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Dumb politics, they should've just done it Obama-style and had the NSA get it for them.
Well, she did try to do this, see Filegate. Obama actually did do it;
"
(CNN) — Here's some background information about the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scandal involving the targeting of certain groups. In May 2013, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration released a report indicating the targeting involved delaying the processing of applications by certain conservative groups and requesting information from them that was later deemed unnecessary.
The Justice Department is investigating circumstances surrounding the disappearance of IRS emails..."
IRS Scandal Fast Facts - CNN
Is it about standing for the rights individuals?
I never once posited that I wanted to see Obama use the IRS to go after liberal groups. I wanted the mechanism by which the government could persecute - selectively or otherwise - removed from government control.
Wait a minute...here we go again with "the other guy did it, why can't we" excuse. So, let's get this cleared up right here, right now.
The U.S.A. Patriot Act/Patriot Act (as revised) started off as a good and reasonable law. It's initial purpose was to monitor telephone communications that took place between individuals (usually was a foreigner but could have been a U.S. citizen as well) who made phone calls from the U.S. to points abroad and vis versa. The idea was to catch the bad guys who at the time were using burner phones (which were nearly untraceable and disposable) to make phone calls overseas and coordinate terrorist attacks either on U.S. soil or points abroad of national security interest. As word began to spread of how there would-be terrorist were being monitored, they changed their tactics going from burner phones to the Internet. As such, our National Security Agency (NSA) changed their tactics as well only they began to go a step too far randomly monitoring the online activity of U.S. citizens who had nothing to do with terrorism.
Now, if you're trying to make that equivalency shame on you! What the GWBush and Obama Administrations did was wrong in their blanket approach to surveillance techniques, but their motives were not personal. From a strict reading of the search warrant, this appears to be personal with [the] Trump [Administration]. As I said above, I could understand if the detective had un-named suspects and all he was doing was trying to put a name to a specific face, but it's clear that is NOT the case. This is about [the] Trump [Administration] going after anyone who sought to disrupt and embarrassed the incoming President on Jan 20, 2017.
The two (or three) monitoring situation don't even come close to being on equal footing assuming that's the equivalency you're trying to make. If not, please clarify what you meant.
It's not a direct equivalency, but this is hardly the first administration to conduct blatant misuse of the government apparatus for political ends. President Obama's administration played pretty fast and loose with the NSA, the IRS, and the DoJ, for example, and the equivalency stems from these all being examples of abuse of governmental authority for political ends - in some cases, in direct violation of the government charter.
The unwillingness of the left to pick up that particular complaint is what allows this administration to make such an obviously political request for an abuse of their own. You see, the precedent has been set.
I was listening to a podcast with Zeynep Tufekci where she outlined - to the Obama Administration, in the full swing of a campaign - how their reliance on social-media style hypertargeting is actually quite a dangerous tool. The response she got from campaign officials was a brusque pushback: the "other side" doesn't like science and data like "our side" does, therefore this tool will only be usable by "the good guys". And then the 2016 election season saw everyone using the same techniques, as warned. The surveillance state exists, and is getting stronger. This latest overstep by the Trump administration is further proof of the worsening problem.
But Trump certainly didn't invent the tactic, nor is he redefining the extent of Executive overreach. Continuing to remain blind to this is agreeing to be part of the continued problem. If you can't separate the partisan angle from this problem, then you are part of the in-group/out-group division that allows such transgressions to not only continue, but to get worse over time. Let me restate my argument here, for clarity's sake: this request by the Trump Administration is wrong, but only deciding to complain about this kind of stuff because it's Trump doing it is enabling Trump to get away with it. Claiming the non-equivalence of what he is doing now is easily dismissable as partisan bias and will serve to only steer the conversation into distraction.
Tell me, who do you think benefits the most from the distraction?
This is concerning and not a good road to go down.
not if it is meant to prosecute people that were doing this.
i mean antifa is so peaceful and everything.
You're also doing it to justify the current Administration's abuse of power
BTW, no one was blind to what the Obama Administration did in their NSA surveillance. The public outcry led to changes in how meta data was obtained and subsequently used.
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