People don't get the danger of Spygate

[gulliver]

They should be afraid, but they don't get it. They think things like: "He can spy on me if it helps protect our country. If you don't have anything to hide, you have nothing to worry about."

We have to help them get the blinders off and scare the bejeezus out of them. People don't realize that once the mechanism of full scale spying on communications is in place and strictly under the control of the president, that mechanism can be turned to any purpose. It's as bad as if he put a camera in every room of everyone's house and told us he would only turn it on for people with links to Al Qaeda. And, by the way, there won't be any oversight by the courts or Congress. The communications spying system will be kept oiled and in place, ready at a moment's notice and without any oversight to spy on anyone, merely on this (or any future) president's say so. That's a loaded weapon pointed at everyone.

Rather than blithely arguing for checks and balances, civil liberties, and constitutional rights, we need to make things stark with real examples of what could happen: A government that can spin out of control and immediately throw the switch to capture our present communications and review our past communications. If we don't make this concrete for them, they will not get it.

[snowbear]

1. Because Rethugs baffle them with B.S...

How's that old saying go?

"If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit"

They're too damned gullible.. http://eliteleague.co.uk/forum/images/smilies/duh!.gif

[Elidor]

2. The fastest way to scare them silly:

"What happens when a democrat is elected to the presidency?"

[B3Nut]

3. Or you can phrase it thusly:

"So you'll be OK with these wiretap powers when Hillary becomes President, then?"

Watch their heads explode.

Todd in Cheesecurdistan

[gratuitous]

4. Some people can't learn

They take a faulty premise: This will protect us from terrorism. After that, anything goes. Folks tend to forget that Bush had a briefing on his desk for a month before September 11 that bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States. What did he do about this dire warning? He went on vacation for a month. All this snooping and eavesdropping won't do a damn thing about terrorism or stop even one attack.

But it will surely sweep up a lot of people innocent of any wrongdoing, and bring the power of the federal government against them. Right after the train bombings in Madrid, a mistaken fingerprint identification tied the bombings to Brandon Mayfield, an attorney in Portland. He was arrested amid great fanfare, and his face was splashed across TV screens and newspaper articles all over town. In the time-honored tradition of "verdict first, trial later," he was practically convicted and spent several weeks in jail, denied access to counsel.

Then somebody did some old-fashioned police work, took a real look at the fingerprint instead of a telexed copy of the print, and determined that it wasn't quite the identical match everyone thought it was. A little more digging, and it turned out that Mayfield hadn't been to Spain. Oopsie. And we're all going to pay a lot of money to settle Mayfield's wholly warranted lawsuit against the government which fucked up so badly.

The government isn't immune to mistakes any more than any individual or corporation or any other entity on the face of the planet. Before we hand over our liberty to a rapacious bunch of corrupt thugs, who don't have a very good track record of handling the authority they have or that they have seized, let's step back a moment and consider that these clowns couldn't find their ass with both hands and a flashlight, mmmmkay?