General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Strange how the same people running around calling everyone Authoritarians [View all]JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)to expose abuses...they also have the credibility.?"
Anyone who goes public with this information, even so much as the information that Snowden has revealed, gets in big trouble.
That is what the supporters of the NSA secrecy and excesses do not want to admit. The law that protects the NSA has huge penalties for revealing the secrets that the law hides from us. Secrecy is incompatible with democracy.
That video explains what has happened. We have to stop the secrecy. We are paying too high a price for it, and instead of making us more secure, which is its supposed purpose, it is making us less secure. The secrecy engenders so much suspicion, so much doubt, so much fear that it harms our country more than just about anything else other than climate change.
As long as we have an elite in our intelligence and certain of our police services that know and legally withhold major secrets from the rest of us, not secrets of great military value, but secrets about other aspects of our security, Americans will become more and more suspicious of government. Our country cannot be strong if Americans are as suspicious of government as they are now -- on all sides. The NSA is not entirely to blame for the suspicion, but the laws creating the NSA and protecting the excessive secrecy of the NSA are among the factors setting off the suspicion.
The Patriot Act does not clearly define terrorist or terrorism on top of everything else. In fact, it may be that term, terrorism, cannot be defined. Maybe we should be using different, clearer terminology.