On this day in 1949 “Nineteen Eighty-Four” was published.
It added to the lexicon: Big Brother, thoughtcrime, newspeak, doublethink, Room 101, as well as the painted slogans WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
Today our ignorance is indeed strength for politicians who get away with telling us debt is wealth and “green” will save us all from a warming planet. 
In fact the president recently told us we are not at war with Muslim jihadist, we are at peace.
This week we learned Big Brother really is watching — tapping data from phone companies, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple and soon Dropbox, grabbing email, phone numbers, video, photos, audio, documents.
“Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” Obama reassured us Friday. “We have to make choices as a society … It’s important to recognize that you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience.”
He went on to say: “If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress and don’t trust federal judges to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution, due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.”
Trust the executive branch in which the IRS targets tea partiers? Trust the Congress, which passes bills no one has read or understands? Trust the judiciary where something is a fine one day and a tax the next and it is OK to gather the DNA of people who have not been convicted of anything?
The Constitution was written expressly because the Founders did not trust government, and the Bill of Rights was added to even further tie its hands, such as the Fourth Amendment:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
As I pointed out some time ago, our one-worlder president doesn’t believe in fighting a global war against man-caused disasters. His Defense Department (They don’t call it the War Department anymore.) sent out a memo saying: “this administration prefers to avoid using the term ‘Long War’ or ‘Global War on Terror’ [GWOT.] Please use ‘Overseas Contingency Operation.’” And a man standing on a table, firing a gun, shouting Allahu Akbar is merely workplace violence.
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?” Orwell wrote in “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” “In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”
The last words of the book: “He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”
4TH ST8 
Perhaps more lawmakers should have actually READ the Patriot Act before voting for it
Gee, Mr. Mitchell, if you are going to endorse the idea of a “global war” of infinite duration against an unspecified enemy – as you do – you gotta expect that a few civil liberties will have to be compromised. Right?
After all, that is what happens when you have always been at war with EastAsia.
Chilling. Big Data available without restriction to Big Brother.
Apparently that is what happens when you have always been at war with EastAsia, Petey.
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You guys really don’t appreciate the irony in the fact that the judge who signed the order permitting to government to track the phone call of every single American citizen is the same judge who issued an opinion invalidating ObamaCare on the grounds that requiring citizens to have health insurance would put us on a slippery slope to a broccoli-eating Orwellian nightmare.
Pretty funny, isn’t it?
Funny? No.
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Tom covered that, Nyp.
Go back and READ what he wrote. This time be certain you do not miss this part:
“Trust the judiciary where something is a fine one day and a tax the next and it is OK to gather the DNA of people who have not been convicted of anything?”
Selective comprehension always trips up those wearing the rose colored lenses and filtering out anything that does not seem to support their idyllic views of the world.
You don’t get it, do you?
I get that you miss it. We all get it.
On the other hand, you are stuck with your adoration for the liberal side of things. Conservatives want to slow down and look things over before being bent over and rammed.
Tracking communications use is not the issue. How in the hell they thought they would ever be able to keep such large data mining secret in the first place is astounding. Oh sure, they worried if they were actually “transparent” and let the public know about their plans it would have skewed the data. This is very unlikely based on data mining used for ad targeting.
Look at Google and the mess they created with their data mining a few years ago. The result? Ad targeting is working better than ever. AND shoppers on the internet are much more savvy and intelligent than those new Tsarneav-like recruits Al Qaeda is actively seeking today. Once enough of a baseline is in place those are the very people this type of data mining is likely to catch.
This data mining is not insidious in itself. The result of such a database will you and I and everyone using our various communications systems will simply be in the background noise. Its the spikes they will be looking for and when they show up a Judge will need to sign an order to make further investigation possible. (if they don’t have that included in the program they had better get it in place FAST)
No Nyp, the program does not bother me and the judge did not make any type of faux pas signing those decisions. The data mining itself is not invasive where ACA may have been, until SCOTUS settled that issue.
The issue at hand is yet another bungle in the jungle from the “most transparent” administration in the history of the USA.
“you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience.”
”If people can’t trust …”
If one ever needed proof certain about how little Obama/Progressives understand about the reasons for the Constitution, these two statements provide it. In the broadest sense, the Constitution was created to address the tension between security and liberty. The first statement correctly recognizes that reality. The second, however, shows an almost diabolical (1984) twisting of how the Constitution was written to balance the two. We do not have a problem because we have a failure of trust. We have a problem because the President of the United States thinks lost trust is a problem when State trustworthiness is what the Founders rejected in principal. The government can’t break a trust that by its very nature it was never entitled to.
OTOH maybe I give Obama/Progressives to much credit as being ignorant. Perhaps they understand full well the implications of what they are up too.
The fact is that your phone is being tapped every time that you make a call overseas. They SAY that they will only look for bad guys. There is an obvious temptation to use the data for other purposes – a slippery slope if I ever saw one. Is the security from terrorism worth the insecurity generated by the invasion of our privacy? Hard to say, but I would have felt better if this had not been a clandestine operation in the first place. If we didn’t even know it was happening, where was the assurance that it would only be used for it’s (never) stated purpose?
The Obamacare decion was of a different nature. This court decided to perpetuate the lunacy of present situation. While other courts had decided that it was fine to force others to pay for health care of the uninsured, this court decided that it was not fine to require these individuals to pay for their OWN health care.
Theoretically, they can pay cash, but it is not a theoretical world. The reality is that the only way for most people to pay for extensive treatment is through insurance – and those without insurance are usually the same ones that have no way to pay the bill themselves, sticking it to the rest of us.
Now I can’t even figure out what these fellows are saying. Is the tracking of every single phone call of every single American an OK thing or not? If it is, why is it less Orwellian than Romney/Obama’s proposal to require everyone to have health insurance?
Both are wrong.
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At least you’re consistent. I believe both are right.
And what do you think should be done about Mr. Snowden?
Same as Ellsberg. Dismiss all charges. The government’s actions offend “a sense of justice.”
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OK, Nyp lets “simplify” it for you.
Follow this link:
https://www.google.com/search?q=cell+phone+tracking&oq=cell+phone+tracking&aqs=chrome.0.57j60j0l3j62.4088j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
It is only a quick Google search.
All the NSA is doing is the exact same thing private companies, private investigators, parents and suspicious spouses have been doing with this publicly available information.
Note the very crucial phrase in that last bit. Lets refresh it for you.
“PUBLICLY AVAILABLE INFORMATION”
The private information is not available from these apps.
“Tapping” is long established as requiring a court order. “Tracing” calls, even back in the days prior to the internet, was always done with no court order.
FACT IS they are doing nothing wrong mining the data they claim they are. IF anyone can show they are recording conversations or reading complete emails or texts and breaking privacy seals on Facebook or Google+ THEN they will be breaking search and seizure laws.
AGAIN, this is yet another case where the administration blundered, this time by failing to be transparent.
Snowden is public now, the chips will fall wherever they may.
I bet the NSA will not pursue him publicly, odds are they would have to declassify too many other things to do so.
So Steve thinks this is completely inconsequential and that private companies do it all the time. Thomas Mitchell thinks that it is an outrageous violation of the Constitution, and that we are one step away from Oceana.
Nevertheless, they both agree on one thing: that it is all Barack Obama’s fault.
This would be ATTEMPT NUMBER THREE.
I THINK THE ADMINISTRATION MADE YET ANOTHER BLUNDER BY FAILING TO DISCLOSE THIS ACTION.
PERIOD.
So you think it was a “blunder” for the Administration not to make public a program that it considers to be top secret. Hmmm.
Question for you: the tracking of every since phone call made to or from every single American citizen began in the Bush Administration — was it a blunder by the Bush Administration to fail to disclose that program?
Most top secrets are meant to the keep the American taxpayers and citizens in the dark, not some foreign enemy.
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Well Nyp, you have the selective belief machine in overdrive tonight.
The patriot act began under Bush but the excessive records collecting did not. This misuse of that act was escalated under Obama. In 2010.
And it was Obama who promised to do away with things like this.
Add it to the Gitmo promise and chalk up another O’blunder.
Wait — first you say that what the NSA does is completely unexceptional — that (in your words) “what the NSA is doing is the exact same thing private companies, private investigators, parents and suspicious spouses have been doing with this publicly available information.”
Now you say that the NSA’s actions constitute “misuse.” Which is it?
In any event, you are completely wrong in asserting that the Obama Administration is doing anything dramatically different with respect to metadata monitoring than the Bush Administation had done. Completely wrong. Here is how Bush’s NSA director, Michael Hayden, characterized the distinctions between the two Administrations:
“‘We’ve had two very different presidents pretty much doing the same thing with regard to electronic surveillance. That seems to me to suggest that these things do work.’ Asked on Fox News Sunday how Obama had dealt with NSA programs since coming to office, Hayden replied: ‘In terms of surveillance? Expanded [the programs] in volume, changed the legal grounding for them a little bit – put it more under congressional authorisation rather than the president’s Article 2 powers – and added a bit more oversight. But in terms of what NSA is doing, there is incredible continuity between the two presidents.'”
So, Steve, I ask you again: did President Bush commit an enormous blunder in not publicly revealing this activity?
“In terms of surveillance? Expanded [the programs] in volume, changed the legal grounding for them a little bit – put it more under congressional authorisation rather than the president’s Article 2 powers – and added a bit more oversight.”
O’blunder
So your complaint (to the extent that it can be discerned is that President Obama created more checks and balances for the program. OK, then.
By the way — did President Bush blunder by (in your words) “failing to disclose this program.”?
Nineteen Eighty Four…It’s a cookbook!
Nice genre bending, Winston.
But seriously, folks…ever read Dan Brown’s “Digital Fortress”? Ever heard of NSA’s ECHELON? None of this is new, both flavors of klepto-republicrats have been doing this $hit for years, to one level or another. Why? Because they can.
The fake War on Terror, created by false-flag events, just keeps rolling along.
And why does anyone take NYP seriously, he has stated he basically believes that security trumps liberty, and has no respect for the Bill of Rights.
And yes, NYP is now contemplating whether to bring up the fact that I am a 9/11 truther, in order to discredit me. What-ev. And I will continue to ask him how WTC Bldg 7 managed to collapse at near free-fall speed, into its own footprint, without being hit by a plane, and having no major fires.
Yes, I’ve heard of Echelon and could’ve sworn I’d written about it, but the R-J’s archives are a shambles.
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Tom, I knew an old guy like you would get the reference. Actually, I don’t believe it was an intended cookbook, but “Brave New World” may well have been.
I have “Brave New World” on my Kindle and in paperback. I’ll have to reread it.
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Even when we post it right from his own quote, Nyp still selectively reads.
“Expanded [the programs] in volume, changed the legal grounding for them a little bit”
Didn’t clue in the public one iota.
O’Blunder.
Wikipedia disagrees Winston. They say WTC bldg 7 burned until it collapsed at 5:21 PM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_World_Trade_Center
The WTC South Tower collapsed at about 10 AM. Why can you not believe that an abandoned building with failing water pressure could not have burned for 7 hours and collapsed when many first responders were dead and the rest were totally overwhelmed? For that matter, if it had been a nefarious plot, why would a plotter take care that the building does an artful collapse? Why not just let fall as it would?
One more question enters my mind: When the two towers were destroyed, why would a saboteur bother with Bldg 7? Perhaps they had some spare explosives and didn’t want them to go to waste? Or maybe his mother-in-law worked in that building. Couldn’t blame him in that case 🙂
Rincon, I don’t claim to know why it was taken down, but there are nearly 2,000 architects and engineers that question the official story about WTC 7, no matter what Wikipedia says.
http://www2.ae911truth.org/wtc7.php
[…] ”We have to make choices as a society … It’s important to recognize that you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience,” Obama told us. […]
We’re all free to believe what we want, but motive appears to be absent. Without a proposed motive, why would anyone give it credence? As for the group producing the Web site, I look again to Wikipedia: “The mainstream scientific and engineering community has generally rejected the position taken by the group.[6][7][8][9]”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architects_%26_Engineers_for_9/11_Truth
Why would a layman decide to believe a small minority of a group of experts instead of a large majority. Only one reason – because he wants to believe them. Sounds a lot like the global warming pseudoscientific skeptics to me.
I suspect one can find lots of “experts” that confirm the existence of UFO’s, the Bermuda Triangle, the Loch Ness Monster, etc. Thanks, but I see no reason to follow the fringe elements.
Motive: power.
http://controlfreaku.com/wordpress/control-freaks-love-stirring-up-shit.html
I suppose we’re unlikely to convince each other, but I enjoy the conversation anyway. I can understand the motive for making 9/11 a false flag operation, but I still cannot understand the importance of bringing down building 7, especially with precision explosive charges. Wouldn’t simple arson or plain old bombs be easier? And why bother with it anyway? Hardly anyone knew about building 7 anyway. It was completely overshadowed by the larger events.
If one decides that building 7 was a setup, then it would have to apply to the whole 9/11 disaster. This of course, puts you in agreement with many in the Muslim world.
Am I correct that Osama Bin Laden took credit for and never denied that Al Qaeda ran the 9/11 operation? If true, it would be hard to imagine why he would play into the hands of his enemies. Are you also convinced that all the other Al Qaeda attacks were also setups?
[…] always figured George Orwell was a prophet with his “1984″ becoming reality in government propaganda and spying on U.S. citizens, […]
[…] He added to the lexicon: Big Brother, thoughtcrime, newspeak, doublethink, Room 101, as well as the painted slogans WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. […]
[…] He added to the lexicon: Big Brother, thoughtcrime, newspeak, doublethink, Room 101, as well as the painted slogans WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. […]
[…] He added to the lexicon: Big Brother, thoughtcrime, newspeak, doublethink, Room 101, as well as the painted slogans WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. […]
[…] He added to the lexicon: Big Brother, thoughtcrime, newspeak, doublethink, Room 101, as well as the painted slogans WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. […]
[…] He added to the lexicon: Big Brother, thoughtcrime, newspeak, doublethink, Room 101, as well as the painted slogans: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. […]