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Comment on Obama Is Announcing His NSA Reforms Tomorrow - Use This Scorecard To Judge Themparent

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It's not about feeling shame. It's about political assassination and public ridicule.

Many important political figures have been involved with adulterated sex and illegal drugs. Mass surveillance can uncover these scandals and use them as leverage to coerce and blackmail. The FBI put MLK under mass surveillance, uncovered evidence of his sexual deviancy, and sent him threatening letters in an attempt to suppress his civil rights activism.

Your MLK example would be more convincing if it actually worked.

BTW, what is "adulterated sex"??? Adultery? Only seems to matter in the military, where it's still a crime and grounds for discharge, at least for officers. And for many Republican politicians, but certainly not all, Mark Sanford being only the latest infamous example I can recall.

Try again.

Your MLK example would be more convincing if it actually worked.

That has nothing to do with my example. I don't believe you are really that naive.

adul·ter·at·ed: to corrupt, debase, or make impure by the addition of a foreign or inferior substance or element;

You could have easily looked this up. You are being purposefully obtuse and it's not fooling anyone. I'll call a spade a spade.

It's one thing to blithely talk about the potential for blackmail; actual modern examples in today's "no shame" culture (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7070045) would be more useful. A failed attempt at blackmail or worse harms the case you're trying to make.

I could also add "look at the Abscam aftermath" if you think these potential targets are toothless.

And of course I know what adulterated means, I've just never seen that formulation with sex; Google comes up with 4,600 entries, perhaps I'm just behind the times. However I'd use "scandalous", which is in common use, and alliterates.

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