[pjc50]

The American people is the enemy of the American people.

By that I mean there are plenty of people who are happy to support this kind of thing so long as they believe it's only being used against people unlike them in skin color, socioeconomic background, religious or political beliefs. America is not strong on solidarity.

On the other hand, the ship is turning, slowly. The war on drugs is being de-escalated, which may provide an opportunity to de-escalate the relationship between the public and the police.

[dmix]

The war on drugs is de-escalating at the civil and state level but not the federal level.

The federal gov is the worrying one. They're the only ones operating with as much secrecy as possible, over-extending executive power, and the biggest reason local police are becoming militarized (via the federal program delivering them military equipment).

[themartorana]

Right, and the militarization of local police forces by the federal government puts those forces under federal control - not explicitly or illegally, but as in this case, they are subservient to - and answer to - the federal government rather than the local population they are meant to protect.

[jpgvm]

The fact they are rolling out what are effectively heavily armoured APCs to local police really worries me.

What possible use could local police have for such heavily armoured vehicles that wouldn't better be handled by SWAT or some other more specialised force?

I don't relish the idea of relatively untrained police officers operating said vehicles in riots etc..

[samspot]

I'm going to apologize in advance for reading your post as "people who don't feel strongly against surveillance are racist bigots".

I disagree. Most of us have not been affected by this personally. We are wrapped up in our own lives, and have disengaged from news sources we don't trust, or are completely beholden to our favorite news source.

To change our thoughts, we need a high profile story of an outrageous use of this technology.

[pjc50]

Unlike some people, I'm not going to call an absence of solidarity bigotry. Not being aware that other people are treated very differently by the same system isn't an offence. It's just, as you say, not being aware due to not being affected.

[meddlepal]

I think you hit on the real problem. Most American's do not really care about other American's problems unless they're very closely related or the other problems are impacting them in some negative way.

I do not see a good way to fix that since that attitude seems to directly spawn from our highly-individualistic vision of society.

[nickff]

There is a great deal of evidence that the great majority of voters (not the same as average Americans,) do not vote on the basis of their own self-interest.[1] The problem here seems to be a bias in favor of entrusting the government with a great deal of power, in the hope of creating a good and stable society. Individualism and collectivism do not seem to have much to do with problem, though one could argue that the public is insufficiently aware of Public Choice Theory, among other problems with collective action.[2][3]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom

[CamperBob2]

There is a great deal of evidence that the great majority of voters (not the same as average Americans,) do not vote on the basis of their own self-interest.[1]

The "Those people in Party X or State Y are so dumb that they vote against their own interests" schtick really annoys me. Sometimes my own view of my interests may diverge from the author's. I have no problem voting against my immediate self-interest, if I think I will benefit from improvements to society in the long run.

[nickff]

My point was broader than that some are "voting against [their] immediate self-interest, if [they] think [they] will benefit from improvements to society in the long run", as many people may vote on some moral or ethical basis, or believe they are voting in their own short or long-term interests, but be ill-informed.

One example of this is that people in non-farm states support agriculture subsidies just as much as people in farm states, when it is clear that these subsidies are simply a wealth transfer (to the farm states).[1]

[1] http://freakonomics.com/2008/07/24/the-illogic-of-farm-subsi...

[mikeash]

The problem isn't people who don't feel strongly, the problem is people who support it.

Techies tend to think that the US government is off the chain, rampaging on an innocent populace who doesn't like it but can't bring themselves to fight it. Techies tend to hang out with other techies and that's how we mostly feel, so it's easy to conclude that this is how everybody feels.

But a lot of people support this stuff, and that is the real source of the problems we've been seeing since 9/11 (and before, but not as visibly).

Why is the TSA still probing everybody even though we all hate it? Because we don't all hate it. A lot of people really, really like having the TSA around and doing what they do. Why are police getting more militarized and less forgiving even though we all want them to back off and calm down and integrate better with the community? Same answer. Why hasn't the NSA's ubiquitous surveillance been brought to a halt now that everybody knows about it and wants it to stop? Again, same answer.

The American populace is, for the most part, terrified. Look at the incredible reactions to the prospect of bringing Guantanamo prisoners to the US as an example. People lose their minds at the idea. They think that bringing these people into the country, despite the fact that they've been locked up for a decade and would be held in maximum security facilities, would be extremely risky.

The government is partly at fault for this. The government's reaction to 9/11 was basically, "Be afraid! Be really afraid! Holy shit, you guys, you need fear!" Basically the opposite of FDR's approach. "The only thing we have to fear is everything everywhere." But the populace accepted it, and it feeds back on itself to where we're seriously stuck with it. Only if we can change this will we see any progress on all the problems it causes.