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Comment by jpdoctor | Hacker News Reader

> And the reason that’s not how it works is because we’ve got congressional oversight and judicial oversight. And if people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress and don’t trust federal judges to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution, due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.

Oh thank god, all branches are providing oversight. So it's just as harmless as all those other programs being overseen by all branches of government.

Like TSA.

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Not to mention he is being very disingenuous because that "oversight" is extremely limited.

Congress passes these laws in a hurry, trying to limit public debate as much as possible. Judges get pressed into signing whatever NSA/FBI wants them to sign (there was no denied FISA "general warrant" denied in 2011 and 2012, and probably none before either), and of course the president can't be trusted with this. He's in charge of it all.

Funny how that works. Apparently we can't trust the executive branch, Congress, or federal judges to make sure they're abiding by the Constitution, and we do have some problems here.

"Separation of powers" is such a bogus concept. We've got three groups of people in different office buildings with almost exactly the same set of incentives, and it's hammered into our heads that this somehow will cause government to police itself. I doubt anyone who didn't repeatedly hear the praises for separation of powers in school throughout their childhood would think that is even a remotely effective plan.

Separation of powers was designed to prevent a few bad actors from seizing control of the whole system, as frequently happened in ancient republics. It's actually worked well for that purpose. It wasn't intended to defend against incentives affecting everyone who gets into any kind of office. No one foresaw that weakness.

People keep talking about separation of powers because it was once a good solution to a problem that no longer exists.

And the superior alternative is what?

Society refusing to tolerate any group of people having a legal monopoly on the use of violence.

This please.

The phrase "Democracy is terrible, but it is the best we've got" makes some sense.

But "American Democracy is terrible, but it is the best we've got"? That's a new one to me.

Transparency and the possibility for the people to review at least high level policy.

Separation of powers is a good concept. The problem right now is that all three branches of government have been taken over by the right wing; there is little disagreement about these things. Separation of powers tends to work best when there is more than one opinion.

I'm going to be EXTREMELY CHARITABLE and suggest that your opinion of the branches "being taken over" by the right wing is a statement which only really extends to the scope of their surveillance and antiterror operations, and that you are merely not thinking of certain things that do not affect you as a member of the left wing, like:

* IRS targeting of section-504 nonprofits

* the National Labor Relations Board's apparent failure to comply with rulings suggesting that their recess appointments were irregular and that they do not legally have a quorum

* the Department of Health and Human Services and its campaign to make Catholic institutions pay for birth control and abortions

* irregularities in the bankruptcy process around the auto bailouts

* et cetera.

Given that limitation, I believe it is possible for your argument to be regarded as meaningful. :)

Are you suggesting that the executive branch has been taken over by the right wing?

Does that suggestion surprise you? You are talking about an executive branch that is putting tanks, helicopters, and other surplus military equipment in the hands of local law enforcement. For decades, the executive branch has encouraged the use of plea bargains to avoid having cases go to trial. The soldiers who enforce our laws have been deployed against researchers who published the wrong books. Spies have been sent into peaceful anti-war groups. How would you describe the government that undertakes such actions, and then tries to amass even more power?

Classifying such things as right wing is part of the problem. "Left wing" governments are just as capable of all sorts of statist, authoritarian activity. But saying it is right wing annoys right wing people who are liberal, saying it is left wing annoys left wing folk.

Politics is more than a left right axis.

The soldiers who enforce our laws have been deployed against researchers who published the wrong books.

What?

Spies have been sent into peaceful anti-war groups.

That's been going on ever since the time of Martin Luther King Jr, and maybe before then.

What?

Probably in reference to the labs of an author of a well-known pair of oddly titled chemistry books being raided.

Even with these recent scandals, I find it somewhat difficult to categorize Obama's policies as right wing, but I was just seeking clarification.

I love how he says several times "we aren't listening to your phone calls". As if that suddenly makes everything better. Fuck me.

They aren't listening. They are just recording them in case they want to listen later. Ohh, and they are listening... sometimes, like when there's a court order. Heck, I spoke with someone personally who used to work in one of their call screening centers. They sat in front of a computer all day and flagged snippets of calls, emails, and text that met certain requirements(e.g. words that would indicate a planned terrorist activity). It wasn't clear whether this was applied only to foreign or foreign and domestic conversations. Though most conversations were in english with a native accent.

It gets worse. Moments later, he says:

"if anybody in government wanted to go further than just that top-line data and wanted to, for example, listen to Jackie Calmes’s phone call, they’d have to go back to a federal judge and — and — and indicate why, in fact, they were doing further — further probing."

Great. So they can't listen to your phone call, unless they indicate why they want to listen to your phone call. I'm sure everyone involved in this program was cherry-picked to ensure that no one says "no" to any of these requests. Oh, and I'm sure all the logs (who asked who for permission, what the reasons were, which requests were granted or denied, etc.) are also conveniently "classified," which you should remember is different than "secret."

So now you're objecting to the very concept of a warrant?

I'm saying that the concept doesn't make sense when they're being issued by people who have very similar incentives to the people executing the warrant. The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution essentially says "the government cannot perform a search unless the government drafts a piece of paper saying that they can do a search."

Did FISC warrants suddenly start requiring probable cause? Did the court itself suddenly start scrutinizing requests (how would we even know)?

Don't conflate FISC warrants issued for criminal investigations. FISC is barely even a speedbump when it comes to this sort of surveillance.

The quote isn't talking about FISC warrants. Its talking about regular Article III warrants.

What's deeply ironic about the outrage here is that FISC was created as an extra layer to safeguard privacy. FISC warrants give law enforcement officials permission to initiate an investigation, not to access information that would otherwise require an Article III warrant.

Or as if that makes it true.

Wasn't there reports that warrantless wiretapping is widespread?

They may not be listening to everybody's "phone calls", but how about activists, dissidents, whistleblowers, etc phone calls? How about people active in grassroots campaigns, from OWS to ecology, etc? How about people that work at EFF? What about journalists that are preparing a government corruption story, etc?

Heck, they had files one mile long for people like ...John Lennon and MLK, back in the sixties/seventies.

But he is right, somebody isn't listening to it as you say it. Its just being saved in a HUGE database so when they decided you did something wrong that can be used against you.

It's also a straw man argument. Nobody ever claimed voice recordings were collected, all news sources were very clear about that. He's just distracting from the actual complaint, which is that all of the other data is collected.

As if that suddenly makes everything better

Well, it does seem like most folks are primarily concerned that they will be listening to your phone calls. So maybe it doesn't make you feel better, but maybe it wasn't targeted at you.

(I know, as if that makes anything better!)

The limiting factor here really is the lack of computational power to listen to everyone's phone calls. As soon as technology gets there, you can bet it'll be on the table.

Every call passes through numerous computers between the speaking parties. Why do you think the largest best-funded organizations in the world would lack the computational power to "listen"?

Usually telecom equipment is near the lower bound of the computer power needed to carry calls; there is not much room for advanced signal processing, speech-to-text, etc.

They are not getting through a single centralized location, and transcoding voice traffic does not require as much performance as voice recognition (the difference is several orders of magnitude). Your average telecom branch exchange station is not anywhere in the ballpark.

According to the report they don't listen the voice of the calls, only the "metadata" such as the numbers the calls are made from and to, and when.

Two different issues:

The Verizon FISC order addresses only metadata. The PRISM presentation indicates that among the data captured from the providers involved in PRISM is VOIP data, which, would seem to be call contents.

The best explanation I've seen for that is that they are just collecting the content in case it is needed later. If, for example, they see you making a lot of long-distance phone calls to numbers known to be ties to Al Qaeda, then they could 'get a warrant' to actually look at the PRISM data they've collected.

In real life terms, it's like posting an NSA agent in every house in America, who promises to keep his eyes closed. Of course, he can hear everything you're saying, but he promises not to tell anyone unless you say something elsewhere that would give them cause to.

Or he's just going to plead ignorance and maintain plausible deniability.

Surveys of the American people show that at least two of his three preconditions are correct. I think we're going to have some problems here.

Excuse me if I have this muddled, but being a Top Secret program, wouldn't those Congressmen be bound to silence on the matter anyway?

Assuming you found one who bucked the trend and wasn't bankrupt of responsibility already, what could he actually do?

What exactly is harmful about the TSA? Annoying and stupid, sure, but as far as I can tell nothing more sinister than that.

You don't think that an agency that exists to condition the American people into the belief that a police state is "normal" is harmful?

They've stolen $300 worth of stuff from my checked baggage and don't provide any means to get it back. There are dozens of similar stories. Not quite sinister, but beyond annoying and stupid.

How about systematically irradiating 99% of the people that walk through their lines, without any independent study of the risks of such radiation? What happens when a terahertz antenna of unknown power is waved 2 feet in front of a male's genitals? 5 years of x-raying individuals, then taking all machines out of service shortly after the EU bans the machines? We will never know how many cancer cases arise from that program.

Not to mention the cost of running an agency that has not even once caught a terrorist.

I mean, aside from being a corrupt organization that wastes tax dollars and has done almost nothing to keep us safe, I suppose they are fine.

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