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Comment by guelo | Hacker News Reader

We don't need an NSA or CIA or any other spy agency. I know I'm an extremist on government secrets, but I think there should be none. Nothing should be outside the reach of a FOIA request. In my ideal world all government officials' documents and emails would be made publicly accesible in real time, they're working for us. Any exception or loophole to transparency gets abused, every time. If that makes it harder to conduct wars or espionage, well too bad. If you remember from the game Civilization, democracy is not a good system for a warmongering state. And that's a good thing.

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If you stop playing the game Civilization and look back at history, you'll see that there are a lot of very bad people in the world who do very bad things. All of the freedoms that we enjoy in Western democracies were hard-won and continue to be backed up by guns, bombs, codes, and secrets. It's not pretty, but that's how things are.

It might well be that the current approach to domestic surveillance is out of balance and these agencies (and contractors!) need to be better controlled, but this pseudo-libertarian nihilism about government betrays an ignorance of realities that are much more fundamental than who is tracking phone call metadata.

"All of the freedoms that we enjoy in Western democracies were hard-won and continue to be backed up by guns, bombs, codes, and secrets. It's not pretty, but that's how things are."

That's the official story. In reality, those things are used to enslave people and keep them happy on the modern plantation, looking to the master to keep them safe. Freedom is the absence of coercion, and those things have utterly failed to safeguard that, and indeed have actively warred against it.

So you thing all the guns in the US revolutionary war were superfluous?

No, really, that's not just the official story. The reality is that tens of millions of people were killed in wars and genocides in just the 20th century. The most basic role of government is to protect its own citizens against that, and it is not an abstract threat. And despite their many flaws, and the many wrong things that they have done, the US and its allies remain the most open, free societies and a positive, stabilizing force in the world.

It's entirely legitimate to question whether the NSA has been going too far -- there's been debate about it for years. However, there is zero evidence that any of the data being collected had even been used in any way that impacted or threatened the freedom of people in the US -- it's all possibilities and abstract paranoia. It's difficult to have a serious debate when people put on tin-foil hats, plug their ears, and refuse to even acknowledge the broader realities. It's not all just a conspiracy to monitor Facebook and take away our bitcoins. All of these issues demand a dynamic balancing of risks and benefits, and of the rights of individuals against society. Any extreme philosophical positions are dangerous.

How many of those genocides were carried on by a government against some segment of its population? How justified is it to look at the tens of millions who have been killed by their governments and conclude that if the governments are to protect us from war and genocide, "with friends like these, who needs enemies?"

Well, actually all genocides were carried on by people (part of a government or not), so maybe we should eliminate people.

Either that or not make broad generalizations.

Indeed. Imagine if we just killed everyone how many social problems we'd solve....

But my broader point was, larger government surveillance and national security powers won't stop genocides or wars between governments. This isn't what they are there for. They are there to prevent groups which are deemed politically dangerous ("terrorists" which evidently include nuclear protesters, environmentalists, and states' rights advocates).

It's one thing to have spy agencies. However widespread spying on one's own people is never a good sign.

Most people cannot fund a military via taxation. That's unique to government.

That's a tautology, since a tax is by definition imposed by a government. Bullets bought with private money kill just as well, though, and can and have been used to create new governments.

Even governments cannot rely on taxation to fund armies or anything else they do. For centuries, they have relied instead on seizing monopoly control of money and then debasing it. This has the effect of stealing people's savings and the benefits they would otherwise obtain by increased productivity, and it is much harder to detect than blatant taxation.

(By all means read "Creature from Jekyll Island" to learn the details of that deliciously evil story. :)

Yes, that's very true, although I still think that a large part of the reason the USD is still trusted internationally is that a large group of wealthy people (Americans) have to pay their taxes in the USD. Another large part is the US military, of course.

"Although" is not the right word here -- you're supporting my point. :)

The requirement to pay taxes in USD is the primary "inherent value" which makes that particular commodity circulate as money. The "inherent value" is to increase the odds that one may continue living outside of a cage.

When I call that value "inherent", I am obviously speaking very loosely and tongue-in-cheek. Remove the threat of force, and USD paper cash has no significant value -- it's too rough to use as toilet paper and doesn't even burn particularly well in the winter. It is durable enough to function as wallpaper, though with a rather busy and avant garde retro design.

Combine that dynamic with the Mandrake Mechanism described in "Creature", and you have a very powerful monopoly fiat money, consisting of cash and bank "deposits", useful for financing horrors like World War I, the Marxist overthrow of the Kerensky government, endless bailouts of banks and corporations throughout the '70s, '80s, '90s, and '00s, and a litany of other ridiculous, juvenile schemes.

It is the monetary inflation, produced by the central bank buying government debt (i.e. a promise to tax), which gives governments most of their "spending money". Taxation itself merely gives people a reason to accept the USD in the first place, and also serves as the principal means of social engineering.

When you look at it that way, taxation and inflation are seen as two mutually recursive functions, whose fixed point is the gun.

> The most basic role of government is to protect its own citizens against that

Or perhaps it's to bring wars and genocide to people in other countries.

The reality is that approximately 200 million people were killed by people in government in the 20th century. If the basic role of government is to protect "its" own citizens against that, then not only have they utterly failed in that role, they have actively opposed it.

I do have an extreme philosophical position: that relations among people should be by mutual consent, or not at all. It is compromise that is dangerous.

Are you sure you've looked back at history? People's freedoms are typically limited by elites in their own country, not by foreign enemies.

the two are not mutually exclusive. Consider the a the number of former colonial powers is small compared to the number of former colonies.

The only difference between a normal government and a colonial government is the degree of integration. If you live under any government you are ruled, not free. The countries we have now grew by conquering and accumulating territory -- that is except in the cases where territories decided to give up their independence like the states in the US.

Sorry, this is complete nonsense.

On the topic of history...

"After the fall of the Roman Republic, the constitutional balance of power shifted from the Roman Senate to the Roman Emperor. Though retaining its legal position as under the Republic, in practice, however the actual authority of the Imperial Senate was negligible, as the Emperor held the true power in the state. As such, membership in the Senate became sought after by individuals seeking prestige and social standing, rather than actual authority."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_senate#Senate_of_the_Rom...]

Imagine for a moment, further expansion of executive autonomy and power. Then review recent elections with the definition of populism in mind. There are stark similarities.

"When Hitler was appointed in January 1933, Germany was a democracy. Germany had fair elections; nobody had their right to vote abused; there were numerous political parties you could vote for etc. To pass a law, the Reichstag had to agree to it after a bill went through the normal processes of discussion, arguments etc. Within the Reichstag of January 1933, over 50% of those who held seats were against the Nazi Party. Therefore it would have been very unlikely for Hitler to have got passed into law what he wanted. Many saw Hitler as a fall-guy politician who would have to shoulder to blame if things got worse under his leadership.

Hitler had promised a general election for March 1933. This would have been, in his mind, the perfect opportunity for him to show all politicians who opposed him where the true loyalties lay in the German people. In fact, 1932 had shown Hitler that there was a possibility that support for the Nazis had peaked as their showing in the November 1932 election had shown. Anything other than a huge endorsement of Hitler and the Nazi Party would have been a disaster and a gamble which it is possible that Hitler did not want to take.

One week before the election was due to take place, the Reichstag building burned down. Hitler immediately declared that it was the signal for a communist takeover of the nation. Hitler knew that if he was to convince President Hindenburg to give him emergency powers - as stated in the Weimar Constitution - he had to play on the old president's fear of communism. What better than to convince him that the communists were about to take over the nation by force?"

[http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/Nazi_Germany_dictatorsh...]

Even in a well formed government, there are possible scenarios that play out with catastrophic results. As politics become more polarized and government exerts more authority, it is more likely that individual opportunists can raise to dominant positions and wreak havoc on policy and settle vendettas against political opponents.

Be slightly careful with Wikipedia about Rome. Such sweeping generalizations covering hundreds of years can't be always accurate. In fact the Senate's power waxed and waned depending on the politics of the empire. Under Claudius, the Senate was comparatively powerful if largely to convince everyone that the days of Caligula were over.

Understanding the dynamic nature of governments, especially ones as expansive as the US government, is necessary I think to appreciate how little democracy we actually have in the United States as it now stands. If we want to pin things to the definitions historians use to differentiate the Roman Republic from the Roman Empire, I think we passed that point with FDR to be honest.

Great input. I couldn't find a better source for the Roman Senate, but my quote was more to satire the current 24/hour news cycle driven politician.

FDR def.; probably Wilson

Maybe even Lincoln.

Be slightly careful with your analogies between the US and Nazi Germany, too.

Before Nazi Germany it was just Germany. Unless one is racist against Germans, one must in the interest of humanity seek to understand exactly how that transition happened.

> one must in the interest of humanity seek to understand exactly how that transition happened.

I suspect Martin-Niemöller had some insight into how this happened:

First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

And I told them "hey, you forgot about the gays, and I can tell you where they are!"

Everyone be slightly careful about anything they read on history.

Thanks for this. On a related note, be slightly careful when chopping onions or crossing the street. Be moderately careful when trying to do both at the same time. Be extremely careful if your knife is dull, you wear contact lenses, there is oncoming traffic, and you are jaywalking.

What freedoms are being protected exactly? The freedom from government intrusion in your private life? The freedom to travel? The freedom to bear arms and defend yourself? The freedom to grow whichever plant you wish in your own land? The freedom to do with your own body as you please, provided you do not harm anyone else? The freedom from excessive labour? The freedom to run a currency like Bitcoin? The freedom from being targeted by the IRS if you go against the status quo? The freedom of the press? Or do you mean some other freedoms? Or maybe, just maybe, you mean security and not freedom at all?

The point is that security is a precondition to enjoying all of the freedoms you list. There are trade-offs to make between freedom and security, and neither the freedoms nor the security are absolute, and they never have been.

You're doubly wrong. Security is not a precondition of freedom, and security does not have to come at a loss of freedom.

Not at all. The moment someone points a gun at you and tells you what to do, your freedom has been usurped. Without the security to make your own choices, you do not have freedom. Thus, it's important to restrict certain actions (i.e., your ability to point a gun at someone and make demands) in order to protect the freedom of others.

The moment someone points a gun at you, your freedoms are completely intact.

Moreover, this is the moment when you can show whether you are really free.

Free men do not mind dying when their time comes.

You're being pedantic. "Freedom" in this case quite clearly refers to "Liberty" or "Autonomy" rather than to "Free Will".

That sounds nice. Let's hear you deliver that soliloquy when you're held by a mugger at gunpoint, about how you are your own master.

You realize that armed muggings and burglaries are thwarted a lot, right?

What the heck do you mean by "freedom"?

When I say "freedom", I talk about choice. Options. Influence over one's light cone. All of which are drastically diminished whenever you're locked in a cell, or threatened by a madman with a gun.

As do I. If I am to find myself in an unenviable situation I would rather make it hard for the villains to go about their business than to bow down and beg for mercy.

I might be taken out. I might take my enemy out (shooting a person is not as trivial task as it seems). Or I might just cause enough trouble for the bad guys so their total cost goes up, hopefully beyond break even point.

It is no different attitude than the one US tries to project upon the world.

I only acknowledge that nobody will fight for me if I don't fight for myself.

The first part is true; forcible coercion does usurp freedom - and even more so when done by the government.

The second part is fallacy; you obviously cannot remove the ability to point a gun (or knife) at someone and make demands, and any attempt to do so necessarily tramples other's rights. In reality there are two effective choices - the person being mugged can defend them-self and/or the government can attempt to find and punish the person after the fact. The second one does not do a bit of good for the current victim, of course.

You can deter people from pointing guns at people by promising to punish those who do that..

it's a balance. By preventing people to point guns and make demands (to a certain extent), you (for example) allow for more freedom to walk around at night without a fear of getting mugged.

Everything is a tradeoff, saying 'tramples other's rights' is misleading because it doesn't indicate which rights. Some rights are more valued than others to people (I'd gladly trade my right to kill myself for my right to free speech, if such a tradeoff existed).

it's a balance. By preventing people to point guns and make demands (to a certain extent), you (for example) allow for more freedom to walk around at night without a fear of getting mugged.

When I say you cannot remove the ability of people to do it, I mean only that - you cannot remove the ability. And that is what all the gun-grabbing hoopla is about - physically removing the ability to do so by restricting access to guns. That, I contend, is impossible and absolutely infringes on individual rights.

The threat of retaliation, either by the victim immediately or after-the-fact by the government, is of course effective at prevention. The former is more effective, as evidenced by crime rates in areas where the government does not infringe on the right to self-defense.

It does not matter which rights - the government may not pick and choose which individual rights to value over others, it's their duty to protect them all equally - and for all people equally.

Of course it is your right to determine which rights you value the most, but it is not a power of the government. And it's a power of neither you or the government to determine which rights I value most.

Some people are leagues better than others when it comes to fight. Handing out a .45 to everyone instead of policing does not put everyone on equal footing.

Hobbes had said that humans give up some of their rights to be protected by the government. That's what the western philosophy is built on. You may try to deny it but needing security is already a loss of freedom.

Examples of peaceful countries like sweden or switzerland can be given, but what did they do to stop hitler? Poland started to crack the enigma code and later turing with his friends in secrecy completed it in England.

What we need is people that can be trusted to be in power. The voting system in America is just plain wrong. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw2z9lV3W1g

Since where Security is a precondition to Freedom ? I wonder where you conceived that strange idea. We never had as much security as we have now (compared to the hundreds of generations before us) yet we are losing our liberties at an alarming speed.

> Since where Security is a precondition to Freedom ?

If you have zero physical security, that means that anyone can come up and just knock you down and take your things, your woman, whatever... Not my idea of "freedom".

I think that it follows that you do need some security in order to live a free life. Does that justify secret government spying programs? Probably not!

People here seem to have awfully black and white thoughts about some aspects of life.

> yet we are losing our liberties at an alarming speed.

Except for minorities (at least for some things, like, say, being able to vote in Alabama), gays, people who consume marijuana in Washington and Colorado, and various others who have gained rights recently. It's not black and white.

> If you have zero physical security, that means that anyone can come up and just knock you down and take your things, your woman, whatever... Not my idea of "freedom".

These are orthogonal issues. There are strong reasons to believe that the modern stability that we enjoy is maintained by networks of mutual self-interest, soft social norms and overall cultural sophistication. The idea that we are being protected by the state is just a fairy-tale and there is no scientific evidence of this whatsoever.

Saying that something is not "black and white" sounds clever, but can be used as a way to disguise unscientific, mushy ideas.

> unscientific, mushy ideas.

Uh, most things involving people are kind of mushy, because you can't experiment on them like you would with rats. And they tend to behave oddly at times. Also, there are a tremendous number of things that bear on their behavior - isolating them is not easy.

> modern stability that we enjoy is maintained

Could it be that the modern stability also exists because most of us feel relatively safe in our persons?

It's not as if the only thing preventing most of us from running amok is the presence of police, but some kind of security force does act as a backstop for those individuals who do not care about your self-interest, social norms, or whatever.

Once again: not trying to justify the NSA stuff, but I think the idea that no security at all is needed for one to live in freedom is handwavy bullshit.

> There are strong reasons to believe that the modern stability that we enjoy is maintained by networks of mutual self-interest, soft social norms and overall cultural sophistication.

You mean, stability is mantained by structures like the state?

>If you have zero physical security, that means that anyone can come up and just knock you down and take your things, your woman, whatever... Not my idea of "freedom".

What you're describing is total freedom in a causal society - the only constraint on what people do is what they _can_ do. It may not be your definition of freedom, but from an unbiased observer, it is arguably the most free a society can be.

You (and a lot of other people, I think) are conflating freedom (being able to do whatever you can) with rights (a guarantee that certain conditions will exist in a governed society). Granting rights necessarily diminishes the total freedom of a society.

> If you have zero physical security, that means that anyone can come up and just knock you down and take your things, your woman, whatever

Hodor. Own woman. Hodor. Hodor. Hodor.

"If you have zero physical security, that means that anyone can come up and just knock you down and take your things, your woman, whatever... Not my idea of "freedom"."

But that happens now. All the examples that are being given on why we need security are examples of things that are happening now WITH security.

"I think that it follows that you do need some security in order to live a free life. Does that justify secret government spying programs? Probably not!"

My problem is that this security is just a false sense of security. With all of the restrictions and all of the money poured into the DHS and other counter-intelligence, we still get things like Boston. I wish people would realize that bad things happen, and giving your rights away isn't going to stop them from happening.

"Except for minorities (at least for some things, like, say, being able to vote in Alabama), gays, people who consume marijuana in Washington and Colorado, and various others who have gained rights recently. It's not black and white."

They haven't gained anything. Nothing is stopping the feds from swooping down and arresting these individuals. They are still breaking a federal law. Also, in reference to the gay marriage thing, I feel it is kind of low to say they are gaining rights as there was no real legal reason (that I could think of) to prevent them from being able to marry.

> But that happens now.

Obviously. It's impossible to eliminate bad things completely. They would happen more without anyone providing security.

> They haven't gained anything

Ok, fine, whatever, the world is moving only in one direction, with no nuance, no complexities, and in a very simple, easy to understand way. Nothing has gotten better for anyone.

"Obviously. It's impossible to eliminate bad things completely. They would happen more without anyone providing security."

To me, this argument is based on how one views human nature. Personally, I don't believe that the majority of people want to commit serious crimes but are only held back by the fact that if they did, they would be punished. Because of that belief, I don't believe that eliminating security would cause an increase of bad behavior.

"Ok, fine, whatever, the world is moving only in one direction, with no nuance, no complexities, and in a very simple, easy to understand way. Nothing has gotten better for anyone."

I probably should have phrased my response better but at the time was stuck in a better way to do so. Surely there are places that have improved in people's lives but it isn't like those same improvements couldn't or wouldn't have been made without a state providing security.

>I don't believe that the majority of people want to commit serious crimes but are only held back by the fact that if they did, they would be punished.

What is your definition of serious? Sure, most people don't want to kill others, but what about non-violent crimes. What about fraud? Not paying taxes? Although you might argue that taxes are usurping our freedom somehow, I like having infrastructure.

While I haven't truly thought about it much, I guess my definition of serious would coincide with what government calls a felony.

"What about fraud? Not paying taxes?"

Maybe I'm just naive but I don't think the average person walks around conspiring to commit fraud but is discouraged by the fact they could go to jail if caught.

As for the taxes issue, in this scenario, taxes would most likely decrease since there would be no big security machine (DoD, DHS, NSA, FBI, CIA) to feed, or at least budgets would be slashed. On top of that, there could be systems put into place that automate the taxes and make the current way of doing taxes a thing of the past. The lower taxes and the automated system could make it easy to pay taxes as well as harder to avoid paying taxes.

> Personally, I don't believe that the majority of people want to commit serious crimes but are only held back by the fact that if they did, they would be punished. Because of that belief, I don't believe that eliminating security would cause an increase of bad behavior.

You don't need "majority", you need just a handful of really really bad ones.

But the current system, with all of the "security" it provides, already has a handful of really really bad people that commit crimes. So why should I give up freedoms to try and stop these bad people when despite everything, crime still happens?

I'm not sure what you argue exactly. That policing has no effect on crime rates?

The modern state we have is here not to build Heaven on Earth, but to avoid Hell. Eliminating all crime is impossible, but without state intervention you end up with Somalia, Afghanistan or post-Katrina New Orleans.

The last part of your argument reminds me of back home where rednecks with confederate flags would say "THEY HAVE MORE RIGHTS THAN US! THOSE MINORITIES ARE TAKIN' OVER".

Perhaps (well, hopefully) I'm reading into your comment too much though.

Hobbes made a case for that in Leviathan. It's certainly not a new idea.

I'm glad somebody did the reading...

>The point is that security is a precondition to enjoying all of the freedoms you list.

the position you state was formed by Greek and Roman civilizations. Majority of people in these civilizations were slaves. And security was a precondition for the freedom of few at the top of these ancient societies.

The American revolution was a break in that order of things. It resulted in granting of unheard of freedoms while dismantling a lot of Imperial Britain security. And now we're sliding back to imperial level of security and freedom.

About 35 to 40% were slaves in Rome.

The American Revolution carried forward slavery.

"If you stop playing the game Civilization and look back at history, you'll see that there are a lot of very bad people in the world who do very bad things."

When I look back at history, I see that the worst people that have done the worst things are in fact people in state governments, using the powers of government against civilians.

>When I look back at history, I see that the worst people that have done the worst things are in fact people in state governments, using the powers of government against civilians.

That's because you're looking at the largest damage influenced by a small group of people, instead of total amount over a period of time.

Obviously the most damage done by any single person was done by a person with a lot of power, and thus probably a member of the government. That doesn't mean more damage is done when a government is present rather than in total anarchy.

Consider a choice between:

1. A mad governor that kills 100 people yearly, but prevents any other killings (somehow)

2. An anarchy system where 100 mad people kill 10 people each every year

Your heuristic of 'the worst people that have done the worst things are in fact people in state governments' still holds, because any other murderer only killed 10 people. However, comparing the two options clearly shows the first one is better.

TL;DR - availability bias

By your logic anything can get an apology because we can always point out to a worse alternative.

History also teaches that all governments that did not trust their people (hence had to spy on them) did not survive long. Fighting wars is very different from spying your own people, societies are built on trust after all.

Yeah, if you stop seeing reality through your super narrow lens, you'll realize that large-scale wars are started by governments and states and not common people.

I tend to lean towards your view point, mostly because the alternate unknown is terrifying. What does need to happen is the people who are given control of systems need to be accountable, not lie, and intent of their actions needs to be known. There are many more less costly things that can be done to help a society stay safe - from itself and from others around the world.

What freedom is being protected by U.S. involvement in Iraq or Afghanistan?

"All of the freedoms that we enjoy in Western democracies were hard-won and continue to be backed up by guns, bombs, codes, and secrets"

I'm going to single out the US in the "western democracies" and state that while this may be true, it certainly isn't true for just about anybody alive in this country today. The last time we actually fought for OUR freedoms, in my mind, is the War of 1812. Other than that, it was fighting for our interests, which are not the same. But, those in power need to keep up the idea that the war machine always needs to be at the ready because those darn communists/socialists/terrorists are after our freedoms and we need to be proactive.

Hmm, according to all kinds of measurements, indexes, etc. the most democratic, free, hight standard of living countries reside in northern Europe. Most of them don't have much military. So somehow this comment is pretty flawed.

The US once was the most free countries and indeed helped and inspired others, but that was more than a hundred years ago. The problem is while other countries emerged (possibly because of mistakes, losing wars, being split, reunited, etc.) the US has had a few problems that got them stuck.

I think and it's just my opinionated explanation. I might be completely wrong, but I think the biggest problem for the US where the two world wars and the cold wars. Basically it made the country/government learn that espionage, military, etc. is a good thing, because they only win. They win no just like the war itself, but they win control of people, they pretty much unite them, but even that is not all. The military system allows the US to do what other countries do with welfare. They reinvest tax money, the out it into families of veterans, have a huge military industry from weapons to mercenaries. It works. Just like it allows them to do heavy espionage in the name of national security.

On the other hand there is expensive education or bought education (VISA policies), not the best health care system, still a lot of weird stuff, like death penalty (an example of how the US is stuck), bad infrastructure (streets, internet, etc.) and a lot less liberties or equal treatment of sexes and "races" for example.

This is something that stabilizes the US. I don't know, in a way it is a valid thing. Stability is good and there is pretty much no country that does so well that it should judge the US for that.

Another problem is that they tend to do overpropaganda, so they can't really change. They had stuff like the cold war, so communists (Russians/Chinese) people are super evil. Also there were no other reforms. The two party system where both have pretty much opinion. That's no way of choosing. For example the death penalty thing I mentioned. Republicans are pro, Obama is pro. So no movement in sight.

The US is also stuck in nationalism. Like really, do you know any other developed country that is so much into flag waving and where everyone is like "Mall of America, Bank of America, X of America"?

Like I said. It's not bad. It brings stability, which is something people want, but it also means that progress simply stalls.

In this regard the US is actually quite the same as China or Russia. Big countries, which pretty much always the same government, lots of propaganda, lots of nationalism "the others are all bad (or envious)", death penalty, secrecy, lots of military investment, our country is the best, etc.

It might also be a thing of size. There have been political-philosophical works about this, partially with practical implementation (The Breakdown of Nations).

However, as history tells us (see various empires) these things break down in bad ways. Sadly it usually means the next nation will become like this and won't be any better at all. And yeah, I am not a friend of nations and stuff, but I am realist enough to know, no matter how long the US remains like that (yeah, I think it is trembling, but I think it's far from falling) or whatever, this isn't going to change. I also don't think there can be any kind of utopia. It would be really cool if people just abandoned stuff, but no matter how wrong communists are. There is one thing they got correctly (but usually still don't live after, else they wouldn't be communists): It might be nice for a while, when everyone understands how shitty things were and how nice it is to just live together, but people forget that and then it really starts from the beginning.

> Most of them don't have much military.

But they do have some. And they have police, don't they? So they provide some security to their citizens, meaning that their people are free to live without someone bigger than them taking all their things.

There are an absurd number of things that it makes sense for the government to keep from the public and not divesting that information but keeping the people who have that information accountable is what elections are for.

You want to know what officers are working under cover in the police force? Who are informants on terrorist organizations working against the state? The home phone numbers and addresses of all public employees? Their emergency contact numbers? Medical histories relevant to their jobs? One can go on and on.

Demanding better of elected officials makes sense, crippling the capacity of government to do kinds of work that it has to do does not.

You are correct. But also there is not much an election can do when they have rigged the elections with Gerrymandering and first across the fence voting. There's a district in one state that goes out to sea and back. Corrupt as fuck.

More importantly, it mean we just have one more person saying "trust us" - we have no means of telling how good a job they're doing in any secret oversight role. I'm sure your congressperson is fantastic, but the notion that congress broadly will reliably serve our interests over those of potential donors with more access is far fetched.

If this guy had leaked that kind of information, he wouldn't be in the news like he is now. PRISM is not the kind of work that government has to do.

JamisonM--

Almost all confidential informants are engaged in the Drug War. There is a pretty strong argument that whole thing is counterproductive.

There is no global existential threat that is anywhere near as grave as the nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union once was.

So, where is secrecy really needed? Is it more than 5% of the secrecy we have?

How about a middle ground where information private to the government is allowed but there is no NSA or CIA, or at least no intelligence operations beyond keeping an eye on the military movements of other countries?

Honest question: What danger would that put us in? My instinct says a moderate amount, but I guess none of us know for sure, which makes it a little scary to imagine.

Honest follow-up question: How much danger would it need to put us in for you to think it's a bad idea?

What if what they're not telling us is that FISA collection orders and analysis has kept people from nuking Manhattan a half-dozen times?

So because there might be bad people, somewhere, planning to do bad things, we should just let the government run wild and do whatever it wants? What if the government claimed that they needed to put cameras in everyone's livingroom, because by doing so they could stop a major terrorist attack?

The problem with your argument is that it basically allows the government to do anything it wants, and then claim that there is secret information that proves that what they are doing is necessary to save lives.

In my view, there is a need for government secrets. Diplomatic cables need to be secret. The names and locations of informants and spies need to be kept secret (I will not deny the need for such agents). During times of war, the locations and planned movements of troops must be kept secret. On the other hand, the existence of diplomats, the existence of spies, and the existence of the military absolutely should not be kept secret.

> So because there might be bad people, somewhere, planning to do bad things, we should just let the government run wild and do whatever it wants?

Whoa, you've just gone all straw-man on me. Stop presuming and just answer my question. Somewhere between "nothing happens" and "vaporizes the whole planet" is a consequence that makes the loss of privacy an acceptable option. Where is it?

I didn't make an argument one way or the other.

>How much danger would it need to put us in for you to think it's a bad idea?

There is no number high enough to make me think getting rid of government secrecy is a bad idea. The reason is that there are other methods to deal with these kinds of problems. If other countries want to nuke us, it's probably a better idea to find out why they want to nuke us then to become a police state.

>What if what they're not telling us is that FISA collection orders and analysis has kept people from nuking Manhattan a half-dozen times?

What if they've also kept the big fight between Godzilla and King Kong from us? This is nonsense, they have not stopped anything like that. Pretty much everything terrorists have actually tried to do, they've succeed (or were foiled by their own incompetence). The cases where the government actually managed to "stop" a terror attack were very clear cases of entrapment. If they're actually out there like Jason Bourne saving the US in the last second all the time, why would they chose to show us clear cases of entrapment as their success stories?

But if you really believe they're keeping us safe, then I'd like to give you a great offer on my anti-Godzilla rock. Godzilla has not so much as inconvenienced me on the way to work since I have this rock. I'm willing to make you a great deal on it, $1B. That's less than you're paying for the other charade.

If other countries want to nuke us, it's probably a better idea to find out why they want to nuke us

What will your next step be, when you learn that the answer to your question is "Religion"?

I'm confident that that will not be the answer. That and "hate us for our freedoms" are popular for war mongers because there is apparently no solution besides continuing to bomb them. But is it possible they have legitimate grievancences? Is it possible that they're human beings who are pissed off about something we're doing or have done?

The saddest part is, we appear to have learned literally nothing since our handling of native Americans. It's disgusting.

There are plenty of fundamentalists in the world for whom the reason is indeed religion.

You're engaging in wishful thinking.

This is what you believe, this is what people who benefit from you believing that are telling you but it's nonsense. There may be poor fundamentalists who would gladly kill for religion but they have no ability to act on it. Only the rich and powerful have that capability and they're also better educated.

If you truly believe there are a group of people for whom religion is enough to make them want to kill, then the solution would be education and financial investment. Middle class people make poor martyrs. The idea that the only thing that can be done is murder them is sickening.

There have been plenty of middle class martyrs.

There are many religious people who openly explain that freedom is evil, and everyone should convert to Islam or face death.

You're essentially claiming that I am brainwashed, and you know the real truth instead. I'd like to claim the opposite.

I think he just hasn't been paying attention. ("Middle class martyrs" have if anything been the rule rather than the exception in many scenarios.)

There is no middle ground. As soon as you give the government the right to secrets (and even if you don't!) they're going to use it to build things like NSA and hide them from you.

This is a bizarre claim when phrased as an absolute: Eisenhower should have published the Normandy invasion plans?

This is different and you know it. The Normandy invasion is one specific operation of one specific group. Cops doing a raid would be a similar thing. In both cases, their activities are isolated to that one specific area and they only need be secret for a relatively short period of time.

Contrast this with things like NSA: no end date, literally global scope, etc. Surely you can see how these things are different.

So intelligence services in general are out?

Yes probably. Anything that can't be held accountable publicly is just begging for abuse. Governments draw dangerous people to want to work for them so they will be creating illegal secret structures in any case. We shouldn't be making it even easier for them.

This is surprisingly easy to fix.

What you have to do is

1. Any agency can designate a document as classified, a designation which remains in play for four years. This dovetails nicely with the election cycle. Also, the majority of police, etc. undercover operations are shorter than this period. Above this you are in "major case" / RICO / terrorism / etc. territory.

2. Extending the classification beyond four years requires a motion to show cause before a bona fide judiciary, where the agency must show by clear and convincing evidence that the classification falls into an enumerated exemption criteria. The classification can be extended indefinitely, but only in increments of 12 months and only upon the approval of the judicial branch.

A proposal like this addresses most people's objections. The real problem with the current classification scheme is A) like Mickey Mouse's copyright, it expires on paper but not in real life, and B) the agencies are all essentially self-policing and nobody really checks in on them to see if the classification decisions are correct.

The thing about this proposal is that it requires all three branches to sign off and say "yes, this should stay classified" and it also limits the number of secrets you can have, because there are only so many lawyers and so many judges, and now you have to decide if you want to allocate time in the budget to make motions for the next 50 years. There are legitimate secrets that are worth that kind of hassle, and then there are the other 90% of stuff that the alphabet soup of agencies does.

I would add to that, any company bidding for government contracts has to accept that all bids in that tender process, including the winning bid, are to be made public after the tender process is complete.

Here in Australia too many governments agencies spend tax payer’s money, issuing big contracts to private companies and the all the contract details remain secret.

One example was a company awarded the right to build a cross city tunnel toll way. The contract included a $100 million payout to a government body in exchange for massive road closures designed to divert traffic into the (toll paying) tunnel.

All the road closures did was create traffic chaos and the secret collusion was only revealed when the tunnel company went broke.

Clearly, this doesn't work so well. Obama was first elected around this "change" and to be frank, not much has changed. At the risk of being overly pessimistic, I fail to see how the next president will be any different. He/She will be trapped in the same continuity of secrets and money. Maybe the democrats will be ousted from power, but so were the republicans

> You want to know what officers are working under cover in the police force?

I don't think that there need to be undercover police officers.

> Who are informants on terrorist organizations working against the state?

I don't think there need to be informants on terrorist organizations.

> The home phone numbers and addresses of all public employees? Their emergency contact numbers? Medical histories relevant to their jobs?

I wouldn't classify (teehee) this as "government secrets." If they're public employees, then obviously their names should be public, but I don't see their personal information as a "government secret."

> crippling the capacity of government to do kinds of work that it has to do does not.

People disagree about which kinds of work have to be done by government.

I generally agree with you, but to be Devil's Advocate for a moment, what do you think about secret R&D for purposes of defense?

Even some of the most staunch anarcho-capitalists I know believe in centralized national defense as one of the very few legitimate functions of the state.

Would not having planes invisible to radar (B-2), or those that could fly faster than missiles (SR-71) be nice secrets to keep from everyone who's thinking about invading you?

> Even some of the most staunch anarcho-capitalists I know believe in centralized national defense as one of the very few legitimate functions of the state.

Really? You or they must be using the term "anarcho-capitalism" in a non-standard way. In the standard usage of the term, the whole point is to be distinguished from pro-government libertarians and minarchists who believe that there are a few legitimate functions of the state. I've never heard anyone use the term to refer to an ideology that accepts any legitimate functions of the state.

I think that the capitalist part of anarcho-capitalist implies minarchism, as how can you have capitalism without private property?

The "anarcho" part means no government. The fundamental thesis of anarcho-capitalism is that private enterprise can solve all the problems that government currently is tasked with solving, including private property, defense, law enforcement, punishment of wrong-doers, consumer safety, charity/welfare, etc.

I'm not claiming any authority over the term "anarcho-capitalism," and you can use it however you like, but I have read a lot of works by people who are widely considered to be pivotal to anarcho-capitalism, and I've been somewhat active in several online communities that call themselves anarcho-capitalist, and I am reasonably confident that your usage is incredibly non-standard, and that very few people who are aware of the term would use it to describe minarchists.

We seem to have created many of the problems that we now need the Defense industry to bail us out of.

>what do you think about secret R&D for purposes of defense?

I'm strongly against it. A lot of our breakthroughs are too expensive for dangerous countries to copy in any case.

> be nice secrets to keep from everyone who's thinking about invading you?

When is the last time the US was invaded by anyone? When is the last time any country even tried to invade the US? If all your justifications are about nightmare scenarios that haven't occurred in centuries they're probably not very good justifications.

> When is the last time the US was invaded by anyone? When is the last time any country even tried to invade the US?

Why do you think those answers are what they are?

Could it be that the latest public data we have is that we were building planes FIFTY YEARS AGO that could effortlessly outrun SAMs? Can you possibly imagine the shit that is flying out of Groom Lake these days?

Haha, I think you watch too much Hollywood. No one has invaded the US because there was no value in doing so. Germany taking over most of Europe made sense. Taking over the US? Not so much. At least not until they had a much larger land holding.

The US' geographical position has had more to do with their safety than any secret they've ever had. But don't let me disrupt your "G.I. Joe" comic book fantasies.

Everyone always goes back to this stupid under cover cop example. It would be possible to allow under cover sting operations (of course, once you legalize drugs the need for most of those goes away) while not allowing the government to spy on the whole internet. Come on.

My girlfriend works for a branch of the Canadian government.

All of her emails, meeting minutes, agendas, etc. are all on the public record. Anyone can search/read/whatever them at any time.

As a Canadian I'm curious where I can search this information.

For example: http://www.hss.gov.yk.ca/hssc_minutes.php

AFAIK, all local governments do this

Searching isn't that easy for things other than public meetings, but you can making an access request through just about every level of government's website.

E.g., Here's the FOIP request page for the City of Calgary http://www.calgary.ca/CA/city-clerks/Pages/Freedom-of-Inform...

Right. But the work of the CSIS is not that accessible. There isn't one blanket rule you can apply to "government".

Agree, but it should be applied to as much of the government as makes sense, right now.

That's tautologically true though. Just like no one likes government that's any bigger than it needs to be.

What? What about the location of strategic military operations? Well "too bad" if a categorically transparent gov't inhibits the NSA's ability to process intelligence without alerting extremist groups. "Too bad" if a few thousand people die because you believe there should be no government secrets. Wait, I forgot that running a country is like playing Civilization...

You've come a long way from 'Give me liberty, or give me death!'.

Dear U.S. Navy,

Where are your nuclear subs and what are their missions?

Sincerely, Definitely a U.S. citizen

I don't want to keep secrets of public works from any of you. The people in the govt are there to do things we chose to do for everyone.

If it's a problem to know where all the subs are and what they are doing in my name, then I have a problem.

I don't personally want the launch codes for the missiles, but I want to know who has them, what the policy is for using them, when they are used (each and every time), what was targeted, who was hurt, what the damage was, how much it cost to build them, keep them, use them, and dispose them.

The military serves at everyone's behest, not of their own accord.

If it's a problem to know where all the subs are and what they are doing in my name, then I have a problem.

I'm glad you aren't in the Department of Defense, then.

The military serves at everyone's behest, not of their own accord.

This is a false dichotomy.

You enjoy secret wars in your name, cool. That's not what I would call a functional society.

It's not a dichotomy, let alone a false one. Please explain your objection.

One of many examples: Project Azorian

During the Cold War the Soviets lost a nuclear submarine in international waters. The Soviets couldn't find it, the US (through its network of acoustic listening stations in the oceans) could. There was a multi-year effort to recover the sub, which required an elaborate cover story and operational security.

If the Soviets knew what the recovery ship was doing, they would have blown it out of the water. All the secrecy was necessary to protect the mission.

The mission to do what exactly, who authorized it, who was running it, how much did it cost, what were the gains, what was the point.

Edit: If you need to keep public things that secret, maybe you shouldn't be doing them.

If it's a problem to know where all the subs are and what they are doing in my name, then I have a problem.

(shrug)

Why exactly do we still need nuclear subs?

I'm not trying to be a troll, or funny. What threat is currently best dealt with by deploying ICBMs in nuclear subs? And why is the money better spent on that than on any other alternative use?

China and Russia.

Are those really not dealt with via ICBMs? Why do we need the capacity to destroy them 20x over within 25 minutes when 1x with 3 hours notice would suffice? It seems like the downside risk of rogue actors or accidents causing a nuclear holocaust far outweighs the benefits of additional weapons at the margin.

ICBMs don't move around... so they are easily targeted themselves.

Do you want the information relating to the ICBM's to be public knowledge?

Perhaps on paper. But being a global power gives the US a special relationship with friendly countries as well. The dependency on US military protection subverts the sovereignty of allied nations causing them to harmonise laws on intellectual property, drugs, share intelligence including information about businesses in competition with US ones amongst other things. It is a very advantageous situation for the USA and I think it is wrong to think the only point of being a global superpower is to keep the Russians and Chinese in line. It is as much about maintaining the Empire and keeping the client states in line. Hail Caeser!

Two countries that have never used nuclear weapons against their enemies.

On the other hand, they've both killed tens of millions of their own citizens. Each.

And the U.S. killed more people using conventional ordnance in a single night in Tokyo than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined from the atomic bombings, so what is it that you're actually upset about? Because it's obviously not the number of Japanese killed.

I wasn't commenting on total number of people killed by each government. We were talking about nuclear weapons (specifically nuclear subs).

Yes, but you say that as if being killed by a nuclear weapon is somehow more traumatic than being burned alive in a city-sized Holocaust incited by incendiary weaponry. Or even that being blown to bits by conventional weaponry is somehow better.

Think about it: Germany never used nuclear weapons on the U.S.S.R., were they somehow more moble?

Nuclear submarines typically refer to submarines that are nuclear powered, not submarines that carry nuclear missiles. Although some submarines do carry ICBMs.

If anything, China and Russia are more interested in the locations of the SSNs than the SSBNs, at any given time in the modern age.

I'm curious why we need both a nuclear deterrent and a standing army of 1,127,801 people. Seems like more of an XOR.

Because we subsidize world peace (http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-01-22/india...). Maybe it's a business we need to get out of, but at the moment, the reason Europe, etc, get away with spending so little on defense is that they can count on NATO, and the U.S. basically carries NATO.

NATO's record to keep the world safe and peaceful is nothing short of a disaster. Arriving too late with too little is often how NATO's interventions can be described. Laughable at best, and in return people end up hating NATO for their lack of timely action to save lives.

The purpose of NATO isn't to keep the world safe. The purpose of NATO is for Europe to outsource its collective defense to the U.S., specifically to protect Europe from the Soviet Union. It worked, at tremendous cost to the U.S.

So, when some large military power cuts off shipping lanes in the Pacific, we'd, what, threaten to nuke them? That's a better state affairs than what we have today?

Conversely: what goes does a standing army of 1,127,801 people do you if your adversary has nuclear weapons?

The adversary has nuclear weapons because you (assuming you are a citizen od the US of A) have nuclear weapons.

I wish this was a picture so I could submit it to Cute Overload...

Because it is cute or because you find my comment ridiculous?

I'm not a military strategist, and I know this isn't really an area where logic wins, but I like thinking of these scenarios at a top level anyway.

OK. Assume China cuts off shipping lanes in the Pacific. They position their naval fleets in some aggressive formation over major lines (likely blockading Taiwan or something). Assumedly, they have to sink a ship or at least fire shots and take one captive. The U.S. and Japan respond by moving their forces into aggressive positions threatening China. The situation either A. ends when China or the U.S. back down or B. accelerates into military conflict. The conflict is either small, likely involving only SEALs, drone/tactical strikes, or another group of special forces, or full scale, involving (initially) a Pacific strike group fleet. The only logical progression of a full scale military conflict between two nuclear powers is nuclear warfare, at which point it won't matter how big either standing army is. Again, some assumptions, but not unreasonable.

The same scenario without a large standing army has no "standoff." The "standoff" is MAD from nuclear weapons, and understanding on all sides that military action that threatens any nation's "security" will quickly go from tactical to nuclear.

I suppose I just see the massive standing army (special forces not included) like I see air superiority fighters. There's really no scenario where they are necessary for the defense of any modern nation.

> The conflict is either small, likely involving only SEALs, drone/tactical strikes, or another group of special forces, or full scale, involving (initially) a Pacific strike group fleet. The only logical progression of a full scale military conflict between two nuclear powers is nuclear warfare ...

It's not quite as black-and-white as that, as illustrated by the history of the second half of the 20th century: The U.S. and USSR engaged in several proxy wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan, arguably Central America), but never came close to nuclear war.

(Neither the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis nor the 1983 Able Archer scare involved a war, and the Korean War of 1950-53 was apparently started on Kim Il Sung's own initiative to the surprise of the USSR, although there have been reports that Russian pilots flew North Korean MIGs in air-to-air combat with U.S. planes; when China came into the war in November 1950 it wasn't yet a nuclear power.)

> there have been reports that Russian pilots flew North Korean MIGs in air-to-air combat with U.S. planes

Stalin was careful enough to enlist pilots as "volunteers", suspending their official service in Soviet Army for the duration of mission.

> Assumedly

I rode subs for awhile and your question is a fair question. Subs with nuke missiles are an insurance policy. They are a deterrent, insuring no country can attack the U.S. - no matter how successful - and not expect a massive and devastating counter-attack. Run silent, run deep.

That argument is flawed. You can destroy each other, so what? Everybody loses. We know that some countries have their weapons ready to go at the will of a single person or very few. What if that leader becomes crazy or incapable of reasoning? Your subs you't protect you in that scenario.

There are so many other ways you can prevent such attacks. Diplomacy, commerce, keeping good relations, etc. The threat of an axe on your neck makes it hard to look like you have good intentions in the first place.

That's why it was called M.A.D. - Mutual Assured Destruction - with dark humor. Nobody chose it, the world just evolved that way until it became codified.

In his book, "Star Wars," Lt. Bowman makes the case that the Strategic Defence Initiative (and similar missile defence systems) are bad ideas specifically because they disrupt MAD. His argument is that as long as we KNOW we are not being under attack, then we can all sleep at night. There is a point to this.

MAD wasn't just about deterrence, but also about ensuring mutual access to early warning information. The combination of the two is actually not a bad thing. "I know you can destroy me if I attack you, and I know you can see me if I start to do so" is not a bad set of factors. Unfortunately things like anti-satellite missiles and weapons in space really endanger that because if a small piece of space junk collides with a satellite over the other guy's territory, you may not know for sure that this is not the prelude to an attack.

So the actual MAD strategies as they developed through the Ford years were actually quite sophisticated and stabilizing. But what happens when your threat is a nuclear weapon in a twenty-foot container instead of an ICBM (because some country like North Korea knows we can have 747's with lasers shoot down launching missiles if we launch a first strike)?

That strategy demonstrably worked -- we got through the Cold War.

The problem is you can't always assume that the other guy has good intentions. If they're rational, then mutually assured destruction keeps everyone rational. If they're crazy, then that certainly is a problem, which is why there is enormous effort put into preventing proliferation and containing the capabilities of countries like North Korea and Iran.

You think mutually assured destruction is going to keep an Islamic extremist group rational?

No, that's what the NSA and CIA is for. :P

I realize it's a circular argument, but MAD is for other nuclear nations (or future nuclear nations).

Islamic extremists are not the only security threat to the USA. We continue to exist in a relativel tense peace with China, Russia, and other nation-states.

The ability to drop a bunch of nukes on someone on short notice is not to deter terrorists, it's to deter nation states - anywhere between North Korea through Pakistan.

The existence of nukes and the submarines that carry them is almost entirely orthogonal to the (relatively new) thread of terrorism.

Because the threat of force is the only real deterrent for some sorts of people / threats. Wishing it was different doesn't make it so.

MAD works.

But only when combining deterrence with early warning and an agreement not to develop weapons to target early warning systems. Otherwise it is a recipe for "oops, I guess we weren't really being attacked. Sorry for the nuclear war."

Really? All evidence to the contrary.

Avoiding the overuse of classification doesn't automatically mean creating a live feed of all troop motion. You're using a strawman argument here, I think.

Knowing the location of the troops months or years ago isn't likely to cause much harm: A competent enemy can probably know all that anyway, if they care to.

They already know where the subs are:

Submarine Spotting

Now a report in the magazine New Scientist says the probable reason for the action is that the scientists are all study bioluminescent plankton which can reveal the whereabouts of submarines.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/525113.stm

You need an NSA and CIA simply by virtue of the fact that every other country has one.

Secrecy is also an essential part of negotiations - you can't reach middle ground if all your concessions are made public. There's a balance to be struck, though we're clearly far from achieving that atm.

A little secrecy by itself is not an issue, as long as the process built around it is as transparent as possible. That's the issue you're facing with this whole PRISM thing, lack of accountability and transparency.

Unfortunately we don't live in a world of ideals.

With complete transparency comes little ability for security. Terrorist attempts become more frequent. Crime becomes more rampant and life become more unstable.

If you ask a typical American if they are willing to die for their freedom, very few would. They'd rather the security. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, it's just true.

>With complete transparency comes little ability for security. Terrorist attempts become more frequent. Crime becomes more rampant and life become more unstable.

I understand how it can seem that way, and I'm not criticizing, but is there any evidence anywhere for these claims?

I don't know. It's a great question that demands an answer. However, I feel like finding those answers might take me down a Google hole I don't want to travel down at this point in the night ;-)

But I will ask you this. Is open government intelligence something that should be tested?

While I might be wrong with my claims, what's worrisome to most is that I'm not. And opening up intelligence as a test isn't exactly something that can be fixed with the next iteration.

Sounds like the "security through obscurity" argument that gets flogged by the geek crowd.

Except that does actually work sometimes. Debian flat-out broke crypto for a couple of releases, yet it appears it was caught first by OpenSSL developers and not the black hats.

>Terrorist attempts become more frequent.

Citation needed. We have no reason to believe that any actual terror attacks have been stopped. People who wanted to use terror against the US have either managed to or failed by their own incompetence. What we do know is that before we started getting insane about security there would be some attack about once every 10 years. Why do you imagine it's any higher frequency now?

And the part that irritates me the most is: if there is more frequency to the attacks, why aren't we trying to find out why and addressing that. If you think the answer is "they hate us for our freedoms" then you're simply an idiot.

> We have no reason to believe that any actual terror attacks have been stopped.

My guess would be that NSA guys probably take the fact that many Americans hold that view as a huge compliment. I'd be willing to be there's a whole book of "if only you knew".

(FWIW, I still don't think that warrants the program.)

Life is not a Hollywood movie. Hollywood movies, comic books and so on use larger than life figures doing larger than life activities to stop larger than life villains. In reality, no one on earth is that competent. The villains are usually not very good (often blowing themselves up alone with their bombs) and the "good guys" are usually not that great either (often corrupt themselves).

If the government actually were stopping constant terrorist activity (a) they wouldn't parade obvious entrapment cases as "wins", they'd pick something legit to make us feel safer and (b) someone would talk. One of the contractors, loud mouths, drunks, etc. would eventually leak something. A group as large as NSA wouldn't be able to keep their world-saving completely quiet forever, that's just unrealistic.

> If the government actually were stopping constant terrorist activity (a) they wouldn't parade obvious entrapment cases as "wins", they'd pick something legit to make us feel safer and (b) someone would talk. One of the contractors, loud mouths, drunks, etc. would eventually leak something. A group as large as NSA wouldn't be able to keep their world-saving completely quiet forever, that's just unrealistic.

Consider for a moment how long they've kept the fact that THEY HAVE A REALTIME MIRROR OF GOOGLE a near-total secret. Consider the fact that private companies like Apple and Google have been able to keep their source trees secret with far lower penalties for accidental/intentional disclosure and much less attention and fewer resources devoted to OPSEC.

Also, I think you are confusing FBI/LEO with NSA/military intelligence. It's the former that does those silly things. NSA never parades anything, ever. It's like STFU is in their DNA.

As far as the rest of the military goes: the coolest plane we know that they've built is the SR-71, which was built in... 1964. It's fifty years old. Do you suppose they've sat on their hands since then, with all the advances in materials and computer/avionics technology since? To put the R&D in perspective, it is believed that the NSA's Utah datacenter is built to store a yottabyte of data. The mind reels. Where do you think all that classified budget defense money is GOING, building shit that gets press releases?!

Keeping secrets is pretty straightforward, actually, if you're willing to go to the (order of magnitude increase in) trouble and expense. USDoD is.

Israel. They're under a constant threat of terrorism, but their intelligence has been relatively successful.

I was talking strictly about the US. I'm aware that there are actually places on this earth that have a problem with terrorism. The US isn't one of them.

Wow, after 9/11, after the boston marathon, after ricin and anthrax to the president, after the first world trade center bombing, after OKC bombing? These were actual events with actual deaths. These are actual problems in every definition of the word. I understand very well that Israel and other places have more frequent attacks (though few/none have had attacks on the scale that we have) but that does not exclude the US from having a problem.

Do you realize these events are decades apart? We have a terrorist death count of something like 100 people a year. 100 deaths a year in a country of ~350 million people isn't worth thinking about for one second.

>>Terrorist attempts become more frequent

> Citation needed.

My insinuation that terrorist attempts would become more frequent was IF our intelligence agencies opens up all its data to the public. I was not defending the competence of the US government's intelligence agencies.

Please read the opening post.

There are probably things that still need to remain secret, just like corporations need secret to protect their business. However, to insure a minimum level of transparency, the government should clearly SAY what kind of things are going to be secret, so that the scope is clearly defined (for example: locations of nuclear weapons will be treated as classified for obvious reasons), as well as the constitutional limits of whatever secret operation can be carried. Likewise, there should be budget restrictions on secret operations to ensure nothing huge can go out of the radar without public scrutiny.

I agree that we need radical transparency in government, but I think this goes too far.

First, we have to recognize that these are still people, and people do not function well with zero privacy (which is part of the problem here).

Second, any information the government keeps about me should be kept secret from others (though I should be able to pull - and contest - it, potentially with a time delay if I am being investigated).

However, we really do need to open things up. Secret programs in particular are fundamentally broken in a democracy - supposedly, our elected officials have oversight; but we have no means of assessing how good of a job they are doing in that capacity.

Security by obscurity has always been a bad, unsustainable policy. It also only happens to be the one method of security most idiots can understand.

Ultimately, all security is by obscurity or delay by physical impediment. Kerckhoff's doctrine is just an abstraction in a limited context. Throw in all complications of the real world, and your left with just those two.

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