Quote (IceMage @ Apr 11 2019 01:36pm)
When Hannity and Trump say the campaign was spied on, do you think they are talking about authorized, lawful surveillance? Do you think anyone who watches Fox News think they mean authorized, lawful surveillance?
Let's stop playing stupid.
I'm not sure why you're hung up on the semantic distinction between 'spying' and 'surveillance', as if they aren't colloquially if not literally synonyms.
But its also suggesting a false dichotomy between malicious politically motivated spying on a campaign and authorized, lawful surveillance- when the past 3 years have demonstrated over and over and over again that the lines between lawful authority and malicious political influence are blurred beyond any distinction. When those in charge can manufacture bogus evidence to give themselves plausible deniability to conduct a campaign of wiretapping a political opponent, frothing at the mouth with their political vendetta and conspiring with one another about how best to abuse their authority- then its not an excuse if they technically had legal authority. When the ringleaders get busted for crossing the line and abusing their office and leaking and lying about it, when we find out after extensive review that there was no 'there' there, when we see a culture of political corruptness so endemic that it ousted the whole top leadership of the FBI for ethics violations- the difference between 'spying' and 'surveillence' is not black and white.