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Comment by boomboomsubban | Hacker News Reader

This article reminded me of how many damn agencies we have spying on us. People regularly talk about the FBI, CIA, and NSA but there are like ten other US intelligence agencies.

The US Intelligence Community contains 17 organizations, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Com... and that's not counting any state or local organizations that Blueleaks showed are doing similar things. Sure Google is making it seem normal to give up our information, but it's also hard to continue being angry when you hear that the DIA and DHS are also spying on us.

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While it is plausible for any of those agencies to spy on the domestic population, and it may definitely be possible that some of them need to be combined or removed, you must realize that any country will have such agencies as they have important roles, particularly for the military and law enforcement. It would be rather unwise if the FBI didn't have an intelligence branch because there's plenty of analysis to be gained from there, for example how drug cartels operate. Similarly, the DIA has an important job of accurately finding out the military capabilities of other countries. Whether they do bad/illegal things or not they are a necessary part of any government.

You're not making a great case by saying we need to stop the drug cartels that exist because of prohibition and keep track of the military capabilities of countries we probably sold arms to.

Neither of those things seem worth empowering a group to have the capability of spying on the domestic population.

How are you using the word spying here? Are you using it synonymously with the word surveillance? If the FBI conducts an investigation that may require surveillance do you consider that spying and therefore shouldn’t be allowed to do it?

Any surveillance should require specific warrants, with such requests automatically becoming public at some point. Basically follow the Fourth Amendment.

This is very wrong. Before mass communication no such thing existed and such surveillance will always end in the same way. You cannot build any sensible opposition anymore, you are already captured in a technocratic nightmare. Why would any power not research any possible opposition and dig up dirt. Even if it is faced with an opponent like Trump, where you wouldn't even need it, the establishment produced faked dossiers to discredit its opposition. You will never come back from this.

The threat from drug cartels cannot justify this and not only government intelligence knows who the stakeholders in this business are. A political solution could very well end cartels very effectively if desired.

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