As I said the potential is worse, likely far worse, but right now it's not quite there (maybe?).
Back in the worst days with Hoover they were actively targeting specific political activists and basically running black ops against them. We haven't reached that stage with NSA, as far as I can tell, though the potential is certainly there.
Maybe you misinterpreted what I said, it shouldn't be an excuse to wait until things get worse before taking action. The fact that the potential is there should be enough.
>We haven't reached that stage with NSA, as far as I can tell, though the potential is certainly there.
We HAVE reached that stage, and worse. The NSA - and other spook agencies - are actively engaged in warfare with various social/peacenik groups, and has been demonstrated time and again as a constant source of infiltration, provocation, and so on. Agent-Provocateur isn't just the name of a knicker factory - its a real tactic deployed against enemies of the regime, which include civic groups (unions), churches and other citizen organizations.
We simply cannot have this power out there, in the hands of these people.
I don't get it. If we start with COINTELPRO as the baseline, why would the current situation be any better?
Nothing happened, the programs continued, the people running it back then are now happily retired or left the world without a mark on their record. There were no mass firings of the hundreds of agents directly implicated in these obviously unethical and illegal things.
The people running COINTELPRO back then to find the communists tutored the government agents that are now trawling through the massive NSA data to find terrorists. The capabilities were only expanded.
Back in the worst days with Hoover they were actively targeting specific political activists and basically running black ops against them. We haven't reached that stage with NSA, as far as I can tell, though the potential is certainly there.
Maybe you misinterpreted what I said, it shouldn't be an excuse to wait until things get worse before taking action. The fact that the potential is there should be enough.