Comment by tialaramex | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tialaramex | Hacker News Reader

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They're spooks. This is what they're for. The constraints are at best just theatre, obviously their adversaries aren't going to obey these rules, and they know that so if they are to be effective (and if they aren't why would they exist at all?) they will also disobey these rules.

The purpose of such rules in practice is to help the American public to sleep at night despite having tacitly authorised a nightmare. You know the scene in Casablance, even if you've never watched the movie - it has permeated our culture Captain Renault claims to be shocked to discover that the club is being used for gambling, undercut by a croupier giving him his winnings.

If you don't want spooks to do what spooks do, don't pass a law saying it mustn't happen, don't vote for a government that promises they'll exercise oversight over the spooks to prevent it. Just get rid of the spooks. Congress could, if the American people wanted - which they do not - abolish these agencies entirely. They'd just cease to exist and while I'm sure some small scale abuses would continue you just can't run programmes to snoop these huge volumes on pocket change, and companies would be less likely to co-operate with informal requests than with the Department of Justice.

But as much as they enjoy bluster, Americans are afraid, and so the spooks will certainly continue to be authorised and "outrages" will happen when once in a while it is revealed that the spooks are doing what spooks do but nothing actually changes. Eventually it'll get to be so routine the The Onion has a pre-built news article for it like for the mass shootings.

Sorry but I disagree (partially). Where I agree is that covert agents operating abroad are by-definition criminals. Foreign governments don't give permission for spies to be present, and they break all sorts of their nations host laws while there. Morally this is questionable... if you believe that 'all men' have 'certain unalienable rights' then surely those should apply to how you treat all humans on earth and not only your own citizens; but most countries and their citizens accept the cat and mouse game that is spying abroad.

Where I disagree is that these powers are unchecked and tolerated when used on a country's own citizens. The mandate of both of these organizations is crystal fucking clear - do bad shit abroad but not to your own citizens. There has to be oversight of this, that oversight has to be built into the system, and there have to be consequences. Knowingly collect data on US citizens: go to jail. Fail to regularly audit whether or not you are inadvertently collecting data on US citizens: go to jail. Torture, steal, trespass, hack? Jail. Know that someone has done this and look the other way? Jail. But what about domestic terrorism, or important exceptions? No problem! Get a warrant.

This whole business of "we don't want spies to be afraid to their job" is bullshit... As a business owner it would be much easier to not pay my taxes, defraud investors, avoid safety regulations, and have my competition murdered. But I don't do it (and I'm not preoccupied with dread about it). Either our shared values (e.g. the constitution) are important or they are not.

At a tangent to your (marvelous) response:

> But what about domestic terrorism, or important exceptions? No problem! Get a warrant.

I've heard about accounts of police investigations being aided with access to the mass surveillance data (through the FBI, I believe). It never goes to a FISA court, and the police use the information to develop a pretext for a warrant.

So even with a warrant, the power may still be unchecked. I believe it reasonable to conclude that conducting mass surveillance can't reliably done without abridging constitutional rights. I guess that leads us back to the unresolved conversation from early in this century about the trade-offs between liberty, privacy, and security.

The practice of obtaining warrants with artificial but believable evidentiary basis to conceal the illicit means by which the basis was actually obtained is called "parallel construction", and the intentional practice or facilitation of it should be a felony with a maximum penalty of imprisonment of up to 50 years (2.5x evidence tampering, and I'd be fine with a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years). It is a heinous perversion of the public trust, knowingly undertaken by unchecked law enforcement personnel to wilfully conceal unconstitutional acts. Parallel construction is a stain upon the very fabric of our nation... Or, you know, business as usual.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

Parallel construction combined with the repeal of Habeus Corpus is reason enough to be rioting in the streets.

> do bad shit abroad but not to your own citizens

Well, yeah, that's the entire point of the Five Eyes: each member can spy on the others and share the results with the rest of them, but if one member were to spy on its own people, perish the thought! That would be unconstitutional!

Backwardly? Media and the wrong picture of a "good america" ? ^^

> Congress could, if the American people wanted - which they do not - abolish these agencies entirely.

Unfortunately that's not now power works, not even in a relatively free society such as the US. How often does the public actually get their way when it comes to policy? Once elected, representatives will almost certainly follow the same agenda - work hard to maintain power and privilege for the existing ruling class. Secret services with discretionary power are an invaluable tool in this endeavor.

> But as much as they enjoy bluster, Americans are afraid [...]

Are Americans really afraid? Or is it that Americans feel comfort in having the meanest dog on the block, even if that dog sometimes nips its master?

When I expressed horror and outrage at the notion that the TSA can go through your luggage, an American friend told me "well if it keeps us safe...", so I'd say "afraid".

First of all, it's not at all clear that this implies fear as I understand the emotion.

More tangentially, as I usually fly outside the US, it's fair to say that this is far from just an American reality. For example, the Dublin Airport even explicitly mentions that hold baggage may also be searched by hand on their website: > "Both your carry-on luggage and check-in baggage will be checked by means of detection equipment and may also be subject to a hand search." [1]

I have a hard time believing that airports with any restrictions on what check-in/hold baggage may contain (virtually all of them, if not all) don't have any provisions for searching bags, although maybe I'm wrong here.

[1] https://www.dublinairport.com/at-the-airport/security

Maybe they have provisions, but the only time I've had my luggage searched was in the US.

That doesn’t sound like fear but acceptance.

Although, what country doesn’t have the ability to dig through your luggage? In my personal experience, Europe is the only place that I’ve seen armed officers dig through 100% of the bags on a flight while the entire airport watched.

If you have a family member that watches Fox News and then check some of their primetime programming out, you'll see both the fear and where that fear comes from.

And you could do the same with CNN and MSNBC. Don't single out one source, they're all peddling fear just in different ways.

Whenever news org echo dire Gov warnings

[1] without vetting the evidence (or highlighting the lack thereof) &

[2] without the context of how often these turn out to be true/false

they're part of the FUD Generation Machine

I don't really disagree but I will single out Fox News because it's completely valid to do so. They are a much more blatant offender than any other outlet and essentially wrote the playbook on fear-mongering for political gain in this country. It's silly to deny the extent of their influence on the media landscape in your desire to seem equitable.

Fox News did indeed set us on that path initially, but it's also silly to deny the extent of the rest of the networks' buy-in into this playbook.

Fox News' use of the "FOX NEWS ALERT" interruptions and the fear mongering were quickly replicated by all the other major cable networks in an attempt to compete. All of the networks were complicit in selling us into war with lies,

I think it's really more silly and uninformed to single out Fox News, given the current media ecology and political climate. Today's CNN and MSNBC will do things that are simply treacherous, making Fox News look tame by comparison. We're in a new era now.

Fear and sensationalism sells news - yes. And Fox, CNN, and MSNBC are guilty of that - yes. But that does not mean they are in any way equivalent or as-bad-as-each-other. They are not.

Fox News uses fear - and the degree at which their resident pundits use falsehoods and misrepresent the truth - and use fear as a partisan tool to push one single political party - is far beyond CNN and MSNBC.

Huge parts of these agencies' activities have been moved off the books or to private entities. It's not as simple a matter as just cutting off their funding anymore.

The off-the-books money that the CIA uses to pay those shady Raytheon subsidiaries doesn't appear out of thin air. It may be several layers removed and cycled through a few South American laundromats, but its genesis is always the U.S. Treasury.

The genesis is often illegal activities of various kinds, especially drug trafficking. Although I agree that is probably not enough money to run a mass surveillance operation on the scale of the NSA in perpetuity.

Sure, but the money still has to come from somewhere, and that's from appropriations authorized by Congress.

Now, if you believe that these agencies have amassed and hoarded enough of the money they've already been given that they now have an endowment that can perpetually fund their activities, then yes, that would mean you really can't stop them. But I'd find it hard to believe that's the case; what they do is not cheap, and I'd be surprised if there's all that much left over after they spend their yearly budget on regular operations.

If Congress voted to completely defund these agencies, they'd go away. Not immediately, and I'm sure there will still be some in power who create limited shadow agencies that run on much, much smaller budgets, but they can't operate at the scale they do now without continued funding.

I'm not so sure they would go away without a fight. These are people who gave grown accustomed to breaking laws (including US laws), fomenting coups, and even assassinations in order to gain control. If Congress was seriously threatening to abolish them, Congressmen might start having a sharp uptick in "accidents". That's the problem with getting in bed with dubious characters.

Oh, certainly. But I find it hard to believe that these agencies would keep the support of the public if they started assassinating Congresspeople. At some point there's too much opposition to make it feasible to continue on.

Really, though, I'd expect them to maintain Congress' support through non-lethal means. Bribery, blackmail, stuff like that. A Congressperson in your pocket is much more useful than a suspiciously-dead body.

But still, if US citizens as a whole really wanted them gone, they'd just continue voting in people who will take a hard line against funding them.

I don't expect something like this to come to pass, mind you, but it's possible.

https://www.iqt.org/

Not sure what your point is. Sure, the 3-letter agencies have an investment arm, but the capital used for those investments is a tiny fraction of their operating budget. And that capital still comes from Congress' appropriations.

The parent previously offered that three letter agencies would require an investment arm to sustain themselves. In that context, I offered that they had one. I can't claim any knowledge about the profitability of that group or what portion of funding is provided by that group which is relevant and you have added perspective on. I have personally experienced InQTel as an alternative funding mechanism which argues against it being a serious funding source.

> Now, if you believe that these agencies have amassed and hoarded enough of the money they've already been given that they now have an endowment that can perpetually fund their activities, then yes, that would mean you really can't stop them. But I'd find it hard to believe that's the case; what they do is not cheap, and I'd be surprised if there's all that much left over after they spend their yearly budget on regular operations.

What do you think In-Q-Tel[1] is for? It's about ensuring that the TLAs will exist in perpetuity regardless of Congress.

1. http://www.iqt.org

"The money has to come"

And the hope, with all this surrounding us, that somebody must made exclusive findings ? P-:

The old "We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." - anon

>and if they aren't why would they exist at all?

Reminds me of Lisa simpsons rock which protects against tigers.

I read that as "if they aren't going to be effective". Not a claim that they are effective, but a claim that they're intended to be effective.

> >and if they aren't why would they exist at all?

> Reminds me of Lisa simpsons rock which protects against tigers.

Reminds me of Ernie's banana in the ear:

https://youtu.be/zwsmqZLCKPE

Certainly you could have spooks and not grant them unlimited power.

And, in the case of bulk collection, it's quite obviously made them worse at doing what they're supposed to be doing.

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