Re:Rand Paul: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communicatio...
by youdontknowtho on Tuesday March 14, 2017 @08:20AM
(#13866866)
I agree with you that techno-solutionism, as some might call it, is a big part of the solution. I just think that the Republicans are so wrong on other issues that there is no point allying with them on any issues. There's more to American life than surveillance. It's huge, but so is the voting rights act. (That's just one example. I won't beat you up with more.)
You are right, the foreign policy elites in both parties are largely homogenous. That being said, I don't think that it's possible to build a coalition with the Republicans that doesn't betray something else that you hold dear. I think that you have a better chance of building a coalition inside the democratic party that can move the center of power away from the foreign policy elites.
From a federal government perspective, the intelligence community is a tool; it's not a terminal goal (where I think one party is obviously more reasonable than the other), it's an intermediate step to achieving terminal goals. Neither party seems interested in restricting their power (even to restrict the power of their opponents) or to give a damn about the incidental harms caused by surveillance tools.
This is why I get so irritated by the argument that mechanical approaches to privacy are techno-solutionism. The same people pursuing strong encryption lead the political fight, but they're viciously opposed by both parties. On surveillance, anything resembling the political establishment in either party has proved utterly immovable.