They were able to slow down the inevitable trajectory, they did nothing to reverse course. Doing anything different would be too "radical" for Obama or Biden.
The trajectory in question was pretty well laid out in Bush’s Patriot act. If the Democratic Party at any point wanted to reverse course they would have opposed the initial legislation (like the general public did), and subsequently championed a policy which abandons it and corrects for the harm it caused.
I think you vastly undersell how much of the US voters supported extreme measures in reaction to Sept 11.
There was a social panic to “protect us against terrorism” at pretty much any cost. It was easy for the party in power to demonize the resistance to the power grab and nobody except Libertarians had a coherence response.
I don‘t think it really matters how much people supported these extreme actions. This policy was clearly wrong. The general public mounted a much more significant opposition against this policy then the Democratic party did. Some members of the Democratic party did some opposition, but the party as a whole clearly did not oppose this, and therefor it was never truly on the ballots.
To be clear, I personally don‘t think stuff like this should ever be on the ballot in any democracy. Human rights are not up for election, they should simply be granted, and any policy which seeks to deny people human rights should be rejected by any of the country’s democratic institutions (such as courts, labor unions, the press, etc.)
> I don‘t think it really matters how much people supported these extreme actions. This policy was clearly wrong.
This is wrong and ignorant of how we select elected representatives. They have no incentive to do “what is right” and all of the incentives to do “what is popular”. The representatives who stood up against the Patriot Act, the surveillance state, “you’re either with us or either the terrorists”, etc were unable to hold any control in Congress.
The reason we have stereotypes of politicians as lying, greasy, corrupt used car salesmen is because their incentives align with those qualities.
I am exclusively discussing the _is_, not the _ought_ (which is where I would agree with you)
If politicians did what was popular, the USA would have a public health system a long time ago. They just pretend and do things they're paid to support, that's it.
I was stating an opinion, not a fact, and I was interpreting history according to that opinion. That is I am arguing for a certain historical framework from which I judge historical moments.
I also don‘t think mine is a widely unpopular opinion either. That scholars of democracy and human rights agree that a democracy should not be able to vote them selves into a dictatorship, that human rights are worth something more than what can be ousted by a popular demand. So I don’t think this is an unreasonable historical framework, from which I judge the actors of this history of.
You just don't have imagination. Google, just by itself, controls 89% of the traffic in the Internet. And we know that the government can get any information they want from them, without even asking too much. If you combine this with other major companies operating very close to the US government, it is probable that more than 95% of the web traffic outside China that is easily within reach of these sinister 3 letter organizations.
You're right. It's fantastic to see how English comprehension is decaying, even in groups that supposedly are smarter than average. There's a fast decaying tendency in language comprehension overall, and I can only point to the fact that much of the new generation is unable and unwilling to read even a single book.
Trump’s Claim to Venezuelan Oil Money Draws Scrutiny in Congress - https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/us/politics/trumps-claim-... | https://archive.today/xhNT9 - January 7th, 2026 (“President Trump’s declaration that he would personally control the proceeds from oil produced in Venezuela drew instant condemnation on Wednesday from Democrats in Congress who noted that the president had no constitutional authority for such an undertaking.”)
They're just too busy repackaging the same spying tech on different channels and then selling that for billions in the US stock market. Also knowing that US regulators won't say a single word, because how could they ever say something bad about these companies... It must be a very good business.
So Palantir receives info from governments only to… hand it back to them? It seems like most people really don’t know what Palantir actually does and are just speculating.
No, we know very well how they operate. They're paid to get all kinds of sensitive information from governments and other institutions around the world and store it in their very "secure" data centers. Once there, the US government can easily get any of that information for "national security reasons", because how would they say otherwise, and the Israeli government can do the same as well without even announcing anything, because how would the US government ever say "no" to them... It's all just obvious at this point.
They figured out that if the government does something it is opposed by a lot of people. But if a company says they'll collect information from every single customer in exchange for some worthless token, people will willingly provide all their information to said company. And those companies will either sell that info to governments or give it away with a little ask... So, the private economy has become the biggest contributor to the surveillance state.
What people have "willingly" given their data directly to any company? It's usually buried in an agreement or hidden behind some dark pattern.
Suing your government generates results. Suing a company usually results in it shedding it's shell corporation and taking it's assets where you can't get them.
Selling user data needs to be a federal criminal offense. You need to go to jail for doing this. You need 15+ years in prison for doing this or enabling this in bulk. Let's start talking asset forfeiture next.
Exactly. Most people just don't know how much data is being collected on them, and probably can't know at this point. I say can't because the reality sounds so much like a conspiracy theory that a majority of people would simply reject the truth outright.
I'm technical, and I use AI tools but only for basic technical tasks such as finding information, summarizing simple topics, etc. For everything else AI is too inconsistent/inconvenient/unnatural. While it works fine as a demo, real world applications of AI are still far from anything useful in most areas.
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