[zxcdw]

This is a huge problem with a surveillance state. Everyone has something which you can use against them. This means that if you piss off wrong people you're going to jail. Otherwise not. Possible implications to politic balance are astounding.

[temp453463343]

"This means that if you piss off wrong people you're going to jail."

Except that's not the reality. The reality is that if Obama really really hates someone and wants to make their life miserable, the most he can do it make it hard for him to fly (ie. the no-fly list). The government is constrained in what it can do, surveillance and omniscience doesn't change that.

[CapitalistCartr]

I don't know what rock you've been hiding under, but that's not even close to accurate. Inspections, vague public statements, IRS audits, being followed everywhere, having all your friends "interviewed", being stopped and having your car searched, all your cash confiscated; these things have been used before by the government. As have being killed by a drone.

The Church of Scientology has quite a record of effective harassment, too. They're worth studying for an excellent example of what an NGO can do. http://www.holysmoke.org/cos/harass2.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_%28Scientology%29

[temp453463343]

Confiscating your cash would need to be done with some kinda of judicial order, so it's not up to the president or someone who you "pissed off"

The drone killing is a seriously disturbing precedent, but with the backlash that's happened I think you won't be seeing that again (at least I hope).

The rest of your examples are definitely tools at the disposal of the executive branch, but they're on the same order of being put on the no fly list (the no-fly-list was more of an illustrative example than a definitive list of what the government can do). Annoying, but not at all equivalent at all to being jailed (as the parent comment stated).

[triplesec]

That is actually vastly incorrect. Your cash can be seized by cops etc with little redress: see as an example http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/police-i...

[rogerbinns]

> Confiscating your cash would need to be done with some kinda of judicial order ...

In the US your assets can be seized by the police before you are convicted. This is especially the case with drug related matters. This website has details (and advocacy) http://www.fear.org

[temp453463343]

That's really messed up. More outrageous than the TSA... Thanks for the link and sharing the information. Why isn't this discussed more? I guess we only talk about news, not our preexisting long term problems (ex: prisons)

[joelrunyon]

> The drone killing is a seriously disturbing precedent, but with the backlash that's happened I think you won't be seeing that again (at least I hope).

Because "backlash" stops people with enough incentive from regularly getting rid of people that inconvenience them.

[kaoD]

So the economic crisis finally rocks the US to its foundation. A charismatic but authoritarian leader surfaces (let's name him... I don't know, Hutlor?). Common populace vote him out of desperation based on his promises to bring back US to its place in the world.

A few months later Hutlor shows his true face, the government radicalizes and becomes violent. Hutlor's party does NOT like homosexuals. He does not like people posting on Hacker News either. But the average Joe is not homosexual nor a Hacker News reader, so nobody actually cares.

Then Hutlor's right-hand man comes up with a great idea: they'll just take those nice backups that the NSA collected in their huge datacenters and track down homosexuals (and Hacker News users).

Now you're screwed.

With this I mean: it's not the statu quo but whatever the future might bring.

PS: I know, Godwin's law.

[hga]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Pistols

And they'll have a lot of non-homosexual allies, even ones who don't particularly care for homosexuals, for enough of us remember where the pink triangle base of this organization's logo comes from, and even more will learn.

[kaoD]

Is that even relevant? What are you going to do against the SWAT Anti-Homo unit raiding your home alone in the night? Pretty much nothing.

Are the Pink Pistols going to fight the army too? With pink tanks I guess :P (come on, how stereotypical is the pink reference?)

Also: you completely missed my point. Replace "homosexual" with whichever minority you want. Maybe mexicans? Muslims? And their friends too! Whoever they target, they'll be minority and will smear their name and accuse them of America's illness. Desperate people buy that shit.

[hga]

This quote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn'a The GULAG Archipelago provides a start:

"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?

Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?

After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria [Government limo] sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked.

The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!"

And that's just from a reactionary point defense. Go on the offense---if you're a member of a targeted group, what do you have to lose?---and things get ... interesting.

And when you bring up fighting the army's tanks, you're implying playing the game by the other side's rules. Those of us who are contemplating the awful contingency of a hot civil war have absolutely no intention of doing so.

"Desperate people buy that shit."

And?

Do these desperate people matter at all in such a conflict? Well, they can inform on you, observe you in action or preparation for such, and call the authorities, but otherwise, most people will just want to be left alone.

[kaoD]

And by wanting to be left alone they'll give power to the wrong people. It won't be them, so it won't matter.

Seriously. The Holocaust DID happen. Or so I'm told. And under the citizen's tolerance (or blindness, who cares).

What game are you going to play? The game of death. There's no game for you to play. You're just killed or sent to a camp and that's it. You won't stand a chance.

Nazi Germany didn't last too long because the US had too much to lose, but the USSR took 69 years to be dismantled... with how many political deaths?

You're being overly optimistic. I wasn't even talking about a civil war. It's the state and most of the population against some unpopular minorities.

Well, even if it was civil war. Do some research on how the last Spanish Civil War turned out for Republicans.

[temp453463343]

Yeah, if you think the US is going to go fascist you're living in a fantasy land. You wouldn't just need a depression, you would need the whole fabric of society to unravel and become as poor as pre WW2 Germany.

No country with a high GDP has turned authoritarian. Authoritarianism doesn't work in wealthy countries.

[short_circut]

Japanese internment camps were not a fantasy land. The US exhibits fascist qualities all the time. We don't usually call it that but there are certainly examples which could be considered that way.

[temp453463343]

You mean back when people thought blacks were less human than white and women didn't have the right to vote? Back when a depression meant people starving to death?

We're not the same society we were back in the 1940s.

[kaoD]

> if you think the US is going to go fascist you're living in a fantasy land.

Snooping on citizen's private business seems quite fascist to me.

> No country with a high GDP has turned authoritarian.

For how long will the US have a high GDP? Every single empire has fallen, even the wealthiest.

[dasil003]

The constitution of the country, a document which is paid immense lip service throughout the country, and held in high regard throughout the world, lays out very explicit restrictions of what the government can do. And yet all it takes is a handful of terrorists to kill a couple thousands Americans, and that's all it takes to trample it all into the dirt. That is how trivial it is for terrorists to destroy our freedom as it were. Can you imagine what politicians could get away with if the American people were actually destitute? It's more than a bit terrifying.

[ctz]

   The government is constrained in what it can do

I'm wondering if you consider the existence of Guantanamo, rendition, etc. to be within or outside these constraints.

[baddox]

I also wish he would finish the sentence by filling in the blank: "The government is constrained in what it can do by _______."

As soon as you realize that "government" is the only thing filling the blank, you should realize how silly (and scary) the whole scenario is.

[hga]

Ah, but you can also fill in the blank with "the well armed populace".

Maybe not anyone you know, but at least half of the nation, 300+ million guns and more every day. Heck, 2/3rds of the nation lives in shall issue concealed carry regimes, with well over 8 million licenses granted.

This puts constraints on a would be out of control government. Let us hope we don't have to file a claim on this insurance policy.

[baddox]

Well, sure, there's always the armed populace, but that is inherently illegal rebellion against the government, and it would be violently resisted by the government. (And, for the record, almost everyone I know owns guns, and that percentage was even higher before I moved to San Francisco.) But even though founding fathers wrote about the inevitability and even duty to violently resist an oppressive government, that's certainly not built into the government's rules for itself (the Constitution). Nowhere in the law does it say that these laws only need to be followed if you believe them to not be oppressive, or that you are free to overthrow the government if you find it oppressive.

[nwhitehead]

You're wrong. The constitutions of New Hampshire, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Texas allow for the people to abolish the government.

[zxcdw]

Please remember that these concepts apply outside US too, where gun ownership and constitution defending the citizens aren't as available. This is one of the reasons why the "but we have guns to take 'em down if needed" is not very applicable argument when talking about these issues. The other being that the means to achieve influence and share of power should be political, and not rely on violence.

[ryguytilidie]

Wow, just utterly blown away that someone can live on earth for as many years as you presumably have, and have such a deep, fundamental misunderstanding of how it works...

[visarga]

> The government is constrained in what it can do, surveillance and omniscience doesn't change that.

When, before or after they do it anyway, legal or not?