New "National Security" Tools to Shut Down Dissent

Of course it's always been done, which is exactly why the Constitution specifically declares protections against it.


Digby:

The point is that governments, to a greater or lesser extent, always try to shut down dissent, whether it's through social pressure, legal means or something else. Even the good ones do it. Allowing them to have even more tools and even more power to do this is a recipe for abuse. You can already see it happening with the ridiculously long sentences for hacking. It is highly likely that at some point a US government is going to believe its justified in using the massive spying capacity it's building to quell what it quite logically believes is a threat. It's so fully baked into the cake of human nature and government power that our founders wrote a whole list of individual rights out on paper telling them they weren't allowed to do it.