Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Thursday November 19 2015, @01:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the never-let-a-crisis-go-to-waste dept.

A U.S. senator plans to introduce legislation that would delay the end of the bulk collection of phone metadata by the National Security Agency to Jan. 31, 2017, in the wake of security concerns after the terror attacks last Friday in Paris.

Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, believes that the termination of the program, scheduled for month-end under the USA Freedom Act, "takes us from a constitutional, legal, and proven NSA collection architecture to an untested, hypothetical one that will be less effective."

The transition will happen in less than two weeks, at a time when the threat level for the U.S. is "incredibly high," he said Tuesday.

The obvious answer to doing something that doesn't work is to do more of that something.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday November 19 2015, @05:12PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Thursday November 19 2015, @05:12PM (#265406)

    To me, it says that an armed citizenry is far more able to win a deliberative, just outcome from an out-of-control government, than a disarmed citizenry can.

    I don't see those situations the same way you do. At all. I'm firmly of the view that the difference in their treatment has a lot to do with another factor entirely.

    Imagine what the reaction would have been if Eric Garner had a group of big black guys armed with legally-owned guns had pointed them at the NYPD officers attempting to arrest Garner. You can bet that that would have turned into an all-out shootout in the middle of the street in broad daylight in Brooklyn, and it would have been considered completely justifiable if it had.

    Now imagine what the reaction would have been Cliven Bundy had put his hands in the air in exactly the same gesture Eric Garner used. At most, the BLM would have handcuffed him as gently as they could have and taken him to jail. Or they might have simply done what they had planned to do when they arrived, namely take Bundy's cattle away. In any event, Bundy would not be dead.

    So it wasn't a matter of who was armed and who wasn't, but about whose lives the authorities considered worth protecting.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Insightful=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3