The thing that bothers me most about this as a European is; I have zero say in this, in the US you can strike out against surveillance, you can write to senators, protest against terrible legislation. Actually have a voice, however faint it is. Whereas I don't get a say but the exact same treatment from your country. The Five Eyes have made me paranoid and the only escape seems to be downgrading your phone to a brick and carrying it in a Faraday cage. We may as well just go back to plain old telephones.
I was happy to see the disgust people had for the CIA black sites operated in other countries when that came to light during the Bush presidency. Not because of the torture, but because people here expected alleged terrorists to have the same rights as detained American citizens. I feel this is important to note, because we have a large population of young voters who I feel have concern for everyone - not just the US. This is very different from how my grandparents vote and I do think it's split along generational lines. In regards to overreaching surveillance: It's not ideal, but we over here do think of you when we vote.. I do.
Remember that outrage over the Patriot act abuses? Obama 2008 platform promised to restore the Constitution:
> We reject the use of national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. We reject the tracking of citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. We reject torture. We reject sweeping claims of "inherent" presidential power. We will revisit the Patriot Act and overturn unconstitutional executive decisions issued during the past eight years. We will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine duly enacted law. And we will ensure that law-abiding Americans of any origin, including Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans, do not become the scapegoats of national security fears.
but as we have seen, every word of this has been reversed. I don't trust either party at this point. Both are scalp deep in this.
I don't think a responsible person can possibly vote for a major party candidate. Doing so just results in the same powerful interests remaining entrenched.
There's always the "oh no what if so and so gets elected" but it always turns out that any major party candidate does pretty much the same stuff once elected. Obama continued and extended the Bush Doctrine on foreign affairs, for example.
All first past the post systems like we have in the US will trend towards a two-party system. It sucks because voting third party just takes votes away from the major party candidate that most closely represents your views. To maximize your influence you have to hold your nose and vote for the major party candidate that most closely represents your views...
Perhaps that is true in terms of maximizing your influence in the next election.
But to maximize your influence over a longer time period, you should vote for the third party candidate that most closely matches your views.
Then, when the major party candidate you would have resorted to loses, the post mortem reveals votes lost to the candidate you voted for, and in the subsequent election the major party adapts its platform to win some of those lost votes.
If politicians expected voters to vote on principle and to hold them accountable, we'd have an entirely different sort of politicians.
> But to maximize your influence over a longer time period, you should vote for the third party candidate that most closely matches your views.
That might, arguably, resemble truth if the details of the political system itself were guaranteed stable over time and not subject to alteration by the same people who gain power over other policies through electoral victories. But, in the real world, to maximize your influence over a long-time period, you should organize and advocate for both electoral reform and the minor party you most prefer during periods between elections (the former to work to mitigate the perverse effects of the existing system, the second to maximize the likelihood that, in the next election, the competitive major parties -- which can change over time -- will include the party you most prefer.)
But, once its clear who the major candidates are in the present election, you should still generally vote for the one least harmful to your interests if they win.
> If politicians expected voters to vote on principle and to hold them accountable, we'd have an entirely different sort of politicians.
With no changes to the electoral system, what we'd have with that is "major" parties representing even smaller pluralities (well, technically, only the biggest would be a plurality), and more negative campaigning directed by each major candidate at getting voters best served by the other to not vote for them to "hold them accountable" for something. Which is a change of degree, not kind, from what we have now.
> you should organize and advocate for both electoral reform and the minor party you most prefer during periods between elections
I totally agree with this.
>Once its clear who the major candidates are in the present election, you should still generally vote for the one least harmful to your interests
I don't agree with this, because the platform-creation calculus of the major parties is to ignore interest groups that will not abandon ship.
As H's platform makes clear, when there is sufficient loyalty, it's in the best interest of the candidate to edge as close as possible to the opposing party's platform, to attract as many swing voters as possible.
I'm pretty morally opposed to voting for a ruler I don't personally support. At least if Hillary decides she wants to break some more laws I have the excuse I didn't support her at any point.
Unfortunately, with Trump (if he's elected), there's a chance not supporting him would mean I'm imprisoned so... you win some, you lose some.
More than two parties is not that great either. At least here in the USA you need to win a majority of the electoral college to win the presidency or else congress will elect one for you.
unfortunately you're part of a minority. The mere fact that the election will happen between Clinton and Trump makes me think that mass surveillance and lack of respect for other countries are going to continue and probably worsen.
> “We have to stop jihadists from radicalizing new recruits in person and through social media chat rooms, and what’s called the dark web,” Clinton said.
> Clinton said she would ask technology companies in Silicon Valley to expand their oversight of posts that could be used to radicalize recruits. Tech companies, she said, should enforce strong service agreements and track questionable content.
I'm hesitant to consider the next presidential election's results as a harbinger of the state of politics during the 2020 or 2024 races.
The Baby Boomer generation's influence is waning and I'm optimistic that the next generations who did not grow up in a period of extreme mutual distrust like we saw post-WW2 and during the Cold War will be better suited to lead.
It's going to take us, as a global group of people on the planet, a long time to unwind a lot of the hawkish and nationalist policies that have evolved over the past 150 years. Certainly there will be periods where charismatic leaders with latent agendas drag us backwards and temper the progress, but ultimately if each successive generation is even just a bit more inclusive and globally considerate than the last, we'll find a way to make this work.
That sounds nice. It won't happen, but it sounds nice.
Every generation has felt they could do things better than the previous (old people shouldn't be allowed to vote has been stated lately), until they learn what it was the previous generation had to deal with. The mutual distrust among certain parties do go away after time, look at all the countries that were at war in WW2 that are now allies. But there is always somebody that jumps in to take advantage of the newfound peace and harmony to further their agenda. Sometimes it leads to a return of mistrust, sometimes it leads to war.
What you are describing is every agency of authority agreeing with each other across numerous nation-states, economies, cultures, and more. Some of which are directly opposed to each other, possibly violently.
The human race is simply not ready for that level of cooperation and will not for a very long time. Losing sight of that will only lead to hardship and suffering. Likely the only way for such a thing to happen is for it to be forced among people with violence. Then that status maintained for multiple generations until the old ways have been forgotten.
But your way is a nice thought and should be attempted at least.
1) Global trade was not as established prior to WWII - there is a market incentive to maintain alliances. We don't even have the production means to make everything we need anymore - we're too inter-dependent.
2) Facebook and Snapchat and other social venues made possible by the Internet make it hard to sew mutual distrust among the nations of the world. If the Cold War happened today we'd see the propaganda from both sides on Twitter - I think it would be harder to mislead people with 2+ perspectives.
Every generation does think it can do better than the last - but I personally think there are a few major differences to set us apart. :>
> old people shouldn't be allowed to vote has been stated lately
Really? I'd be interested to see a source on that. Not questioning the validity, I so many of these college aged kids calling for restrictions on speech and political organization of people they disagree with. I'm not surprised that this would come up.
Looks like we can expect a mommy-state as much as we can expect a liberalization of out-dated baby boomer policies.
You know Hillary is a bad idea when Trump is a more considerate choice in terms of security policies and also not being bound to campaign funders' priorities, despite his otherwise out-of-this-world views on important topics. Trump said he'd like to pull out troops from places like Europe, which makes one believe he wants to concentrate on local issues.
I think it's age more than generational. Every generation is idealistic in youth. By the time you've lived 50 or 60 years you see that you cannot wish the world to be the way you want it to be, and things are more complicated than they seemed when you were 22.
To some extent, sure. But also I've noticed that easy, cheap global communication enabled by the web and similar technologies has given people wider access to info and viewpoints from around the world whereas in past generations, you had to study abroad or live in a cosmopolitan city to get a lot of that.
I don't mean to suggest that provincialism is dead and buried but I do think that a 20-year-old today has much greater odds of at least being aware of the views and outlooks of people in other parts of the world than a 20-year old in 1970 or 1980.
Once you've reached 50 or 60, you don't want to risk your house price, your stock value, or that job that you worked for a quarter of a century getting up to. With little working time left, you're not likely to recover. So you rationalize your self-interest with generalized vagaries when what you really want is for things to stay how they are for your own safety.
>Whereas I don't get a say but the exact same treatment from your country.
The NSA works with the 5 eyes to gather data on you. If you want to stop the NSA from spying on you, vote in your democratic country to remove yourselves from our intelligence agreements.
It doesn't necessarily mean the NSA won't spy on you, but it does mean it will be technically illegal for them to do so, so they probably won't do it unless they actually care about you.
Interactions with foreign parties is rarely enforced through domestic law (in this sense). It's the job of your government to protect you from foreign governments. Your government having intelligence agreements with our government is them saying to you they don't value your privacy enough to protect it.
Reminds me of a humorous saying I read somewhere. Roughly: Move to the U.S., because the only thing worse than living there is being subjected to its foreign policy.
Is there any reason to believe that no European countries do this kind of thing? Relative to national budgets, this kind of stuff can't cost that much. Dunno where the EU is on their EU-level army right now, but it'd stand to reason that a EU-security org would do exactly this kind of stuff. The UK certainly has no qualms about it.
Even the US's allies will try stunts as bad as false flag bombings[1]. So it's not like they can only monitor non-allies. So they can't shut down spying, and perhaps it just becomes a never-ending escalation of power then. Might as well grab all data. I don't like it, but I can understand how they might arrive at that position.
Probably the only hope is to outlaw this worldwide, perhaps in some human rights kind of thing, then actually apply punishment for those caught. That seems unlikely to really work though. Even now, we have countries that steal nuclear tech and don't get punished - few will view spying as worse than that.
Quite the opposite - GCHQ in the UK is just one agency that, from available evidence, is very probably doing the same things against its own people and those of the rest of Europe.
The American outage at the NSA is entirely correct. The European histrionics are mostly yank-bashing with a side of whistling in the dark.
> The European histrionics are mostly yank-bashing with a side of whistling in the dark
If I recall correctly, there was much in the media around the time of the Arab Spring about UK and German companies selling the tools of mass surveillance to governments that were less than friendly to their residents. It's easier to point a finger at the US than to acknowledge that the major European governments are usually deeply involved in the same activities and equally responsible for much of the conflict we see in the world today via the legacy of colonialism and actions such as the Sykes–Picot Agreement.
Yep. Of course, the US government has been involved in helping friendly tyrannical regimes monitor their citizens. It's not that anyone's hands are clean, it's that castigating a scapegoat is the comfortable alternative to doing anything about these issues.
Partly true. Europeans have fairly good opportunities to influence domestic and regional issues. Probably better than the in the US. For instance look at how the data retention directive was invalidated [0]. That said, support for US misconduct in Europe is still surprisingly strong. From US companies paying less tax than European counterparts to blatant spying or kidnapping. I'm not sure what the answer here is other than being more aware of our own interests as persons, nations and regions.
> From US companies paying less tax than European counterparts to blatant spying or kidnapping.
It's a little naive to assume that European countries do not have similar banking issues. Between Switzerland, London, the Channel Islands, Monaco, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands there is more than enough dodgy banking to compete with the US
Likewise with spying and kidnapping - the major European powers have been playing those "games" (and worse) since long before 1776. Extraordinary rendition did not happen without the knowledge of European governments and the UK in particular has a long association with many of the countries where those picked up were interrogated/tortured in.
You can try to get your domestic spooks gang up with other EU spooks to stop colluding with the NSA. The agencies use intelligence as currency and you can apply sanctions this way.
Carrying this info in cleartext across tappable international cables is pretty close to giving a free pass to spooks. Telecom regulators are enabling this because they're against/indifferent about strong encryption.
Actually Congress already made laws bounding NSA behavior and mission but they are operating outside the law. They are a self serving criminal enterprise at this point.
Time-proven way of influencing decisions made by other countries is having a strong army. Recently it has gone slightly out of fashion, but the general principle still holds. Those without power are not reckoned with.
Of course not. The point is to have a strong BATNA, as negotiations people put it. The USA is actually a great example of this principle. Their military spending is the biggest in the world. What for? Do they intend to eradicate all other nations so that only Americans remain? I hope not. More probably, they spend all these resources because they don't like it when other nations tell them what to do.
Something that's always bothered me about people who complain about low voter turnout among young demographics in the US is that young people are the least likely to be able to make it to the polls. In the US, election days are like any other- your employer is required to accommodate your vote, but in practice, younger demographics are much more likely to be working multiple shit jobs with bosses who treat them like disposable labor and couldn't care less about their rights. There are initiatives in many places to literally ship retired voters to the polls so they can vote, but our government seems to make it difficult for working people to vote. Or, while we're at it, take advantage of any other government service like the DMV, post office, etc that are only open during business hours.
Voter turnout was at record levels. It's not obvious that greater turnout of "millennials" specifically was likely to happen. Typically it's difficult to ensure that one kind of voter turns out without also increasing the rate of turnout for other kinds of voters as well.
There were the Remain votes, the Leave votes, but then there the Protest votes -- which from my perspective were votes that said "I want to Remain, but dammit I don't like how things are going right now".
Why doesn't it make sense? Admittedly, it is a rather blatant example of what the parent comment asked for, but because it is so blatant it is also pretty uncontroversial that what happened was precisely foreign citizens having a say in the military program of another nation.
Because it is a treaty that was implemented after a World War? Circumstances of implementation matter. It is also a great example of a treaty that backfired and led to another war due to its sanctions end results. I'll also say you're stretching the analogy of a treaty as a way for a foreign citizen to have a say in another nations affairs. Technically correct but I don't think that really gets at "foreign citizen not of the ruling class of another country influencing another countries military programs (note no espionage examples)" Unless you're looking at a vassal state I don't see it happening.
The non proliferation treaty is similarly a poor example as it was multiple nations deciding in their interests to stay on top with nuclear weapons and not allow more. What would better convince people would be another country impacting another countries military program negatively, not for mutual gain.
The grandparent comment was referring to influencing the NSA surveillance of foreign countries. Guess what, as an American I have no say over the spy agencies of France, or any multitude of agencies either. The NSA just has been doing a better job at it for numerous historical reasons. I'm not condoning it but so far you've not really provided a convincing argument that foreign citizens can influence other countries espionage agencies.
Your government is free to negotiate whatever treaties are acceptable under its laws and the U.S. Constitution; you have whatever voice in your own government that your laws give you.
It makes literally no sense to me that a government would have any more concern for another government's citizen than that other government has incentivised it to.
You can write to your MEP and ask for clarification on what are they doing in order to protect you from, what essentially amounts to, a hostile act from foreign power. Twist is they are working with them.
The CIA/NSA of old had to do similar things. Do you not think China or Russia are doing similar things? I'm sure theres a reason Huawei equipment has been blocked in US, UK, and even some Indian contracts.
