Supreme Court Rules Unanimously: Police Need Warrants to Search Cell Phone Data

[Ideologue]

In any event, I'd be very interested for you to provide a brief history of all the states that started out as liberal democracies, legitimized pervasive surveillance...

There has been no such abomination.

What is remarkable is Ide can see fascist ideology in Wally-E but he cannot comprehend real fascism.

That's not fascism, it's just statism.

Ideologue's post above with the picture is just mind-boggling, to the point where it's clear he isn't on the level - he is an agent provocateur.

For what?  Is this a fancy word for "troll"?  I assure you, I'm not.

Total surveillance IS truly infantalizing, which is why a key point in development of children is when parents back off on monitoring and give their kids space to grow without being constantly watched.  It's true we lose that sense of security we had as small children that someone is always there to come to the rescue if needed, but that is the price of being an autonomous adult.  And in any case, the government is not a viable substitute for Mummy and Daddy.

Nonsense.  The first duty of the government is to prevent crime (or maybe it's to fight other governments, but at least it is its second duty).  Going back to that Calvinist epithet, do you think I wish the government to engage in petty moral scolding?

In any event, applying household metaphors to theories of the state is a dangerous game.  Aside from the blind alley of crude Freudianism, you also get goofy results like austerity.  Such frameworks should be well-examined.  I mean, really: your argument, boiled down, is that the threat of violence teaches us to grow up and become independent adults.  That cannot be the best you've got.  (It's not even true.  The most juvenile people I've ever met were victims of violence.)

Domestication and interdependence are the two most clear thrulines in human history.  They're tantamount to the point of human civilization.  There is not, and has rarely if ever been, such a thing as an autonomous adult, for the simple fact that almost no human who ever lived has been autonomous.

I think these are the two genuine arguments against the proposal that search power be expanded to permit pervasive surveillance (I am open to correction):

1)Government, given surveillance powers of such a mighty kind, will use it to destroy actual liberties.  For example, Ninth Amendment privacy rights--a Republican-controlled government will round up everybody who's ever had an abortion, put them all into Room 101, where fetuses chew off their faces.

Counterargument: The Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Ninth Amendments still exist in their present form, robust enough to prevent such abuses unless government is already engaged in outright, lawless tyranny.  If that is the case, we are doomed, since they have tanks and airplanes.

2)Private individuals will get ahold of the data and extort people with it.  For example, someone finds out you like weird sex stuff.

Counterargument: private civilians will not have access to the data--if they come into possession of the data, they will be punished (I prefer execution, but as you torturers prefer imprisonment, let's say they get 10 years in the federal pen); government-employed private actors may have access to the data--if they use it, they will also be punsihed.  This is an argument you would use against cops carrying guns, since they could use them for evil ends.

(Also, big fucking deal.)

Speaking a little more concretely, what actual need is there of humans in the data collection process itself?  Is there actually a need for data review?  Perhaps, to avoid 9/11 type threats.  That's much what the NSA is doing now--putatively defending us against people who are willing to die in the commission of their crimes.  This is why terrorism is warfighting by any other name, and not ordinary criminal activity.

As for ordinary criminals--the child molester, the bank robber, the dirty accountant?

Computers could store years--decades!--of surveillance data with nary a human eye laid upon it , outside of a formal charge.  The computers could, if we wished and felt they were capable of it, be programmed to generate reports of potentially criminal activity which a reviewer could look at.  But this is not entirely necessary.  The mere existence of evidence of everything would have such an enormous deterrent effect on criminal behavior that it would rarely if ever occur.  As I've noted before, incorrect verdicts would almost never occur as well; perhaps ironically, defamation by way of false accusations would probably become the number one crime in America.

Unfortunately, your rather flummoxed arguments suggests that your opposition is kneejerk ideological.  Consider the least offensive plan as laid out above--stored surveillance data, reviewed by a court and by attorneys, only in the event of a sworn warrant supported by probable cause, and subject to all other protections our Constitution grants us.  Then tell me what fundamental, necessary human freedom is annihilated by this.