I just scrolled down my blogroll and my Facebook feed and discovered something very disturbing. In the discussions of the NSA scandal, the words “Edward Snowden” appear about 100 times more often than the words “US Constitution.”
I really hope we don’t see this crucial issue get reduced, in the customary American way, to a dime-a-dozen story about a Lone Ranger’s heroic battle with evil forces. It is so frustrating to see every political issue in this country reduced to personalities. It’s like people can’t discuss laws, politics, economy, their rights, or anything whatsoever unless they have imagined the issue as a Hollywood movie.
This reminds me of those endless and endlessly inane discussions of how a candidate for a crucial political office treated his dog and whether another candidate bought a puppy. It is as if people’s brains refused to process anything but puppy-related pablum.
The whole NSA debacle is turning into yet another round of “Julian Assange Against the World.” Remember how the whole issue of the Wikileaks degenerated into a Hollywood-like story of evil feminists who were also spies who were also CIA employees? Everybody (except me, of course) agreed that the leaks revealed hugely important information. Yet nobody (except me, of course) wanted to discuss that supposedly important information. It was all about the minutia of one person’s life.
I know I will now start getting outraged comments of the “How can we not talk about Snowden if it’s only thanks to him that. . .” variety. It’s easier to get into this fake frenzy than to notice that I don’t object to discussing Snowden. I object to discussing nothing but him.
My prediction is that this entire scandal will result in absolutely nothing. Except a Hollywood flick or two, of course.
Clarissa's Blog 
The Snowden case is about public informations that we should have known way before now. The fact that the government invades the citizens’ privacy is nowhere near a new information.
The Aaron Swartz case is more interesting in my point of view.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
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This is precisely what I’m talking about. Let’s debate whether we like Superman or Spiderman more.
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“The Snowden case is about public informations that we should have known way before now.”
This is what I don’t understand. I admit I haven’t been following the case too closely but what’s new here? Isn’t this just more ramifications from the Patriot Act? Didn’t we know this was happening? Obama didn’t repeale the Patriot act in his first tern and we reelected him. I confess I don’t understand why people are outraged _now_. This strikes me as all old news–things that have been happening since 9/11.
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I personally am outraged because Obama said just two weeks ago that the War on Terror is now over. If it’s over, then who is it that the NSA is hunting in this way? If the War on Terror is over, why are the weapons it was fought with still being used so actively?
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The War on terror has no end.
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May the gods keep us safe from charismatic politicians.
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http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/region_west_valley/surprise/surprise-man-charged-with-dui–documents-show-a-drug-recognition-experts-said-no-impairment-present
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http://c4ss.org/content/19692
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“It’s like people can’t discuss laws, politics, economy, their rights, or anything whatsoever unless they have imagined the issue as a Hollywood movie.”
That’s how we do it in America, comrade.*
If you haven’t seen it already, it would be worth your while to search out Roger and Me (I got tired of Michael Moore fairly quickly but this movie is amazing).
Talking about it afterward I kept thinking I had seen a different movie than my friends had. Yeah as a documentary it leaves a lot to be desired and is often manipulated and false (true of all documentaries as far as I can tell). But, what knocked me out was how he captured the utter vacuousness and banality of political discourse in the US.
Another movie that’s interesting in the same way is Days of Heaven where the rootlessness and careless cruelty of American life is portrayed flatly as simply part and parcel of the landscape (and all the more horrifying for that).
On this issue, I’m mainly left thinking/saying: Is anything revealed here a surprise to anyone who has been playing the slightest bit of attention? Nothing revealed so far is anything more reaching than what I’ve assumed has been going on for the last 15 years or so.
*yet another obscure pop culture reference.
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“If you haven’t seen it already, it would be worth your while to search out Roger and Me (I got tired of Michael Moore fairly quickly but this movie is amazing).”
– This is the only one by him that I didn’t see because I don’t like the premise. But since you are recommending, I will check it out.
“Is anything revealed here a surprise to anyone who has been playing the slightest bit of attention? Nothing revealed so far is anything more reaching than what I’ve assumed has been going on for the last 15 years or so.”
– The number of people who think this is perfectly OK because it “keeps us safe” astonishes me. I hoped for the better.
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To be clear, I think it’s awful, just not in a surprising way.
And to be fair to Obama (who I’ve never liked). I’m pretty sure he’s as powerless to stop it as you and I are. Many of his broken campaign promises are because there are things a president can’t do.
I find the blase attitude of many people every bit as horrifying as the revelations, maybe more so because I kind of hoped there would be more outrage.
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So I just watched Roger and Me on Amazon. It reminded me of the collapse of the USSR which was basically the same process but on a really grand scale.
Moore is really good at finding crowds of really stupid people with empty eyes to interview. The Amway lady who was a former feminist radio host was just heart-breaking. I can’t even imagine how long it must have taken him to find her.
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“crowds of really stupid people with empty eyes to interview”
That’s also known as “The American public”. I disagree about the stupid part (in terms of natural inclination). They’re simply taught never to question lots of things and therefore have no intellectual resources to deal with traumatic events that individuals cannot pull themselves up by their own bootstraps from.
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Ian Welsh wrote in a comment:
They are putting cameras all over the metropolitan world. The numbers in London and NYC are staggering. In LA they plan to put audio surveillance on the busses. Added to aerial (drone, balloon/dirigible) and sattelite surveillance, to cell phones (which even the poor use), and so on, they will have you under visual surveillance much of the time, including while you are inside. They don’t need a horizontal camera to see inside a window any more, I’m given to understand from someone in the industry, and, of course, there’s IR and so on.
Is the bolded true?! It’s like insanity already.
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No, the real insanity is how easily some people slip into apocalyptic speechifying from discussing real issues. Cameras in public places are on a different planet from accessing personal emails. A right to privacy and a right not to be looked at in public places are extremely different. While the former can be guaranteed, the latter cannot.
I don’t like Welsh because he is an hysteric with no regard for truth.
It’s exactly the same thing as what we discussed yesterday. A person tries to make a valuable and simple point that the costs of higher education are needlessly inflated. Instead of just saying that, he invents some completely ridiculous tale of 99% of people getting higher ed in 1968. Here we have the same thing. Instead of discussing the unacceptable nature of NSA gaining access to private emails we begin to talk about “they” and “someone” and using lots of passive voice to denounce cameras in public places.
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// Cameras in public places are on a different planet from accessing personal emails.
Is audio surveillance on the busses OK too, if it’s true? Hypothetically.
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In the US justice system, there is this concept – and it is an absolutely crucial one – of the reasonable expectation of privacy. Can people reasonably expect to have their actions and conversations to remain private on public transportation? Can you be private in public and should you expect to be? This is the real question here.
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Or if I stand in the midst of a busy street yelling the details of my personal life into my cell phone, do I have an expectation of privacy? Obviously, nobody has the right to tape my phone without a warrant. But do people have the right to record me if they are standing next to me in the street? I think the answer is obviously yes.
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