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Gaaark writes:
"The First Amendment has been upheld in the United States!
Dan McCall has been making T-shirts and mugs that parody the National Security Agency as "the only part of government that actually listens" for over a decade. In 2011, he got a cease-and-desist letter from the NSA and from the Department of Homeland Security. Last October, McCall filed a lawsuit saying his shirts and mugs parodied the government agency and were therefore protected by the First Amendment.
'Citizens shouldn't have to worry whether criticizing government agencies will get them in trouble or not,' said Public Citizen's Paul Levy, who filed the suit on McCall's behalf. 'This settlement proves the First Amendment is there to protect citizens' rights to free speech.'
Now, the NSA has admitted: McCall is right ."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Yog-Yogguth on Thursday February 20 2014, @11:56AM
I used to "parody" the NSA and AC is right. "Parody" is not the answer.
Pretty much anyone and everyone anything like me who knew about anything (public stuff is plenty, it's all I knew) and gave them some slack because some slack is always needed could cough up a cheerful "parody" or two to make light of what was unsavory necessities.
And we did.
In addition to using the word "we" in the general sense meaning all of us I'll also risk speaking on this group's behalf and thus also use "we" and "our" in that sense. There used to be a few of us, some haven't woken up to reality yet. Not that it will do any good, it's too late now and if you think that's defeatism then I would say you haven't been paying attention or that you don't know how this old and worn story always goes.
Unsavory necessities does not describe what they started to do, if the shit we know about thanks to Snowden is necessary then everything is lost anyway and maybe, just maybe, some future generation will manage to take back their freedom. Maybe not. Because there's no reason to think it will be us seeing what has happened so far.
We always assumed there would be thousands like Snowden because that's how we thought we would act ourselves, there weren't. There was one Snowden and a handful of other honorable people who tried to do it by the book. That we know about that is, because everyone should realize how easy it is to stop people without anyone any the wiser if they're stopped fast enough and as long as you're willing to do pretty much anything.
Anything.
By now we should assume such things to be somewhat common events, and they seem to be, in fact you --any of you-- really ought to be able to name a few deaths that fit the mold. High visibility examples that are fairly unrepresentative of the average "wet" job.
Because that's the kind of organizations we now have in the US and elsewhere as well, when they're off the leash (and they sure are) there is no longer any reason to think they're any different from the horrors in history books. There used to be a difference but now there isn't but everyone including most critics want to pretend otherwise in some lame hope --the ultimate curse-- that it just isn't so. Nobody in power seems to have learned anything at all from World War II and the Cold War, they seem to not comprehend the American Revolution, or the French Revolution, or any of the myriad of constitutions they inspired. Some of them are that stupid, and some of them are that evil, but that deafening silence you hear should be the sound of feigned ignorance from people desperately thinking "not this shit again... I'll just close my eyes and stop looking in mirrors".
We gave them slack because we thought there would be oversight.
We thought there would be oversight because we lived in democracies be it representative republics or parliamentary constitutional monarchies.
We thought there would be democracy because the populations were supposed to be in charge.
We thought the populations were supposed to be in charge because that was what our various constitutions said.
We thought those constitutions said that because people sacrificed their lives and well-being to make it so and continued to do so.
But no. That's long gone.
And by the way we did not assume perfect or infallible oversight but decent enough oversight to keep "the kids" under control. Because anyone who has been in for example any armed services knows how it can be; people are people and will always run rampant in due course even if they were saints at the beginning. It's that old thing about power, any kind of power. So when they're out of line you tell them, or if they did bad enough or think they'll get away you use the law as needed (that's how all law is used no matter what lawyers or politicians pretend) and if that's impossible but something truly bad took place (or continues) then you revert to "illegal" natural law.
Now we know there was no oversight, and there doesn't seem to be any democracy either, and the constitutions are rotting organic matter. It is system failure, it's never visible unless it's endemic and it sure is visible now.
So please; no "parody", our wounds are already filled with salt and pepper.
I don't mind if people think this is way over the top, I don't think it is and I personally can't do anything significant about it. Maybe nobody can, that doesn't seem unlikely to me at all considering how much I feel this "challenge" is being underestimated.
I hope I'm wrong ...oops there's that curse again.
Buck Feta? Duck Fice! And Guck Foogle too!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jcd on Thursday February 20 2014, @12:59PM
I agree with a lot of what you're saying here, but I have a lot of contact with the younger generation, and I have some very bad news. They have no concept of what the Constitution was about. Or of what the Revolution was trying to accomplish. Or what the founding fathers believed in (or who they even were - I showed a picture of Jefferson to a room full of high school seniors and they guessed Edison and a couple of other wildly unrelated names). So let's not count on the next generation.
I know that makes the situation all that much more dire, but it's the truth. The next generation has an even smaller idea of what this country stands for, and "freedom" is just a word you say when you're talking about the US, it no longer has any real meaning. It's just patriotic to say it.
"What good's an honest soldier if he can be ordered to behave like a terrorist?"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2014, @02:34PM
My daughter will never know the freedom of privacy. :( She'll never even miss it.