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Comment by sillysaurus2 | Hacker News Reader

There's a difference between reading 1984 and seeing articles of how things play out in real life in your own country.

There is no difference. Nothing has changed. Nothing will change.

I was going to make a lengthy comment detailing all the possible ways that Americans could effect change, and then going point-for-point with reasons why none of those ways could possibly work in this case. But it's too depressing. Besides, I would love to wrong.

Our only hope is if a website manages to act as a "vote multiplier" in the sense that it serves a function analogous to a lightning rod: it focuses people by telling them who to vote for and who not to vote for, and when to vote, and even how to vote. No one will do their own research. Want to make a difference? Make that website, and then achieve popularity large enough to make a difference.

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Things have changed. They've changed many times in the course of modern history. The Church commission happened, the Senate Intelligence committee happened, the FISA court was set up, things change.

Gov'ts are designed for slow change. The advantage of this being that it should avoid massive populism to dismantle everything in one go (imagine if the Tea Party had control of the Senate). There are movements both in the judicial and the legislative branches to start pulling back the excesses of the executive.

Sure, Obama could "executive order" everything away, but why would the executive neuter itself? Luckily checks and balances are a thing, and we're fixing this.

What worries me is that the mechanisms for government slowly adapting to changing situations have been eroded. Massive public protests are now far less effective than they were, because the authorities are using new technologies, such as mass-surveillance, to suppress them.

The result is an ossifying system of government, that is slowly, but surely diverging from consent of the people.

>Gov'ts are designed for slow change.

Except they haven't changed slowly. Think of how far we've come since 9/11.

If the government is designed to change slowly, yet has experienced this period of rapid change, then it seems that we have to ask, "what force is being applied to overcome the slow-change inertia?"

the changes since 9/11 happened because the legislature and the executive agreed that the way the intelligence community was operating at the time wasn't effective.

The environment of 9/11 was particularly unique (being the first major attack on American soil from a "foreign entity" in a long time), and it's important to understand a couple things.

It's not the patriot act, but this story on the AUMF (http://www.buzzfeed.com/gregorydjohnsen/60-words-and-a-war-w...) shows the sort of environment in which the AUMF and the Patriot Act were passed. It's slightly insane.

Almost all of the "radical" change post-9/11 is based on things written in these laws written over a 2-month period that was patently different from the status quo.

Policies developed from these acts have been struck down on multiple occasions, and there is a momentum towards rolling things back, rather than going further. But we still get the characteristic slowness of government. Without a strong event to do so, it will be hard. The Snowden leaks seem to be a good trigger for a Church committee-style event, but it won't be instant.

Yes, it was the post 9/11 environment that led to the post 9/11 changes. We are still on that footing. But, if it was 9/11 that caused us to form consensus, and thus move so swiftly at that time, then what, exactly, is it now?

Because I would argue that the momentum is categorically not "towards rolling things back". Honestly, I find that an astonishing statement in light of the fact that 12+ years later, we are still engaged in a rapidly progressing surveillance agenda and just learning about the Snowden revelations regarding same. This does not even touch the fact that drone strikes have risen sharply, we're still engaged in extrajudicial killings, Guantanemo is still open, and on and on.

So, it's not just that we have lingering laws on the books post 9/11 that will take time to unwind. It's that we are still engaging in--and indeed, expanding--activity supported by these laws. What is the driver for this? What is the end goal?

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