[paganel]

For once I'll avoid Godwin's law and link instead to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_58

> The article was used for the imprisonment and execution of many prominent people, as well as multitudes of nonnotable innocents. (...) Article 58 of the Russian SFSR Penal Code was put in force on 25 February 1927 to arrest those suspected of counter-revolutionary activities.

So the point is that even in Soviet Russia people were sent into the Gulag based on written laws and going through the legal system, so I'd say that the US Government's reply that "it's all legal! it has gone through the courts" doesn't mean a thing as long as said laws are against the spirit of the US Constitution.

And I'd say that's the gist of it, the current laws are against the spirit of the original fundamental law of the United States. As long as its current citizens are ok with that (no mass protests etc) then I'd say there's nothing that the minority can do (if it matters I'm not from the US)

[jsmcgd]

Godwin's Law, or people's interpretation of it, has a lot to answer for. It's perfectly acceptable to make comparisons to the Nazis if it's relevant to where a conversation is at, at a particular moment. Not only is acceptable, it should also be encouraged. The most valuable thing to emerge from World War Two was the anti-blueprint for society. Let's not make this taboo merely for the sake of falling foul of some internet meme.

[mseebach]

The problem is that references to the Nazis or Soviets are very hard to get right without tripping over the slippery slope argument. Hitler was not only a vegetarian, he was a health fanatic, and there's evidence that it informed his obsession with purifying the race. That's doesn't make any number of locavore glutenfree vegan hipsters a step towards nazism. Hitler "militarized" society, and emphasized such organisations as the Hitler Youth where kids learned discipline, healthy living and love of the outdoors. Does that tell us anything meaningful about the boy scouts?

Yes, Hitler and Stalin spied a lot on their own populations for "national security" purposes, but we should be able to oppose surveillance on it's own merits with out resorting to the painting a (fallacious) slippery slope picture where the next frame is a KZ/Gulag camp.

[jsmcgd]

I totally get your point that people often make fallacious comparisons. In the interest of making a concise point I omitted stating it myself. However just because some people do not debate with integrity, or they make mistakes in their reasoning, it should not prevent others making comparisons which are pertinent.

I disagree that with your last point, that people should make the argument purely on its own merits. "So what if people are monitoring our communications?" I might ask this question myself if I had never read any history books.

The worrying thing for me is that we've been here before. Hitler did not come to power via some dramatic coup. He tried that and it failed. Instead he took the long, slow, legal and democratic route. Many legitimate comparisons with early 1930's Germany are there. I'm not saying it's a facsimile, it never would be. But with each civil liberty we sacrifice in the name of security the state becomes more oppressive, more open to abuse, an evermore viable breeding ground for tyranny. Worst of all, it can all happen without a shot being fired and well meaning onlookers saying, 'It will never get that bad'.

I'm going on a bit now, but for me the really terrifying aspect is that with all our modern technology (which I do love) it is possible for the state to create an apparatus to suppress the population that which we could never extricate ourselves from.

To quote BoC, "Defend your constitutionally protected rights. No one else will do it for you."

[mseebach]

> The worrying thing for me is that we've been here before.

No, that's exactly the problem. Other nations has at radically different time been in a vaguely similar situation.

Looking at Hitler doesn't tell you anything about the surveillance state that it doesn't also tell you about vegetarians and boy scouts. The reason we're not opposed to vegetarians and boy scouts (at least not based on their relation to nazism) is that we're approaching those cases on the merits. It's ludicrous to suggest a causal bond between those and Auschwitz.

Also, pure tactics: Anyone who's studied WWII civil oppression can spend hours detailing just how radical the differences between the Gestapo and the NSA are. You're basically handing your opponent the rhetorical petard he will hoist you by.

[mindcrime]

Yes, Hitler and Stalin spied a lot on their own populations for "national security" purposes, but we should be able to oppose surveillance on it's own merits with out resorting to the painting a (fallacious) slippery slope picture where the next frame is a KZ/Gulag camp.

Agreed, but consider this: a slippery slope fallacy is more like "If we do A, then B will inevitably follow". Lacking evidence to support it, that is a fallacy. But it's not a fallacy to point out "B" as warning of what might follow from "A".

And in the "reasoning by analogy" sense, it's not wrong to point out that "Group C did A and then B followed, so we might want to be careful about doing A" (assuming "B" is something undesirable).

Sometimes it is a valid point of discussion to point out these potential "slippery slopes"; it's just important to distinguish between the assertion that the following part happens as an inevitable consequence or not, and if that is asserted, to demand evidence.

[Karunamon]

The problem with such "pointing out" is that it's often taken as incontrovertible evidence that A means B will happen.

The very essence of Godwin's Law is that invoking Hitler is almost always the most extreme example possible of governmental abuse possible, when more nuanced ones would do the job. Usually it's a symptom of lazy thinking and lazy arguing, used by those who want nothing better than a cheap sound bite for their audience (e.g. "Obama is literally Hitler!" and other such gems).

By making the Hitler comparison, you are more likely than not pointing at an irrelevant extreme and tarring yourself with the brush of "conspiracy nutjob". There are better ways to make the same point which don't involve the same baggage.

[gasull]

Gulags and concentration camps weren't set the same day they set the surveillance. Those came afterwards.

[ako]

The gulags are already there: Guantánamo bay...

[jlgreco]

Hell, we've got a goddam archipelago of them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CIA_Secret_Prisons.jpg

[paganel]

I agree, even though the time-difference wasn't that big as far as I remember (I did read a history of CEKA and Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago", but that was 10-12 years ago).

Back to the conversation, what might prove slightly useful from this comparison is that in the USSR and German Democratic Republic surveillance was mostly done through the use of one's acquaintances and often-times even close relatives, because as the article mentions back then secret police forces didn't have access to today's technology.

That's what made it very personal and invasive and what ruined lots of lives and close-relationships, while today's surveillance techniques seem to be (and I'd say they are indeed) more remote and not that soul-crunching. In the old system you risked to have your sister or brother-in-law snitching on you for listening to Radio Free Europe or for making a regime-related joke, you had to be always on the alert of what you were saying and to whom you were speaking. I think this is why in the present day and age we don't see lots of protests against this new surveillance system, it's far too remote from us so we tend not to notice it.

[mseebach]

Indeed. Making the causal link all the more slippery.

[gasull]

The point I'm trying to make is that having surveillance in place gives them the power of effectively building such camps later.

[mpyne]

Surveillance is orthogonal to camps. They could build the camps first and start dumping in undesirables and then start surveillance immediately after, for all we know.

[notahacker]

Do you believe that Obama (or secretive figures in the NSA) are actually planning gulags and concentration camps?

If not, instead of arguing by outrageous and irrelevant historical innuendo, you could express quite reasonable concerns about consequences of excessive security powers that are actually likely to happen.

It would be a much more convincing argument.

(since both the Nazis and the Bolsheviks very openly stated their intent to violently suppress people fitting certain criteria and had militant wings actually targeting them long before they achieved the power that enabled them to set the surveillance, I'm not sure the historical comparison even works...)

[gasull]

> Do you believe that Obama (or secretive figures in the NSA) are actually planning gulags and concentration camps?

What about a president 10 or 15 years from now?

[notahacker]

I think the likelihood of of abuse of intercepted material by individual agents is probably worth emphasizing more than the remote possibility of America electing (and supporting) the Presidential candidate that wants to build death camps

Frankly, if you think that in 10-15 years America is remotely likely to be introducing gulags and death camps, then NSA surveillance is the last thing you should be worrying about; Hitler nor Stalin neither had nor needed an effective way of monitoring most private communications to eliminate all resistance and millions of people. If I was worried prospective presidential candidates were secretly plotting to lock me in camps I'd probably support the government going all Richard Nixon and wiretapping the opposition.

[graycat]

> the Hitler Youth where kids learned discipline, healthy living and love of the outdoors

Yes, and too soon a lot of "healthy living" "outdoors" had too many single girls 15 or so coming back pregnant, as "Hitler's brides" and had to be throttled!

[flyinRyan]

Can you name a place with that level of surveillance that turned out good for anyone? Because I can point to a lot of vegans there are more obsessed than Hitler was and didn't gas a single Jew.

[scotchmi_st]

Absolutely. Godwin's Law is the sort of thing Hitler would have invented.

[flyinRyan]

A meta-invocation of Godwin's law. I don't believe I've seen that done yet, kudos to you.

[mindcrime]

Godwin's "law" is nothing but an Internet meme at this point. "Invoking Godwin's Law" or referencing it does nothing to promote the conversation at hand, and we'd all be better off it it just disappeared into the dustbin of history.

[gaius]

Godwins Law was necessary in the early-mid 90s on Usenet where every conversation would degenerate into people calling each other Nazis. Now, not so much.

[mseebach]

There is 'the law' and 'the rule of law'. The former without the latter is pointless, and is what existed in the Soviet Union. The worrying bit about the current state of the US is not the law itself, as much as it's the erosion of the rule of law: concepts such as due process, meeting your accusers in a disinterested court, equality before the law etc. being eroded.

[CWuestefeld]

...not to mention: knowing what the law is in the first place.

[brown9-2]

Who was responsible for passing these laws/articles in 1920s Soviet Union?

One difference here is that when the USG says "well it's all done according to law", that law was written and passed by an institution who at least nominally represents and is elected by the people. I don't know if the same can be said of the USSR.

[dragonwriter]

> One difference here is that when the USG says "well it's all done according to law", that law was written and passed by an institution who at least nominally represents and is elected by the people. I don't know if the same can be said of the USSR.

The USSR was also nominally run under laws, which were notionally written and formally adopted by an institution which at least nominally represented and was elected by the people, and no doubt for any particular policy the regime could point to some justification in some provision of the Constitution and laws for the authority to carry out the action.

[brown9-2]

I am asking this out of genuine interest and lack of knowledge - was there a representative legislative body in the USSR in the 1920s?

[dragonwriter]

I believe the Congress of Soviets was an indirectly elected representative legislative body elected by the local Soviets.

[flyinRyan]

Pre-WWI, Russia was a feudal system. After the revolution, pretty much everything was done via some kind of parliamentary procedures. Granted, Lenin was a bully and hammered through the things he wanted but he largely did it via parliamentary consensus. At least at first.

[nknighthb]

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

[xradionut]

The problem now is that who you vote for doesn't represent you. They represent themselves, their donors and their social class/circle. They've also sworn an oath to the Constitution, then passed laws that are against that oath.

For all practical purposes the "classical constitution United States" that we were taught in school and media doesn't exist anymore. But we pretend it does for pragmatic reasons.

[dragonwriter]

> For all practical purposes the "classical constitution United States" that we were taught in school and media doesn't exist anymore.

The Constitution never existed as anything more than an idea, and it has force and meaning to the exact extent to which the people choose to give it force and meaning (the same as any other law.)

Laws, including basic laws like the Constitution, aren't magical and self-enforcing; they are real or not to the extent that people give them effect. The idea that "the Constitution protects" this right or that limitation on government's power is the exact thing which guarantees that those things are not protected -- either people protect them by insisting on them, or they are not protected at all. The Constitution is, at most, a statement of intent about what the people will insist upon, and it loses credibility when the people are passive and don't follow through.

I believe that one of the reasons that Jefferson thought it was necessary for the Constitution to be rewritten and readopted every generation is that he recognized that the slide into passivity and lack of ownership of the Constitution was a natural trend that would, over time, render any Constitution into a dead letter.

[dreamdu5t]

I agree except I must point out that the Constitution was an agreement amongst the states, not an agreement with the people and the government.

The rhetoric of "the people" is extremely deceptive. Me, nor my forefathers, had their opinion represented at the constitutional convention. The people in "... a statement of intent about what the people will insist upon" is solely people who were at the convention.

[dragonwriter]

Who wrote or ratified the Constitution is irrelevant to its effect in limiting government.

How people now are willing to defend what those people now perceive to be its limitations is all that matters.

[tootie]

I think the key is that we don't have Article 58. Per the quote in the op-ed, the NSA has had the ability to make America a tyrrany since 1975 and it hasn't done so. None of history's police states required digital surveillance. What they required was, you know, tyranny. We don't have any right now. I look at this purely as a question of privacy and due process.

[betterunix]

"What they required was, you know, tyranny. We don't have any right now."

We have all the pieces in place. Widespread surveillance, a "legal system" that allows anyone to be arrested and imprisoned, soldiers carrying out police work, secret courts/secret laws, mass imprisonment, etc. All it would take is for someone to arrange those pieces properly and tyranny would ensue.

[mpyne]

So in other words "all it would take" is for someone to do the one part of that which is actually almost impossible?

[betterunix]

How is it almost impossible? What, other than voluntary procedures, is standing in the way?

[mpyne]

What you ask for requires sweeping structural changes, which itself requires cooperation between a bunch of mutually-antagonistic parties, and all of that happening under the watchful eyes of the entire world who are more than happy to lace into America for the slightest fault they see.

It certainly helps that Americans are so seemingly genetically suspicious of government that even government workers despise the government (usually not their little enclave of it, but even that is not a hard and fast rule).

In short, despite all the whining on HN about how the people are just sheep, the people themselves are the reason your part of the plan is the most difficult part. The fact that you had an NSA contractor leak TOP SECRET data at great personal risk over an automated warrant compliance system should indicate that.

Likewise it was not very many years ago when some of the same senior intel community personnel that HN feels are all enemies were threatening to resign and cause a huge political explosion due to how Bush wanted to implement a program that would have benefited the NSA.

When we lose the people we'll have real problems. But if we lose the people those problems will be far, far, far worse than simple surveillance.

[Andrew_Quentin]

You boil a frog slowly. If such thing as torture, surveillance, indefinite imprisonment without trial, secretive kill list, secretive removal of right (no fly list) etc, become normalized and accepted, then a huge part of what forms a free society is already gone.

[popee]

Which one? Adjusting algorithms or start using it little bit more? In both cases all they need are some good arguments but you already see they even have, so called, arguments for current situation. At the end they are here to save You! P.S. ofc, if you can, please join the army. Forget the truth, there's a war out there, I tell you :-)

[mpyne]

My current community would be beyond offended if I joined the Army. Yuck.

[Torgo]

When I was a kid, the Soviet Union was declared bad _because_ it did these things. So it's hard for some of us to shift from a mindset that it was bad on its face as proven by the Soviet Union, to that it's only bad if it's done by a bad state. I mean, right or wrong, this is the conditioning society gave us at the time. I happen to think it was right. I don't really care about their reasons, no legitimate process operating under the principle of limited government and consent of the govern gives it the power to collect extensive data about the private lives of citizens without some kind of cause to believe the citizen is engaged in wrongdoing.

[tootie]

I agree that they don't have the right to do this, I just don't think it amounts to tyranny. The Soviet Union was a police state because the national security apparatus was used not just for national security, but also for mercilessly squashing political dissent. A policy enforced with an iron fist by unelected oligarchs.

As an analogy, consider how Americans view gun ownership in relation to gun crime as opposed how Europeans might view it. Crime is the telltale of a criminal, not having a gun.

[glurgh]

As you're concerned with the spirit of laws - your parallel is much in the spirit of 'Godwin's law' and ahistorical to the point of being specious. The USSR was a totalitarian single-party state that engaged in many decades of brutal mass repression of its population. The US is a constitutional democracy where laws are formulated, enforced and interpreted by independent branches of government, two of them elected. The comparison boils down to 'both in the US and in the USSR, they wrote some stuff down'.

[CWuestefeld]

The US is a constitutional democracy

Actually, it's a constitutional republic.

But my real concern here is with the "constitutional" part, because most reasonable readers seem to agree that the PRISM surveillance violates the Constitution. Yet the federal government only seems concerned about Constitutionality when it suits them, (literally) laughing it off otherwise:

CNS: Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?

Pelosi: [Giggles] Are you serious? Are you serious?”

CNS: Yes, yes I am.

Pelosi: [Takes question from another reporter.]

So I'm concerned that the degree to which we're "consitutional" at all is becoming increasingly tenuous.

[jbooth]

That's a really bad example, given the interstate commerce clause. Pelosi was laughing it off because damn near everybody, including the majority-conservative supreme court, agrees that regulating healthcare is regulation of interstate commerce, just like 1000s of other things that the federal government does which don't happen to be hot political footballs at the moment.

Conversely, most people that I've talked to agree that the NSA listening is very much not constitutional as per the 4th amendment. Even if you think it's constitutional, you have to do a lot of weasel wording about the definition of 'search and seizure'.

[jacoblyles]

It was actually a very close ruling (5-4) that hinged on whether "regulating interstate commerce" gave the power to the government to compel people to participate in commerce.

Personally, I disagree with the Wickard v. Filburn ruling that gave the power to the government to control what a farmer grows on his own land to feed to his own cattle under the "interstate commerce" power. The Constitution was distorted beyond any reasonable reading of the English language during the FDR administration and we never recovered.

The Republic is dead, FDR killed it. It's just taken us awhile to get used to living in a totalitarian state. Well, here we are.

[dragonwriter]

> It was actually a very close ruling (5-4) that hinged on whether "regulating interstate commerce" gave the power to the government to compel people to participate in commerce.

No, it didn't hinge on that point. The court split a number of different ways on different points in the case, but the rationale to which a majority signed on to for finding the individual mandate constitutional was the Taxing Clause, not the Commerce Clause.

There was an apparent 5-4 majority against finding for it under the Commerce Clause (the four conservative dissenters who would have struck it down plus Roberts), though there was no single opinion to that effect joined by any majority.

[jbooth]

Yeah, but the only reasons it was close were political. The individual mandate is well within the bounds of interstate commerce regulation when you compare it to some of your and my examples of existing jurisprudence that aren't politically controversial at the moment.

[CWuestefeld]

But the eventual SCOTUS decision did determine that it's not covered by the Interstate Commerce Clause. So your explanation of Pelosi's laugh may illustrate what was going on in her mind (as well as most other legal scholars at that date), but it also shows that they were wrong in the final analysis.

The reason that ObamaCare survived wasn't because of the Interstate Commerce loophole. It was because SCOTUS determined that it's a tax, and thus came in through the power of Congress to levy taxes.

[Torgo]

In my cynical opinion Roberts wrote his finding as a tax to prevent being responsible for the ruling that found you could use interstate commerce to argue the government could compel you to actually _engage in commerce_ so that your activity could then be regulated, because inactivity affects the market. Ginsburg wrote a pissy rebuttal defending the Commerce Clause interpretation. It's almost comical she had to write a dissent for a decision in her favor simply because she loves the omnipotentCommerce Clause so fucking much.

[embolism]

Ordering people to pay money to a government approved set of corporations is not regulating healthcare it's regulating the people and undermining property rights.

What's next? A selected group of 'food providers' that you have to pay because the government decides that they provide a better diet than people would choose from the free market?

[jbooth]

It's not new. You've got mandatory flood insurance from a selected group of companies, mandatory osha safety training from a selected group of companies, mandated accounting procedures that must be certified by selected people...

If you disagree with the law on principle, that's fine, it's certainly not a perfect solution.

But those are political objections. Based on how the interstate commerce clause has been interpreted for a wide variety of issues, it's not unconstitutional (for most working definitions of constitutional). That's why Pelosi laughed and moved on to the next question.

[embolism]

This is a good argument for the constitution meaning essentially nothing since if there are no limits on how the government can control how people spend their money, there are no real limits on how much control the government can exert over the individual.

I'm not saying you're wrong, just that your point isn't really about what is or is not constitutional, but rather that interpretation has rendered the constitution meaningless so anything is constitutional now. Perhaps this is why Pelosi laughed at the idea of something being unconstitutional.

[dreamdu5t]

Shhhh.. lest people be reminded that the government's claim to power is arbitrary.

[glurgh]

I don't know who these reasonable readers are given how few facts are available about PRISM surveillance - so few that it's next to impossible to reasonably conclude much about it.

As to the 'it's not a democracy, it's a republic' thing - it's just silly. So is taking the fact that some congressperson would not engage in a constitutional law debate with a reporter as an indication of the country's inexorable drift away from its constitution. Especially when you consider the question was answered - by the Supreme Court.

[mongol]

> The US is a constitutional democracy > Actually, it's a constitutional republic.

I don't understand this distinction. I read it from time to time on forums like these. US certainly is a democracy, in my (non-English) native language. And it is a republic. These are not exclusive.

[graycat]

> I'd say there's nothing that the minority can do (if it matters I'm not from the US)

No, not at all. The situation is still all well within the US Constitution in the sense of want people "can do". In particular, as I will outline, there is a very fast, simple solution well within what "the minority can do".

Background: In the US Federal Government, there are three branches, executive (e.g., headed by the president), the legislative (i.e., Congress), and the judicial (with the Supreme Court).

In the case of the Snowden leaks, the actions Snowden was objecting to were by the executive branch which (more or less) was following laws passed by the legislative branch and signed into law by the executive branch. So far so good, that is, within the Constitution. Note that the judicial branch is not involved in passing or signing such laws and so far has not been involved in this whole matter.

But looking at the laws and what the executive branch did that Snowden revealed, a "minority" might conclude that the Constitution was violated. Really, still, so far so good because it's not up to the legislative or executive branch to determine if the Constitution was violated. It's been common throughout US history for the legislative branch to pass laws and the executive branch to sign and use those laws but later the US courts, usually including the US Supreme Court, to find that the laws were "unconstitutional" and strike them down.

So for what a "minority can do" in this case? Sure: Bring a law suit in the judicial branch where the suit claims that the Constitution, e.g., First or Fourth Amendment, was violated. Typically the case (I don't know the details of the process) makes it to the US Supreme Court. For the role of a "minority", in principle only one person need bring the case.

We should guess that people highly concerned with the situation leaked by Snowden will bring such cases. So, we will look for the ACLU and the EFF. But now we also see that Google is bringing a case. The legal costs for bringing a case might be significant, but there are plenty of organizations and individuals with much more than enough money to pay for those costs. Likely cases will be brought.

My guess is that much of the relevant laws will be struck down.

So, why has the judicial branch or the Supreme Court not yet struck down the relevant laws? Because they don't do that; instead, there has to be a legal case brought.

In all of this, the Supreme Court will act very cautiously. And in principle there is nothing important to keep them from acting quickly.

Net, so far the US Constitution is working just as intended. No riots in the streets are needed yet. We just need for some cases to be brought. That the laws mandated a lot of secrecy may have helped slow the bringing of cases, but likely Google, Microsoft, and some individuals have plenty of 'legal standing' to bring suitable cases.

So far the legislative branch passed some laws. They can do that. The laws can later be found to violate the Constitution and even then we don't line up the people in Congress who passed the laws and shoot them. Similarly for the executive branch: Once Congress has passed a law, the executive branch can sign it and use it.

Net, there is only one branch that can say if a law is constitutional or not, the judicial branch, and so far apparently no suitable case has been brought and the judicial branch has yet to speak.

Indeed, I have a letter drafted to my members of Congress but have not sent it because the letter really just claims that the relevant laws were unconstitutional, and for the members of Congress such claims are nearly irrelevant.

Net, we just need a suitable case in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court will have no difficulty at all understanding all the relevant issues, and that court has plenty of ability to slap down laws passed by Congress and signed and used by the executive branch. Slapping down unconstitutional laws is much of just why the Supreme Court is there, and they are 100% fully aware of that point.

Some of the recent appointees to the Supreme Court are quite 'liberal', but nearly always they are plenty bright and will see the constitutional issues in the activities Snowden described with crystal clarity and intense concern.

The fight over the constitutionality of the relevant laws is not nearly over and, indeed, has yet to begin but apparently is about to begin. Don't bet on those laws coming out whole.

In particular the Constitution says nothing about violating the Constitution with secret orders of the executive branch based on wacko laws and approved by a secret 'court' of persons appointed by a member of the judicial branch with secret oversight by committees of Congress. Maybe the people who dreamed up this wacko nonsense thought that they were clever, but they were not: What they constructed has nothing to do with the Constitution, and the Supreme Court will have no difficulty at all seeing this point.

If the Supreme Court strikes down the laws, they will be gone -- out'a here. And that's just the way the Constitution says the process is supposed to work.

We're a government of laws, not men: What matters are the laws, not what Presidents Bush and Obama say, what General Alexander says, what the FISA 'court' says, or what the Intelligence committees of Congress say. Instead what matters here is what laws the Supreme Court says are constitutional.

[gknoy]

> My guess is that much of the relevant laws will be struck down. > If the Supreme Court strikes down the laws, they will be gone -- out'a here.... > What matters are the laws, not what Presidents ... say.... Instead what matters here is what laws the Supreme Court says are Constitutional.

I wish I shared your optimism.

I sincerely hope that the laws will get struck down, but I also fear that the classified nature of many things that touch this will lead the courts to say that we can't show we have standing, and therefore decline to rule on the constitutionality.

More importantly, what matters is NOT just what the laws say, but whether the government follows them! The core issue here is that we believe the laws and constitution are NOT being followed, and that the government feels that What the King Does Is Legal. That was Nixon's claim, and in effect is what the Bush administration claimed re: treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. This time around, the fact that it's being done by the NSA with the President's permission allows them to claim that the classified nature of nearly everything at stake here means we should trust them.

Getting the laws overturned will be a HUGE first step, though, and you laid out in excellent detail things that we citizens can (and should) do and expect.

[jacoblyles]

Part of the NSA's surveillance program was already found to be illegal and the executive branch classified the court's ruling:

http://blog.rongarret.info/2013/06/court-finds-nsa-surveilla...

How screwed up is that?

[aznjons]

I had no idea about this issue, thanks for the link! Looks like the FISC overruled the executive branch's argument about classifying the ruling. Kudos to the EFF.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/public-first-secret-co...

Honestly, what does the executive branch hope to accomplish by classifying the ruling that it was illegal? It sounds like everyone already knows what the ruling was even if the documents themselves are classified. Seems like a weak measure that makes them look worse, that they are willing to exercise the power to hide things (a power one would hope would be used responsibly) even in cases where it doesn't seem to help their goals in a meaningful way? Am I missing something here?

[graycat]

> Am I missing something here?

No. Money is the mother's milk of politics, and secrecy is the favorite dessert of bureaucracies.

Much of why W, Obama, etc. want the Patriot Act is to have power to catch the bad guys so that they, W, Obama, etc., won't get blamed. Indeed if a president doesn't defend the Patriot Act, the NSA, etc. and there is another Boston bomber, then some people will try to sell the charge that "The president is soft on terrorism." So, a president will want to defend the Patriot Act, etc. right up until the Supreme Court strikes down the act. Then a president will say that he did all he could to protect us against the bad guys, and the part of government soft on terrorism was the Supreme Court or just say that the Supreme Court showed us what we have to do to defend the Constitution.

A politician wants to avoid chances that opponents could say that the politician was to blame. Generally politicians get an A+ in CYA.

Generally the hope that a politician will be more responsible is a well informed citizenry making their opinions heard. That's why here on HN I'm putting out there that my view is that we need to protect the Constitution; the Patriot Act, etc. and the NSA have been trashing the Constitution; it's not worth trashing the Constitution to catch Boston wackos with pressure cookers; so, let's get the NSA, etc. back within the Constitution and otherwise do what we can with Boston police, the FBI, etc. about Boston wackos. Indeed, the Russians told us that the Boston bombers were dangerous wackos, and still we didn't do enough.

One more point is that so far a few wacko Muslims have caused us to suffer over 4000 deaths among our soldiers, tens of thousands of serious casualties among our soldiers, blow ballpark $3 trillion (net present value) of our money, and trash the Constitution. We've taken a sucker punch. We need to find some ways to get more security per unit of effort.

[graycat]

> I sincerely hope that the laws will get struck down, but I also fear that the classified nature of many things that touch this will lead the courts to say that we can't show we have standing, and therefore decline to rule on the constitutionality.

So, the Supreme Court will let claims of 'secrecy' trash the Constitution? I don't think so! The court should be able to find some ways around such claims of 'secrecy'! Telling those nine justices that they can't get 'secret' details promises not to 'play well'! The NSA is worried about tracking some loser, wacko, nutjob Jihader from Somalia, and the Supreme Court is worried about saving the US Constitution -- hmm ...!

> More importantly, what matters is NOT just what the laws say, but whether the government follows them!

If the executive branch is violating a law, bring a legal case. While this answer is simplistic, and usually is not an easy path, it is basically the way the process works. But such a case has to be brought and decided only once -- after that any judge can say that the issue has already been decided. While the process is not always easy, in important cases it tends to get followed. E.g., if the FBI goes to Google and says "gimme", Google can reply "see you in court". "Double secret probation" worked in the movie 'Animal House' but won't last long before the Supreme Court.

> What the King Does Is Legal

Not really true, but there is a lot of 'latitude'. And there can be a 'time window' until legal cases are brought. But the President is Commander in Chief so can tell the military to take that town. If the town is in the US, then there is a law about that. If the town is in another country, then the president should have some 'war powers', but the way it usually works in practice is that the president asks Congress for an authorizing vote. Then of course the president needs Congress to vote the money for the military action. And Congress can also pass a law that says that no money will be used to take the town in question -- in which case for the money the president has to run a bake sale, sell some arms and call up Colonel North, or some such. If the vote is 2/3rds in both houses, then it overrides any presidential veto and stands. So far the pushing and shoving from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue have not gone beyond such things. E.g., in effect for Gulf War II, Congress voted some 'authorization' (I'm no expert with details), did vote the money, lots of money, often, and didn't vote "no money will be spent in Iraq" or any such thing. W didn't do Gulf War II by himself and, instead, had a lot of help from Congress; it wasn't all W's fault. Cheney's "There's no doubt that Saddam has WMD."? Well, if count chembio weapons, that was true. Why? Because we still had the receipts from when we shipped those materials to him when he was fighting Iran. I was 100% against Gulf War II, but it wasn't all W's fault; he had a lot of help, enough that at least the spirit of the Constitution was followed.

It's simple: Nearly all the power is in Congress, if they can get a sufficient majority to use it. But if Congress goes beyond the Constitution, then they can get slapped down by Supreme Court just across the street. We had some darned smart founding fathers: They were working to give up a lot of the power of the separate states to a central government and were darned careful about doing so.

Gitmo is a legal mess: (1) It's not in the US, deliberately so. (2) It's supposedly about what we are now calling 'prisoners of war'. Somehow a lot of people want to regard the prisoners in Gitmo as having the right to access the US legal system, but that's not so clear, and, indeed, how the US military handles 'justice' on the in times of 'war', or whatever we are calling the fight against Al Qaeda, etc., has long or always been a long way from the US domestic criminal legal system. E.g., the stories go that in Viet Nam, the US had four prisoners and wanted them to talk but they didn't want to talk. So, all four prisoners got a helicopter ride. From maybe 2000 feet up, the prisoners were asked one last time to talk. When they didn't, one prisoner went outside for a 'walk', from 2000 feet up. The story is that then usually the other three prisoners were willing to talk. The Geneva Convention may have something to say about such tactics, but I don't recall if the Geneva Convention applied in Viet Nam. Maybe Senator McCain (whom I rarely agree with -- he didn't actually sink a US aircraft carrier although he came close) can give some details on how the Geneva Convention applied in Viet Nam. I was very much against the US in Viet Nam soon after I heard General Maxwell Taylor speak and asked him a question and got his answer; but with the US military actually sent to Viet Nam, some of the details on just how they talked to prisoners I was less concerned about. Broadly just what the heck the US military does on battlefields is to me a bit far from the US Constitution here inside the US.

> This time around, the fact that it's being done by the NSA with the President's permission allows them to claim that the classified nature of nearly everything at stake here means we should trust them.

They can claim all kinds of stuff. E.g., they might claim that no kittens or puppies were harmed by the NSA. Fine. Irrelevant but fine. Similarly they might claim "you can trust us -- we love the US and work hard everyday to protect and defend the US and honor the laws and the Constitution" -- close to some things they actually said recently and about as relevant as not harming kittens and puppies. Instead, as we know well, very well, all too well, and as I am fully sure that all nine Supreme Court justices know with brilliant clarity,

"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."

Besides, it's not up to General Alexander, the NSA, or President Obama to determine what is "constitutional". And it's not up to Senator Feinstein, etc. either. As we know well, instead, with a suitable case brought, the issue is up to the Supreme Court.

> Getting the laws overturned will be a HUGE first step

Shouldn't be. That's just the way the process is supposed to work. Congress and the president go with the excitement of the moment but eventually a case is brought to the Supreme Court and cooler, wiser heads prevail. In the meanwhile a General Alexander is able to say maybe that he loves America while he tracks mud over the First and Fourth Amendments.

Have some faith: The Constitution is fairly clear. The Supreme Court is highly respected. Nearly everyone in the US understands that the Federal Government is not supposed to be listening in on pillow talk, phone sex, steamy e-mails, or following people around, e.g., via cell phone towers, as they meet for their romantic engagements, etc. And the government is not supposed to be getting all that data, from Verizon, Google, Microsoft, or the Internet backbone even if the government does not use it. E.g., an ordinary phone wiretap takes a court order, and grabbing all the Internet traffic covers wiretaps, literally, and more. That no alligator clips and reel to reel tape recorders need be used is irrelevant -- grabbing voice over IP is the same as a wiretap; grabbing that data for 330 million US citizens within the US instead of just some one suspected Mafia thug is at least 330 million times worse and not better; and without a court order, in line with at least the Fourth Amendment grabbing all that data is just flatly illegal and unconstitutional.

Net, for the Supreme Court to strike down the laws that enabled a lot of what Snowden showed will be an easy slam dunk from a 10 foot stepladder. Telling the Supreme Court that they can't strike down such laws will be one of the most outrageously funny jokes ever cracked near DC. Take that claim and go down the present list of Supreme Court justices and guess who will even smile: Let's see, will Justice Scalia smile? He never smiles! Justice Ginsberg? She's so serious she can laugh and smile and no one believes it's genuine. Justices Sotomayor and Kagan? They are both busting their gut everyday to be sure no one can claim that they, as women, are not up to the full seriousness of the Court.

Trust in the founding fathers, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution. So far what the NSA did may be roughly 'legal' with current laws; that may not be the case much longer.

[makomk]

> So, the Supreme Court will let claims of 'secrecy' trash the Constitution?

They already have for decades, starting with United States v. Reynolds. That ship has well and truly sailed.

[graycat]

Then the court should revisit the case. They can do that, too.

[nknighthb]

They've had ample opportunity to do so. They turned down one just a few months ago, in fact. There is no reason to believe they will ever revisit it.

[flyinRyan]

Why would they? What do they care?

[AnthonyMouse]

>Net, there is only one branch that can say if a law is constitutional or not, the judicial branch

This is a myth. Any branch can declare a law unconstitutional. If Congress thinks a law is unconstitutional they can keep it off the books. If the President thinks a law is unconstitutional he can refuse to enforce or execute it.

The courts get a reputation as the ones who decide because A) if the other branches do their duty it never gets to the courts, which means the courts have the last word and are the final check on unconstitutional activity, and B) the other branches of government are happy to let you believe they have no responsibility to uphold the constitution (even though they very much do) because they're elected and elected officials violating the Supreme Law of the Land is fairly unpopular, so all the better if people mislead themselves into thinking that they have no responsibility.

[graycat]

When the Supreme Court declares a law unconstitutional, that ends the issue until the Supreme Court decides to address the issue again.

When anyone else or any other organization declares a law unconstitutional, then that's nice, nice to have their opinion, but mostly that's just their opinion. As I recall, the president is sworn to uphold the laws. If there is some law the president refuses to enforce, then there might be a law suit that goes to the Supreme Court. Or there might be an impeachment proceeding in the Congress.

Really, in practice there is a lot of discretion on what laws get enforced, and part of the role of the Attorney General (AG) is to decide, as a political matter as the AG serves at the pleasure of the president, what laws will be enforced. Still, likely (I'm not a lawyer) if I am suffering because some law was not enforced, then I can bring suit against the people supposed to enforce that law.

[AnthonyMouse]

>When anyone else or any other organization declares a law unconstitutional, then that's nice, nice to have their opinion, but mostly that's just their opinion.

Not really. If one of the other branches decides that a law is unconstitutional, that's pretty much the end of the issue as well. If the courts decided that operating Gitmo is constitutional but Congress decided otherwise, Congress could de-fund it and that would be the end of Gitmo. If Congress passed a law allowing indefinite detention without trial and the executive branch believed it to be unconstitutional, it could refrain from detaining anyone indefinitely without charge and there is very little anybody else could do to force them to do otherwise.

There are some circumstances where you can sue the government for failure to execute the law, but those cases pretty rare are hard to win. And even if you "win" all you end up with is a court opinion saying you won. If the executive subsequently says that it's still unconstitutional and they're still not going to do it, what then?

In practice this never really happens (because the executive pretty much never thinks anything is unconstitutional), which means there isn't a lot of precedent, but the courts don't really have any enforcement mechanism for their decisions against the executive other than reactions of the voters to the executive's defiance. If the executive is determined that something is unconstitutional and the electorate acquiesces then who is going to make them do it?

[graycat]

Good discussion. But all those places you said that the Executive or Legislative branches believed something was 'unconstitutional' and applied that belief to their actions, really they were just using the powers they had and could have done the same thing just saying that they just didn't like the law. So when such a branch says "unconstitutional" nice to have their opinion.

When the Supreme Court says "unconstitutional", that's different because there the court is using one of their fundamental powers. The court can't strike down a law just because they don't like the law.

[AnthonyMouse]

>When the Supreme Court says "unconstitutional", that's different because there the court is using one of their fundamental powers. The court can't strike down a law just because they don't like the law.

Neither can the executive. If they chose to do otherwise without any constitutional authority the courts should rule against them. Obviously the president can still just do whatever and defy everyone, but if the president is sufficiently in the wrong then you get subordinates siding with the constitution and impeachment proceedings etc., and ultimately a popular revolution if things go sufficiently badly.

Congress is different because they can just strike down (i.e. repeal) a law because they don't like it, but that doesn't change the fact that if they say "we're not passing this, it's unconstitutional," that's the end of the story and the thing in question is not happening, and they all swear an oath to do that when they take office.

[dreamdu5t]

So what the Supreme Court says, goes? You have quite the romantic opinion of them.

Maybe we should ask the Japanese Americans who were put into camps if they feel safe with the Supreme Court protecting us from the legislative and executive branches.

[graycat]

The WWII Japanese situation was a black mark on the history of the US. Apparently the Japanese Americans were exceptionally loyal to the US.

The excuse was that we were at war, in particular with Japan. The fear was that Japanese in the US would work for Japan.

We knew that putting all Japanese, at least those in the West, in camps was an ugly situation. And, when the war was over, the camps were emptied.

In the camps, life should have been as good as possible with lots of food, good shelter, good schooling, good medical care, etc. I don't know if that was the case. They were not criminals. But a lot of Japanese in the US lost their homes, belongings, businesses, etc. It was ugly. Hopefully they didn't suffer serious medical problems or lose their lives.

What happens in war is different from what happens in peace. Indeed, one of the issues about 'the war on terror' is, is it war or peace in the US? If it is peace in the US, are the terrorists in the US just criminals in the US legal system or enemy soldiers? If the war on terror is war in the US, are we going to suspend the Constitution until all the terrorists, many tens of millions of radical Muslims, have been 'defeated'?

What will the US do about Muslims in the US? Try to judge if they are 'radical' Muslims? Watch them in the mosques? Follow them around? Deport them? Put them in camps as for the Japanese in WWII? Treat them just as criminals in the US criminal system?

E.g., what is going on in Gitmo is not really the US criminal legal system. It's a bad situation. But 9/11 was a bad situation, and so was the role of the camps in Afghanistan and the IED's in Afghanistan, etc.

[PavlovsCat]

What happens in war is different from what happens in peace.

First off, things don't "happen", people do them. Secondly, the actions of people determine peace or war, not the other way around. Thirdly, the "War On Terror" is a rhetorical device, and depending on the thickness of your skin, an exercise in hipocrisy or comedy.

all the terrorists, many tens of millions of radical Muslims

Wait, what???

what is going on in Gitmo is not really the US criminal legal system. It's a bad situation. But 9/11 was a bad situation

9/11 was a tragedy and a horrible crime, but what made it the bad situation you are referring to were the, how do I put this, nazi cunts who abused it for their ends. I also assume building 7 collapsed out of sheer sympathy with the whole situation being so bad? And of course, this logic applies to the attackers as well. Killing thousands of people wasn't ideal, but the situation was "bad", you know.

[graycat]

Your writing is not clear enough for me to respond to all of your points. For

> nazi cunts who abused it for their ends

I'm guessing you mean Cheney and the "neocons" who, for reasons of Mideast oil and having a position to put more pressure on Iran (note the map of the huge number of US military bases within 200 miles or so of Iran -- it's amazing), etc. (which can cover a lot if are willing to believe).

I didn't like Gulf War II. I would have let Saddam stay there since as bad as he was we had no real way to engineer something a lot better. And I would have ended the no fly zone over Iraq as essentially just pointless. Leave carriers in the Persian Gulf? Likely. Be ready to jump back into air bases in Saudi Arabia? Likely. Keep a big presence in Kuwait? Okay.

But, whatever anyone thought of W, Cheney, the neocons, Gulf War II, in fact W, etc. had a lot of help from Congress. There was plenty of war authorization and money voted.

Basically have to blame the US voters. But, then, maybe should blame the US MSM -- which I do. One W Admin guy said that Gulf War II would cost $120 billion and got fired because W, etc. wanted to say the cost would be $80 billion or some such. One guy said that to occupy the country (an occupying force is supposed to ensure police protection) would take 500,000 US soldiers, and the W Admin fired him. Still the MSM didn't raise a big stink and basically public opinion went along with Gulf War II. So, who to blame? Basically the public.

For the places I said it was "bad", that's a euphemism to admit it was not good or acceptable but to try to avoid a hot rehashing of the old issue. If you believe much worse than "bad", fine with me.

For Building 7, I've heard this and that but really have tried to avoid following the issue because I doubt I could put back Building 7!

For the "nazi cunts", my guess is that in part they rubbed their hands with glee, told themselves that with the Patriot Act, our military, the NSA, CIA, etc., we were going to "take the gloves off" and really roast the Jihaders and teach them a lesson, not to mess with the big bad US, that would last for 1000 years. For the Patriot Act being constitutional, they just took the position that it would take years for legal cases to reach the Supreme Court and get the act struck down as unconstitutional and in the meanwhile they would bend the Constitution for a while and roast all the Jihaders.

But the "nazi cunts" in the end were quite dumb, wasteful, and ineffective. One reason is, if want to use Nazi techniques, they were not enough like the actual Nazis: In some area the Nazis occupied, if something went "boom", the Nazis were not reluctant to round people up, torture them, and level much of the area. The US, however, kept wanting to be loved from building roads, bridges, hospitals, and schools, of course, including for the girls (which totally torqued off nearly every Muslim for 2000 miles), setting up a constitution and holding free elections. Didn't work at all well.

Instead, nearly every low level thug, every leader of a small gang, a large fraction of everyone with some military training, various tribal and Muslim leaders, various international opportunists, etc. all saw that the US occupation in both Iraq and Afghanistan was a golden opportunity for mischief, money, power, etc. while the W Admin and any of their Nazis didn't. We were writing term papers on the lessons from Ireland, Indonesia, and anywhere else, guessing, etc. The short answer is, we blew it.

Now we've got one in Syria: Assad is an ugly guy. He's in with the Iranians we are pissed at. He's in with Putin who, I guess, stole a Superbowl ring and is not running a Jeffersonian democracy. A lot of innocent people in Syria are suffering. So, there is US political pressure "to do something". A point is, it's not the least bit clear that there is a better alternative, and there's a fear that the main alternative is Al Qaeda or some such and worse. So, it appears that Obama is trying to appear to do 'something' but actually is doing very little, which to me means that he will please the people who want him to do 'something' but not really seriously piss off the people, like Palin, who just want to "leave it to Allah". The Pentagon has said no fly zones, shooting down Assad's air force, etc. would all be too darned expensive, e.g., 400 US air sorties.

So, no politician wants just to come out and say, "The situation stinks. What we can do about it is next to nothing -- we could throw in a lot of effort and come up with a big, fat zero for making the situation better. In time, the civil war will burn itself out with likely not much impact on essential US interests.". US politicians don't want to say that. However, politicians in nearly every other country on the planet are eager to say just this. Really, only the US is all vulnerable to rushing off to more 'international adventures'.

I believe that the US voters need to wise up and then wise up the politicians.

[flyinRyan]

All your posts in this thread just make you sound utterly delusional. You're presented with clear cases that prove your optimistic beliefs to be little more than prose from a romance novel and you wave it away with "was a black mark on the history of the US.". So was every other time they've ignored their own laws in the past and every time they will continue to do so in the future.

[graycat]

The US is somehow a naive country (for no good reason) with more money than wisdom about 'foreign adventures'. So, the US messes up a lot. I wish we didn't. As Churchill observed long ago, the US always does the right thing after trying everything else.

Some countries a lot less democratic than the US end up with much more wisdom in foreign policy.

If you have some specific objection with what I wrote, then quote it and argue against it. If I return to this thread, then I will try to respond.

There was a case in the news today: Some US woman reporter went into Syria (she couldn't have been too bright) and met in a room with a lot of women and children. The men were mostly off fighting.

One of the women was 14 and had a small baby. The reporter explained that the main reason was that the family wanted the girl to get married so that she would have more protection against rape (the reporter didn't go into what might have been the result had the girl been raped). Then the reporter went on about how horrible it was for the girl to have a baby at age 14 (and get married and pregnant at age 13). Yes, there are potentially some medical problems due to her young age and lack of physical development. And, as the reporter made clear, the girl was not going to be able to finish high school.

Gads! The US reporter was projecting onto that poor family in Syria her strong US views about women in the US.

Instead, consider: The women and children in the room looked well enough fed and clothed. They were not obviously suffering. The young mother actually looked quite happy and calm and really happy holding her baby. The baby looked good, calm, happy, well fed and cared for (the US reporter did mention that the baby had not yet had some inoculations it should have). Otherwise the young mother looked like she was being a good mother. Moreover, the young mother was just surrounded by family -- her mother, brothers, sisters, likely aunts, etc. She was in an 'extended family' and no doubt just awash in emotional support and feeling of belonging. There was no shortage of expertise on how to care for the young baby. That she had a baby at age 14 is not ideal but, apparently, Mother Nature is not wildly against it. Also, likely in some Muslim countries, such young mothers are not so rare. As far as finishing high school is concerned, commonly in Muslim countries that's not a big consideration for girls (although maybe Syria, like some Muslim countries, except for the civil war, is more advanced about such things).

That's just the way it is in some Muslim countries. I don't want to live that way, but since they've been living that way for 1000+ years, it can't be all bad. For the person under stress, it looked to me that it was only the US reporter.

Net, the US needs to be more accepting of other cultures. That doesn't mean we want US girls 14 being mommies, but it does mean that what that girl was doing in that house and extended family in that country was not so bad there.

If the US gets itself all bent out of shape over lives such as that of that young mother, then we will be chasing absurd 'foreign adventures' until we are white from loss of blood. To avoid this, we have to wise up.

[flyinRyan]

How old are you? You seem extremely young from everything you're writing. Probably still in school getting actively brain washed by the school system about how the US works.

>The US is somehow a naive country (for no good reason) with more money than wisdom about 'foreign adventures'.

They are not, not even a little. They simply do not care about anyone or anything other than american interests. They don't do the things they do because they didn't realize it might cause an international incident. They simply don't care. They have the biggest military and biggest market, what is anyone going to do to them?

>As Churchill observed long ago, the US always does the right thing after trying everything else.

This quote points out that this is nothing new for the US. It will do the right thing if there is literally no other choice. But they are constantly working to make sure there will be other choices.

>If the US gets itself all bent out of shape over lives such as that of that young mother, then we will be chasing absurd 'foreign adventures' until we are white from loss of blood. To avoid this, we have to wise up.

This whole story is just common media manipulation. Make the enemy seem like barbarians so no one will look too deeply if we go to war with them.

[ensignavenger]

Or the Trail of Tears victims.

[flyinRyan]

I'm afraid your optimism is based on fairly tales, not actual historical precedent.

Laws, Supreme Court and so on mean nothing. They who hold the force make the rules. The constitution is nothing more than a security blanket that people can hold onto and pretend it's protecting them from something. In reality, the government will do what they want to do and (possibly, if they care to) justify it later with some "interpretation" of the law.

[graycat]

You are too pessimistic.

> historical precedent.

There's plenty of historical precedent where the US democracy worked. E.g., we passed prohibition -- 2/3rds of the House, 2/3rds of the Senate, and 3/4ths of the states. When we saw how dumb it was, we repealed it.

Recently SOPA and PIPA were close to passing. A lot of people in the tech community raised hell, and the bills went down in flames.

Sure, the Constitution doesn't solve all the problems. Instead, as Jefferson said,

"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."

So, to make the Constitution work, citizens have to keep pushing. You mentioned threats, and there are threats, but they can be defeated.

Once public opinion polls rise significantly over 50%, politicians start to pay close attention.

The main issue, then, is just what the voters want. Sure, the MSM, political ad campaigns, lying politicians, etc. can have big effects, but in the end the voters know a lot about lying, duplicity, manipulation, etc. I believe that the Internet will be helping -- it seems to have helped a lot with SOPA and PIPA and to have gotten the Snowden efforts front and center. No doubt some cases are on the way to the Supreme Court -- from Google, EFF, ACLU, etc. I doubt that the Patriot Act will come out whole.

Indeed, I believe that YouTube is helping a lot: Once a politician gives a speech, then due to YouTube the politician can't assume that the voters will easily forget. And for text data on politics, the Google/Bing keywork/phrase search engines are terrific.

Look at the US efforts in Viet Nam: Before WWII, Viet Nam was a colony of France. Ho Chi Minh was a dishwasher in Paris!

During WWII, Japan made Viet Nam a colony. The US worked with the Viet Namese 'nationalists', e.g., to rescue downed US pilots.

After WWII, the French got one of the peace conferences to let them back into Viet Nam, and war broke out.

Then the US had just fought against the Axis of Germany, Italy, and Japan, and it looked like there was another axis on the way with Moscow, Peking, and Hanoi. So, the US helped France in Viet Nam. The French lost.

By then the US had been fighting in Korea: The North was backed by Moscow and Peking and wanted the whole country. The US and parts of the UN wanted to 'block' that effort. So, there was the war in Korea, really, still simmering.

So, when the French lost in Viet Nam, the US wanted to divide the country and have the southern half allied with the US.

Alas, whatever the Ho government was, it was able to maintain power. And the US couldn't find a government to back in Saigon that could maintain power -- a Saigon politician did not dare sleep in a small village in the South.

So, the US kept backing governments in Saigon that kept losing.

In the US, the foreign policy 'wise men', Keenan, Dulles, Rusk, Bundy, etc. kept screaming that the US had to stop Hanoi or "dominoes" would fall all across the Pacific and land in California or some such. LBJ and Nixon really bought into this stuff, big time.

So the US bent itself all out of shape, inflated its economy, lost the lives of 50,000+ US soldiers, etc. trying to prop up loser governments in Saigon.

Why? Because no US politician wanted to see Hanoi take Saigon and, then, suffer the charges that they "lost Viet Nam" and were "soft on the atheistic, international Communist conspiracy about to take over the world and march into Washington, DC". That sales pitch worked really well in the US from the end of WWII until the US finally was run out of Viet Nam with people hanging off the parts of US helicopters whenever it was in the 1970s.

In all of this, it was really sad that Ho worked so hard to go to Moscow and Peking and, there, poke the US.

Actually, in the end, Hanoi and the US really had no serious differences at all. Indeed, now the US couldn't be happier with Hanoi. The US could have been happy with Ho and Hanoi at any time from WWII until the US totally lost.

But for your point about US democracy, what finally got the US out of Viet Nam was the US voters, e.g., many thousands of them marching on DC. Finally they made such a big noise that even President Ford gave only half-hearted support for staying in Saigon, and we left.

The US voters long bought into that Rusk, etc. "domino" theory. Eventually nearly every young person knew someone in their high school days who had died in Viet Nam. The predictions of the hawks never came true. It was clear that somehow the US just did not know how to build a government in Saigon.

It took US voters a very long time, decades, to see these points. But, eventually the voters saw, and then the US was out'a there.

The bottleneck was the US voters voting for LBJ and Nixon instead of, say, McGovern. I voted for McGovern; he wanted out as in 'leave now' which is eventually just what we did and what brought us to the present which is just fine. But McGovern lost, badly.

There were lots of people saying that we should get the heck out of Viet Nam. One book went "Are not winning, cannot win, should not wish to win". My view is that we burned enough oil, say, in B-52s from Guam, to enable OPEC.

We blew it.

Then, Afghanistan -- same song, second verse. There, still, no US politician wants to say, "Leave. Now.". Me? I'd have bombed enough of Akrapistan to teach them a lesson and then left, without ever setting a foot on the ground.

The US needs to wise up.

[flyinRyan]

>There's plenty of historical precedent where the US democracy worked.

And at least as many where it didn't.

>Recently SOPA and PIPA were close to passing. A lot of people in the tech community raised hell, and the bills went down in flames.

Haha, no. A lot of big companies put their lobby dollars behind a position and that position got adopted. No one in the US government cares about a bunch of blog posts, email or online surveys.

> etc. can have big effects, but in the end the voters know a lot about lying, duplicity, manipulation, etc. I believe that the Internet will be helping

No they don't! And even if they did, I'm not sure they can stop it (in the same way that knowing you're taking a placebo won't alter its effectiveness). It's getting more and more documented about just how effective marketing can be.

Some have gone so far as to ban certain kinds of advertising [1].

>it seems to have helped a lot with SOPA and PIPA and to have gotten the Snowden efforts front and center.

What? Outside of sites like HN, pretty much no one cares about Snowden. The mainstream press was already over him the next day.

>Once a politician gives a speech, then due to YouTube the politician can't assume that the voters will easily forget.

Except they do forget, and sites like political compass help them forget by trying to look official but producing padded stats. You can probably find every one of Obama's speeches on youtube yet there are still people who claim he hasn't broken any big promises.

[1] http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/ban-on-adverti...

[trg2]

Absolutely incredible. Thank you for breaking this down.