I have taken a step back to do serious and realistic thought on the subject.

Firstly, citing all the times congress went wrong is sensationalism. All the bad gets into the news and none of the good. For every act of abuse of power 10,000 more firefighters save cats from trees and families from burning homes. All the good in people doesn’t make it to the news, giving most people a very skewed perspective of humanity as a whole. You hear about police brutality all the time because that will make it to the papers. What about the 100,000 other daily normal traffic stops, tickets, giving directions, burglar nappings, etc. that are too mundane to report?
Just because you only hear about all the bad does not mean it in any way outweighs the good, and in fact far from it.

But let’s say it is terrible when it happens (someone unfairly prosecuted or targetted etc.) Would the list in the hands of the FBI make it happen more often? That is nothing but conjecture. It’s also conjecture to say it could happen less often—that the list may actually be used to help people—but no one wants to conjecture in that direction for some reason.


Here is something that is a whole lot less conjecture and much more realistic scenario.

Firstly, as I said again, there is a statistical anomaly in believing anything in your life or the lives of those you know would change. Even if we ever do appear on some list, that list has to be so vast that there is no way they would even have the resources to put any focus on us. No, realistically, they are going to tag potential terrorists and perhaps potentially violent gun-wielding Americans too.
Just a slight recap: Saying they might use it to target journalists, left-wingers, etc., may be possible, but my goal is to reduce conjecture to what no one or very few would actually deny, and we should at least mostly all be able to agree that whatever they use to filter the list, potential terrorists will definitely be on there and then possibly local bad guys if they are high-profile enough, long criminal records, etc. They do have a limited amount of manpower.

So far that is fine and reasonable.


Would the list be used to persecute someone who hasn’t actually done anything yet? Possibly, but:
#1: You can cite historical references to that having happened before, but it doesn’t happen about 1,000,000 times more often. Not impossible, rare, and perhaps half of the citations in which it has happened it happened to people who showed strong signs of potential future violence. The brothers behind the Boston attack were already under surveillance prior to the attack yet nothing happened to them until after the attack. And the ironic thing is that when the FBI is watching a suspect and nothing happens until after the crime, everyone blames them for not acting preemptively. I’m sorry, that is just not how it works. And if they had everyone would be citing it as a reference to how “the FBI abused its power”.

#2: It’s a much higher level of conjecture than to say that the information would ever only be used after-the-fact, which will definitely happen either way. While there is no conjecture at all in suggesting the information would be used afterwards, statistically speaking it is also unlikely that it is used before-hand. There are only so many people they can watch closely and many of them will slip under the radar, meaning even if they had wanted to use the information preemptively (see #1) they wouldn’t even be able.

So, minimizing conjecture here, the information is unlikely to be used prior to any attack, and will definitely be used afterwards in order to find out affiliations, signs of terrorism they missed, etc. It will enhance their profiling abilities.
Has no one considered that with more information they would be able to do better profiling and perhaps avoid targeting the wrong people in the future?
Everyone has conjured up all the worst-case scenarios citing history to make a case for plausibility that plays on the innate fears of all of us.
Now, if you will be reasonable and admit that is all conjecture, I’ve already admitted to conjecture on my part.
The basis for one side is that it has happened before so it must happen again.
The basis for my side is that it has happened before, about 10,000,000 times more often if you clump all things together (times police officers did not beat anyone, times preemptive strikes did not happen, etc.), it happens every day, and it will continue to happen.

But I also provided a plausible path to a better tomorrow coming out of all of this in which fewer of those people you don’t know are unfairly targeted and then mistreated.


L. Spiro

Google secretly keeps a stored cache of webpages. Awhile back a person could fall back on a earlier site if the site was no longer available.

I want to download the internet onto a floppy so I will always have it.