Video & Multimedia
Related: About this forumThinkingabout
(30,058 posts)With cell phones able to video and take pictures, anything you do in the public is subject to being recorded by someone. Cameras are everywhere, I have them in my home also. Don't do the crime and you may not need to do the time. Don't like events being recorded, then do not use facilities in which a foot print can be retrieved. This is your choice, your freedom.
East Coast Pirate
(775 posts)Good plan.
Ms. Toad
(34,093 posts)Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)For drones overhead and I don't think they are coming for my guns. Don't think anyone is going to be interested in my conversations either.
Kurovski
(34,655 posts)They'd have access to info on all those boring people, all in one place! they could make life miserable for those boring people.
It's all just great, until someone gets in who decides to use it all against the crashing bores.
You know, boring Christians (pick a boring sect), boring smarty-pants, boring Tea Party members. And so forth...
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)some takes advantage and bullies others. We can gather all the what if's but in the end we need to protect ourselves as much as possible.
Kurovski
(34,655 posts)Bush/Cheney had plenty of intel/info and the attack on 9/11happened anyway.
Lack of info is not the problem in the US.
http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/disinfo/deceptions/bostonglobe091801.html
by Kevin Cullen and Ralph Ranalli
The Boston Globe
September 18, 2001
FBI Director Robert Mueller continued to insist yesterday that federal authorities had no reason to suspect Islamic extremists were training at US flight schools before last week's suicide hijackings, even as more evidence surfaced raising questions about those assertions.
The vice president of a flight school in Oklahoma told The Boston Globe yesterday that three weeks before Tuesday's suicide hijackings, FBI agents interviewed him about a suspected terrorist who had trained at the school.
Dale Davis, the vice president of Airman Flight School in Norman, Okla., said FBI agents showed up at the facility asking questions about Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested in Minnesota last month after he tried to get flight simulator lessons on flying a commercial-size jet.
In addition, Davis said that FBI agents visited his flight school two years ago to ask questions about a former student who had been identified by federal authorities as an associate of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born dissident who is the prime suspect in organizing last week's hijackings.
Davis also said that two of the men who hijacked two flights out of Boston's Logan Airport last week, including Mohamed Atta, who investigators believe was the ringleader of the Boston hijackings, had visited the Norman flight school last year before deciding to attend one in Florida.
At a Washington briefing yesterday, Mueller repeated his assertion, first made Friday, that federal authorities had no inkling that terrorists were using US flight schools to acquire the training they needed to take the controls of commercial airline rs as they did on Tuesday.
''There were no warning signs that I'm aware of that would indicate this type of operation in the country,'' he said.
But the Globe reported Saturday that federal authorities have known for at least three years that two associates of bin Laden had trained in the United States as airline pilots.
The link between the Al-Qaeda terror group, allegedly led by bin Laden, and US flight schools emerged earlier this year at the trial of four men charged with the 1998 bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. At that trial, during which FBI agents were called as witnesses, an associate of bin Laden testified that he went to a flight school in Texas.
Prosecutors introduced evidence that a second associate of bin Laden, Ihab Ali Nawawi, had trained at Airman Flight School, as did Moussaoui, who is now being held in New York for questioning on suspicion that he is an associate of the hijackers.
In a telephone interview, Davis confirmed that the FBI had suspicions about Moussaoui at least three weeks before last week's disaster.
The questions FBI agents posed to him appeared to be about whether Moussaoui could have been a terrorist, Davis said, including whether the alleged Algerian militant had ever made any ''extreme comments'' about the United States.
When asked why they were inquiring about Moussaoui, Davis said, the agents replied that ''he had done something very bad.''
Davis said FBI agents had visited his school just two years earlier to inquire about Ihab Ali Nawawi, who took flight training there in 1993 and was later charged in connection with the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Africa, which were blamed on bin Laden's group.
Davis also confirmed that Atta and another suspected hijacker, Marwan al-Shehhi, visited Airman Flight School, staying overnight at the school's dormitory in the nearby Sooner Inn, before deciding to train at another facility.
''They did a school visit in July of 2000 but went elsewhere for whatever reason,'' Davis said.
The Los Angeles Times yesterday quoted an unidentified federal official saying that Moussaoui asked only for lessons on ''steering, not landing'' and cheered when he watched a news account of the suicide hijackings at the jail in Minnesota where he h as been held since last month.
reusrename
(1,716 posts)Doesn't seem to put much value on liberty or justice.
think
(11,641 posts)And you'll be fine. We're only concerned with those that rock the boat....
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)In_The_Wind
(72,300 posts)Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)baldguy
(36,649 posts)Nobody screams about privacy & civil liberties when Google & Verizon watch and record your every move for Coca-Cola & Walmart.
Laelth
(32,017 posts)That said, they are not the government, and the 4th Amendment does not apply to them. Apples and oranges.
-Laelth
baldguy
(36,649 posts)Remember that it's the Objectivist nutcases like Ron Paul - people that Snowdon has supported in the past - that want to remove ALL restrictions on what corporations can do to you.
Laelth
(32,017 posts)I would certainly favor some reasonable limits on what data corps. can collect, how long they can (or must) keep it, and what they can do with it.
That does not mean I do not want some limits set on the government as well.
-Laelth
baldguy
(36,649 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)At which point 'private' security would escort one out the store. Online purchases, they got you by the short hairs. No one remembers the old saying, 'Never volunteer for anything.' It's all with our permission after we asked to join whatever...
Great excuse to go tribal and live in a cult. Glenn Beck and Joe Barton are now building a place to be 'free' again in pure Objectivist territory.
No taxes. No regulation. Also no religion of your own choice, or choosing to not join the cult. There is always a price to be paid. If you don't like that, doh.
Government exists to stifle the religious fanatics, hassle the greedy corporations and to wage class war on the rich with taxes.
Neither the corporations running the plantations nor God freed the slaves and neither gave women the right to vote, either.
I'm sticking with the secular government. Where I can argue without being crushed by the patriot version of paradise.
'Freedom and liberty.' For some. For others of us, not so much.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)Laelth
(32,017 posts)Corps. can make any laws they want abridging the freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, etc. (so long as, when applying these rules to their employees, they don't violate state or Federal laws, like the Civil Rights Act of 1964).
The 1st Amendment limits what the government can do. It does not limit what corps. can do.
-Laelth
Ms. Toad
(34,093 posts)civil liberties have to do with government intrusion - not private intrusion.
Information sharing between private corporations does not have the capability to imprison us, until it is shared with the government.
baldguy
(36,649 posts)have your best interests in mind when it comes to your privacy? You think they don't want to have the power to imprison you, or even kill you? You've never heard of Karen Silkwood? Or the way United Fruit and then Chiquita has treated its workers? And that every other huge industry isn't exactly the same way?
The only thing that really stands in the way of the Objectivist paradise Snowden apparently wants is the government.
Psephos
(8,032 posts)Auggie
(31,194 posts)even more. Profits, you know?
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)And digitally stored.
snappyturtle
(14,656 posts)L0oniX
(31,493 posts)emulatorloo
(44,186 posts)Locrian
(4,522 posts)Because it shows an entrenched industry that will never let go of the assloads of $$$ they are making. We've created another worthless, evil vampire machine that is sucking away our resources.
And that machine is now 'all knowing' and can crush anyone who dares go against it.
kath
(10,565 posts)And then there's the "health" insurance industry, now made even more deeply entrenched for the next few decades, dammit, thanks to the Health Insurance Protection Act, aka the ACA.
titanicdave
(429 posts)a problem....don't misunderstand me, I am a liberal and have voted for Democratic and liberal candidates....but....in the age of the radical extremists out to destroy us and kill our citizens and ruin our way of life are the ONLY ones who need to worry about being listened to and tracked....
harun
(11,348 posts)DFW
(54,445 posts)I speak German and Russian and have been interrogated in East German rooms where I was the only one without an East German uniform, a weapon or the right to stand up without permission.
Believe me, we're not there yet, and don't ever want to be. Living in the "realexistierender Sozialismus" was no picnic.
merrily
(45,251 posts)Noting that the same arguments could be used for both regimes is not the same as saying both regimes are identical.
DFW
(54,445 posts)However, if you've ever had the "honor" first hand, the implied parallel is irritating.
If you get the chance, see the German Oscar-winning film "Das Leben Der Anderen." It used some actors who had grown up in the former East Germany, and according to many former "DDR-Bürger," was an accurate depiction of life there. My short stays were more than enough. You have to have experienced the place first hand (and speak German) to begin to understand what any comparison means. Two different planets, I promise you. A better example could have been used.
merrily
(45,251 posts)even leads in that direction.
A totalitarian state does not just leap full grown out of the head of Zeus, as the goddess Athena supposedly did.
DFW
(54,445 posts)Its founders spent WWII mostly as Stalin's guests, and he trained them to take over the minute the occupation was declared over. They didn't change much from the Nazis. Even their uniforms and their goose-steps were almost identical except for their army helmets. The Gestapo became the Stasi, but that was about the extent of it. They just declared that their part of Germany was "Nazi-free (the 1949 equivalent of "fair and balanced" " and all the former nationalist "Beamten" were suddenly socialist "Arbeiter und Bauer." It's no coincidence that the largest group of Neo-Nazis after the fall of the wall was in the East. They had never really experienced a country where elections mattered, and since the reigning "socialists" had declared that no Nazis were ever there, well, then all the fascists laying low could never have had Nazi backgrounds, could they?
Dick Cheney would have loved to lead us in that direction. Obama has nothing of the sort in mind. I graduated from the same high school (if you want to call it that) as W. I never met him, but I know where he's coming from. There were enough like him there, and his dad was the guy who interviewed me. I have spent time with Obama. We are NOT heading in that direction as long as he's president, and I'm confident that we will still not be heading in that direction if Hillary, O'Malley, or anyone else on our radar succeeds him. Obama will probably have a post-presidency like Bill Clinton, organizing charitable initiatives around the world full-time. Look at what W and Cheney are doing. Again, we are not headed in that direction. Easily said, but not easily substantiated if you've lived the real thing.
bvar22
(39,909 posts)Would you say that the growing Surveillance Capabilities of the US Government......are :
1)moving TOWARD that of the old East Germany?
OR
2)moving AWAY from that of old East Germany?
Have you been through any of the "checkpoints" in South Texas?
Not the Border Crossings,
but the "checkpoints" 50 or 100 miles into the interior?
Be careful.
You could have a FlashBack.
DFW
(54,445 posts)I wish I had the time to. I haven't even been to El Paso or Austin, if you can believe it. I've heard about the checkpoints. I ran into one in the 1980s in Italy, and totally freaked at being in a car with four guys stopped on a roadside by about six guys in full battle gear with machine guns all pointed at us. The era of the Brigate Rosse was almost at an end, but the Italian government seemed intent on looking "tough" all the same.
We would have to go a long way before we get to East Germany. Did you know that it was legally forbidden there for more than four people to sit together at a table at a cafè or restaurant? That's how terrified they were of their own people. They were scared some dissident movement could arise if six people were chatting together at a café where listening devices weren't in place. For that matter, when I was in Cuba, their monitoring of my telephone was so bad that I had to complain before I could hear the person on the other end of the line.
When the wall came down, and the first East Germans came for vacations in the western part of Germany, they were confused when they asked what time breakfast was. When told it was between (for example) 7:00 and 10:00, some of them (friends witnessed this) said impatiently, "yes, but what time do WE have breakfast?" You see, in East Germany, everyone at a hotel was told exactly what time their own individual breakfast was, so that their whereabouts could be monitored at all times. The concept of being able to choose your own time to have breakfast was completely foreign to them.
There are all sorts of degrees of control that State can have over your life. I know it's difficult to conceive of the degree they watched over you, but it was for real. Some friends of ours that we used to visit in East Berlin in the seventies got out after a year of trying. The woman's father was in the Stasi, and he freaked when he found that his daughter wanted to emigrate to the west. He let it happen, although I'm sure it devastated his career. Her husband was a musician, and he was so clueless about the west that he just figured that money materialized magically out of nowhere (too much western TV), and he would be off to see America as soon as he had learned some English (Russian was the obligatory first foreign language there).
totodeinhere
(13,059 posts)extremists have already won.
And I don't buy this if you do nothing wrong you have nothing to worry about argument. The more people that they spy on the greater the chance that innocent people might be caught up in the net. And remember that under our system all citizens, whether they did something wrong or not are entitled to certain rights.
titanicdave
(429 posts)have the terrorists won??......answer, .....NOTHING......having served in the Army during the Viet Nam era, I have no problem with our government protecting our people......the Presidential Oath of Office specifically states protecting the constitution and the constitution is we the people.......
dkf
(37,305 posts)In fact you could say they have decided not to protect the constitution but to protect people. They have turned it into a trade off and have decimated the 4th.
merrily
(45,251 posts)dkf
(37,305 posts)The Boston situation shows more than a few holes though.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)totodeinhere
(13,059 posts)Constitution? I don't think so regardless of what some stooge court might say. In fact these spy programs are contrary to our constitution IMO. And yes they have won because their aim is to destroy our way of life and if we drift toward a police state then yes our way of life has been destroyed.
However even though I disagree with you I would like to thank you for your service to our country.
merrily
(45,251 posts)You can violate many provisions of the Constitution if your only objective is keeping people physically safe.
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)Specifically the fourth amendment.
bowens43
(16,064 posts)you think that the government VIOLATING the letter and spirit of the Constitution is protecting the Constitution ???
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
George Orwell
historylovr
(1,557 posts)If we're all so afraid of a possible nebulous attack that just might possibly take place at some point in the future that we're willing to trade away our basic rights as American citizens, then yes, they have won.
lastlib
(23,293 posts)Are you listening to yourself? Do you suppose the Jewish people in pre-WWII Germany would have thought they were safe because "they had nothing to hide"?
emulatorloo
(44,186 posts)Probably better ways to argue with that poster than going the Nazi/Hitler route.
totodeinhere
(13,059 posts)valid one.
merrily
(45,251 posts)it has, thanks to people who mistake it for the 12th commandment and repeat it as though it made sense.
This is the so-called rule, in its entirety.
It states: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
Godwin created it, not because there is anything to it, but as an experiment in memetics. Id. See also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics
Either a comparison has some validity or it doesn't. If the comparison has no validity, just say so.
emulatorloo
(44,186 posts)titanicdave
(429 posts)Kali
(55,025 posts)gotta love the old SAFETY argument
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)titanicdave
(429 posts)I have been a liberal probably before you were even born and I DO support marriage equality
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)domestic surveillance.
titanicdave
(429 posts)awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)who support the Patriot act, which violates the 4th, 6th, 7th, and 8th Amendments to the constitution are not liberals, no matter how hard they try to pretend to be.
Kurovski
(34,655 posts)Not that he isn't obvious.
Hi, Dave.
SammyWinstonJack
(44,130 posts)Skittles
(153,193 posts)American fatcats have done a GREAT job of doing just that.
bowens43
(16,064 posts)Vinnie From Indy
(10,820 posts)by terrorists.
The simple fact of the matter is that the hundreds of billions being spent are really being stolen. The MIC/Surveillance state contractors are bleeding us dry while tens of thousands die each year from lack of medical care and from guns.
totodeinhere
(13,059 posts)Of course I understand striving to save lives. But if we took some of that money and spent it on medical care instead might we be saving even more lives? Is the expenditure of all of this money the most efficient use of money if we want to save lives?
warrant46
(2,205 posts)It's about looting the public treasury to feed the wallets and Coffers of a Few "Pig" Capitalists and their Corporations
thelordofhell
(4,569 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)thelordofhell
(4,569 posts)awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)occupying foreign countries. If we were occupied by a foreign army, and we attacked the occupiers, we would not be terrorists- well, maybe from their point of view, but not from an objective POV.
Amonester
(11,541 posts)And that those thousands of employees do bring food on their family tables every day.
Who would like to see them all go jobless all of a sudden?
snappyturtle
(14,656 posts)Americans don't build great things anymore. She was pictured at the Hoover Dam. Maybe she should re-think her remark. Another candidate should be the Baghdad embassy. Meanwhile, back in the "Homeland" bridges are collapsing and schools discinegrating....go figure.
Edit: Forgot to add link with alittle more insight:
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-washington-post-backtracks-on-claim-tech-companies-participate-knowingly-in-the-nsas-data-collection-2013-6
merrily
(45,251 posts)excuse for us to start building big things again, or at least to shore up the big things we've already built, like bridges whose soundness is dicey.
But, we went another way.
snappyturtle
(14,656 posts)valerief
(53,235 posts)They want to know what's most profitable for them. They being, of course, the the gazillionaires who own the world and everything in it.
merrily
(45,251 posts)Are we sure Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy are really dead?
valerief
(53,235 posts)lastlib
(23,293 posts)Tea Partiers/Republicans, Where Are You?
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)[center]
K&R
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Please post this as a separate thread in the videos. It is prophetic.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)so paranoid that we construct that sort of apparatus TO SPY ON OURSELVES.
What would you do with a person who covered his walls with mirrors so that he could watch himself and make sure he wasn't doing anything stupid, wrong or, God forbid, sinful?
I knew a woman who spent hours and hours writing down her random thoughts. The notes were illegible and neither she nor anyone else ever read them. What a life?
How about the person who spends hours and hours staring in the mirror just to get every hair in place and every eyebrow perfectly plucked. We consider that person to be narcissistic and perhaps ultimately self-destructive.
But that is my opinion of these people? What is yours? Are they living healthy, productive lives? I think not. Life is not about looking at yourself in a mirror or scribbling your every thought.
Yet this surveillance state is ourselves watching ourselves and recording all our contacts. It's sick. It's a huge waste of money and time. It produces nothing. It educates no one. It heals no one. It is an inversion of the most sinful and sick sort.
I'm just horrified. As a society, how paranoid and useless have we become?
What a waste of perfectly good lives.
You NSA guys. You only get 16 waking hours per day. You live maybe 80 years. Do the math. How many of those hours do you want to spend staring in the mirror of America? It's crazy. You are wasting your time and hours. Most Americans are rather boring. Terrorists could be found through other, less intrusive, more accurate means. You are wasting our money and bankrupting the very people who feed you.
End this absurdity. We do need intelligence. But there is nothing intelligent about surrounding yourself with mirrors so that you can watch your every move from every angle.
kenfrequed
(7,865 posts)It is not new. We have been there since the Bush administration and some would argure it started far sooner than this.
We still need to get rid of the Patriot Act and the majority of the Democrats in the house voted against reauthorizing it in 2011. Almost 90% of the Republicans voted for it while two-thirds of Democrats voted against it.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/09/us-usa-irs-scrutiny-idUSBRE9580A820130609
Solly Mack
(90,787 posts)ctsnowman
(1,903 posts)the MIC and now we also have the SIC but remember folks we can't afford to help the poor and social security spending will have to be cut.
Fire Walk With Me
(38,893 posts)B Stieg
(2,410 posts)as he watches us continue to swivet ourselves into a Gordian knot even Solomon couldn't unreel.
Major Hogwash
(17,656 posts)That's very interesting.
"Since Sept 11 . . ."
Well, putting two and two together shouldn't be too hard now, should it?
RushIsRot
(4,016 posts)Initech
(100,104 posts)And the Plutocrats are winning.
Politicalboi
(15,189 posts)And so did 9/11. Somebody had to get their money's worth, and it looks like a lot of people got their money's worth. Until we re-investigate 9/11, we will never know the truth of how ALL these companies got these contracts. They ONLY got them due to 9/11. I wonder if the Pentagon got their blurry camera fixed. I guess their surveillance plans didn't mean them.
What a waste of money. Think of all the schools that could have been built for the 21st Century, with good teachers with all this money.
We will never get anywhere till we investigate 9/11 AGAIN. I hope Bush/Cheney are shaking in their boots every time 9/11 comes up, because the more they dig, the more shit comes up.
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)Canuckistanian
(42,290 posts)Roads are in sad shape. Levees along the Mississippi are substandard. Oklahoma has no tornado shelters for schools.
But goddamn it, this country will be FREE of a handful of radical subversives.
God loves America. Just not as much as he used to.
LibDemAlways
(15,139 posts)the DC area. Huge number of openings for "cyber warriors." Jobs always require full on top secret clearance with full polygraph. Government is bound and determined not to hire anyone likely to spill the beans. Nothing they hate worse than an employee with a conscience.
Rosa Luxemburg
(28,627 posts)chervilant
(8,267 posts)gainfully employed US citizens...
CrispyQ
(36,526 posts)Fuckers.
tavalon
(27,985 posts)Not okay under bush, not okay under obama.
Initech
(100,104 posts)JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)Think about that for a second. ~1000 requests a year.
That seems like a very SMALL number given that some claim we now live in a police state.
10s of Millions of pieces of data ... and yet only about 1000 requests a year?
I'd have expected the number to be much higher.
Could it be that the very existence of the FISA court causes the investigators to be more cautious in what requests they bring forward?