Do Only Criminals Have the Right to Privacy?

The worst part today is the smug cynics who shrug off the fascist invasion of our privacy by saying of course the government knows everything we do; get used to it.

That's the attitude of the hordes bowing under communist regimes. It doesn't get much more un-American.

David Cole at The Nation:

Defenders of the new surveillance typically argue that if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear. This familiar claim ignores the fact that privacy is valuable not just to criminals, but to all of us. We all close the doors to our bedrooms and our homes, whether or not we are engaged in criminal conduct. We all use password protection for our personal computers, regardless of whether we are doing anything wrong. Privacy serves a multitude of ends other than protecting criminals; if that weren’t the case, we wouldn’t have protected it in the first place.

Rand Paul Votes to Let the NSA Take Naked Pictures of You

We have a variation on the old Stupid or Evil question: Does the Tribble-Toupeed One not even realize he is contradicting himself? Or does he think repug primary voters are too stupid to notice all of his weather-vaning and flip-flopping?

Scott Lemiuex at LGM:

Now, yes, yes, unlike most of his Republican colleagues, Paul ostensibly opposed the bill because it wasn’t robust enough. But this makes about as much sense as most heighten-the-contradictions arguments (i.e. none.) This was, to be clear, far from a great bill. But it’s also quite clearly better than anything that’s going to be passed by the next Congress.

SNIP

McConnell strongly opposed this legislation as doing too much to rein in the NSA, and especially with Udall losing the chances of a better bill emerging next year can be safely estimated at 0%. So Paul’s motives for opposing the legislation are irrelevant; he’s a cat’s paw for the Mukasey/Hayden team when the rubber hits the road, and all the showoff filibusters in the world won’t change the fact that he voted for this one too.

The Knock on the Door

ummagumma.co:

(Source: thedragoninmygarage)

Get Off Facebook; Stay Off Facebook

It's worse than the NSA hovering up every detail of your life and storing it for the day it can be used against you.

Zandar:

Reminder for folks out there: big social media companies like Facebook and Twitter pretty much completely own any data you enter into the system, and they can do whatever they want with it.

Facebook the corporation is actually fucking with what you see on your page in order to manipulate your emotions.

If it can do that, it can manipulate into buying more shit you can't afford. Or voting for people who will let corporations get away with it.