I am having a contrary reaction to the recent revelations that we might live in a pervasive, invasive surveillance state. My first reaction was: Why is anyone surprised? What did you think the Patriot Act meant? It legalized activities that the government actively pursued covertly since WWII at the latest. Spying on US citizens is nothing new. And why be outraged about it? What did you expect the N.S.A. to do? To look for terrorists, they MUST look at EVERYONE. And really, didn’t you KNOW your phone calls were being scanned for keyword clusters? Didn’t you realize you were putting your life on display for retailers on the Web? Haven’t you noticed how Google Ads respond to keywords in your emails? Or watched the ads on the right side of your Facebook News Feed reflect your demographic data? If Amazon & Netflix tracking cookies can follow your browsing, why shouldn’t the government have the same access? I heard the argument that we didn’t click “I agree” on the TOS agreement w/ the N.S.A. Perhaps not personally, but a majority of voters re-elected G. W. Bush and the Congress Critters who made us give up our 4th Amendment rights at airports. We have COMPLIED implicitly if not explicitly. I say we KNEW we gave away our privacy & shouldn’t boohoo too loudly. We darn well know there are men being held in Gitmo indefinitely w/o due process. Oh but that’s THEM, not us, you say. Well, we’re not STARTING to slide down a slippery slope. We’re snowballing downhill ALREADY.
My second reaction was: They aren’t doing a very good job of compiling & sorting all that data. Those two losers still blew up people at the Boston Marathon AFTER they reportedly looked up bomb making instructions ONLINE… along w/ at least half a million other idle slackers that week alone I would guess. I’m not sure I would mind if they had the ability to intercept those boys BEFORE they set off their bombs. It would have been nice if the movie theater mass murderer had been arrested in the parking lot & taken off for a psyche eval. One of those mass murder TERRORISTS exercising his 2nd Amendment rights–I forget which one–made a number of suspicious ONLINE purchases of ammo. Why didn’t that throw up a red flag? So there’s that. Big Brother appears to be incompetent. His all-seeing eye blinks.
My third reaction was: Why is this big news NOW? WHY is this shiny bauble of outrage being dangled? WHERE are we being lead? All over the Web, people were saying how this was a non-partisan issue. Left & right should unite to roll back this gross invasion of our privacy. Then the leaker was revealed & my mind reeled over his totally unbelievable life story. While others were hailing him as a courageous hero, I was saying to myself this dude is NOT REAL. I saw contradictions in his narrative. You cannot BE epileptic AND accepted into Army Special Forces Training. After breaking BOTH legs in a training exercise & taking a couple of computer classes at a community college to get his GED, how in hell does someone end up being a C.I.A. employee in Switzerland? To then be transferred to the N.S.A. & spend the last four years working for subcontractors tasked w/ super-duper top-secret operations… This is the stuff of wild fiction! And you cannot BE PATRIOTIC & tell the Guardian–a news outlet that is notoriously anti-American–you melodramatically fear for your life while you sit in gawd-damn evil CHINA!
PLUS, Big Brother is beyond incompetent & well into negligence IF this “sys admin ASSISTANT” was given access to their powerfully pervasive, invasive PRISM. I considered the only way ANY part of Snowden’s tale could be true is if he had a connection that pulled strings to put him where he was. Many unqualified people were given overpaid do-nothing admin jobs related to Iraq because they had connections. It was part of a Republican patronage system that rewarded young people related to contributors or who had done grunt campaign work. The only part of Snowden’s past that has been confirmed is that he worked the last 3 months for a subcontractor in Hawaii. SERIOUSLY! He wasn’t even out of a probationary period of employment before they handed him the keys to unlock damaging documents! THIS is MORE outrageous to me than the SPYING! I DON’T BELIEVE IT!
I thought to myself it was far more likely someone handed him whatever evidence he claims to have. He’s a photogenic geek type & draws out sympathy w/ his romantic idealism. I devoured the continuing interviews w/ him and THERE IT WAS! The creep VOTED for RON PAUL! He’s “disappointed” that Obama has not changed the course of the massive ship of the surveillance state. Pah-lease! Obama can’t even get his judicial appointments or cabinet positions approved & he’s to blame for operations that were started before he was elected and continue to be funded by Congressional subcommittees!
I smell A RAT! If Breitbart were still alive, I would suspect him of this trickery. It has been suggested this will be an issue for Rand Paul to fly if he seeks the presidency in the next election. Indeed, many of my liberal friends are finding themselves in common cause with reactionary retards. How many Democratic votes might be peeled away by this overblown issue? Could it be enough to tip the balance & put a mad dog Republican in the White House? Are you willing to trade away the New Deal for the promise of private emails? I know the adage about trading liberty for security and having neither. But we can’t have ANY liberties WITHOUT security and a functioning central government.
I don’t care if the ominous They ARE scanning my phone calls or emails. The government started spying on me in 1964. I know this for A FACT & the Thought Police haven’t shown up yet. I DO care VERY MUCH that the N.S.A. is INCOMPETENT! We seem to be wasting billions of dollars on a system that doesn’t protect us from outbursts of semi-automatic gunfire almost every frigging week! Do their defining parameters on what constitutes terrorism need to be adjusted? Should they hire Google to tweak their algorithms to better anticipate when nut jobs are about to go postal & kill innocent children? AND WTF! HOW did a dweeb like Edward Snowden get hired & handed access in under 3 months? There’s THE scandal!
Also, anyone who voted for Ron Paul or encourages voting for Rand Paul needs to WAKE THE FUCK UP!