We Have No Privacy, We Are Always Being Watched.

@Rockhead,

Rockhead wrote:

billy, it's kinda scary that you are arguing my side of things...

I missed the "right to fly" in the bill of rights.

which part was it in again?

It might have been under the right to due process rather than Kafkaesque secret government decisions that affect you but that you can't find out a thing about.

1 Reply

@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

firefly wrote:
We Have No Privacy, We Are Always Being Watched.

We should also note the difference between "being watched" and "being seen". If cameras are everywhere, or if massive amounts of data are being collected and scrutinized, and you draw attention to yourself, then you are not necessarily being watched, but you may have been seen.

To me there's a big difference between the two.

Maybe there shouldn't be cameras everywhere in a free society of, by, and for the people.

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@spendius,

spendius wrote:

Quote:
Secret courts are bad enough but when some nameless bureaucrat can stop your free travel for unknown reasons with little or no recourse that should only be ok to such people as Firefly and Frank.

There is not time for open court hearings Bill and if you would stop hunting down the nameless bureaucrats when an incident does occur they might be a little less tense about the matter. Whoever he or she is is unlikely to have any "unknown reasons" even if they turn out to be mistaken.

Having one's travel plans disrupted is hardly the biggest deal that ever took place.

How about the right to confront your accusers? Is that unimportant to you too?

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@Brandon9000,

Quote:

It might have been under the right to due process rather than Kafkaesque secret government decisions that affect you but that you can't find out a thing about.

How come these issues raise not a murmur for all the people held for how many years now in the Guantanamo Gulag?

How come there's not a murmur for all the people that have been subjected to illegal renditions, to the torture going on in US secret torture chambers around the world?

How come there's never any concern voiced from the people of the land of the free and the home of the brave about all the torturing that has gone on by the US since day one?

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@firefly,

Mr. Thoman L. Friedman must never had read any of Franklin writings or if he did not understood the concepts. We must surrender some of our liberty now otherwise we might demand all of our liberty be surrender later due to a nuclear 911 by terrorists is his thinking!!!!!!!!!!

Strange with ten of thousands of nuclear missiles aimed at all of our major populations centers for decades we did not feel the need to surrender our liberties or at least the attempts to do so due to the claimed internal Communists threat was beaten back in the 1950s.

Quote:

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin

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@Rockhead,

Quote:

billy, it's kinda scary that you are arguing my side of things...

Somebody has to, Rocky, 'cause you never do.

Quote:

I missed the "right to fly" in the bill of rights.

which part was it in again?

Always trying to be cute. Is that to disguise the fact that you are actually a rockhead?

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@glitterbag,

Quote:

All the rest of you can continue to engage in your hissy fit about how oppressed the American people are here in this country.

As always, you miss the crucial point, GB. You are a walking definition of the oxymoron 'military intelligence'.

The American sheeple are only as oppressed as the ruling Democrat/Republican governments need them to be. Propaganda has served as a much better grease to keep things operating smoothly.

The crucial issue is the oppression not of the American sheeple but of the people of [name virtually any country in the world - the US has oppressed them].

Quote:

Well if you can't trust the word of a high school dropout,

Who was being paid big bucks by a US sub-contractor. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand and realize that the US is - lord, it has to be said yet again - a major hypocrite, always bitchin' and moanin' about other countries doing the things that the US leads the world in - the truly evil things.

You, of a whole lot of people, should not be denigrating this honest young man. He is a better American than the sum total of a huge chunk of the rest of you who make excuses for US crimes.

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Exactly what part of the following don't you folks understand, huh, Firefly, Farmer, GB, CI, Brandon, BillRM, Hawkeye, Finn, [have I missed anyone?]?

"The media are a pitiful lot. They don't give us any history, they don't give us any analysis, they don't tell us anything. They don't raise the most basic questions: Who has the most weapons of mass destruction in the world by far? Who has used weapons of mass destruction more than any other nation? Who has killed more people in this world with weapons of mass destruction than any other nation? The answer: the United States."

Howard Zinn

1 Reply

@BillRM,

Quote:

Mr. Thoman L. Friedman must never had read any of Franklin writings or if he did not understood the concepts

It's laughable that you quote Franklin in response to the Friedman article, it only makes your hypocrisy all the more glaringly apparent.

You of all people should be able to understand Friedman's main point--if we suffer another catastrophic terrorist attack, like 9/11, that the government failed to prevent, we may wind up willingly surrendering those civil liberties we cherish, because the public's fear, and the need for security, will demand that we do that.

Your own fears, in reponse to 9/11, and the continuing threat you feel is posed, even by Muslim-Americans, led you to call for the abridgement of civil liberties in order to protect future attacks.

These are your words, BillRM...

Quote:

In any case, I am all for taking away the freedoms of any group to the degree needed to stop or at least slow down the mass murders of our citizens from that group members.

I could care less if that group danger is base on religion or nationality or any other elements.

The Constitution is not mean to force us to committed mass suicide by not allowing us to be able to response to a clear threat to our survival.

The courts had as a matter of fact had rule time after time in the country history that civil rights in time of national danger is secondary."

http://able2know.org/topic/159601-160

Quote:

Sorry the rules are not the same when the country is facing a threat to if survival nor should it be.

The Constitution is not a suicide pact.
http://able2know.org/topic/159601-161

If that was the sort of response you had to 9/11, views you continued to voice almost 10 years after that event, you, of all people should realize how willing others would be to throw even more civil liberties under the bus if we suffer another attack like that. How many more would happily climb aboard your bandwagon, and chant your slogan, " The Constitution is not a suicide pact"?

Friedman understands people like you--and how they would react if we had another major terrorist attack on U.S. soil. It's a shame you can't recognize yourself in what he is pointing out. It's a shame you can't understand his warning, people like you are the ones who most need to hear it.

But, you may simply be too dumb to understand it...

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@JTT,

great men are rarely/never good men and great countries are rarely/never good countries.....i think america handled our superpower years better than most so your America is evil rants dont go far with me. I am much more concerned that America is no longer great, that we went to hell in a hand basket so fast.

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@hawkeye10,

Quote:

i think america handled our superpower years better than most ...

"The greatest myth concerning American foreign policies is the deeply-held belief that no matter what the United States does abroad, no matter how bad it may look, no matter what horror may result, the American government means well. American leaders may make mistakes, they may blunder, they may even on the odd occasion cause more harm than good, but they do mean well. Their intentions are always honorable. Of that Americans are certain. They genuinely wonder why the rest of the world can't see how kind and generous and self-sacrificing America has been."

William Blum

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@hawkeye10,

Quote:

i think america handled our superpower years better than most

"The media are a pitiful lot. They don't give us any history, they don't give us any analysis, they don't tell us anything. They don't raise the most basic questions: Who has the most weapons of mass destruction in the world by far? Who has used weapons of mass destruction more than any other nation? Who has killed more people in this world with weapons of mass destruction than any other nation? The answer: the United States."

Howard Zinn

=============

Quote:

so your America is evil rants dont go far with me.

You hope that they are my rants, Hawk, but the plain truth is they are the facts. See above quote.

Quote:

I am much more concerned that America is no longer great, that we went to hell in a hand basket so fast.

Who says you folks are the most self absorbed people on the planet!

How long do you think you can maintain this level of delusion? Open question.

1 Reply

@firefly,

Quote:

It's laughable that you quote Franklin in response to the Friedman article, it only makes your hypocrisy all the more glaringly apparent.

Gee what a surprise, FF, YOU show BillRM to be a hypocrite.

There's a saying, somethin' about a pot, ... or a kettle. Do you know it?

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@firefly,

Sorry dear but taking freedoms away from us in order to keep from having more freedoms taken away later is insane. By the way if we did tear on the bill of right all ten amendments that does no give us any guarantees that we will not have another 911 or worst either.

Next it is nice that you can and have taken the trouble to cut and past selections of my past words out of content. You have always been very good at editing my postings such as my sarcastic comment back to you once that Yes I trade child porn with federal judges to yes I trade child porn and then have the nerve to claimed I was confessing to that misdeed/crime. Yes it was just an error on your part that you cut the sentence short I am sure and then posted it in that form.

An out of control government acting in secret is far far more of a serous threat to the well being of the American people then all the terrorists that ever had live.

Short very short term government unconstitutional actions out of immediate need is one thing a never ending removal of our freedoms is another. Lincoln closing of some newspapers in the border states that was calling for those states to join the south was a short term need in fighting a civil war.

Now when do you think the government is going to give us back our privacy Firefly a year. ten years, a hundred years or never. My money is once we accept such programs those types of privacy is gone forever more. Somehow I can not see them bulldozing that many billions of dollar spy center complex in Utah or not using it for the next 50 years or more.

If the terrorists are that must of a threat perhaps we should just surrender to all their demands and keep our bills of right intact........ Drunk

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Howard Zinn, strangely enough, seems never to have read the Boston Globe or the NY Times. He's wrong.

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incidentally, you're wrong about idioms. "Don;t count your chickens....: doesn't fit the Camb. Gram's definition of idioms, peculiar tho that def'n. is.

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@JTT,

Quote:

You hope that they are my rants, Hawk, but the plain truth is they are the facts. See above quote.

and I am front and center when it comes to advocating recognizing facts even when they make us look bad. but I am much more concerned when Americans get hurt by american evil, to me lives are not equal, I care more about my people than I do about other people. the things that get my blood boiling are more the following, Hitchens claiming that tens of thousands of Americans died in Vietnam to get Nixon in the White House in 1968.

but his overall claim that Henry Kissinger is a war criminal I think is likely true.

2 Replies

@BillRM,

Sorry BillRM, you made those remarks--including, "The Constitution is not a suicide pact." I don't blame you for trying to deny them. You made some very appalling statements in that other thread.

Quote:

My money is once we accept such programs those types of privacy is gone forever more.

We're already there, and privacy is gone forever.

And that's thanks to people like you who wanted the Patriot Act. You wanted to be safe from the threat posed by Muslim-Americans, from the threat posed by all Muslims. You handed the government that surveillance power with the Patriot Act, you asked the government to use surveillance powers to protect you.

I didn't take your remarks out of context--in that other thread, you were carrying on about the threat posed by Muslim-Americans, and their mosques in the United States, particularly their mosques in NYC, when you said...

Quote:

In any case, I am all for taking away the freedoms of any group to the degree needed to stop or at least slow down the mass murders of our citizens from that group members.

I could care less if that group danger is base on religion or nationality or any other elements.

How many more deaths from plots generated inside the area mosques would it take for you to feel that we should control mosques.

Is there any numbers of dead bodies lying in the New York cities streets for you to agree that there is a public safety issue here?
http://able2know.org/topic/159601-160

Because you were willing to throw the civil liberties of your fellow citizens under the bus, for the sake of national security, yours also wound up under the bus. And they will continue to wind up under the bus.

You wanted the mosques of all Muslim-Americans "controlled". It clearly wouldn't have bothered you to have their mosques bugged. And it certainly wouldn't have bothered you to have their phone metadata collected. What was their crime? Being Muslim, of course, because you view all Muslims, including all Muslim-Americans as being suspect, and a potential threat. What about the civil rights of these Muslim-Americans, their right to privacy? To which you said...

Quote:

The Constitution is not mean to force us to committed mass suicide by not allowing us to be able to response to a clear threat to our survival.

The courts had as a matter of fact had rule time after time in the country history that civil rights in time of national danger is secondary.
http://able2know.org/topic/159601-160

You should have been interested in protecting the civil rights of those Muslim-Americans, BillRM, and of all other groups in this country as well, instead of having been so fast to advocate sabotaging them, as you chanted your mantra, "The Constitution is not a suicide pact." You best protect your own civil rights only when you protect and defend everyone's civil rights, including the rights of those you do not like, and that's the part you forgot.

Your privacy is gone forever. You already live in a surveillance state. You're already being watched and monitored. And each new terrorist incident will increase that. And you were one of the people who wanted it, for the sake of better security.

You may not like being confronted with your own past words, but you can't keep your words and thoughts private when you choose to post them on the internet. And you certainly can't hide them from the people here when you post them at A2K.

You're the one who said...

Quote:

Sorry the rules are not the same when the country is facing a threat to if survival nor should it be.

The Constitution is not a suicide pact.
http://able2know.org/topic/159601-161

1 Reply

@firefly,

Quote:

The Constitution is not a suicide pact." I don't blame you for trying to deny them. You made some very appalling statements in that other thread.
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Sorry dear heart I did not denial those comments however once more you cheerfully and knowingly took then out of content.

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And that's thanks to people like you who wanted the Patriot Act

Sorry I never supported the so call Patriot act. I did support the monitor of Mosques in areas such as NYC that have a history of being used as centers for some terrorists attacks. An that would have mainly involved using human agents not large scale electronic monitoring and surely not mass monitoring of the whole damn society along with the rest of the world including nations that are our allies.

Nor are we at the momrent facing a threat to our survival as those gentlemeen have no power to do great harm to this nation that power is only in our own hands and once more if you are so fearful of them why do you not prefer to surrender to them.

Given them weapons, money and support to overthrow any middle east country they care to after all we might otherwise get a nuclear 911.

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@BillRM,

I don't know Bill. It seems you are the one that doesn't understand concepts. Franklin speaks of "essential liberty". That is not defined by Franklin but the adjective certainly would imply he doesn't mean "any liberty" like you want to claim. I would suggest Freidman might be closer to Franklin than you are.

1 Reply

We Have No Privacy, We Are Always Being Watched.

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