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Re:Rand Paul: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communicatio... by ajross on Monday March 13, 2017 @07:18PM (#13863481)
> I'm not really sure how to respond to your characterization of the Snowden revelations as a unrelated political scandal.

Which should have been your clue that you whiffed on the point.

"Obummer tapped my phones!" is the unrelated political scandal. If you don't want to be dinged for derailing the discussion, you could have jumped into a discussion about FISA/DoJ vs. NSA surveillance via any other technique. Instead you chose to go down this ridiculous "See? Trump was right!" rathole. And here we are.

Re:Rand Paul: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communicatio... by grandalf on Monday March 13, 2017 @07:36PM (#13863605)
> "See? Trump was right!" rathole. And here we are.

Not at all. I don't care whether Trump was right, but I do care whether we have a system where an audit can be done that can actually provide reassurance that inappropriate surveillance is not being done. Note that I am not arguing that surveillance of Trump (if it occurred) was even inappropriate, since there were widespread concerns about his ties with Russia, and the administration in office at the time had an obligation to provide due diligence.

There has been very little focus on the rule of law and limits to the surveillance state. Trump is not a privacy advocate, but nevertheless his remark made some of the relevant issues around unchecked surveillance timely.