Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillance If Elected President

Re:Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillanc... by DickingAround on Saturday April 11, 2015 @09:22PM (#9361606)

Corporations are not as worrisome as government because their power to act on that data is less. No company in america is going to bust down my door with rifles or throw me in prison because I think things they don't like. The worst they can do (assuming the government doesn't totally break down) is refuse to do business with me. But the government can do a lot worse and have a history of doing a lot worse.

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Re:Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillanc... by geoffpado on Saturday April 11, 2015 @09:37PM (#9361653)

No, but corporations can lean on the government to do that on their behalf. Such as forcibly evicting a tenant from a foreclosed home [1] or confiscating equipment from a journalist who wrote about your unreleased products [2].

[1]: http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2012/10/15/florissant-police-arr... [2]: http://gizmodo.com/5524843/police-seize-jason-chens-computer...

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Re:Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillanc... by DickingAround on Sunday April 12, 2015 @11:58AM (#9363731)

Agreed. If the corps use the government to do their bidding that is bad. In the case of this candidate I think the pitch is that he won't allow that either (or at least that' me general understanding of the libertarian position).

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Re:Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillanc... by nerraga on Saturday April 11, 2015 @09:34PM (#9361644)

I agree that the government can do a lot worse and that governments certain have in the past. That said, the more comfortable the relationship between government and a corporation the more likely one is to benefit from the resources and pull of the other.

A corporation won't bust down your door when they can just have LE do it on their behalf. The iPhone 4 leak comes to mind... http://www.fastcompany.com/1628188/police-raid-gizmodo-edito...

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Re:Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillanc... by sgift on Sunday April 12, 2015 @05:27AM (#9362750)

Psychic terror, working against you ever getting a job again if you don't "behave", colluding to make sure you are held down (e.g. your wage, benefits, whatever) .. and so on. People who think that physical violence - the one the government reserves for itself - is the worst form of violence live a very sheltered life. I envy them.

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Re:Rand Paul Pledges to Immediately End NSA Mass Surveillanc... by DickingAround on Sunday April 12, 2015 @12:03PM (#9363745)

Help me understand this better. It seems like being blacklisted by a big company or even entire industry is bad, even life altering. But people get serious PTSD or sometimes even die from one single 5-minute fight with a cop.

Furthermore, I think shunning and blacklisting should be a protected form of individual choice. For example, I'm just not going to hang out with someone that's a racist. That is and should be 100% my choice. But I don't have a right to physically harm them. I'll argue that this arrangement of making violence special and different from harsh-words or shunning will make for a more functional society because we don't always all have to agree but we can still live in one place together.

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