resist?

[Joseph Tracy]

The debate about privacy has not seriously been put forth in a constitutional way. Ruling by raw power clearly outside the boundaries of the constitution is simply authoritarian and dangerous.( Theoretically the legitimacy and authority of the government is derived entoirely from the constitution government empoyees are sworn to uphold)  I think Risen is perfetly aware of the legal questions surrounding protection of sources. Up until recently it seems to have evolved as an unchallenged part of  what Freedom of the Press means. His stance, and it makes sense, is to stand on that tradition. The fact that the US government backed down rather than convict him of a crime at least says they are extremely reluctant to come out against this idea.

The more clear it is to people that it is in the nature of a police state to infinitely expand their privacy and non-accountability while elliminating citizen privacy, the less popular the trade-off you describe will be. Once people get that there is no correlation between the loss of privacy as guaranteed in the constitution and effectiveness in controlling criminality, it becomes a very hard sell. 

We will only be  safe from false flag wars and political and racial persecution when we are watching them rather than them watching us. That is the way a constitutional republic should work. 

The problems of getting read when there are so few media outlets with wide respect continues.  The publicly funded news of public tv and radio has failed to come anywhere close to the pulitzer winning work of the major papers.

> On Jan 16, 2018, at 12:30 PM, Robert Mahnke <rpmahnke at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I read the Risen story and I have a lot of sympathy for him, and appreciation for the work he has done. But I did see two big problems which seem pretty fundamental to me and which he seems to have missed.
> 
> First, Risen blames his recent experience for eliminating a reporter's First Amendment privilege to protect his or her sources. I don't have the article in front of me, but my recollection is that there is some sentence where he says that in about so many words. But that's not what happened. What the courts decided is that that law recognizes no such privilege. A lot of people (like me) think it would be a good idea, but Congress has never passed such a law, and the courts have never created that protection. I see this again and again when these issues are covered, and it really bothers me (although unlike many people Risen has paid a price here). Media sanctimony and entitlement are a barrier to the kind of work it would take to change the law. And notwithstanding that the law did not give him a privilege not to testify, in the end Risen was called to the stand but was not pushed very far and did not have to do any time. 
> 
> Second, a big problem that Risen faces is that there isn't much competition for the New York Times. He touches on this when he talks about interviewing with another news organization, which expresses even less willingness to publish something if the White House asks it not to. If there were more places publishing the sort of stories he works on, he would have had more leverage with his editors, both in the sense that they would be more likely to publish his stories if they worried about getting beat to the punch, and also in that he would have had more options to leave and take his work elsewhere (which, in a sense, is what he did by publishing a book). I'm not saying he defends concentration in the media market, but I got the sense that it contributes to his status and that he likes it.
> 
> Thinking just about the warrantless search program, it seems to me that if the tradeoff between privacy and protection is put to a vote, most people are going to trade away their privacy for the promise (illusory or otherwise) of more protection every time. You can blame Bush or Obama or other politicians for that, but aren't they responding to what people want. It's too bad that the Fourth Amendment doesn't seem to do much. I am pretty suspicious of the NSA's ability to learn much from the electronic communications they suck up (using "NSA" in a broad sense, and just pausing here to say hello to anyone in Fort Meade who might be reading this), leaving us with the worst of both worlds: A national security apparatus that could be listening in all the time, but can't process what it absorbs. 
> 
> 
> On Sat, Jan 13, 2018 at 7:21 PM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
> So, what’s the take on the Risen story? I’ve refrained from bringing it up, but there it is. I started reading Scahill’s Dirty Wars, and right away, I feel something ain’t right. Am I wrong? WTF!
> 
> Www.innergroovemusic.com
> 
> On Jan 13, 2018, at 10:02 PM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Notice that the purity pigs over at The Intercept don't even TRY to give the "other" side of the story. It's just "Dems bad as GOP Big Brother blah blah WAAAAH!!!" 
>> 
>> Greenwald's Wikileaks-loving rag is porn for pseudo-woke political purity punks.
>> 
>> J
>> 
>> On Sat, Jan 13, 2018 at 9:53 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Thanks.
>> 
>> Bothsiderism is a contagious plague.  "Congress" isn't to blame for anything. That kind of reporting is media's way of escaping responsibility for reporting, for doing its #1 job.
>> 
>> RESIST!
>> 
>> On Sat, Jan 13, 2018 at 8:40 PM Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Thanks for calling me on it. Of course, it’s a cop out. A way of not taking responsibility for paying attention to who is helping and who is not. You dig? Of course you do. 
>> 
>> Www.innergroovemusic.com
>> 
>> On Jan 13, 2018, at 9:32 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> No.  Stop spreading the cancer of Bothsierism.
>>> 
>>> Are *WE* all the same?  Neither are *THEY.*
>>> 
>>> David Morris
>>> 
>>> On Sat, Jan 13, 2018 at 6:40 PM Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> They’re all the same.
>>> 
>>> Www.innergroovemusic.com
>>> 
>>> On Jan 13, 2018, at 5:25 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> https://theintercept.com/2018/01/12/the-same-democrats-who-denounce-trump-as-a-lawless-treasonous-authoritarian-just-voted-to-give-him-vast-warrantless-spying-powers/
>>>> 
>>>> Resist my ass.
>> 
> 

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