It's not that hard. The first step is to remove the extremists. We have a massive surveillance regime in place that we are told is to keep us safe. How about you use it to keep us safe by finding...
The U.S. military on Wednesday acknowledged it was unsure about how to address white nationalism and other extremism in its ranks
It's not that hard. The first step is to remove the extremists. We have a massive surveillance regime in place that we are told is to keep us safe. How about you use it to keep us safe by finding the white nationalists and other extremists in the military and remove them? That seems really easy. You know the web sites these people hang out on. You probably have access to military members' DNS queries, emails and chat logs, at the very least when communicating over the government's network or using the governments equipment, which many of them are sure to have done while visiting extremist sites. It's ridiculous.
I don't think it's that easy at all. There are certainly people in the military who have made statements that could warrant their immediate dismissal. Those are the easy ones though. The hard part...
How about you use it to keep us safe by finding the white nationalists and other extremists in the military and remove them? That seems really easy
I don't think it's that easy at all. There are certainly people in the military who have made statements that could warrant their immediate dismissal. Those are the easy ones though. The hard part is, what do you do with the grey-territory ones? People who maybe visited a few sites that their buddy mentioned, but decided it wasn't for them? And the one guy who doesn't post anything racist on social media, but follows a few racists on Twitter? What shade of gray gets dismissed, what shade gets reprimanded, and what gets noted for later but no action taken? These are the difficult questions.
I want to be very clear, I'm not arguing against making the attempt to root white nationalism out of the military. However this has the possibility of turning into an real witch hunt (as opposed to the "WiTCh HuNt of Trump) similar to the red scare of the 50's-60's. I think they have the public sentiment behind them to do this, and they're being careful to keep it.
Yes, that will be more difficult. It just feels like the government is standing around looking at their shoes and asking, "Well, what are we supposed to do?" I feel like they could have done much...
The hard part is, what do you do with the grey-territory ones? ... These are the difficult questions.
Yes, that will be more difficult. It just feels like the government is standing around looking at their shoes and asking, "Well, what are we supposed to do?" I feel like they could have done much of this before the insurrection. But as @teaearlgraycold said, they probably weren't incentivized to for various reasons.
I don't think this is the right attitude to take. It is wrong to have a surveillance regime, and it is wrong for people to suffer consequences based on the results of a surveillance regime. Those...
We have a massive surveillance regime in place that we are told is to keep us safe. How about you use it to keep us safe by finding the white nationalists and other extremists in the military and remove them?
I don't think this is the right attitude to take.
It is wrong to have a surveillance regime, and it is wrong for people to suffer consequences based on the results of a surveillance regime. Those two are separate and independent. It's not a matter of ‘since we already surveil people to this degree, we might as well use the information we've gleaned’.
And, visiting an extremist site is not an indication that somebody is an extremist.
(That being said, reading employees' email and chat logs is perfectly acceptable and should be expected; and they should be held accountable for anything untoward written therein.)
For the record, I totally agree. However, the lie they keep telling us is that it's to keep us safe. If they can't use it to keep us safe from domestic terrorists among our troops, then it shows...
It is wrong to have a surveillance regime, and it is wrong for people to suffer consequences based on the results of a surveillance regime.
For the record, I totally agree. However, the lie they keep telling us is that it's to keep us safe. If they can't use it to keep us safe from domestic terrorists among our troops, then it shows how ridiculous the lie is.
People in the military have fewer rights than civilians, but there is still a legal system. Running a legal system so it doesn’t devolve into totalitarianism might be harder than you think? Intent...
People in the military have fewer rights than civilians, but there is still a legal system. Running a legal system so it doesn’t devolve into totalitarianism might be harder than you think?
Intent isn’t all that easy to determine from DNS queries, particularly if they’re not running an ad blocker. You would also want to be wary of Rickrolling, or honest curiosity about what the bad guys are up to.
A problem with going after bad guys while being unconcerned about justice is that if you make a mistake then it will probably show up in the newspapers and result in Congressional hearings.
They’re just fucking lazy and don’t want to do the work and are scared they’ll lose “good” soldiers because of it. It’s like women in the military, they were never worried about a woman’s ability...
They’re just fucking lazy and don’t want to do the work and are scared they’ll lose “good” soldiers because of it. It’s like women in the military, they were never worried about a woman’s ability to hold and shoot a rifle...they were worried about all the scandal, scrutiny, and paperwork that would happen thanks to all the rape and sexual assault charges.
They just don’t want to deal with it all, same for rooting out these assholes. They don’t want to lose good fighting men just because of a little sexual assault or white supremacy.
It's not that hard. The first step is to remove the extremists. We have a massive surveillance regime in place that we are told is to keep us safe. How about you use it to keep us safe by finding the white nationalists and other extremists in the military and remove them? That seems really easy. You know the web sites these people hang out on. You probably have access to military members' DNS queries, emails and chat logs, at the very least when communicating over the government's network or using the governments equipment, which many of them are sure to have done while visiting extremist sites. It's ridiculous.
I don't think it's that easy at all. There are certainly people in the military who have made statements that could warrant their immediate dismissal. Those are the easy ones though. The hard part is, what do you do with the grey-territory ones? People who maybe visited a few sites that their buddy mentioned, but decided it wasn't for them? And the one guy who doesn't post anything racist on social media, but follows a few racists on Twitter? What shade of gray gets dismissed, what shade gets reprimanded, and what gets noted for later but no action taken? These are the difficult questions.
I want to be very clear, I'm not arguing against making the attempt to root white nationalism out of the military. However this has the possibility of turning into an real witch hunt (as opposed to the "WiTCh HuNt of Trump) similar to the red scare of the 50's-60's. I think they have the public sentiment behind them to do this, and they're being careful to keep it.
Yes, that will be more difficult. It just feels like the government is standing around looking at their shoes and asking, "Well, what are we supposed to do?" I feel like they could have done much of this before the insurrection. But as @teaearlgraycold said, they probably weren't incentivized to for various reasons.
It's as if the extremists are also at the ranks that can stop such an exodus from happening.
I don't think this is the right attitude to take.
It is wrong to have a surveillance regime, and it is wrong for people to suffer consequences based on the results of a surveillance regime. Those two are separate and independent. It's not a matter of ‘since we already surveil people to this degree, we might as well use the information we've gleaned’.
And, visiting an extremist site is not an indication that somebody is an extremist.
(That being said, reading employees' email and chat logs is perfectly acceptable and should be expected; and they should be held accountable for anything untoward written therein.)
For the record, I totally agree. However, the lie they keep telling us is that it's to keep us safe. If they can't use it to keep us safe from domestic terrorists among our troops, then it shows how ridiculous the lie is.
People in the military have fewer rights than civilians, but there is still a legal system. Running a legal system so it doesn’t devolve into totalitarianism might be harder than you think?
Intent isn’t all that easy to determine from DNS queries, particularly if they’re not running an ad blocker. You would also want to be wary of Rickrolling, or honest curiosity about what the bad guys are up to.
A problem with going after bad guys while being unconcerned about justice is that if you make a mistake then it will probably show up in the newspapers and result in Congressional hearings.
They’re just fucking lazy and don’t want to do the work and are scared they’ll lose “good” soldiers because of it. It’s like women in the military, they were never worried about a woman’s ability to hold and shoot a rifle...they were worried about all the scandal, scrutiny, and paperwork that would happen thanks to all the rape and sexual assault charges.
They just don’t want to deal with it all, same for rooting out these assholes. They don’t want to lose good fighting men just because of a little sexual assault or white supremacy.
It’s sad.