The US surveillance state is poised to grow more powerful under a Trump administration.
Though President-elect Donald Trump still has nearly two months until he's sworn in, his picks for Attorney General and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency are a sign that many surveillance reforms could be overturned or changed, such as the NSA's collection of telephone metadata on all Americans — a program that was reformed after it was exposed by Edward Snowden.
Trump recently appointed Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions for Attorney General, and Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo for CIA Director. Both have advocated for the increased domestic spying that was implemented by former President George W. Bush after 9/11, according to Bloomberg.
"Congress should pass a law re-establishing collection of all metadata, and combining it with publicly available financial and lifestyle information into a comprehensive, searchable database," Pompeo wrote with coauthor David Rivkin, Jr. in a Wall Street Journal editorial in January.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02 2016, @06:22AM
At least this has a little more meat than the usual comparisons to Hitler and the like. I've found conservative commentary that wasn't in support of Trump to be pretty decent at picking apart the appointments. Some good, some bad- but that isn't much different from anyone else.
The damnable part will be if/when Trump does do something nefarious- can't stand with liberals as they have lost all credibility at this point. Hell, even them protesting is likely cast aspersions against others protesting. That's fucked up.
I don't think most leftist have appreciated how far into a corner they have painted themselves. They are moving from irritating to despised.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday December 02 2016, @01:06PM
Yes, and wouldn't it be epic if the "right" and the "left" could put aside those stupid, meaningless labels when that moment comes and work together?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02 2016, @01:24PM
Not gonna happen. What you are forgetting in your estimation is the moderates, and they know for a fucking fact the left will turn at the first opportunity.
The left have proven themselves to be completely untrustworthy, and the right have their own issues as well.
You can't work together with someone who is only in it for themselves, and at the moment the most self-indulgent is BY FAR the left.