Got nothing to hide? Be very afraid.

[dilloduck]

Being afraid is the worst thing one can do.

Learn and understand the laws, what they authorize and do not authorize. Monitor privacy rights cases as they make their way through the courts.

Ignorance is the greatest threat to Americans, not ‘terrorism’ or government ‘spying.’

LMFAO---understand the laws ? Hell our government doesn't even know what they are.

They know, they just don't care to follow them.

No---they really don't. They have to ask the courts for legal clarification.

 

[theDoctorisIn]

Why should people who have not broken any law be worried about government surveillance?

Here are three reasons.

1. Every American Is Probably a Criminal, Really
That Americans think they have nothing to hide in the first place is a sign of how little attention they're paying to the behavior of our Department of Justice. Many Americans have run afoul of federal laws without even knowing it. Tim Carney noted at the Washington Examiner:

Copy a song to your laptop from a friend's Beyonce CD? You just violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Did you buy some clothes in Delaware because they were tax free? You're probably evading taxes. Did you give your 20-year-old nephew a glass of wine at dinner? Illegal in many states.
Citizens that the federal government wants to indict, the federal government can indict if it monitors them closely enough. That's why it's so disturbing to learn that the federal government doesn't need to obtain a warrant on us in order to get our emails and phone records.
​

2. The Federal Government Has Abused its Surveillance Powers Before

While most Gen Xers were still very young and before any Millennials were born America went through similar controversies in the wake of the Vietnam War and the Watergate Scandal. In 1975, Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho) put together a committee (which would eventually be known as the Church Committee) to investigate abuses of the law by intelligence agencies. Abuses included spying on leftist activists, opening and reading private mail, and using the IRS as a weapon. Sound familiar? There’s a reason why Baby Boomers have started comparing Barack Obama to Richard Nixon. The value of doing so has been lost to the ages; everything politically awful that happens in America is compared to Tricky Dick.

3. Government Is Made of People, and Some People Are Creepy, Petty, Incompetent, or Dangerous

Gilberto Valle had an unusual sexual fetish. He fantasized about kidnapping, killing, and eating young women.

Valle was also a member of the New York Police Department, and was convicted in March of plotting to make his fantasies a reality. Whether he really meant to do so is up in the air (his defense was that this was all sexual roleplay), but he was also convicted of looking up his potential targets in a national crime database, accessible due to his position of authority.

3 Reasons the ?Nothing to Hide? Crowd Should Be Worried About Government Surveillance - Reason.com

The last is the best reason to keep the government from building a database.

On this topic, we're completely on the same page.

 

[flacaltenn]

The issue has nothing to do with whether or not anyone has ‘something to hide.’

1. Every American Is Probably a Criminal, Really

Ignorance of the law is no excuse, no matter how unfair the law may be perceived. But in order to indict the government must first obtain a warrant to investigate further possible criminal wrongdoing; the current surveillance programs likely don’t generate sufficient evidence for a warrant, much less an indictment.

Wanna risk the amount of evidence they have? Ever been required to file a FAFSA for Student Aid? Maybe 3 or 6 of them? How about the 10 page long form census interrogation requiring you to state the # of toilets? Got bomb-making materials in your compound? Got wacko Branch Davidian religious beliefs? Been the innocent dupe of BATF sting operation? Had an IRS agent ask you about the "content of your prayers"? Ever been fingerprinted and polygraphed for a security clearance? DNA swiped for a crime you didn't commit? Carry LARGE SUMS of cash?

2. The Federal Government Has Abused its Surveillance Powers Before

During the Vietnam Era surveillance activities were ‘analog,’ not digital as they are today. Opening one’s hardcopy snail-mail letter is clearly a 4th Amendment violation, as one as a reasonable expectation to privacy regarding such mail.

That may not be the case with wireless, digital communications used with smart phones and computers. This doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t a reasonable expectation to privacy, it’s just that the courts have yet to make a determination. And until they do the government’s surveillance programs are legal, Constitutional, and do not manifest a privacy rights violation.

'SCuze me.. I don't wait for a judge to back me up if I refuse a vehicle search. Or take the 5th amendment.. It's my call.. I live with the consequences. I think protecting the broader rights of the class goes the same way.. We say STOP --- and then they have to justify their power to compell me...

3. Government Is Made of People, and Some People Are Creepy, Petty, Incompetent, or Dangerous

True.

But anecdotal incidents of abuse by specific government employees does not constitute sufficient evidence to warrant the discontinuance of surveillance programs. If a citizen believes his civil liberties were violated by a given government employee per his execution of official government policy, he’s at liberty to file suit in Federal court, as was recently done by the ACLU.

That's NOT an option if the government is blanket warranting communications data under a secret court where even the content of the warrants to the phone companies can't be disclosed. Where the phone companies LOSE their right to appeal. And where EVEN CONGRESS is unaware of the scope of the surveillance.

In time there will evolve a body of case law establishing boundaries where one’s right to privacy ends and where the government’s right to surveil begins.

Don't have that kind of time.. There's a picture below that tells you why...

Until that time the current hysteria and hyperbole is pointless and counterproductive. To refer to the government’s policies as ‘Orwellian’ or ‘Big Brother’ is consequently unfounded, irresponsible demagoguery.

Want kind of law clerk are you? Demagoguery? We've had 2 agencies in a month reveal that AGAINST the law and IN VIOLATION of Congressional oversight -- they've released confidential information to parties that are my enemy.. It doesn't have to be the Govt persecuting and damaging me.. It only has to be the EPA in bed with ECO-WHACK groups giving those clowns information on my livestock, my land, and my business for PURELY political spite.. Put down the NY Times and start listening to the CONCERNS of others on this board about the stories that the media WOULDN"T cover unless we start screaming...

Should we wait for the government to voluntarily give up on this?????

Or wait for it to go operational so that they MIGHT (or some future leadership) decide to quell dissent with this weapon?

 

[candycorn]

 

[Quantum Windbag]

That is exactly what the government is doing.

 

[Moonglow]

Hell, the government has been watching me for a very long time.Nothing new, but yet they have yet to catch me.