Comment by Nadya | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Nadya | Hacker News Reader

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Due to the nature of such surveillance - there is little oversight over what is actually being done. Which means there is no promise anything is being done. As a citizen, is there any way for me to know for certain or must I have faith my government is working how it claims to work? I'll explain...

[Begin conspiracy theory]If a judge marks it unconstitutional or not or forbids them from doing it doesn't necessarily mean that the NSA stops. That only works if you have faith in your government.

A government set to maintain its own power, after being outed by a whistleblower, would seek to save face. Have judges "ban acts of surveillance" and distribute that knowledge to the general public while secretly maintaining the actions behind the curtains. With a smaller, more loyal/contained group to prevent future whistleblowers. [/End conspiracy theory]

If it is found that the NSA continued to keep/records phone records after being "forbidden from doing so" - who would be held responsible? Would it be the head of the NSA? Head of the specific surveillance department in charge of the program? How would they be "punished"? How would the government insure it doesn't happen again? Who provides oversight of the NSA, outside of the NSA?

James Clapper's congressional perjury will probably make the history books as an example of modern corruption. For a crime committed against the very core of American democracy, the press gave him a pass and the president gave him a promotion.

Maybe he blackmailed everyone using NSA data...

http://www.hasjamesclapperbeenindictedyet.com/

> Maybe he blackmailed everyone using NSA data

Even if he didn't, it's only a question of time until the NSA starts blackmailing everyone with NSA data.

I'm not American, so your politics are largely irrelevant to me, but as an American I would find it probably worth looking at Obama's stance on bulk surveillance over time. Has he flip-flopped?

If so, either he was persuaded by evidence of its effectiveness in preventing terrorist attacks on the US, or maybe he was persuaded by evidence of its effectiveness after being shown his last 10 years of internet searches, presented on a CD, lying next to the duplicate sitting in an envelope marked "To the Editor, New York Times".

If you live on Planet Earth, American politics are relevant to you, as distasteful as that thought might be.

He doesn't want a serious attack to happen on his watch. There's a strong incentive to do "everything possible" to prevent one. Very few people would reward him for reigning in his own power, but nearly everyone will blame if an attack happens.

> Has he flip-flopped?

Well... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BmdovYztH8

Clapper didn't get punished because he did his job. Lying and spying is what he's been paid and ordered to do. If he didn't commit perjury my guess is that he would have been disappeared. I'm not arguing for him or the system but I'm not at all shocked that it was swept under the rug.

And there are the reddit style down votes as expected...

For the record I'm not saying clapper was in the right or that he shouldn't face charges, but in a country where sanctioned torture is the norm why should unpunished perjury by an official from a spy agency be shocking?

The fact that to date nobody has been held responsible lends a great deal of credibility to your conspiracy theory. I'd be highly surprised if they were upset at what they did, I think they're mostly upset at being caught.

I think that's pretty much correct.

A lot of the problems here are simply about the inherent tensions with intelligence gathering. The default statements from such agencies pretty much has to be, "if you knew what I new, you'd be very afraid". And the default reply, now that "we" know they are not trustworthy, has to be, "bullshit".

Short of the NSA actually behaving as if civilian control over their operations was a thing, and doing so for a generation, I don't see how they regain the trust of folks they are ostensibly there to protect.

Which is a bit of a problem, assuming they care about such things.

>The fact that to date nobody has been held responsible lends a great deal of credibility to your conspiracy theory.

Do you mind explaining why you think that? I do not think it makes my theory any more credible.

My concern is that checks and balances rely on oversight. Oversight relies on motivation. There doesn't seem to be any motivation to provide oversight of the NSA.

Anyone in a position to provide oversight can easily be bribed. Want to snoop on your SO or a love interest? Bam. They now have a reason to "glance over" the surveillance and use it for their own personal gain. There is zero motivation other than "integrity" for ratting on the NSA while the individual stands to benefit by keeping their trap shut.

Also because there are always the apologetic pro-authoritarian government shills out there: Yes. I firmly believe that all levels and positions of government can be corrupted or bribed. That doesn't necessarily mean that they are all corrupt. But it cannot be discounted as a possibility.

It lends credibility because if the culprits are known (and they are) and what they did was found to be illegal (and it seems we crossed that particular line long ago) then they should be in court as defendants rather than be promoted.

It's not that there isn't any motivation to provide oversight, it's the exact opposite, there is a strong motivation to look the other way. If it weren't then there surely should have been a lot more fall-out from the Snowden leaks but in fact it is mostly a re-arranging and re-naming of some programs and making sure the next Snowden has a much harder time of doing it (and probably an even harder time of getting out of the US before tshtf).

This has nothing to do with corruption per-se, it has simply got to do with that plenty of what goes on without our knowledge can not stand the light of day and the amount of complicity is such that no government official will want to look too hard at what other departments are up to because they're up to their necks in it themselves.

And that's not just limited to the USA either, I fully expect every western democracy to be doing roughly the same thing only limited by capability to execute and budget.

Sad to see your comment downvoted, its not fair when you get hammered like that on a follow up question on your own comment. Bleh.

It's most likely due to my last paragraph and not the follow up question itself. :) Don't worry about it.

These questions don't even sound like a conspiracy theory to me -- I feel like it was yesterday that people were talking about how the NSA doesn't do any work on American soil at all, now the fight is whether they can collect literally every bit of communication in the country. It makes me sad to think that, at the end of the day, I have no faith that the government will do the right thing, and almost no faith that they'd even do the legal thing.

Maybe it's naive of me to be surprised, but until all this Snowden stuff it never occurred to me that it was possible for entire government organizations to just flout the law because nobody was watching.

This is the biggest problem isn't it? The lack of true oversight and accountability. First you have the Oversight Committee act more like NSA's Public Relations Office, and then when we actually have proof of abuses, they get protected or even promoted. This is what allows the abuses to continue and grow.

2nd Ammendment probably existed for such cases but in modern times it is probably ineffective in its letter.

We can however keep the spirit of 2nd amendment and fight against NSA by actively creating incentives for those people who are willing to shut down NSA. For example a candidate like Rand Paul should get enough support. It is not even necessary that this candidate should win, but once politicians realize that there is vote issue to be exploited they will bite the bait.

It is remarkable that the government wants to spy teenagers sharing nudes but cant prosecute Hillary Clinton who seem to have actually put sensitive information at danger.

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