TSA agents, Amtrak employees, and employees at shipping companies were paid millions of dollars by the DEA to secretly open up bags, inspect the contents, and report the bag/parcel and the owner to the DEA.
Employees were doing this without their employers' knowledge or permission.
And then the DEA threw out all the false reports, and only kept the "hits".
Don't you feel safer now?
So what about the employee who is coerced by the DEA to open the packages that are entrusted to them, and document the contents for anything "suspicious"? The employee (UPS, FedEx, Post Office, etc) signed a contract that explicitly prohibits this type of activity. The employee and the DEA both work within a country bound by the Constitution, which says everyone has an inalienable right to privacy, and any police agency needs Probable Cause to investigate anyone for any reason. So now the DEA has compelled private individuals, private and public companies, and government employees, to commit unconstitutional acts. NOW you should feel unsafe.
If you don't have anything to hide then I'd say, theoretically, you should feel safer. Personally having tracked my own metrics correlating to large-media centers of projection - seeing the stark contrast in what they are covering now compared to a month ago... I feel much less safe, to say the least. the divisiveness of media is going to bring ruin to the people before any breaches of constitutional rights. The pen is much mightier than the sword. The media is not run by the people. It is run by individuals who must propagate, elevate, and harness a position that ensures their growth. They, despite all their spin over the facts, and how they justify their position through viewership, are not fair or balanced whatsoever. mark my words.
This has nothing to do with the media. At issue here is a spy agency hiring people behind their employers back, to do things that are strictly forbidden in their employment contracts, and specifically forbidden by the Constitution. A FedEx employee cannot open a package and survey the contents, then button it back up, and ship it on to its destination. However this is exactly what the DEA did, compromising the company, the employee, and illegally gathering information on people who were not under investigation. The law is pretty straight forward and simple on this subject: You are innocent until proven guilty, and the legal forces cannot just pick you out at random and investigate you to see if you have done anything wrong. That's just Privacy 101 in our democracy. The police "must have Probable Cause" to begin investigating anyone for anything. They can't just rifle around in your stuff until they find something suspicious and then investigate you for it. And the "if you don't have anything to hide" school of logic is easily refuted with grade school-level logic. Don't make me school you like a 5th grader.
how did you come upon this information? If you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough. The constitution was meant to be a living document, I know friends who interpret the constitution much differently than I do. Media has balkanized everyone, and the risk media presents today is far greater than this unconstitutional behavior by the U.S. government. I'm defending the law only so far as it is intended, and while fundamental amendments are actively denounced by the media, I attack them on the grounds that their covering is not credible as a source of news. I am a conspiracy theorist, after all. People, like it or not, are far more co-dependent upon technology today than they are upon their government. Look at the popular topics present in culture, and the way they are transferred. Centralized hubs for propagating information are becoming synonymous with legislation. Conversation is now dependent upon infrastructure solely propped up by individuals and their (often hidden) agendas. I wish KB didn't have me blocked now. I know he has a lot of experience with cloud-based social archetypes. The position of the government today in comparison to the sphere of influence media has is the lesser of two evils (imo). The bias today in media has promoted a rupturing within society down to the fundamental values of our country. I'm not dogging the 1st amendment. But looking at the constitution as a living document, the freedom of speech is being circumvented by the snowballing of media-tech. On paper it is revolutionary, but look at the degree of social engagement today. I've met a lot of socially hyperactive persons, who have zero concept of a reality outside of the spheres they chose to follow in the cloud.... stagnation in my humble opinion. (and something something, space is the answer).This has nothing to do with the media.
If I am interpreting your question - and its intended implications - properly, you are saying, "Hey goobster, you believe what you believe because of the slant of the media outlet you consumed the information through." Which is wrong, in general, and specifically in this case. The media is an interpretive layer between you and the actual information. They contextualize and package information, and present it via their publishing methods. The (reputable) media doesn't make things up. They see a situation, a report, a NOUN of some sort, and then they interpret that person/place/thing and package it to make it into a story. But the same data that reporter reported on is available to you to scrutinize yourself and make your own decisions about. Their information sources are not proprietary. (And when they have proprietary sources (see: Snowden), they aren't proprietary once the information comes out. Others will pick up that information and report on it using their own story frameworks and interpretations.) It honestly frightens me that you are ignorant of, and clearly do not use, original sources, and instead suck at the teat of media. What the media provide is not information. It is story. A packaged product that delivers on specifically defined goals. If you are unaware of this, and truly believe the supposition you made above that my information comes solely from media sources, then we really don't have anything else to talk about. That's just willful ignorance of the topic on your part, and leaves us no space for conversation on the actual issue at hand. This has nothing to do with the media.
how did you come upon this information?
you're totally right - I'm speaking of the entire scope of media and it's strength relative to the position it held as it was represented hundreds of years ago in the constitution. I'm interpreting the trends, not extrapolating my opinion off of media sources. Thanks for your feedback. I'm clearly not going to entertain the idea of sharing more of what I think with you.