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Comment by insickness | Hacker News Reader

That's not true at all. Intelligence agencies can't just do whatever they want. They are beholden to the people just like every other government agency. They can be granted power to do things that ordinary people can't, but that doesn't mean they are above the law.

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Yes they can do whatever they want and no they’re not beholden to anyone. When has the NSA ever been held accountable for their illegal spying on US citizens?

Right, I'm not saying that they don't break the law. They do. But technically, their role is not to break the law. There ostensibly is oversight but it obviously doesn't work well enough.

They're beholden to Congress funding them, if nothing else.

They can and they do. Look at the history - they routinely kidnap, torture, assassinate, spy on citizens, support all kinds of illegal activity and make unscrupulous deals with terrorists and tyrants. Every now and then they slip up and the government has to pretend to give a damn and they go through a show of righteous anger and then once the heat is off and constituents are satisfied the intelligence agencies go right back to doing what they were doing anyway.

The government doesn't want intelligence agencies reined in by anything but American interests. They want those agencies to be free do commit whatever evil is deemed necessary to further those interests, laws and Constitution be damned. The NSA is still spying on everyone. The CIA still runs torture camps around the world. Nothing changes. Snowden didn't change anything. Assange didn't change anything. Wyden isn't going to change anything.

The ability of the American people to hold their government to account in any meaningful way is a facade. Americans live under the oligarchy of corporations and the military industrial complex, not any kind of functional democracy. The American people, despite their guns and breathless evocations of the Founding Fathers, are not in control.

The NSA has literally broken laws, lied about it, and gotten away with it.

Technically not, they just had secret courts rubber stamp for them.

In the most technical sense it's legal though of course it subverts the entire idea of the justice system by having a court in your pocket.

Wrong.[1][2] And what law and court do you believe authorized James Clapper to lie to Congress?

[1] https://www.vox.com/2015/5/7/8567089/nsa-patriot-act-ruling

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-b...

Indeed. Being granted exclusive powers that would otherwise be illegal must always be given the respect it deserves: use of powers only when and as far absolutely necessary and reporting of and punishment of transgressions, intentional or not.

There is nothing more morally corrosive than a law enforcement agency betraying the trust represented by their powers.

I think the parent is referring to foreign law. Which all intelligence services break as a part of their purpose, to spy.

Although that statement is just an oversimplification of the situation. The government should follow domestic law even if it breaks foreign law by design.

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