With the intelligence community hacking into Senators' computers to defend themselves from investigation, even admitting it, at will, with no reprimand? And have it barely scrape the news?
Is it that easy? Can we just repeal bills like the Patriot Act? Look at how easy it was for Australia to invent a media blitz of fear to pass legislation allowing surveillance that has no counter terrorism purpose.
Voters will only be informed if both social and traditional media are able to provide actionable, verifiable and non-biased reports.
Media will only be able to provide quality information when political, intelligence and profit interests have less leverage than an educated purchasing public majority.
Political/intelligence interests will only have have less leverage if we pass meaningful enforceable legislation to curtail the use of selective privilege, story seeding and psychological operations to achieve policy goals.
Congress will only pass meaningful enforceable legislation if the voters demand it.
By and large the public know about the Patriot act and support it, you may disagree but don't pretend they don't know about it.
>Voters will only be informed if both social and traditional media are able to provide actionable, verifiable and non-biased reports.
The reports are there yet the public has yet to be swayed.
>Media will only be able to provide quality information when political, intelligence and profit interests have less leverage than an educated purchasing public majority.
Media can and do provide quality information.
>Political/intelligence interests will only have have less leverage if we pass meaningful enforceable legislation to curtail the use of selective privilege, story seeding and psychological operations to achieve policy goals.
Rolling back freedom of speech is a non-starter.
We need to convince voters that the Patriot Act is bad not pretend they have been victims of mind control.
> Rolling back freedom of speech is a non-starter.
* Governments have a free speech right to propaganda. (The techniques I suggested 'rolling back' are only used for the purposes of propaganda).
> Media can and do provide quality information.
* Despite barriers and through mires of conflicting accounts, the media is able to effectively report information to a public that doesn't pay it and is able to ignore the influence of the institutions that do.
> By and large the public know about the Patriot act and support it...
* The public has wildly different opinions about the effectiveness of Obamacare than it does the Affordable Healthcare Act. Despite countless examples like this it is because of an efficient and reliable news system that the American public has a good sense of politics, the issues that the country faces, the trade-offs inherent to national legislature and how domestic bills fit into larger policy goals and geopolitics. There is no politicization of the media, or where there is it is recognized, sourced and understood as a defining piece of narrative context.
> The reports are there yet the public has yet to be swayed.
* But despite this really good reporting there's a real debate about whether global and ubiquitous surveillance, espionage and sabotage is legitimized by counter-terror purposes even when the programs in question have nothing to do with terrorism.
> We need to convince voters that the Patriot Act is bad not pretend they have been victims of mind control.
Information control. Don't burn too many calories on the straw man.
Hong Kong, as the most recent example, has once again shown us that whenever "the voters" demand something, the government's response is tear-gas and batons.
But hey, governments are "by the people" and "for the people" of course, and to think otherwise would be tantamount to.. actually seeing what's happening!
Or we can just push for Congress to stop renewing the Patriot Act next year.