Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance
politico.com
politico.com
The less charitable explanation, since it's hard to believe he fundamentally agrees deep down with these programs, is that he is just another politicians and the guaranteed political fallout from surveillance and drones was far less than the catastrophic career-ending political fallout from a major terrorist attack (after dismantling surveillance programs). He chose the option that he thought would give him a second term (and then a gold plated public speaking career after the White House).
I would say his gambit paid off. The right would never love him, the left had no one else and in any case they had fallen so deeply in love with the Idea of him.
It's probably more a symptom of how absolutely useless and ineffective at doing anything than consuming money to be elected for corporate interests the US congress has become.
I think at this point I might actually be better served by having representatives and senators selected at /random/ from the entire populace.
He definitely had enough power, but as steve19 points, he could have estimated that such actions would have probably lowered his chances for reelection.
If it was truly hidden from him... then who is to say he has the power to stop it?
That's it. That is democracy. Unless he had 'an offer he could not refuse', he is guilty of a lot of betrayal (apart from crimes he can commit from a presidential position).
He is not there to do physics, he has been given power to explicitly do what cannot be done without power. Apologetic my ass.
Out of how many candidates were you selecting? 300 million? Or just a few, with long political careers? You don't get to the point of being an actually electable candidate if you could stir up a real mess within the establishment.
Also, I have an inkling that the system is a sociopath pass filter; at any level of government the candidate who is slightly more immoral has improved chances. After a few iterations we have power lusting vampires in charge (the Cheneys, Clintons, ect.)
Candidates can and almost all do take an unlimited amount of money from private donors to fund their campaigns, likely in exchange for favourable legislation. Obama gathered $1072.6m like this in 2012. Obama owes his donors big time I would say.
Now that is the real question here. We as people do not think surveillance is bad. We clap for Batman and worry about Jack Bauer. That is the real insight here.
If they did not want Obama in office, you would not even have seen his name anywhere on screen or in print.
Democracy in its true form has never existed in history as it is not really sustainable for many kinds of reasons, that all lead to disasters (people tend to vote for what is only good for them short-term leading to long-term losses, too many different groups arguing over X and Y and Z leading to stand-stills, etc).
I'm not saying we have it good right now, but it was for a while (last 150 years). But nothing lasts forever and eventually all systems decline and collapse.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/04/30...
Yeah, Obama was low on political capital because he shot most of his wad at Obamacare, which didn't get as far as he wanted it, meaning that he loses political capital for losing relative to his goals. In this weak position, the thing to do is rally more political capital from the base... which he never did.
I also don't think we should retroactively punish behavior that they thought was legal and proper at the time. That seems like a bad precedent.
"I was just following orders" didn't cut it at Nuremberg either. The courts should have been allowed to test whether what they were doing was illegal or not, if it was legal then it is "just" a moral stain on the soul of America.
I'm sorry but the CIA torturers are war criminals, it doesn't matter about the relative aspect of it - there absolutes.
For the sake of a few thousand people, a fraction of those killed in gun violence for instance, the USA sacrificed any claim to moral superiority and probably created many more terrorists than were ever stopped. Home of the brave indeed. I'm British, in the military and a massive ally of the USA, but on this issue the lack of contrition exhibited is shameful.
Assuming he could get his party behind him.
The majority of voters have the representatives they want (approval rates for peoples' own Congresspeople are extremely high). If you keep in mind the demographics that bother to vote (my 65 year old mom, but not my 30 year old wife and I), they have the government they want too. My mom is super excited about Hilary and would vote for life imprisonment for drug dealing if anyone put it on a referendum.
If McCain had won in 2008 would the US have passed national health care reform?
The ACA is less than peanuts, since you have to buy the insurance yourself!
In fact, it's probably the ideal way to promote anyone in any setting. I'd make a few small adjustments, however. Rather than random selection, I'd like the pool of candidates to be reviewed by their peers and scored for ability, creativity, fairness, leadership -- whatever skills are appropriate in their realm. Then I'd like to see some sort of weighting applied to the random choice that favors the "best and the brightest" over the bottom dwellers.
And it goes without saying... no campaigning or re-election.
(1) The Republican and Democrat parties would just switch their efforts to getting people excluded from the random drawing, much as they currently aim to include or exclude people from voting. (2) After selections, the losing party would attack the random selection process. (3) Assuming the selection is allowed to go through without objection, the random person would be under the same duress that elected candidates have to accept bribes and kickbacks. (4) It's possible that the average citizen would be more prone to reap their rewards during their short term in office, rather than someone who's mindful of their full career.
I'm guessing you're just being flippant out of cynicism against the current system, but I'm a little over that line of thinking.
Well, abolish the parties too then. It's just citizens.
I'd abolish lobbies as official entities if it was up to me too.
Eh....not really. The problem these days is a disconnect from reality.
It seems like a sensible approach to me. Much like having members of a jury selected, it should be considered a civic duty and not a career path.
But when you go beyond Dunbar number, seeking popularity turns into game. Then it is matter of playing the game well. Which doesn't necessarily correlate with anything else.
Random selection from people who gathered 100 endorsements should get somewhat good results.
I truly don't believe this.
Any popular uprising that gets large enough, or loud enough, has the capacity to demand change. Sure, the corporate, moneyed interests will push their agenda as hard as possible to try to sway opinion (which isn't always misaligned with the public good, by the way). But at the end of the day politicians will do what they can to save their jobs. Most of them are just ordinary people, after all.
The fact of the matter is, the story of surveillance was sold to us as, "We're protecting you from another 9/11!", and there are many people who really believe that. It might even be true, who knows. Outside of the technorati in SV and urban centers (who, ironically, created the surveillance system), most people really don't give a damn about their digital privacy. Yet. If or when a sensational story happens that involves the "common man" being boned by surveillance, the tide will shift. I'd put money on it.
But possibly not within what people call "the system." It's entirely plausible that some things are "kept safe" from the whims of the people.
I don't really think that's possible, because there is no difference between "the people" and..."the not-people"?
Every time there's any discussion about politics or power, there's the inevitable topic of "us" vs "them". It's always insightful to ask people where they draw the line between the categories of people. Is it all politicians? I mean, is there some secret indoctrination, like Scientology, whereby the minute you reach a certain level in your political career, the "real world" is explained to you? How is it that these secrets are kept?
For many Americans it's the "1%ers" who receive the disdain. That is, until they realize that a significant number of themselves are global 1%ers. I have a personal friend who often rails about the "global elite", meanwhile he is a SMB owner with a multi-million dollar net worth who isn't -- how shall I say it -- especially "diligent" when it comes to offering his low-skill employees the best opportunities.
All this is to say that, yes, often times the incentives of the capitalists and the workers are averse to each other. But "the system" maintains the balance, in that one party can't subjugate the other extremely without personal harm. In other words, "the rich" can't take all the money, because that leaves no demand for product, and eventually "the poor" say @#$% it, and start beheading the royals. At least that's what history tells me.
In fact, that's the reason that the US is a republic, not a democracy - to keep things (somewhat) safe from the whims of the people, and yet to create a system where, if the people want it enough, they'll get it.
And yes, if the people want it enough, they will in fact get it in the US. It's just that the media amplifies screaming. Those who scream are much more often in the minority than the media makes them appear.
Again, I don't believe it.
It is flawed? Sure. Can it be improved? Most certainly. But you can't point to a few glaring problems (which I agree, there are) and compare to some hypothetical ideal without acknowledging the many things the political system gets right, as evidenced by America being the richest, most powerful nation in world history.
In any democratic system there will be winners and losers. Just by the sheer number of decisions that are made, you're going to end up on the losing end of many. If you're really unlucky, you might be on the losing side of a ton. From that perspective, I'm sure the process looks terrible. But that doesn't mean it's broken or worthless. In the long-run, things do seem to get done. I think history bears that out. Yes, I'm a long-run optimist on the economy and humanity in general.
That does not follow. First, if you actually allow that America is the 'richest' and 'most powerful nation', it doesn't prove it's somehow the best democracy, or even a good democracy, or even a democracy at all. It doesn't even prove that it's good at capitalism or corporatism, it just doesn't follow. It's like saying god exists, the prove is in his creation.
The 'glaring problems' are utter failures of democracy; the representatives simply don't represent the will or the interest of the people. Of course the will of the people is bent via media, lack of education, religion, anti-intellectualism and American-History-folklore against their own interests.
But note, some of the systemic issues of the electoral process are, just as examples, the FPTP voting system, the ludicrous campaign financing system, pervasive and completely legal corruption that allows gerry mandering.
The 'hypothetical ideals', i.e. actual democracies, exist in other countries.
America is a great place, with many smart people, and many, many interesting and important contributions to science, technology and culture. But it's governance is a plutocracy at best, and proto-fascism at worst (the original meaning of that word, not the one referring to Nazis). But as long as most rara about the best nation on earth, they'll be happily exploited and nothing changes.
True. The German people voted for change and got Hitler. America voted for change and got Nixon and Carter and Reagan and Bush Jr and Obama.
Wait. Was change supposed to be GOOD?
What does that even mean?
A little over half of the country voted for the guy who wasn't promising to bomb Iran and put Sarah Palin in line for the presidency.
And four years later, a little over half of the country voted for the guy who wasn't calling 47% of us leeches and takers.
I knew what I was getting when I voted for Obama, twice, because the alternatives were all just awful beyond words.
I knew what I was getting when I voted for Obama
I've been wondering about people who felt this way. From my perspective, it appears that people in this situation should be very disappointed, because (it appears to me that) many of the promises weren't delivered. In particular, Obama was quite specific in his criticism of GWB for wars without Congressional approval, yet he himself has done this multiple times now. And one of the themes of his candidacy was to be open and transparent, yet promises like "all legislation will be posted for X days online before I'll sign any bill" didn't even survive a week into his presidency. (these are just two obvious examples, not a complete list)
I can understand why you'd be hopeful going into that. But today, seeing how that's all played out, what are your feelings?
What mattered to me, in opposition of the other guy: Mccain joked about bombing Iran and inflicted Palin on us. (There was probably more at the time, but that was 7 years ago!) Romney actually never seemed like a terrible candidate or politician to me, and in another time I don't think we'd have been so bad off under a Romney presidency, but I still think we were better off for voting in Obama for a second term.
I'm sure there were a lot of campaign promises I wasn't really paying attention to, and that stuff obviously wouldn't matter to me now.
I also think a lot more can be done at the local level, and to a lesser extent, the state level, in terms of dealing with policies that actually matter in our lives.
For all the talk about federal government intrusion in our day-to-day, I think it's probably 99% bullshit.
This isn't a rhetorical way of saying that there aren't any. I expect that there are valid reasons to be silent in such a position. although I can't think of what they might be. Perhaps the chances of success in six months seems better if he's silent now than if he talks loudly now? But what could that assessment be based on?
Random reps wouldn't work because the public is largely uneducated and malleable to propaganda. Maybe opt-in random with a series of civic examinations would work.
That was how democracy was initially conceived and practiced in ancient Athens too (at least for some public positions).
Any rational person would consider preventing a major terrorist attack far more important than keeping their job for four years. People with the opposite motivation do exist, but generally I'd consider them pretty close to evil. Someone like that would probably have had a different 2 terms to Obama, in my opinion.
Elections are cutthroat, and to become president you have to have won many of them. It could be argued that an evil person has slightly better of odds of getting through. Raise that to the power of the half dozen elections needed to become president and you end up with Cheneys, Hilarys, and the like...
Why do you say it's hard to believe he doesn't agree with these programs?
Isn't it also possible that he chose the option he thought was right for the country?
Of course, it isn't that clear cut and there were probably many other things weighing in, but I wouldn't discount it.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/jul/14/...
> But recently the Senate again took up legislation that would let the phone companies off the hook. It would also expand the government's domestic spying powers.
> Obama supported an amendment that would have stripped telecom immunity from the measure. But after that amendment failed, Obama declined to filibuster the bill. In fact, he voted for it. It passed the Senate, 69-28, on July 9.
The point being that all of this just makes logical sense given their (essentially impossible) mission of preventing all future terrorist attacks, whether or not you agree with it from an ethical perspective. It makes an argument against the NSA's methods difficult without hard evidence that threats to the country are either overinflated or could not possibly be stopped without surreptitious methods.
I thought the article was arguing that he in fact did agree with those programs so long as they had a sound legal basis. In criticizing the Bush surveillance programs, people complained that they were (i) bad and (ii) illegal. The article argues that Obama thought that once (ii) was fixed, his work was done.
For example, it would be more important for President Obama to forcibly make a large portion of private industry to work on a super laser to defend against alien invasions, because alien invasions would cause more political fallout than not defending against them.
This is the mental problem with forecasting black-swan events, then basing your strategy on the outsized risk of those events. You can end up justifying insane behavior due to an event you have convinced yourself will happen, even if the odds are infinitesimal.
Most people do not walk away from power. George Washington and Cincinnatus were rare exceptions, and not at all the norm.
There is an actual official post in the party called "Chief Whip". [1]
In the original series "The House of Cards" from the BBC in the 1990's [2], Ian Richarson plays the chief whip. Whilst his primary role is officially supposed to be the formal request of party members to attend votes, he is busy collating secret dossiers on the various party member's dubious personal lives that (when required) can be used as leverage against them.
The NSA bulk surveillance programs are this system in automatic overdrive. The enable the powerful (who control these systems) to abuse and corrupt democracy. The only "safeguards" being a secret court, with secret judgements by judges that can also be corrupted.
I'll give the NSA and the US one thing. They appear to give (at least) lip service to the idea of privacy of American citizens. In the case of the UK, the government is desperate to monitor it's own citizens' internet activities first and foremost. What's sad is that the UK public have pretty much passed the point of no return.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Whip
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Cards_(UK_TV_series)
What makes the British Whips (and party discipline in general) so much more powerful is that in the UK, candidates are almost completely dependent on their party for campaign financing. By contrast, in the US a candidate usually gets campaign donations directly from supporters, so a competitor from the same party supported by the party establishment is less likely to win. This is why, for example, the Tea Party in the US took the form that it did (insurgent candidates competing in primaries against the establishment's choice), whereas in the British system equivalent grassroots insurgencies are all-or-nothing affairs that target the central decision-making bodies and leadership of the party (think Jeremy Corbyn).
John Edgar Hoover did this with the FBI almost 100 years ago. Why would it have stopped? There's no reason for them to have stopped blackmailing folks. In fact there are several buildings bearing his name in DC
The only question is whether they use this kind of information to get what they want. I'd say they probably do, via the axiom that power corrupts. This also explains why people like Clapper and (now ret.) Gen. Alexander can go into a congressional inquiry, lie to the panel's faces, be caught in the lie at the time or later, and still keep their jobs.
I remember it being really good, you should read it if you have the time.
> The officials were there to tell Obama about secret surveillance programs—including the fact that the National Security Agency was collecting Americans’ domestic phone records in bulk.
Funny... that was about 3 years before he denied the Feds were collecting anything. And then corrected himself to admit they were collecting metadata.
This lawyerly approach to government had some surprising
consequences for civil libertarians
realpolitik is far more messier than lofty moralism, the US never had a clean slate, ever. just like any other country.
and for the posters bitching about the sham democracy in the US - right, but still people are dying in other countries to achieve just of a fraction of the freedom, safety and liberty present in the USofA.
if elections changed anything they would be banned, right?
which they ARE, in a lot of places on earth.
as long as a president here is limited to two terms the systems works. erdogan, putin, see for other places where this core principle gets violated and what it does to the system.