@TatinG
“Good grief! The Stasi gathered information on political enemies in order to protect those in power”
While there is always going to be a balance between privacy/rights and protection, the poster is not entirely wrong. Groups like the Stasi and the GRU used, as justification for their domestic spying, that they needed to do so to protect the people and the state from ‘enemies’, both domestic and foreign. Because of this excuse, these kind of agencies were allowed total power, without any kinds of checks and balances.
Obviously, those were different governments, but my point is that what starts out as being for safety and the public good often ends up getting abused, under the guise of ‘we need to do this for your protection’, when it branches into maintainig power. We saw that with the Patriot act, where the original goal of obtaining information about pressing terrorist attacks has turned into a fishing expedition by law enforcement. Wire taps legally were considered an invasion of privacy, the same as peeking in someone’s window or breaking into their house, yet Hoover and others used them, without warrants, they claimed it was to protect the security of the US from “red agents” and the like, yet what it really was was an organized blackmail operation to maintain his power. Dick Cheney with the Patriot act argued that information found from wiretaps and data gathering without a warrant, that discovered other kinds of criminal activity, since it was about ‘public safety’ should be allowed, which violates the intent of the bill of rights, the 4th in particular.
That doesn’t mean that any invasion of privacy is wrong, it isn’t, but it does mean that justifying invasive tactics in the name of ‘safety’ or ‘anti terrorism’ needs very, very close scrutiny, that it cannot be ‘do what you want, we understand it is for our own good’, because time and again it is just too tempting to be used for power. “Safety from Terrorism” is like the term “Patriotism”, it is often used as a cover for scoundrals, the line “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundral” is a very true term…Safety from terrorism itself, like patriotism, is a slogan, that is often used to browbeat attempts to question activities done. If you object to data gathering, that gets turned into opposing measures to protect safety (and who doesn’t want people to be safe?"), If you question the motives of scoundrals who have wrapped themselves in the flag, you are ‘unpatriotic’…it is much like the slogan “support our troops” with the Iraq war, it was used to imply that if you thought the war was gigantic snafu, it conflated supporting troops (which other than maybe some wack jobs, few people don’t want) to supporting the policy that put them in harms way (opposing the Iraq war ultimately did support the troops, would have meant 5k people alive and 10’s of thousands not devastated by wounds).
Slogans like “safety from terrorism”, Patriotism and 'support our troops" have no meaning in of themselves, but can be used to suppress dissent and justify oppression, especially in times when people are scared.
