+Justice said:
Evil Eye said:
I don't think you need any equipment to take a solid guess at what someone wearing a tinfoil hat is thinking.
yet it's been proven over and over again that those "crazy nut-jobs" were actually right about a lot of government conspiracies, especially with the cia/nsa, and the ones that thought those "nut-bags" were wrong were incorrect... but nonetheless, people like to forget that fact...
who's the "nut-bags" now?
truth is truth no matter how unbelievable it might be to some or most...
Again, and I believe this has come up in other threads....
"Truth" is evidently a subjective term, and the object thereof can be manipulated as needed.
Very few topics under the general topic of humanity are absolute, black and white, right and wrong, yes and no.
Our present topic will serve nicely.
Government surveillance of law abiding private citizens is Wrong.
UNLESS, there is reason to believe those very citizens are planning a crime against other law abiding citizens.
How do you find out if Mr. and Mrs. Smith are building car bombs in their spare time? Well, maybe Ms. Jones 'dropped a dime' on them and tipped off the authorities.
So the authorities start going through the Smith's garbage can.
Oh, but it turns out, Ms. Jones is jealous because Mrs. Smith got a new fur coat for her birthday, now there is suspicion that the tip is bogus.
Suddenly the water is murky, there is some odd stuff in the trash. The Smith's may indeed be planning on blowing up a Chinese restaurant because they don't like General Tso's chicken. Or instead, they might be cooking meth by the kilo. Or doing nothing at all, and the trash is just trash that looks funny, like trash does once in awhile.
Do the "Federales" have to wait until there are fortune cookies scattered all over the parking lot, which may never happen, or just ignore the tip and hope no cab drivers OD on badly made drugs?
If they raid their two bedroom ranch and find drugs instead of bombs, is the bust legal? They were looking for nitroglycerine and instead found a cache of Sudafed? Or, even worse, they kick in the door and shoot the Smith's dog, and NOTHING untoward was going on. Then what?
The Channel 6 helicopter is over the Smith's house, what's the "breaking news headline" going to say?