There are proper procedures to follow if he suspected wrong doing.
I do not consider those procedures to be proper, and it's due to the fact that they result in the American people remaining ignorant of the crimes their government is committing.
We don't just magically agree with shit because it's "Our Guy" in office.
Perhaps you don't, but no matter which side people are on, most of them seem to.
Anyone will know, it will take one other attack for the General public to go up and screaming back at the NSA for not doing its job, if because they didn't see it coming.
That has more to do with their lack of principles (Whatever happened to "the land of the free and the home of the brave"? It never existed.) than what Snowden has done.
Social conventions say it is very rude and offensive to fail to recognise someone
I've never seen that, but if certain people get upset about that, then they're ignoring the reality that the human brain often forgets things. They aren't special, and there's no particular reason that you'd remember their name. I think that social convention, if it exists anywhere, is absolute garbage and should be ignored outright.
I don't care about that difference; I simply don't want my government to spy on people without cause.
The TSA is incompetently criminal - incompetent at their job, and their job isn't per se bad
I'd say violating people's fourth amendment rights is bad. Why would you say otherwise?
From what I see, both are criminal organizations.
Spying on citizens of other countries is normal.
What's normal or not normal is irrelevant to me.
ALL countries do it, throughout history.
Even if true, that's utterly irrelevant.
Having the NSA spy on Americans is what citizens of the USA should be protesting.
I'm protesting both.
and wouldn't be sacrificing as many freedoms.
What freedoms would we be sacrificing if we only implemented the things you suggested?
I could understand that after 9/11, drastic measures were necessary to fight terrorism at the time.
Then that is where you fail. I do not believe freedoms should be sacrificed in exchange for safety (real or otherwise), and certainly not so after something like the 9/11 attacks.
I just can't see why getting molested at airports, having your communications spied on, and being recorded/tracked in public places could ever be a good thing. They all result people saying things such as, "I want safety, and I don't care if I have to sacrifice people's freedoms and privacy to get it!" We place limitations on governments because they are made up of humans who cannot be trusted, so why trust them with placing cameras in public places (Which I would oppose even if there were no slippery slope or potential for abuse.) and then blindly believing them when they say the cameras won't be used for anything else? It's not like history has countless examples of governments expanding their powers or anything.
But I do see them as a problem.
"Soon enough, they'll run a red light. Then we'll have everything we need to send them to Guantanamo."
Which assumes they're only used for their stated purpose.
Just in case my point isn't clear: the government is actually doing things that are really fucking bad, right now, but you're getting pissed off about red light cameras.
X being worse than Y does not mean that Y isn't bad. Yes, the government may be doing worse things, but that doesn't mean red light cameras aren't a problem.
Funny, because that's exactly the kind of thing I'd say about your unprincipled desire of freedom.
Then move to North Korea or something.
I started trying to critique the rest of your comment, but you're too far away from sanity for me to even get close.
I could turn that around and say that I believe you to be unprincipled for desiring privacy that strongly.
You could, but I would say that anyone who would say such a thing should probably isolate themselves from the rest of the world; can't have them ruining countries with their nonsense.
In the land of the free and the home of the brave, I would not expect safety to be even close to a prime concern, and especially so when fundamental liberties and privacy are at stake.
The real world is a giant balancing game: if you lean all the way to one side you'll fall over.
I'd say that's utterly false. Extremes are not always wrong, and something being 'extreme' (which is subjective) does not even mean it is likely to be wrong, as most issues are subjective. I don't know if that's what you were trying to get at, but if not, then I have no idea what message you were trying to convey.
We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts. -- Patrick Moynihan
