Trying to sort out NDAA

[usernamenumber]

Ugh.

With SOPA, that other bill that's apparently like SOPA, NDAA... there's so much stuff I feel like I need to research to really get a handle on it, and I just haven't had time lately. :(

Anyway, theferrett posted a ranty piece about how furious he is about Obama changing his promise to veto NDAA. The post its self is pretty much just frothing, plus a link to a more informative but equally scathing article at Salon.com.

I always read the comments on this sort of thing (meaning Ferrett's post, the salon.com article's comments are just a mess) because I hope someone will chime in with an articulation of the other side of the argument. In this case, someone did, and with a position that I'd been considering myself, having read the portion of the bill about which people are upset (Section 1031, PDF of the while thing available here via thomas.gov), but after reading some more and thinking about it, I wasn't sold and replied.

I'm going to link to that thread and invite interested people to take a look because I think it sums up where I'm at on the issue, including what I don't know, and I just don't have the time right now to do the level of digging I usually want to do before having an opinon on something like this, so I'm deferring to the lazyweb to see if anyone out there who's more informed than me cares to comment and fill in some gaps.

Then again, since from what I've read the NDAA is as good as passed, I should probably be reading up on and freaking out about SOPA anyway. Oh yeah, and I should also be doing, you know, my job. I hate feeling like I only have time to be any two of a good employee, a good citizen, and someone with a life. :(

Comments

[lediva.livejournal.com]

A lot of the arguments I'm hearing (see a thread I spawned on G+ (https://plus.google.com/106019593100874854658/posts/Bkon9hTLc1C)) seem to revolve around the fact that this is codifying existing abuses of power that first went into effect under the 2011 Authorization for Use of Military Force (http://news.findlaw.com/wp/docs/terrorism/sjres23.es.html), which lets the government apply military force to anything they deem relevant in the War on Terror.

I agree this is a bad thing, but I'm not sure what the NDAA actually changes. Everything I find, (Mother Jones (http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/12/new-ndaa-loopholes), the Salon article you link to, etc.) assumes the worst, which makes it hard for me to take the rest of the analysis seriously.

SOPA is straight fucked-up, though. Requiring ISPs to block access to websites if there's a copyright complaint is a really bizarre way to address infringement. David Rees, brilliant cartoonist of "Get Your War On", has a new series (http://getyourcensoron.com/) dedicated to explaining what SOPA is and why it's a terrible, terrible idea. Also, the site pops up with a form to directly call your congressperson.

[sprrwhwk.livejournal.com]

The realpolitik answer, I think, is that Obama vetoes this, the Republicans whip their base into a frenzy over him being "soft on defense" and "not supporting our troops" and we inaugurate President Gingrich (or whoever) in January 2013. My guess is that Obama figures he can afford to piss off civil libertarians more than he can afford to piss off the independents who like strong defense. (Which is, in my read of it, probably true. Who else are we gonna vote for?) Threatening to veto it was about the only thing he could do.

What somebody who believes in civil liberties can do is an open question. It's becoming increasingly clear to me that the President is not the person who needs to be persuaded, though -- it's our fellow citizens.