General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: It's amazing that John Lewis can be so easily insulted by people hiding behind keyboards. [View all]JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)And what concerns me so much is that this kind of surveillance concentrates tremendous power, power based on knowledge, in very few hands.
On a personal level, I am offended that the government looks at and analyzes the minutiae of our lives by collecting and analyzing our metadata, but that is not the important issue either.
The really important issue is the power, the unreined power that this surveillance gives to just a small group of people at the NSA. They are not elected, yet they have access to this immense store of information about our communications, our assemblages, our friendships, our family relationships, everything about us.
I see that this power is being used as I watch political events in the country and world, and it is completely incompatible with democracy. No monarch ever had such power. It is just horrifying. I do not understand that people are so interested in Snowden. He did something brave bringing this information to the world. But, frankly I haven't seen any of the foreign intelligence documents that he is said to have brought, nor am I particularly interested in it.
I just care about the threat that this program poses to OUR COUNTRY and what is left of OUR DEMOCRACY. I think that if this program is left in place as it is now being operated, if it is not subjected to severe restrictions and public oversight, it will continue to mean that we do not have constitutional government. And indeed, we do not have it now with that program in place.
The program cedes to the executive and the NSA and the other agencies with this information control over knowledge about nearly all communication in the country and with that knowledge virtually total control over the country.