You apparently missed the fact that the Obama administration had a full scale Democratic congressional revolt on its hands yesterday - a majority of congressional Dems voted to defund the NSA collection of bulk call records under FISA - the White House was seriously afraid the Amash Ammendment would pass - it only failed narrowly - 217 to 205. So in objective terms, the response has been far worse than the administration expected. And this policy tussle isn't over yet.
True and true. If I am not mistaken, What we've witnessed from James Clapper and General Alexander, it is legal for representatives from our federal surveillance agencies
to openly lie in a Congressional oversight hearing.
This of course, if fact, is insane, and will only lead into extralegal catastrophe. Learn to read and reread `Clapperspeak'. When you look for it and know a little context, we see how entrenched and truthfully revealing it is:
"And Ye Shall Know the Truth, and the Truth Shall Make You Free"
- John 8:32, and the entrances of NSA, Fort Meade, Maryland, and the CIA HQ, Langley, VA
"Arbeit macht frei"
-Auschwitz, and the entrances of other Nazi slave labor camps during World War II
I think many of us in the United States saw this coming when the current administration stated they would not be addressing the previous administration's law breaking.
The law is now "in your face" optional, depending on how much money and/or power is involved. Power has always had undue influence, it is just flagrant now.
From what I read, this is fairly common among many countries, so I take it as part of the "human condition."
i think the issue is: 10% of the people are informed enough to realize what's going, and yes, some of them are acting. the majority of Americans don't know what's going on, and many of them don't care, which is sad.
I don't know what would have to happen for you to consider the response substantial. Would citizens need to be forming militias and actively marching in the streets? That's just not how people react anymore.
Tens of thousands of people called their congresspeople on a day's notice to express their support for the Amash Amendement. That amendment lost by only 12 votes. A large majority of people polled think that the NSA dragnet is infringing on privacy rights. I think that's pretty good for a notoriously apathetic populace. This issue is far from over.
A few tens of k's is remarkable. There's a fallacy of thinking "people aren't doing anything about it, therefore they don't care".
In fact, people don't "do something" because they estimate, rightly or wrongly, that they can't do anything that would make a difference. Millions worldwide protested the current US wars when they were getting started, but they went ahead on schedule. What, exactly, can citizens do to effectively influence their government anymore? If people perceive that rule of law is gone, the rational reaction is to "lie low" and hope to get thru these times unnoticed. Those still contacting congress may be old enough to remember a different USA and naive enough to not realize it is gone.
Tens of thousands caring out of a population of 350 million is 0.03% of the population. That's kinda tepid. But should Paula Deen have been fired from Food Network? Crisis of epic proportions!
You might want to consume different sources of news media. The only times I've heard the name "Paula Deen" was in conversation with my parents and grandparents. I'm sure her travails (whatever they are or were) amount to a crisis for some people, but you don't have to pay attention to those people.
Oh. Your parents and grandparents aren't Americans, then?
Look, if you hang with the hipsters who "consume" better media, then sure, you won't have any clue what the vast majority of the public cares about. It's not surveillance. It's whatever mass opiate has been focus-grouped out for the week.
In the meantime, though, that mass opiate is mainlined into every public space in the land on countless television monitors in essentially every place where a person has to spend more than 30 seconds. They've got no time to think about the future - they've got to be outraged about this week's 15-minute hate, or admire this week's baby, or fear this week's terrorist.
You may simply not visit those downscale places. Good on you. But Washington really doesn't care, except to the extent that you earn more money they can extract or possibly build more centralized data processing services they can mine.
That may have been true for whichever couple of days the talking heads devoted to the unfortunate Ms. Dean, but it simply isn't borne out over the long haul. If you look really hard, I doubt you can find a single piece about Dean that was produced today, while most outlets have several about Snowden.
You can't find a piece about Paula Deen today because the attention has shifted to Prince George. Which, by the way, is exactly the point: While there are people who care about Snowden, NSA, etc., they are not currently any kind of substantial part of the public. We all ignore that at our peril.
The fact that Snowden may be a larger-than-normal individual news story doesn't change the fact that the story doesn't capture public attention in the face of the multitudes of other news stories continually cropping up and then going away again.
Not even 500 people made it out to support the July 4 protest of the NSA, in a country where tens of thousands of people will turn out to oppose gay marriage.
Depending on what polls you read, a majority of Americans think the NSA policy is acceptable: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/most-americans-suppor.... ("Overall, 56 percent of Americans consider the NSA’s accessing of telephone call records of millions of Americans through secret court orders 'acceptable,' while 41 percent call the practice 'unacceptable.')
The real news here is that Congress reacted more strongly than the public!
Maybe that's because they know how this power can and will be used against them. What's the likelihood of this blackmail power being used against an ordinary citizen? Very low (why bother?). Against a congressman? Well...
When they regurgitate the content of a government press release or briefing without challenging both its basic premises and noteworthy claims, which they all do every single day, many times a day, the popular news media perfectly inhabits the role of "government mouthpiece". This includes the many instances of on-the-one-hand-on-the-other press-release ping-pong between the two allegedly opposed narratives provided by our two allegedly opposed political parties.
The media didn't break anything. Snowden gave them the story, which they have mostly ignored in favor of hit pieces against him as a traitor and a coward.
You're right, it is a sweeping generalization. It'd be better to say that most of the mainstream media serves as the government mouthpiece. A few key outlets continue to serve the vital role of breaking important stories such as this one.
Unfortunately I believe @northernmonkey and all OP's are talking about the "average American" and maybe the "average human". After all, in the US anyway, aren't we-the-people the government? That would make the MSM a mouthpiece for... the average American. I believe that is more or less true as sad as it is.
Aware and concerned tech-heads are trying to protect a drunken fool (the public) from a hungry bear (whoever it is that actually runs the intelligence networks). Either one is dangerous enough on its own, trying to save one from the other is like trying to settle a domestic dispute... not sure it can happen.
> Aware and concerned tech-heads are trying to protect a drunken fool (the public) from a hungry bear (whoever it is that actually runs the intelligence networks).