Rep. Jared Polis Calls For 24 Hour Surveillance On Senator Marco Rubio
from the because-polis-is-awesome dept
Rep. Jared Polis has a bit of a history of making hilarious, but incredibly on point, sarcastic and satirical suggestions in response to government officials saying something stupid. Last year, he asked the Treasury Department to ban dollar bills after Senator Joe Manchin asked the Treasury Department to ban Bitcoin. Polis, of course, took the same arguments Manchin used against Bitcoin and highlighted how dollar bills had the same characteristics.His latest move is in response to Senator Marco Rubio's ridiculous and clueless call for greater levels of mass surveillance of Americans. Rubio calls for new laws to force tech companies to help the government spy on everyone and also a permanent extension of the controversial Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the part of the law that was twisted by the DOJ and the NSA to pretend it means they can demand every phone record on every American because they might be able to sniff through it all and find something interesting.
In response, Polis has asked the US Intelligence Community to begin "24 hour monitoring" of Senator Rubio:
Nicely done. While he's at it, Polis might want to ask Rubio to release all of his own metadata publicly anyway. After all, if there's no big deal in snooping through metadata, Rubio shouldn't have any shame in revealing everyone he calls (or who calls him), everyone he emails and every website he visits. Right?“If Senator Rubio believes that millions of innocent Americans should be subject to intrusive and unconstitutional government surveillance, surely he would have no objections to the government monitoring his own actions and conversations,” said Rep. Polis. “Senator Rubio is asking for American technology companies to ‘cooperate with authorities,’ so I believe he will have no objection to authorities being given access to his electronic correspondence and metadata. Maybe after his 2016 strategy documents are accidentally caught up in a government data grab, he’ll rethink the use of mass surveillance.”
Rubio’s op-ed called for “a permanent extension of the counterterrorism tools our intelligence community relies on” and said that the tactics were “legally and painstakingly established.” This is in stark contrast with the conclusions of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which found the data collection practices to be illegal, saying the Patriot Act “does not provide an adequate basis to support this program.”
This new focus on Senator Rubio shouldn’t require any additional legislation, as Senators have already been included in intelligence agency monitoring.
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Filed Under: fisa, jared polis, marco rubio, metadata, patriot act, section 215, surveillance
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If they really believe it's 'no big deal', lets see them back that up in action as well as word by being subjected to the very thing that they are demanding everyone else have to deal with.
Anyone who claims that such data is 'harmless' or 'incapable of being used to identify someone'(a lie exposed by simply pointing out that if that's true then it's useless) should be forced to make their 'harmless' data public, so that everyone can dig through it at their leisure.
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An example being their home phone number and see how they like getting scam telemarketing calls!
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The thing is, technically this mass surveillance circus doesn't make your data public. It just makes available to the Government who then may or may not scrutinize it to check if you are the bogeyman.. I mean, terrorist. It depends on if you speak Arabic or happen to believe in Allah or maybe if you read a lot of articles about North Korea saving all photos of Jun-Kin-Song or whatever the fuck is the name. Or whatever flavor the prejudice has at the time, Russians, Chinese, green aliens.
So yeah, they have that defense against such claim.
Or maybe if we vow to make every data about everyone public, including his, so we can collectively fight against terrorism, no? After all we are good, patriotic citizens so why not add us in the anti-terror efforts? I mean, 300 million people scrutinizing the data will surely reveal something damning, no? The possibilities are endless!
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I think that if we're going to have blanket surveillance, then all of the data collected should be publicly available. Not so we can collectively fight terrorism, of course (since I don't believe for a moment that is the main purpose of the surveillance -- and even if it is, it's using poorly aimed scattershot where a rifle might be more appropriate).
I think it should all be publicly available so that we can watch the watchers and so that the scope of the data collection is made very clear to us all.
A panopticon (what we have) is a dystopian concept. If it is inevitable, then we should at least make it the slightly less dystopian concept of an omnopticon.
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Doesn't make it available to the public, just the so-called public servants. Oh yeah, I like that lot better. Not.
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What the hell is the world coming to.
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Haven't you been reading along?
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Mark my words, a few years after any place goes to a ridiculous level like that, the middle class will just be completely destroyed by inflation caused by lower class having an influx of disposable income.
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Wait. Not maybe. Definitely.
Money moving around is pretty much the definition of an economy. Poor people just don't have money to move around. And when rich people gobble it all up it doesn't move around either; it just sits there. The " lower class having an influx of disposable income" will serve to improve the economy. Mark my words.
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The cost of labor goes up the businesses raise prices to make up for increased cost to the business, and end result is that the poor are still poor. Sure the number in their bank might be bigger but so what when everything cost more?
Also, Just so you know, I'm not some rich guy sitting happy and just spouting this out. If they raised minimum wage to $15 an hour I would be getting a large bump in pay. Of course I would also find myself making the same pay as a drop out.... even though I have worked hard to get where I am.
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Since I never said that, I don't know what your point is supposed to be. That's a really poor attempt at a straw man
... and end result is that the poor are still poor.
Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the Washington Post article, "Economists agree: Raising the minimum wage reduces poverty" or the many, many studies that reach similar conclusions.
Just so you know, I'm not some rich guy sitting happy and just spouting this out.
It sure sounds like you've swallowed their lies hook, line, and sinker, though.
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$15/hr wouldn't really do all that much, other than push inflation to accellerate, which would result in higher interest rates for a short time.
In other words, if you live in a state where the min wage is $7.50, burger wages double, and so does the cost of fast food. The cost of bulk foods doesn't change all that much, as those people are already above min wage, so suddenly, healthy food is more affordable compared to unhealthy food.
Raising the minimum wage has a trickle-up effect, where eventually the entire economy compensates. But in the meantime, there's often a usage shift as those at the lower end of the economy suddenly have more money to spend and the services at the lower end of the economy become more expensive.
Note: a burger would cost pretty much the same for someone making min wage before/after. It's the people currently making $15/hr that lose out over the short term.
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This is why we need to stop any one player from preventing others from competing. Where monopolies or other anti-competitive activity occurs, that's when the prices will skyrocket.
This is why I champion middle-out economics and pour scorn on trickle-down. It ain't trickling down to me.
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the middle class will just be completely destroyed by inflation caused by lower class having an influx of disposable income.
Source
Boy, that kind of blows that line of BS all to hell, doesn't it?
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If people actually lived within their means, we'd all be screwed. Our economy actually runs on debt.
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What should happen is that EVERY single thing they got on Congress and see what happens...
Oh, wait, they couldn't even do anything with the Boston bomber...
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If they had been allowed to collect all their metadata of the past two years, they probably would have been able to blackmail them into not doing anything funny.
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He would be more effective if he didn't pull these stunts
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Re: He would be more effective if he didn't pull these stunts
If someone publicly shows support for others being spied on, it seems only fair to demand that they receive the same treatment, to see if they really believe what they are saying, or if they're just a hypocrite that believes themselves above what they would subject others to.
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Re: He would be more effective if he didn't pull these stunts
This is satire which typically is NOT funny. Mass surveillance is a serious issue and Marco Rubio is actually the one making light of it. His meh-its-no-big-deal attitude is a problem and by satirically pointing out that Marco should be subject to it, he is bring the seriousness of the situation to the forefront.
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Do it anyway!
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Sen Rubio's wife sideswipes a Porche
She ended up sideswiping the luxury car, which has a base price of $78,000."
If only we had total surveillance, surely this tragedy would have been prevented.
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2015/01/28/marco-rubio-wife-in-minor-car-accident-cr ashes-into-porsche/
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re: uptick in minimum wage
And somehow, local rates for other necessities seemed to follow that curve, most often within 2 months, but it varied, I admit. Sadly, those on the low end of the income-earning totem pole are seen as least able to resist such shenanigans, and thus they are effectively kept in the lower levels of disposable income.
To paraphrase G. Santyana, those who think that over-riding the most basic tenet of capitalism (supply vs. demand) via legislation are doomed to watch it backfire, on both them personally and their entire society.
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Re: re: uptick in minimum wage
You're not going to tell me there's a free market in jobs, are you?
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Senatorial Surveillance
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