[lbo-talk] [Pen-l] Hands off my metadata

Robert Naiman naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
Wed Jul 3 05:55:43 PDT 2013


If you want to be angry about the NSA's attack on privacy, be angry.

You don't need anyone's permission to be angry.

You don't need to satisfy anyone's criteria for personal purity or consistency to be angry.

You don't need to prove that you were similarly angry about some similar outrage in the past.

Reform happens because people take advantage of opportunities to be angry when there appears to be an opening for their anger to matter.

Right now, there appears to be such an opening.

So it's a good time to be angry, regardless of whether you were angry in the past.

On Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 7:07 AM, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:


> "With all the recent discussion about Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden,
> and the NSA leaks, I was hit with a surprising feeling
> of…indifference. As a Patriot Act hating progressive, I was troubled
> by my own lack of outrage. Don’t get me wrong, I think the NSA
> surveillance is definitely a case of government overreach and more
> than a little creepy. Does it bother me less that the program is
> currently under the Obama administration? I suppose it does. Not
> because I think I’m an apologist, but because I know he’s not Ted
> Cruz. Of course, the scary part is that after expanding this program
> what would it look like under a President Ted Cruz? We aren’t going to
> have a Democrat in the White House forever. I shudder at the thought.
> Yet still, I simply can’t bring myself to being up in arms over it.
> After a considerable amount of reflection,the reason came to me. As a
> majority in many cases and a plurality in almost all cases, we have
> already given it away…willingly.
>
> After the shit hit the fan on 9/11, Americans were all too eager to
> give in to fear, because as Warren Zevon once sang, “You’re a whole
> different person when you’re scared.” And make no mistake, we were
> scared. Hell, if you weren’t a little frightened I question your grasp
> on reality. Unfortunately, that fear took hold at a time when the
> clown prince of president’s, George W. Bush, was in office. With
> Cheney and Rumsfeld in tow, 9/11 gave the Bush Administration carte
> blanche post tragedy."
>
> "
> Full at:
> http://thebigslice.org/if-you-want-to-be-angry-about-privacy-then-stop-giving-it-away/
>
>
>
> Word. I was like did all these people have amnesia about the Patriot
> Act ? I assume spooks can almost read my thoughts by now. Since,
> McCarthyism and before that the Palmer Raids in 1919, we Reds have had
> to have pure thoughts and actions in the USA.
>
> Charles
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-- Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org



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