PRISM - Where are all the protests?

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Sehnsucht Engel

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Apr 18, 2009
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I think it's unlikely that there'll ever be any serious protests in America, even if something worse happens. They'll be too scared of the "threat of terrorists", which the government will probably just love.

Also, "The Land of the midnight sun" sounds pretty damn cool. I don't think I've heard it before. There's also truth to it.

Kolby Jack said:
And I have nothing against Sweden (I am of Swedish heritage, myself) but it's not really fair to compare it to America. Sweden is a fine country, but let's be fair here: it's small, less populous, and it has few enemies. America is a superpower, and the only one in the world by many accounts. We have many people looking to knock us down a peg or two, a very large military force which is large not only to defend us but also to provide hefty support to our less militarily capable allies (like Sweden), and a combination of a huge landmass and equally impressive population to keep track of. I'm not saying these are excuses for shifty dealings, but certain considerations have to made to keep us as secure as we've become accustomed to.
I'm pretty sure many of us don't want your "protection", or anything close to it. We had to protest when the piracy acts were being made, because one was almost forced on us, which is something that came from you. >_> We haven't been in a war since 1814, which is almost twohundred years by now.

I think time will take care of America anyway, so I don't see why anyone would bother. Much more impressive superpowers didn't stand the test of time (Rome for example). Hopefully it'll be sooner rather than later though.
 

Foolery

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Jun 5, 2013
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Eh. I wasn't surprised when PRISM came out in the spotlight. A warning sign was when the Patriot Act was created. Granted, America's freedom is different than our Canuck version. You have freedom of speech, we have freedom of expression. Which means folks have to watch what they say in public, unless they're interested in getting the attention of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.
 

RyQ_TMC

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Apr 24, 2009
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Well, you know, the NSA has this guy:

[img=http://hollywoodhatesme.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/adam-baldwin.jpg]

Nobody wants to piss off Adam Baldwin.

OT: I think it's all down to media reaction. They can't spin the story the right way (pro-Democrat media don't want to blame Obama, pro-Republican media know all too well the elephant wasn't against PRISM either), so they don't. And the only way to get people invested in what's happening is to constantly remind them that they should.

I mean, in my country a demonstration of a few hundred people will be spun as a massive public protest, while one of tens of thousands will be hushed up if it doesn't line up with the line of the media. Occasionally, people will organize by word of mouth, but that tends only to happen when you have some very strong images you can associate with the events. The Istanbul happenings would have largely been ignored and swept under the carpet had the government not decided to be arrogant about it and used the police to attack the protesters.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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It's simple, really, the government is getting away with this because it can. The majority of news media outlets - which have the duty of being a sort of watch-dog for the public - are biased towards the left. And no, I'm in no way saying that Fox News is the only beacon of light, they're just as bad as the rest of'em only they're on the other side of the coin. Here's a few examples of huge scandals that the majority of our media either lied about or, if a fitting lie couldn't be made, they just out-right ignored.

ACORN: a government funded assistance program was caught on-tape offering advice to a guy playing as a pimp wanting to set up a house for under-aged prostitutes. He made it clear that's what he intended to do, and they were giving him advice on what to put on his tax forms and such. Little to no media coverage.

Operation Fast and Furious: a government operation headed by the attorney general in which the US government shipped guns to drug cartels in Mexico which were then used to slaughter countless civilians and a US Boarder Patrol Agent. Why was this done? "So we could track down the badguys! But due to a glitch we lost all the serial numbers so effectively we just gave them all guns." The Right would say this was supposed to be a covert-op to gin up sentiment for anti-gun legislation. And what has become of the Attorney General arming Mexican drug cartels with military grade weapons? Absolutely nothing. Yet another "non-story" according to the majority of the media.

The Benghazi Attack: the US consulate in Benghazi gets attacked by a riotous mob that kills our ambassador and three former Navy SEALS that tried to protect him. For weeks, the government and media INSISTED that the attack was in response to an anti-muslim youtube video that, by the date of the attack, only about 200 people had seen. It most certainly wasn't a planned out terrorist attack, because Obama killed Osama so terrorism should be dead. Come to find out, in the days prior to the attack the Ambassador made requests for upgraded security as there was information there could be an attack soon, all the requests were denied. Military units that could have gone in to help during the attack - which lasted 7 hours - were told to stand down because the situation was too dangerous. A specialized unit based in Italy whose specific duty was hot-zone extraction of VIPs was told not to deploy. Yet again: little to no media coverage, and the coverage that did occur supported the story "It was all because of a video."

There's more, like the voter suppression carried out by the Black Panthers during Obama's first election and how despite there being clear videotaped evidence of this occurring, Eric Holder said "I'm not going to prosecute my people." All the coverage during the healthcare debate. News about the economy.....

Quite simply, the Obama Administration has a hell of a lot of out in the open scandals that, despite being out in the open, no one cares about. Why? The media bias is part of it, but beyond that is the fact that being in a land based on freedom, you have the freedom not to care. Most of the country is less concerned about what their government is doing and more concerned about what Kim Kardassian's baby is going to be named or what some TV cook from the deep south has to say about black people or how sexy Jennifer Lopez looks in her bikini.
 

DoveAlexa

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Oct 28, 2009
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It's because once something's been out in the open for a few days, everyone immediately goes "Oh, then it must be in the process of being fixed right now" or worse "its not really as bad as it is because I live in a perpetual state of disbelief". Then they go and shame anyone who would protest and would ACTUALLY fix the situation, screaming "tinfoil hat" at them.

Though really, while I like to be able to keep my person safe from BS like this, it seems like most people completely deserve whatever they get.
 

Gormech

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May 10, 2012
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From what I've learned as being raised in the US, this is why there's no big protest.
1. We're lazy when it comes to getting our government to do anything that's not related to a recent attack on us.
2. We thought they were doing this anyway as as long as no one is bursting through the door without a warrant, no one really cares that much.
3. While we do a lot of talk about everyone being free, it is generally assumed that the majority of people around us need to be on a tighter leash. No one trusts anyone.
4. Pudding.
5. The government is probably using this thing to deter people from making the protests in the first place. Conspiracy theories ahoy.
6. Majority doesn't care. Kinda defeats the purpose of any voting thing imo.
7. PRISM just sounds cool. If we're gonna have an evil corporation over us it might as well sound like one.
8. I'll think of more eventually. Just woke up and for some reason typing this into the list.
 

ToastiestZombie

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Mar 21, 2011
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Nobody cares because "Well I'm not doing anything wrong! What do I have to hide?", even though this and the breaking of the 4th amendment in Boston should make anyone scared. The American people are willingly allowing their government to do the sort of things George Orwell would have pissed his pants over, all to combat "terrorism".

The culture of conspiracy-shaming we have which makes it so that anything but the things presented right there on the news is just bullshit is also making people apathetic, or even supportive. Who wants to be on the sides of the paranoid tinfoil-hat wearing idiots who only watch Fox News, right?
 

Sectan

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Aug 7, 2011
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I think it comes from a feeling of What the fuck can we even do? Whether it's true or not if you have a few thousand civilians start protesting against the political body that controls a huge military well of course it'll just be riot squads, teargas, batons and bullets.

ToastiestZombie said:
The American people are willingly allowing their government to do the sort of things George Orwell would have pissed his pants over, all to combat "terrorism".
"Okay my fellow Americans. Terrorists are trying to take away your freedom and that's horrible. So what we're going to do is secretly take away your freedoms to protect you from terrorists taking your freedom."
 

Something Amyss

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Dec 3, 2008
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elthingo said:
I am honestly completely taken aback by this. America is basically the only nation in the world that considers freedom a huge part of its national identity, so much so that they've named themselves "the land of the free".
Of course, branding has very little to do with reality. We also call ourselves the greatest country in the world, something strong with our national identity, despite no reason to claim it (unless by total mass of its population, maybe?).

And then PRISM happened. A secret police secretly spying on probably hundreds of millions of people from the US, its allies and the rest of the world under a president who made freedom, privacy and transparency a huge point of his campaign and on top of that, the FREAKING DIRECTOR of the NSA lies right in the face of congress UNDER OATH and walks away without any punishment whatsoever.
Sounds like a great thriller, but a rather glib and somewhat flat interpretation of the matters at hand.

The American reaction to this? A freaking petition to the white house. No protests, no significant calls for Obama to step down and call for early elections, nothing. Not even any major rallies in defense of the guy who gave up a life of wealth and safety to warn the American people, risking his life and going up against the biggest superpower in the world in the process. There were literally bigger rallies in Hong Kong. Yes. China did more to support a guy who did nothing for them than the Americans, for whom he sacrificed almost everything.
LOL it's a farce that this guy's even being called a traitor. He didn't tell us anything we didn't already know, save that a middle manager could access the data that we'd been collecting for over a decade.

I mean, Sweden, "The land of the midnight sun", not "The land of the free" had massive protests outside the Riskdag (our version of congress, basically) when the government considered doing an incredibly light version of this, and in that case they actually told us beforehand. So, what's going on here?
Americans get bored easily. The Government's been doing this in one form or another since J Edgar Hoover. And in this specific case, they've been spying on us like this since at LEAST 9-11. It may actually date back to the Clinton days. But people protests when they found out the Bush Administration was spying on them, they were ignored, so they did what most Americans would do when something got hard: they went home.

It's a Twitter nation out there. We had 140 character attention spans before it was cool. And people have gotten significantly lazier, now resorting to "slacktivism."
 

Something Amyss

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RJ 17 said:
ACORN: a government funded assistance program was caught on-tape offering advice to a guy playing as a pimp wanting to set up a house for under-aged prostitutes. He made it clear that's what he intended to do, and they were giving him advice on what to put on his tax forms and such. Little to no media coverage.
Thanks for the Fox News version of the story.

What we got, in reality, was a heavily-edited tape of a guy pretending to be a pimp (but only when outside the building, not inside). The guy in question had a relative in law enforcement who had told him to do what he did in such a case: gather as much information as possible. When the faux-pimp left, he called the authorities. We had numerous investigations into this guy from police to immigration to freaking Congress itself. You know why he's not in jail?

He didn't do anything wrong.

Yo know who did do something wrong? James O'Keefe, a man so firmly entrenched in the notion of conservative media that he created a false story in order to serve the narrative of that conservative media. He defrauded an entire nation, and its effects are still apparent: conservatives believe ACORN stole the 2012 election for Barry O, and are supporting the actions of Congress to defund ACORN this year. The fact that ACORN has been dead for years is literally over their heads.

Also, "little to no media coverage" is a flat-out lie.
 

Taurus Vis

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Jan 12, 2013
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For so long, the populace has been asleep. The media will never let you understand the slow but cancerous changes that have been changing America for freedom to enslavement since the 1970s. They are on the governments payroll, taking stories pre-written for them by "government officials" who write both the left wing and right wing side of the story. They keep those even partially invested in government distracted by wedge issues like gay marriage or whatever else pushes buttons, all the while working to disarm the populace and sending young men to war to die for old men's money. It has to stop, but it can only stop if you decide to act. Please watch this, and please get involved.


This is also a great video to teach you about why money has become such a dangerous thing!

 

Monster_user

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Jan 3, 2010
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Are the "tin foil hat" guys the problem? Spend a hundred years screaming 1984, and let people get used to the concept. Then when it actually happens, well,... So the tin foil hat guys were right all along? That's cool.

Probably more likely that people are living in their own self-reinforcing bubbles, rather than discussing things with those they disagree with. Because disagreements are unpleasant.

There are a lot of questions to be asked, and discussions to be had. Who is discussing the benefits and ramifications of "Big Brother"? Who is coming up with solutions for real world problems, that don't create a high risk of a police state later?
 

008Zulu_v1legacy

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Sep 6, 2009
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LetalisK said:
My theory is that people saw what the NSA was doing and said "Oh, that's it? I expected way worse. Okay then".
I think Americans have become complacent. Any other country and there would be major news coverage from dawn to dusk of the placard waving protestors. England would even have riots and mass lootings, buts that's just the way they roll.
 

Vareoth

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Mar 14, 2012
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I think most people could already guess this would happen one way or another. If anyone really believed that the internet was free of monitoring, he or she is ignorant and doesn't know the slightest thing about humanity.

The will to control is in human nature. Governments in the past have always tried in one way or another to control their subjects. Why should that stop now? Humans lie, humans deceive, humans manipulate and control all to better themselves.

And to play the Devil's advocate here: it would be an extremely bad idea for any government to not monitor the internet and other communications at least to a degree. It has been and will be used for illegal purposes. And from their standpoint that could be very dangerous if left unchecked.

Doesn't mean that I agree with it. But that's just the way it is.
 

PoolCleaningRobot

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Mar 18, 2012
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elthingo said:
America is basically the only nation in the world that considers freedom a huge part of its national identity, so much so that they've named themselves "the land of the free".
Here in eagle-land, we only use that ironically because fun. You don't like 'Murica? YOU HATE FREEDOM!

And personally... I don't give a shit. Look, logically I know I should give a shit but I don't. I'm not a terrorist. What's the worst that could have happened? They saw my browser history? And deep down, if they stopped a single terrorist attack and saved one life, then I'm not concerned

The silliest truth? If I gave a shit about politics, then would move a different country. Simple as that. The way they do stuff in America is ridiculous

Also I'm surprised one bit that they've been monitoring us
 

Brotha Desmond

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It's because we knew this existed back in the Bush administration. Peoples memories are short which is why they forgot that, but we already had controversy over this once.
 

PoolCleaningRobot

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Zachary Amaranth said:
RJ 17 said:
ACORN: a government funded assistance program was caught on-tape offering advice to a guy playing as a pimp wanting to set up a house for under-aged prostitutes. He made it clear that's what he intended to do, and they were giving him advice on what to put on his tax forms and such. Little to no media coverage.
Thanks for the Fox News version of the story.

What we got, in reality, was a heavily-edited tape of a guy pretending to be a pimp (but only when outside the building, not inside). The guy in question had a relative in law enforcement who had told him to do what he did in such a case: gather as much information as possible. When the faux-pimp left, he called the authorities. We had numerous investigations into this guy from police to immigration to freaking Congress itself. You know why he's not in jail?

He didn't do anything wrong.

Yo know who did do something wrong? James O'Keefe, a man so firmly entrenched in the notion of conservative media that he created a false story in order to serve the narrative of that conservative media. He defrauded an entire nation, and its effects are still apparent: conservatives believe ACORN stole the 2012 election for Barry O, and are supporting the actions of Congress to defund ACORN this year. The fact that ACORN has been dead for years is literally over their heads.

Also, "little to no media coverage" is a flat-out lie.
And here's another big reason for our apathy in America: Everyone lies. Fucking everyone. The only reliable news source is starting to become cracked.com. Every time I see a sensationalist news story all I can think is "gee, how much of this is complete bullshit?" and then I just roll my eyes at the people flipping out and arguing over different sides of a story
 

DoveAlexa

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Oct 28, 2009
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Brotha Desmond said:
It's because we knew this existed back in the Bush administration. Peoples memories are short which is why they forgot that, but we already had controversy over this once.
Then nothing got fixed. I think people should be doubly upset then, not less upset. Not attacking you btw.

Though I'll again say that because of this, it shows even more than although I don't want horrible stuff happening to me, most people deserve it.
 

Weaver

Overcaffeinated
Apr 28, 2008
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The NSA is an entity consisting of around 40,000 people. A lot of them, since the widespread adaptation of the internet, sit around all day intercepting every single communication they can, trying to decrypt it and store it. They're not supposed to spy on Americans, but if you're communicating out of borders then they're technically not spying on YOU.

They're really no better than the Chinese government's hack squads and cyber spys. Yet no one EVER seems to care about what they're doing, and we've known about them a lot longer than China likely has had a dedicated cyber security team.
 

chinangel

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Sep 25, 2009
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O maestre said:
to be fair Prism seemed to come out of nowhere, still I am curious as to how the news media, especially fox has been so lazy to report on this, the patriot act got a lager response than this. Then I found out that a lot of americans are in favour of prism, even after the leak scandal. The fear of terrorism has made people complacent. Those americans who are not gripped by fear have apathy that is astounding, when people are comfortable they don't seem to care about civil liberties and rights. If I was an american citizen I swear I would have been actively campaigning.

On the other hand though I am not surprised by Prism at all, google, apple and all the other companies are logging this data anyway, the difference now is that the government has a permanent warrant to access that data.

Also people who say "if you got nothing to hide then you shouldn't be scared" should have their citizenship revoked. On another side not I find it ironic how the military didn't want the Xbone kinect to always be online due to any secrets it could record.
First off, your avatar. scares me. No seriously, that's like king rape-face right there. creepy business.

Second...well I am actually upset by this, but that's prolly 'cause i'm canadian and not american and I value my privacy: always have.

So I signed a petition about it but I am curious if there will be any backlash.