When Edward Snowden in 2013 leaked thousands of classified documents about the reach of the National Security Agency's surveillance efforts, it touched off a major political debate about privacy and how much access government should have to civilian communication records, such as email and cellphone data. A University of Kansas researcher says questions over how far government should be allowed to go regarding surveillance is not new.
In fact, Lon Strauss, a KU lecturer in the Department of History, says it can be traced back to an important anniversary that is nearing. August 2014 will mark 100 years since the outbreak of World War I in Europe, and Strauss says the United States' involvement in the war in 1917 started the growth of America surveillance methods that have continued ever since.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 15 2014, @08:09PM
The surveillance state began with Lincoln. [slashdot.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday June 15 2014, @08:21PM
beta.slashdot.org/...
Nope, didn't read.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 15 2014, @08:30PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/06/opinion/lincolns-surveillance-state.html [nytimes.com]
(Score: 2) by BradTheGeek on Monday June 16 2014, @12:57AM
I am still a member there, and IMHO, good discussion is good discussion. I hate what the other site is doing. I never see beta, but my ad prefs are consistently ignored now. As much as I hate it however, the discussions are still larger and have good stuff. Plus I can slyly promote this site.
Seems they keep giving me mod points over there too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 15 2014, @09:48PM
Why was this modded down? SN mods need to get over themselves.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Horse With Stripes on Sunday June 15 2014, @10:28PM
It was modded down because you didn't just mention the other site, you linked to it. You see ...
... this is kind of like mentioning your former girlfriend to your current girl friend. Even if it's to tell your current girlfriend how much better she is in so, so many ways than your former girlfriend. It means you're still thinking of your former girlfriend (which isn't allowed). I would have used a car analogy but my car hates me no matter what I do so mentioning my former car to it doesn't really make much of a difference.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday June 15 2014, @11:07PM
Funny thing is, I wouldn't have even posted that snide reply had Slashdot not "randomly" redirected me to the beta version.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Sunday June 15 2014, @10:46PM
This was the type of post I felt supermoderation was necessary for, ones that get unfairly moderated because they state an unfair opinion, or in this case, a controversial source. I asked people with IRC to mod it up (I already posted in this thread before I saw this, nor do I have mod points to mod it up)
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 16 2014, @02:45AM
You'r so Beta.
That site isn't working yet. It's still in it's beta stage. It has retarded to that from the production state ;)
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday June 16 2014, @04:32AM
Not exactly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_surveillance#Espionage_in_ancient_Egypt [wikipedia.org]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mendax on Sunday June 15 2014, @10:07PM
... the Espionage Act, one of the laws that Edward Snowden will be be and probably already has been secretly indicted for violating, was written and put into effect during the First World War.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NCommander on Sunday June 15 2014, @10:44PM
While the shift might have started during WWI, I actually think it became what it is today in the post-war years of the Second World War. The Espionage Act of 1917 was perhaps the seed that started it out, but there had been similar legislation before that, such as the Alien and Sedition Acts [wikipedia.org]. The founding fathers feared that the state would use things like treason to silence dissidents; treason was explicatively defined in the Constitution (it is the fact the only crime in the constitution itself) to prevent the federal government from using it as a weapon to silence its critics.
What most people don't tend to realize is the default stance of the United States for most of its existence was isolationist; Congress voted not to join the League of Nations at teh end of World War I. The United States only became involved in World War I towards the end, and its debates had the Axis powers never declared war on the US, it might have never entered World War II (FDR battled Congress for every bit of aid given to the Allies; cash and carry and lend-lease were both loopholes exploited to try and aid the Allied Powers). Furthermore, the states themselves were much more independent than they are today; the United States is supposed to be 50 nations united under a single federal government, not one superpower (a balance that began to change with the Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution). State powers were further weakened with the passing of the 17th Amendment [wikipedia.org] which changed the Senate to direct elections, creating in effect two Houses of Representives, instead of the House, which represented the interests of the people and the State, which represented the interests of the states.
Not long after the end of World War I, the United States collapsed into the Great Depression, and with it, most of the world. FDR, in his first two terms in office, fought to rebuild the United States, and bring an end to the depression by trying to get bill after bill passes to improve the situation, which was known as the New Deal [wikipedia.org]. The Supreme Court at the time more or less struck down every bill passed as unconstitutional as it was an expansion of the federal governments power. It got to the point that FDR tried to stack the Supreme Court by adding more justices. While this measure failed, it spooked SCOTUS to the point that the rest of the New Deal legalization was left standing. As the United States was drawn into World War II, the powers of the Executive Branch grew under the gesis of emergency war powers, and the policy of the United States shifted from isolationism, to active intervention. Even as late as 1934, cases such as Near v. Minnesota [wikipedia.org] upheld the rights of citizens in defiance of the government.
Now, as we all know, the Allied Powers eventually won both the war in Europe, and the war in the Pacific, but the shift of power was never reversed The threat of nuclear weaponry meant that information had to be controlled and restricted, and with the breakdown of relations with the Soviets meant that the United States essentially was locked into a never-ending war, carving the world into individual pieces to try and protect its interests from the threads of the Reds. This allowed things like the Hollywood Blacklist, the House Un-American Commiteee, and McCarthyism to run rampant; looking back, the 50-60s have an interesting parallel to what was happening today.
The best way to sum up what was going on is that as long as the United States was in conflict, the power of the federal government must be absolute, to protect both the nation and its interests, civil liberties be damned. As long as people feel that the United States must be dominate, you will see this sort of eroision and the slip into Surveillance or Police States. For proof of this, look at the Civil War, Lincoln proclaimed that the slavery must end, and the union must be re-united; and he used his war powers (as proclaimed by the Emancipation Proclamation [wikipedia.org]) to that end, suspending habias corpus, liberating every slave the Union came across, and so forth. Part of the pressure to pass the 13th Amendment was to make these actions untouchable; without the amendment, his war-time actions would have likely gone through the courts, and found unconstitutional.
I think the Ceaser said it best, "Inter arma enim silent leges", or "In times of war, the laws fall silent". In short, the only way to end this slide is to end this conflict, the United States needs to stop fighting every enemy it dislikes, to stop these invisible wars. The thing is, very few in this era can even envision a world where there aren't enemies at every corner, fewer still who are old enough to remember the United States before it was what it became, and those with the courage to stand up and fight seems almost non-existent today.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dry on Monday June 16 2014, @01:20AM
The definition of treason was basically was a straight copy of the English high treason law, minus the parts about the King and the short statute of limitations (excepting assassinating the King) which partly came about due to the abuses of the Tudors, especially Henry VIII who really over used treason against anyone who criticized him.
By the Glorious Revolution it was well established that having a standing army led to tyranny and the Constitution reflects this, enabling a permanent navy but the army having to be refinanced every 2 years and of course the Second Amendment which rather then echoing the Bill of Rights of 1689, which established the right to bear arms for self-protection, instead mentioned the need for a militia.
So in a way just having a permanent army leads to tyranny and now it is so well established that the USA needs an army, any thing to do with it gets a waive by many as automatically Constitutional, even limiting speech to protect the military. Note how few people even mention how the Air Force is unconstitutional and considering how easy an amendment to allow it would be to pass and it is never even mentioned goes to show how established the American military is now.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kaszz on Monday June 16 2014, @02:58AM
Interesting analysis!
If the root cause of un-freedom is conflict between nations. Perhaps that is something one should look into deeper.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Monday June 16 2014, @03:22PM
I don't follow what you're saying. We've always been at war with Eastasia.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by mendax on Monday June 16 2014, @04:12AM
I think Cicero said that, not Caesar. But he knew Caesar well and he was a great political animal.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.