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Comment by sergiosgc | Hacker News Reader

Oh, you completely missed the numbers on the effects of conversion of the US of A into a police state. It was a good move on your part, since democracy and freedom are such an important part of American culture that the loss is not quantifiable.

It was Thomas Jefferson who said something along the lines of "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots". Americans are, today, scared so shitless by Bin Laden that they prefer surrendering freedom instead of committing some blood to the cause of freedom.

Pre 9/11 this NSA case would be a second Watergate. Today, it's yesterday's news. Bin Laden, for all intents and purposes, won.

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I see your questionably attribute Jefferson quote and raise you a whole Constitutional Convention, which wrote in the US Constitution, Article IV Section 4, "[The federal goverment] shall protect each of them [State in the Union] against Invasion".

Speaking from Europe, you don't know invasion. Invasion is not a bomb in a marathon, and it isn't an attack on a skyscraper. You have never seen invasion, and realistically it's not a danger to the US.

Invasion is certainly not such a risk that widespread privacy invasion is warranted.

You are scared. You should also get some of the "brave" out of your lore and into reality.

Speaking from America, you sound like a pretentious stuffed shirt.

Through the miracle of broadcast media, like the printing press or YouTube, it is wholly unnecessary to experience an invasion to know that it is something worth repelling.

Besides, we American have experience with repelling invasions both large and small and from regular military and irregular forces, just not in recent years. Try searching on these topics: American Indian Wars, French and Indian War, War of 1812, Aroostook War, the Texas War of Independence, the Battle of Gettysburg, Sherman's March to the Sea, and the Aleutian Islands Campaign.

Lately, we Americans have been doing a good job of keeping the fighting over there instead of over here, and I imagine PRISM has been a big contributor to that success.

You imagine that without PRISM, we'd be fighting or at least have fought a war on American territory in recent years? Who would be the supposed aggressor?

> Speaking from America, you sound like a pretentious stuffed shirt.

I bow to your superior argumentative technique. You, sir, are a gift to critical thinking and public debate.

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