfterUsing]

https://www.theverge.com/2015/11/11/9719098/fbi-reportedly-p...

[tjpnz]

Would it be going too far to suggest that the founding fathers never intended for a full democracy in the first place? It makes for an interesting argument when viewed in the context of the electoral college.

[nabnob]

Yeah, they never intended a full democracy. Initially only white men who owned property could vote (6% of the population when the United States was founded https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_voting_rights_in_t...), so I think that's a fair statement.

All of the rights gained by different oppressed groups (right to vote, labor laws, tenant laws) came through struggle and direct action, not because those in power suddenly decided to grant those rights out of the kindness of their hearts.

[ben_w]

Anecdotally, “it is a republic, not a democracy, by design” is something I hear from people who bring up in conversation that they voted Republican. (Note: I’m not American, so I imagine the sort of person who tells me that isn’t representative of Republican voters).

[kazagistar]

No, it's just historical fact that they feared mob rule and worked to try to keep the uneducated masses out.

[shadowgovt]

Perhaps more accurately, they were of two minds about mob rule.

Jefferson believed in the idealized "happy yeoman farmer;" that common people, allowed to seek their own fate, would make a better government. Virtue (as a quasi-religious concept) dwelt in the heart of the aggregate public.

Adams believed in significant risks letting an uneducated mass of people determine their own fate. He didn't have to dig too far into the history books to find examples of why a government given over to the people tended to devolve into rule by a strongman. Government of a virtuous people demanded an elite who would be dedicated to the cause and educated to do it right.

The government built from people in these two camps of thought was a compromise government intended to tame the catastrophic risk-factors of the excesses of both scenarios.

[wchar_t]

Not to mention how "imbeciles", African Americans, and other "misfits" were forcibly sterilized in the years after 1900.

[Zooper]

It's ongoing, and the US has had cases brought against it as recently as 2014: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization#U.S._.... While the more recent cases are less overtly abject evil, they aren't the activities of what I'd call a free or even humane nation that has any right whatsoever to claim that the spread of its governance is an ethical good.

[dr_dshiv]

People don't get how lucky they are with the idea and mythos of America. I think the world declines when we don't believe in the specific vision of government by the people for the people. Of course, just having the right philosophy isn't enough. We still need to embody it. But we are damn lucky to have such a good founding philosophy and I highly doubt if we could do better today.

[cryptonector]

The U.S. gets over its problems and becomes a better place.

Slavery? -> Civil War, slavery over.

Jim Crow laws? -> Civil Rights protests, the Supreme Court finally realizes what the Constitution really says, and Jim Crow is over.

Prohibition causes gangsterism and mafia? -> the whole country did not get corrupted by it, and eventually the mafia got taken down.

And so on. Maybe not every problem, but there's a lot of big problems that have been overcome. And all the while not falling into various traps. For example, the Great Depression led to the Nazis getting into power in Germany, and Latin America was quite marked by the economic disaster that was the Great Depression, but the U.S. failed to get a Hitler or Perón -- that's huge.

This is made possible by a number of things, some of which are ideas, and some of which are accidents:

  - geography
  - luck: having brilliant founders!
  - a brilliant Constitution that splits power not
    just three ways, but also over N States (currently 50)
  - mutual distrust in the early days of the nation
  - a British background and fresh memories of the
    British civil war

This means that freedom -yes, freedom- has been available to many, and eventually to most/all Americans. The original ideas were made too aspirational by the stain of slavery, yes, but in the end it all worked out decently enough, even if it took time to get there.

This surveillance-state thing? Who knows, we may not overcome it. Or maybe we will. But are there large countries you'd bet will do better at getting over their problems? China? Brazil? Russia? Really, compare to other countries.

[ravenstine]

America has been over for a very long time. I know I'll get downvoted for saying this, but this is something that more people need to hear because the fact they can vote affords citizens the cognitive dissonance they need to believe the propaganda they were taught about the US federal government. I'd still choose America over China any day, but that doesn't mean I think the United States is a free country; it's a free-range farm.

[solotronics]

Creating the Federal reserve bank closed the loop. The politicians and corporations are able to control the whole system of money/power independently of what any outsider wants.

Print the money, give it to your friends, buy/create the politicans, make the laws, enrich yourself, repeat the cycle but with more power and wealth this time around.

[javert]

The vast majority of corporations are victims, too. Some of the giant ones are not, though.

[tossAfterUsing]

Wish this were more well understood.

[shadowgovt]

"America has been over" is a statement that needs qualifiers to have meaning. "America" means different things to different people.

[dvtrn]

"America" means different things to different people.

Well there's one qualifier right there. The American Mythos of "all men are created equal" has failed to line up with the American reality for quite a long damn time and for reasons that don't require much more effort to "qualify" than is needed to lift up an arm and point at a history book. It's been qualified, documented and analyzed thoroughly enough that the qualifiers should be abundant and "self-evident"-to continue the trope of quoting directly from the user's manual.

[shadowgovt]

If that's the criteria, America never started. That line was penned when Americans still kept other human beings as slaves.

The long arc of history of the US bends towards that phrase becoming more true, but there's still a long way to go for everyone to be demonstrably accepting of it.

[dvtrn]

I would agree with that conclusion; it’s central to my belief system though I must also offer the caveat lector that I don’t want readers thinking this to be THE criteria, just one (honestly opinionated) criterion.

Although it would be the first data point in an outline of what would be my infinitely-less abridged critique of the “American Mythos”, under which many, MANY others would invariably fall-it is still at the end of the day only one.

The others would probably include a few one liners shamelessly stolen, but dutifully attributed to Hunter Thompson, James Baldwin and Cormac McCarthy. Could probably fit Howard Cosell in there too now that I think about it.

[ravenstine]

It does mean different things to different people, but there's a relatively common understanding of "America" as an idea. Interpretations of America generally have a lot of overlap, even if there's some difference. Our rights are pretty much a central pillar of the concept of America, and if they aren't inalienable or taken seriously, then America is fundamentally lost. Even if people have a different idea of what America is, that doesn't mean their interpretation is congruent with an objective viewpoint of America, especially if their idea is prescriptive.

[shadowgovt]

I agree an objective viewpoint is possible to find, but any conversation about "America being over" needs to start with confirmation that the speakers have agreed upon an objective viewpoint.

Decontextualized, the fundamental rights Americans celebrate are at odds with each other (right to life and right to liberty are the obvious examples, and some good criteria for discerning how to maintain those in coexistence has been established, but others, like "Freedom from fear" or "Freedom from want" and "Right to liberty," are much, much murkier. And this is all, of course, in the context of an ever-changing world that brings new technologies and experiences that must be interpreted against those rights).

[Lineup]

>...right to liberty are the obvious examples >..."Right to liberty," are much, much murkier.

Uh... I'm not sure what it is that you are trying to say, or if you are sure of what you are trying to say, or if you have a very appropriate username.

Moreover the freedoms [0] that you mentioned are aspirational. Also, not the constitutional freedoms of speech and religion, which are enshrined therein.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms

[usedtoo]

'a country? It's a free-range farm.'

[OT and (hope so) un-biased:] 'From the Land of the Free, to the Land of the Lost' ?? We used to love America. Is there something your blind at, maybe ahead ?

You know...there once was a story, about a snake not understanding 'step'... (-;

Sry, too offtopic...^^

[coronadisaster]

And the police killed nearly 6,000 people in the U.S. since 2015, without due process: https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings/blob... (that equals to about 3 per day, I am surprised that I don't hear more about them)

[ciarannolan]

Is due process required when someone points a gun at the police? Charges them with a knife? Tries to run them over?

I watch 2-3 new police bodycam videos per day thanks to some neat Youtube channels (Police Activity and Real World Police). I've seen maybe one or two shootings on those channels that were clearly wrong, out of hundreds that were justified or a reasonable person could find to be justified.

Wondering if there's a database of police shootings that includes more information about the circumstances of the encounter.

[coronadisaster]

I have seen a lot of bad faith cops on https://ns.reddit.com/r/Bad_Cop_No_Donut/, but most of the time, they don't kill the suspect.

This is the best database that I have found so far for shootings by police and at least they tell you if the suspect was armed, but yes more information is always better...

But the main issue is that even if the cop was found to use excessive force, there are no real consequences, most of the time.

[maerF0x0]

I would say that there is a spectrum to backing the claim of "due process" w/ time constraints. For example body cams can really help validate that there was a gun, pointed at someone, and the person was threatening...

IMO Governments need to be quick to integrate technologies that can reinforce the true spirit of their laws such that true justice (not just legalism) is applied.

[ciarannolan]

I'm pretty surprised how well the bodycams thing is working out overall.

Of course there are rare cases where they "lose" the footage or whatever, but the sheer volume of videos coming out makes me believe that it's working in most cases (even high profile or controversial cases).

[duxup]

>China isn't pretending to be free.

What does a sentiment like this even mean?

Take a look at China's own propaganda, they very much celebrate their idea of what freedoms their citizens have.

[shadowgovt]

Hell, if you talk to Chinese citizens, they don't seem to generally claim they aren't free. Even if the conversation happens in confidence where they aren't concerned about the government hearing their opinion.

[pixelperfect]

"freedom" and "democracy" are two of the twelve "core socialist values" that are plastered almost anywhere you look in China.

[RobRivera]

>you're fucked

I'm sorry but any anecdotal spinning of history and current events supporting a bold claim about the downfall of western society is just outright non scientific, immeasurable, and quite frankly below educated discourse.

Now if you have a thesis about the sunset of western hegemony backed by reduced gdp numbers, geopolitical influence, and crime stats, thats a more worthwhile discussion.

Call me old fashioned, but passionate cries of wolf really Re just that until you show me the data

[komali2]

I'm not sure what GDP, geopolitical influence, or crime stats have to do with a theory that the values set down in the Constitution are degrading.

[shadowgovt]

Did "you're fucked" mean the Constitution is degrading?

That's, I believe, parent poster's point; without qualifiers, there's no conversation to be had on the topic. Because that is the dichotomy of early 21st-century America: objective measures of "how the country's doing" are at odds with subjective concepts like "Are we free?" You have to start by even coming to agreement that less "freedom" (and one should probably qualify that---freedom from what, freedom to do what) for more GDP, more safety, more prosperity is a bad thing.

[komali2]

> You have to start by even coming to agreement that less "freedom" (and one should probably qualify that---freedom from what, freedom to do what) for more GDP, more safety, more prosperity is a bad thing.

We don't have to agree at all. It is a bad thing. If you think trading freedom for the right to more plutocrat oversight is good, what's the point of even discussing at all?

[shadowgovt]

> what's the point of discussing

Consensus; same as always.

And cross-pollination of ideas.

[cremp]

Going full tinfoil hat...

We've seen the GDP number manipulated during this crisis, Gov propping the economy up with lots of self-debt that we cant pay back.

We've seen that other developed counties in the world bawk at us. Example being the American woman who killed a guy in the UK by driving on the wrong side; and the US said she had diplomatic immunity, when she did not. [0]

Crime stats... Crime isnt crime if it isnt punished or even taken to the courts proper. A sitting president was impeached, but not removed from office. He was charged with high-crimes. If you need a statistic, just look at how stacked the government is from a 2-party system.

I'd completely agree that America is fucked.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Harry_Dunn

[exclusiv]

> A sitting president was impeached, but not removed from office. He was charged with high-crimes.

> lots of self-debt that we cant pay back.

Neither of those work that way. I agree on the 2-party stacked system though.

[gvjddbnvdrbv]

Her husband did NOT have diplomatic status.

[cremp]

Corrected; Thanks.

Didn't realize the US was that bad.

[exclusiv]

It's just in style to hate on America these days. Been that way for awhile. If you're critical of any other country you get jumped on.

Meanwhile the parent takes an anti-American perspective on the US while finding a way to give China props. Which tells me they are not intellectually honest about what freedom really means or about the injustices that China partakes in.

It's like saying "I don't like that thing you did because I wasn't fully informed of the details or the reasoning. At least China ...."

It's just nonsense from a hater.

Now, we would have actually been fucked a long time ago if we didn't have the Constitution. But it's the best document and framework alive and we'll be fine, despite some challenges to liberty that I don't like either.

What's funny is some non-Western countries have been trying to import their ideals, and having some success with socialism interest, but their own younger people are taking up Western ideals and cultures.

Exporting agendas and propaganda is not feasible in an information age. Many countries are struggling to control their citizens like they used to in the past.

The freer countries will be fine and win out.

[shadowgovt]

> It seems something has shifted 180 degrees since WW2

The Twin Towers were destroyed, the Pentagon was damaged, and an additional plane was crashed, via a successful conspiracy that could have been detected by blanket, passive surveillance. That's what changed.

The threat model the US defense department is concerned about has changed significantly since WWII. The threat to Pax Americana is not direct military intervention, since the possession of atomic weapons ensures that's a short trip to annihilation for any nation-state that tries it. It's small-cell actors using sabotage tactics and technology as huge force-multipliers.

As for individual citizens, it appears most still see the threat of asymmetric warfare as a more profound threat to their life and livelihood than passive, blanket government surveillance.

[rickmode]

I don't think this is a good example.

If memory serves, the threat _was_ detected, however it was not acted on. There was lots of finger pointing about lack of coordination, but (as I recall) the core problem was that it was one threat amount many (100s? 1000s?), so the threat detection was generating too much noise.

Ubiquitous surveillance could (does) easily end up creating the same situation: not enough signal among the noise.

[shadowgovt]

It's not an example; it's the causal explanation.

The article in question at the top of this thread is discussing the Patriot Act expansion; the family of laws passed in direct response to the attacks of 2001.

[rickmode]

Ah. Understood.

The Patriot Act is the problem. We knew it at the time. Sounds like we all agree on that point.

[NineStarPoint]

EDIT: Didn’t take much reflection to realize a lot of awful stuff liberty wise happened during the cold war, so scrap my comment.

[economicslol]

>As for individual citizens, it appears most still see the threat of asymmetric warfare as a more profound threat to their life and livelihood than passive, blanket government surveillance

I don't think this necessarily follows. I don't think most Americans support the Patriot Act but its basically known at this point that Public Opinion has no effect on Policy here. Also how much the public understanding of what the Patriot Act actually does is probably pretty low.

[shadowgovt]

Question wording drastically changes the results on polling whether people support the Patriot Act, but broadly speaking, it appears most Americans support its existence and most Americans believe it is in need of moderation. I don't think it's as simple as "Public opinion has no effect on policy;" it's that the policy response to "most people aren't happy, but nobody can gel behind a concrete changelist" is "stay the course."

I agree on the education question, but that's going to be a regular pattern in public polls. General public savvy on privacy issues and the power of technology to consolidate information has not kept up with technology. And, TBH, if the situation at hand is actually "Most Americans don't understand the problem well enough to articulate their wants in the context of the issue," that's a scenario where public opinion shouldn't drive policy. A democracy of the uneducated doesn't work.

[economicslol]

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...

TLDR: Citizen opinions don't have an effect on policy.

I agree about education though. It's a tricky problem. Clearly people aren't informed enough to make coherent decisions on many policy issues but they have to trust that the slick looking lawyer they are voting for actually does understand and has their best interests at heart?

[syshum]

So that is how liberty dies, and terrorism wins... With thunderous applause from a scared and panic citizenry that unable to understand statistical risk instead believing the propaganda of fear that will ultimately see the erosion of both their liberty and the safety they so foolishly believed the government would provide if they just gave up that essential liberty

[shadowgovt]

The threat model has fundamentally changed, and I'm not so convinced it's acceptable to tell people "We will change nothing because you probably won't die" when the mode of death strikes directly at perception of day-to-day safety.

American tolerance of that, from terrorism to gun ownership, is changing.

[syshum]

>>The threat model has fundamentally changed

Not really, Authoritarian governments through out history have still killed more people than all of terrorism put together.

The Threat Model is still Authoritarian government...

>I'm not so convinced it's acceptable to tell people "We will change nothing because you probably won't die"

What is not acceptable is telling people "just give up your liberty and you will be safe" history proved that is never the case, government will (not if, or can but WILL) abuse that power, and the end result will be mass death

[shadowgovt]

> that is never the case

All governments are some form of sacrificing liberty for safety. The strongest interpretation of the argument that you're putting forward is that the only just government is anarchy, and I don't think we can find many supporters of that hypothesis.

As with all government measures throughout history, the question is not "should any liberty be traded," it's "is this trade a good deal?"

[syshum]

>>All governments are some form of sacrificing liberty for safety.

Incorrect. Governments are instituted by groups of people to organize and support their natural right to defend their life, property, and liberty.

This principle of a "collective right", its lawfulness, is based on individual rights therefore the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute (i.e the individual right of self defense)

Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?

[malandrew]

I wouldn't even say it is just the threat model that changed. Humans in developed markets now have a very unhealthy relationship with death to the point where any policy that minimizes death is acceptable consequences be damned.

We no longer see death as a normal and natural part of life like previous generations did because it's not as prevalent as it once was.

The threat model you just described in another era would have more likely been met with acceptance if the alternative was to give up our hard fought for freedoms.

[shadowgovt]

I don't think I can point to an era in US history where an attack on a couple buildings resulting in thousands dead would have been brushed under the rug as "Well, death just happens." I'd even argue that's not a healthy response to a human-caused tragedy like that.

Seeing death as normal and natural carries its own antisocial pathologies. War is more justifiable if "Everyone has to die some time."

[malandrew]

That's a strawman that doesn't try to interpret the point I'm trying to make from the strongest possible position. I'm not suggesting that an event like that should be just brushed under the rug as "Well, death just happens."

I'm saying that the response to that event such as the Patriot Act and other safety-above-liberty-at-all-costs measures would have received a lot more scrutiny and been seen as disproportional. Just like your strawman is not a healthy response, neither was the response we had to 9-11. The goal of the terrorists was to fundamentally change life for Americans and get them to abandon their principles. Well they succeeded beyond their wildest imagination because we responded by dumping many of our freedoms in response.

[shadowgovt]

My understanding of the history of American responses to being attacked inclines me to disagree with that assessment. Consider how many liberties were given up during WWII after Pearl Harbor---the government basically nationalized resource distribution. To say nothing of what Americans considered tolerable to do to their Asian-American neighbors.

[mrfusion]

Yet we won’t find longevity research.

[waffle_ss]

What is "the next stage," exactly? Does the nod to China mean that it's disappearing those who dissent from the state, turning ethnic minorities into organ donors + fertilizer and remarrying their wives over to the ethnic majority, building dragnet panopticons that lock you out of social existence entirely if its algorithmic eye deems you a problem?

The US wasn't founded on perfection and it certainly hasn't taken only correct steps since then. WWII wasn't the high water mark for freedom, either - Americans have stronger freedom of speech now compared to then for example.

This law is clearly a misstep but I hardly think it means it's time to stick a fork in the West.

[maerF0x0]

I took "the next stage" to mean stages in the cycles of empires (ie towards decay+collapse), not to say the CCP is a positive evolutionary step in governments.

[matheusmoreira]

The United States used to be an example to the world. As a nation it used to take its founding principles seriously. That started changing during the cold war and became most obvious post-9/11.

[waffle_ss]

Did John Adams, founding father, take the founding principles seriously when he signed the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798? How about Abraham Lincoln when he suspended habeas corpus or shut down hundreds of newspapers and ordered editors arrested?

The idea that the Constitution was an immaculate instrument forged in a gilded age of freedom, with a decline since then, is wrong. There have been bumps and missteps from the start. And in some areas, like freedom of speech, the right has been strengthened and clarified over years of jurisprudence into something that is more freedom-preserving now compared to when it was declared.

[jylam]

> The United States used to be an example to the world.

Or so the americans say. Who else ?

[vanviegen]

When I was growing up in the eighties in The Netherlands, the US as it was thought to us in class and as we experienced it through its strong cultural influence, was certainly something to aspire to.

Of course, back then there was an obvious common enemy to point at, and the help the US provided to our country during and after WWII was still kind of fresh in the collective memory.

[Zooper]

It happened around the time when people thought having one dude called a king telling everyone else what to do was a pretty efficient way to run things fairly. Unfortunately, the "enlightenment" never seemed to progress past a small group of landed oligarchs telling everyone else what to do because they were obviously so much smarter and better, we're certain, after all they had all the stuff.

[shadowgovt]

Personally, I tend to point to net immigration numbers when someone raises the question.

[grimjack00]

The millions of people who left their countries to come here.

[Corrado]

if that's true then the terrorists have won.

[matheusmoreira]

I think the seeds were planted in the pacific theater. After such a terrible surprise attack, the USA probably feels justified in preventing future attacks by all means possible. Isn't that what national security is all about? Also, cryptanalysis was highly successful in the second world war: the outcomes of many battles were determined by successful interception and decoding of enemy communications. The importance of knowing enemy secrets was proven.

The cold war marked the beginning of global surveillance: the USA and other world powers launched satellites pointed at the Earth in order to constantly watch their enemies. After 9/11, the definition of "enemy" apparently expanded to include a nation's own population. Thus the 21st century is the beginning of total surveillance of all humans on Earth, not just enemy military forces.

Terrorism really is effective. America was not defeated but it a certain way it was destroyed. It abandoned all the principles it stood for in the name of national security.

[nxc18]

Americans worked overtime post-9/11 to make sure the terrorists won. We made sure to become so afraid, so terrified in daily life that we were willing to give up our freedoms.

See the patriot act, TSA, DHS, and other nonsense.

The terrorists won the moment we decided to live in fear.

[Spooky23]

Snowden wasn't talking about the FBI.

[hi5eyes]

incarceration rate of the United States of America is one of the highest in the world

i love the “freedom” meme for america

[RandomBacon]

Perhaps America is so free that it creates more opportunities for criminals. And because many criminals aren't that good, they get caught and thus incarcerated.

In a country that's so restrictive where you can't get a gun or drugs, then there will be a lot less people incarcerated for gun and drug crimes.

[Zooper]

And in a country without food, everyone is fed because the population is zero.

[wchar_t]

But criminals still need to be imprisoned, free country or no.

[shadowgovt]

One would think a country that was, for want of a more specific term, "doing it right" would have fewer criminals.

That the US has so much incarceration per-capita suggests something ain't working, if we respect freedom on paper but have to deprive more citizens of it than any other nation.

[techntoke]

I wish this were the case, but they seem to disproportionately lock up African Americans while giving the rich white people a free pass on crime.

[hnta142356]

received my free crime pass just today

[waffle_ss]

According to National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) numbers, across all races - African Americans included - the arrest rates for violent crimes correlates with the actual amount of crime committed by that race.

[shadowgovt]

That's a tricky number to tease out. One must ask how "actual amount of crime" is measured.

Oftentimes, one finds a feedback loop between arrest rate counting and instances of crime counting that means all kinds of confounding factors enter into the number (including distribution of police patrol resources and likelihood police will let an infringement off with a warning).

[waffle_ss]

It's not very tricky at all. A random sampling of citizens are asked if they experienced violent crime (including instances not reported to police), and if so, to describe the offender (ethnicity being just one component).[1]

Year after year the random samples of victimization correlates with arrest rate by ethnicity.

[1]: https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=245#Methodolog...

[backtoyoujim]

The country has elected a fraudster involved with organized crime whose response to power has been to envy authoritarians.

And that is the current US Federal leadership. Every other federal agency is going to follow suit. Then the congressional departments will do the same to try and maintain hegemony.

The Federal US is not just fucked ... the US Federal is actively fucking every nation state that the US Federal can fuck as a triumph of criminality.

This is also including US state & municipal governments.

If there was ever a time for a coalition of forces to invade the US it would be with this president. Trump would give up Alaska to Putin in a trade to stay in power.