Dissenta’s Comments

• Jun 12th, 2013 @ 1:32am

  (untitled comment)

  on There Are Many Reasons Not To Give The NSA The Power To Spy On Your Info
  "The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less free it is." said a German Justice Minister, putting it in a nutshell.
  
  http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idCABRE95A0T820130611?irpc=932
• Jun 12th, 2013 @ 1:29am

  (untitled comment)

  on There Are Many Reasons Not To Give The NSA The Power To Spy On Your Info
  Here's a link to article about German outrage over NSA surveillance that goes to point I was trying to make about other dimensions of "privacy" threat, reminding Germans of Stasi secret police state.
  
  http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idCABRE95A0T820130611?irpc=932
• Jun 12th, 2013 @ 12:17am

  @anonymous coward

  on There Are Many Reasons Not To Give The NSA The Power To Spy On Your Info
  I agree with your point. It's vitally important how we marshall our resources to respond to this massive surveillance that is rapidly being transformed into a "new normal" by "legalizing the illegal." Important not to waste our energy and time on a Congress that is virtually useless, esp since CU, and we DO need to develop parallel alternative political systems -- and fast. I worked on Jill Stein's campaign last year but commercial newsmedia largely ignored her and other third parties so they had a snowflake's chance because the public never heard of them, a simple way to control the public via newsmedia strangulation of information to maintain the two-party system (really one corporate party with two heads). Developing our own non-commercial newsmedia for dissemination of public information is vital, multiplying Democracy Now (for example), and greatly expanding public access TV with strong news programming like DN to educate the public. We know all this but must figure a way to act on it.
  
  Meanwhile, what do we mean by "privacy"? The term doesn't describe (to my satisfaction) the secret spying on communications that can lead to pre-emption of resistant action and suppression of protest in advance by shutting down groups. There's bedroom privacy, there are personal conversations, there's keeping my bank balance or medical records private, etc, and then there is the "privacy" of protesters' planning, to protect their planning from being pre-empted as soon as known by the police/military/corporate opposition. "Terrorists" are being substituted for "protesters" in the public mind. Mil-intel and police can surveil the phone and email exchanges and plans of protest/resistance groups and pre-empt their actions. Yet few in the press or on blogs are discussing this dimension of the corporate/NSA surveillance threat that can exercise control and pre-emptive suppression like the old Soviet Union or the old Third Reich. Why not?