> While the Democratic administrations may have continued these kinds of policies (and I will challenge you on whether they as bad as the Republican ones)

It is the same question, on a different immigration form. See this article from 2016:

http://fortune.com/2016/12/23/us-customs-social-media/

The proposal (and public comment period) came much earlier in 2016. This wasn't the result of legislation, the executive branch (both then and now) are doing this all by themselves.

So sorry, I'm not buying the whole, "well when MY party wins this will stop" debate. Both parties have been doing this and neither one seems to be slowing down or stopping. I don't care who is "worse" because actions speak louder than words, so until Democrats OR Republicans get into office and actively repeal these things, it is all just hollow words.

The 2016 one was an optional request for people from 32 countries.

The new version is to be required and for people from all countries.

Going by the numbers from the article, that's a 2.4 orders of magnitude expansion.

Are you really equating the two?

Honestly that question itself is just trying to change the subject into a "who is worse A or B?" debate that I refuse to take part in. Both A and B are making the situation worse and neither A nor B are repealing this stuff. Debating who is making the situation worse faster is really besides the point.

Or it is the entire point. People can die slowly from natural causes or quickly from organ failures. Your argument would imply that we shouldn’t bother treating organ failures because we will all die of natural causes eventually anyways. One is objectively better than the other, it’s OK to admit it.

> Debating who is making the situation worse faster is really besides the point.

Wait a second, are you sure this logic really works? Assuming the goal is to do "what's best", then making the situation worse slower is surely better than doing so faster.

Isn't that an artifact of incrementalism? You do the thing on a small scale, and scale it over time. Its the trickle that turns into a stream which decides the path the river will eventually take. While a trickle isn't a river, we can surely agree that the Dem's from 08-16 did little and less to respect and bulwark the privacy of US citizens and the world at large.

Maybe it's a part of _your_ problem but I don't think it's a part of _the_ problem. What OP said is correct. Democrats continue to escalate and promote legislation that is deeply invasive.

This article and this discussion is about this action, not all the other actions that everyone has ever taken. It's a distraction, often an intentional one, to start talking about all the others.

No it most certainly isn't, if this is just but one step in a growing trend with bipartisan support, which it is.

We need a president who will pledge to appoint Justices that will respect the rights granted by the 4th amendment so we can roll back all of the unconstitutional and authoritarian legislation/structures that have been created in blatant violation of it. Stopping this one rule is immaterial. As we've seen, if legislation that is unpopular with people but popular with politicians fails to pass, then politicians will simply try to pass the legislation/enact the policy later when nobody's looking. The problem isn't isolated to a single act, it's a pattern that needs to be fixed.

> not all the other actions that everyone has ever taken

We're talking about this same question (list social media profiles) being added to a different immigration form two years earlier, seems disingenuous to conflate that with "other actions that everyone has ever taken."

I'd go as far as to call the change in 2016 a test case for making it mandatory in 2018. And I'd go so far as to predict that it will be mandatory for all tourists entrants at some point in the future (even visa waiver holders), no matter who is in power.

We need to be discussing how we stop sliding down this slippery slope, and blaming whoever happens to be in charge today isn't a constructive way to do that unless the other side has committed to stopping it (which neither side has, nor have they historically).

> You will have to pardon us if things like visas aren't at the top of the agenda right now.

I'm a lefty Democrat, but this is a cop-out. We've been shit on drone strikes and mass surveillance long before the Trump emergency was even a hint over the horizon.

There's extensive bipartisan cooperation in Congress on intrusive surveillance via the NSA, ICE, etc.

Democrats at least have a large faction who are willing to complain about things like drone strikes and mass surveillance even when it is their guy doing it. Unfortunately that faction isn't yet large enough to get Democratic politicians to stop doing that kind of thing, but there is some hope that if that faction consistently shows up in primaries for a while they might eventually be able to get some change.

Republicans who are willing to keep complaining even when there is a Republican president are practically non-existent so there is little hope of change ever coming from Republicans.

I seem to remember a solo republican filibustering about drone strikes, continuing to do so about FISA and also fighting the appointment of a CIA Director that not only found torture acceptable but ran a black site. Ron Wyden's the only Democrat that's been there every step of the way.

Rand Paul only cared about drone strikes on US soil. And he got attacked about THAT.

However, the fact that he even broached the subject at all got applause from me even though I can't stand the rest of his positions.

I was referring to Democratic voters. I acknowledged that the politicians aren't doing anything to stop it.

Sure, it would have been nice to get all Democrats on board, but the only meaningful opposition IS coming from Democrats. Maligning those fighting a rearguard action against an overwhelming majority is not helping.

And I loathe and have been fighting against Feinstein who carries water for the TLA agencies until suddenly they are snooping in her stuff (laws are good for thee but not for me).

People forget that only Democrats were at the forefront of the encryption debate and the clipper chip. Democrats (and damn few of them) were the only ones fighting against the Patriot Act, and got called traitors for it. Remember that?

Do I like drone strikes? Oh, hell, no. Have I been against it even with Obama. Oh, hell, yes. But, if we want to stop this kind of thing, we have to get adults in power who understand that this kind of thing is unproductive on a world stage because you will NEVER get the public at large to truly care (even worse, drone strikes play well politically with a certain set of sub-neanderthals) about people in foreign countries.

As for surveillance, we can't get people on board about surveillance until they get knocked out of their stupor. Well, they're finally out of their stupor and starting to get concerned. Now, we need to focus the message to cause change.

I would argue that I have a larger problem with the expansion of the power of the executive because Congress has largely abandoned its job. But that's a different battle.