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Comment by adekok | Hacker News Reader

> I think that all these NSA problems show bad management. They should be reorganized, or maybe even abandoned. They cost more than they deliver, and even costed us our privacy.

I.e. the average citizen.

Q: Is the NSA there to support the average citizen, or are they there to support the bureaucracy / power structures?

Q: depending on the previous answer, does your security or privacy matter to the NSA?

>Probably they are still breaking US and international laws on that.

Do the people who enforce the law get punished when they break it? On the whole, I don't think that's a clear "Yes". More of a "maybe, sometimes".

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I'll see your "maybe, sometimes", and raise you a "rarely, if ever".

In practice, the penalty is not only rarely applied; but worse, those seeking to improve the situation are scared, threatened or imprisoned.

>Do the people who enforce the law get punished when they break it?

In a democracy they do ...

Democracy is technically orthogonal to this issue. If the rule of law is firmly established in the country, people who do illegal things get punished. This is equally possible in well-organized dictatorships as in democracies.

I will grant that there is a strong correlation between (the presence of) rule of law and democracy, but it's debatable in which way a causal relationship might flow or if they might both be caused by something else. (For example, economic prosperity seems to help)

Surely a dictatorship is necessarily contrary to rule of law as at least one person is not bound by the law?

Meanwhile, in a democracy, I can see you could have group not under the rule of law _iff_ any actions they take do not impact anyone who is going by the law, including an impact such as "gives an advantage or benefit to those under the law can't get". Otherwise the government whilst possibly being "by the people" would no longer be "for the people" but instead "for the preferred classes".

You could maybe finagle something that some people could do, that was illegal for others, but doesn't give the first group any benefit. But I don't think you can practically; so practically then democracy would be predicated on rule of law even if not technically required.

A dictatorship could conceivably alter the law such that whatever he/she does is not illegal, possibly even chinging the laws as he/she goes. If you're a dictator, changing the law need not be a long and difficult process.

I'll grant that in practice it is very difficult to have rule of law without democracy. It is interesting to think about as a "gedankenexperiment" though. :)

The example of dictatorship with a rule of law is Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew.

In what way is he dictator if he can be challenged and defeated in the courts? FWIW the Wikipedia page, on cursory view, only refers to him as part of political parties and having been elected: perhaps you can flesh it out a bit for someone not familiar with Singaporean history, thanks.

His party is a ruling party of Singapore since before independence, until 80s it won all seats in parliament. He was a prime minister for 30 years, current prime minister is his son.

Lee Kuan Yew was a benevolent dictator, except for his political opponents. Dictatorship is a spectrum :)

No. Rule of law is an inseparable part of democracy, you can't have one without the other.

Can you expand on this? I'm willing to grant that it is true in practice, but it is not at all clear to me that a benevolent, lawful dictatorship impossible in theory.

A dictator can be benevolent, but he's out of the Law's reach, or he wouldn't be a dictator.

If everybody must follow the same laws, and nobody can change the laws at will, you will get a democracy. If some people can steer lawmaking at will or law does not apply to them, it doesn't matter if you vote on public representatives, they won't be submitted to your wills.

In theory, yes. In practice, no.

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