Is it true to say that the terror warning has caused critics of surveillance to "back off"?

[grasswire]

That's what my local NBC affiliate news anchor said on the 6 o'clock news today.

She reported on the continued closure of embassies. And continued by saying that the terror warning has caused critics of the surveillance state to "back off."

She was quite dramatic throughout the whole story.

[BainsBane]

1. Does that look to be the case here on DU?

I see no signs of it.

[Downwinder]

2. Wishful thinking.

[blkmusclmachine]

3. Threat level BROWN,

for bullsh!t

[AgingAmerican]

8. But the Quaedas are coming!

nt

[grasswire]

4. I thought perhaps she was parroting one of the wingnuts.

Limbo or someone. I don't know what the goons are saying today.

[dkf]

5. Well that would be awfully convenient, wouldn't it?

[AppleBottom]

6. Social Conditioning by state ran media. nt

[sabrina 1]

7. It won't silence the average person, but it could 'discourage' all those members of Congress

who were preparing bills to curtail the excesses of the NSA.

I'm sure they are receiving phone calls suggesting that they might not want to be seen as pro-terrorists should something happen.

Prolonging these 'closings' for a month or more should keep the fear going (for Members of Congress) until they return with their bills.

[delrem]

9. "News anchors" don't write their own copy.

They rarely have a critical bone in their bodies.
They are hired for the personas that they've learned to project -- and if they presume to use thought, they are fired.
That's the nature of the market in the MSM.

I think it's better *not* to listen to "the 6 o'clock news on MSM".
Especially so if the listener doesn't already know that the stream of BS is designed to supplement, to nurture, the more hardened pile it lands on.

[grasswire]

13. it was a local news program

You don't watch your local news? For the weather report, and for local issues?

I do. But not for national news.

How do you keep tabs on what the MSM is telling your neighbors if you don't watch? We all are affected by the community conversation, whether we want to be or not. When we shut ourselves away from the conversation, we skew the audience toward the right. And it keeps skewing and skewing and skewing until there are no moderate or liberal voices represented.

[blackspade]

10. Not this critic.

I'll back off when they dismantle the entire warrantless domestic spying bullshit.

[liberal_at_heart]

11. this is why I don't watch news on the tv anymore. They seem to think they get to tell us

how we are allowed to think, and I simply refuse to comply.

[jakeXT]

12. It was in the NYTimes

But intercepting electronic communications is one of the National Security Agency’s main jobs, as the documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor, have only underscored. At the request of intelligence officials, The New York Times withheld some details about the intercepted communications.

Some analysts and Congressional officials suggested Friday that emphasizing a terrorist threat now was a good way to divert attention from the uproar over the N.S.A.'s data-collection programs, and that if it showed the intercepts had uncovered a possible plot, even better.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/world/middleeast/qaeda-messages-prompt-us-terror-warning.html

[laundry_queen]

14. I don't think so but that is the media narrative

There was a lot of "SEE? the NSA is NEEDED! We can't do without it! We must protect it!" on CNN over the weekend.

[Eleanors38]

15. NPR correspondent said as much this a.m. nt

[wildbilln864]

16. k * r! n/t

[frylock]

17. that's the desired effect imho