Tech companies, bristling, concede to government surveillance program

Re:Tech companies, bristling, concede to government surveill... by mturmon on Saturday June 08, 2013 @02:08AM (#5844042)

Every US war has been accompanied by the suppression of civil liberties. Eventually, the mistakes tend to be rolled back. At the outset of the Civil War, Lincoln suspended habeus corpus. During WWI, Wilson outlawed dissent against the war. During WWII, Roosevelt threw Japanese Americans into camps in the desert.

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Re:Tech companies, bristling, concede to government surveill... by sounds on Saturday June 08, 2013 @05:22AM (#5844411)

If you were Japanese-American, wouldn't you agree that we need to roll back mistakes NOW and not wait?

I'm responding to the "Eventually" you wrote. When you're digging yourself a grave, the sooner you put down your shovel and get out of the hole, the better.

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Re:Tech companies, bristling, concede to government surveill... by mturmon on Saturday June 08, 2013 @03:15PM (#5845926)

My comment was descriptive, not prescriptive; I was trying to provide some perspective.

I live in LA and personally know families who spent time in those camps. I also know screenwriting families who lost their jobs during the 1950s Hollywood blacklist. So yes, those mistakes were real, and they can divert the course of lives for the worse.

In the flawed world we live in, it takes time for people to change their minds and muster the political will to roll them back. This is generally prompted by over-reach. For example, as the cold war started to cool off a bit, the Church Committee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee) and the Pike Committee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_Committee). Maybe we're seeing such a time now.

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