Before Prosecuting, Investigate the Government
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
How is it that our own government agencies can lie to Congress with near impunity? It is like disrespect has become second nature to government. They do not respect us nor do they respect other agencies within the same.
Too big to fail, too big to jail, applies to government now.
Where are all the impeachments and swift punishments from Congress? By not punishing them, it just makes it ok for the next guy to do it.
The influential people in Congress, by and large, want to be the next guy, be appointed to a high position by the next guy, or have influence with the next guy while remaining in Congress, so this is perhaps unsurprising.
Coupled with the fact that FPTP, single-member district elections (for the legislative branch, with even strong two-party incentives in the indirecte executive elections) tend to produce a weakly ideological and more strongly tribal party system, and a greater expectation than in a multiparty system for the average legislator that "we may not like it when their guy is in charge, but we need not to cripple the office for when we get back in charge", well, the results are what should be expected.
mainstream media.
> The organization is only as good as its administrative head, and the NSA I served in was widely different from the one that exists today.
The problem is that the administration, the Congress, the Senate, the Judicial System, and the intelligence agencies (with some of the law enforcement agencies) have lost their integrity. The ends do not justify the means. Lying to the American public which put them in power is the ultimate breach of faith. Not only are these things usually secret, but when revealed they are outright lied about.
Why would we punish intelligence agencies for something we don't hold either the administration or our elected officials to? They're all dishonest.
Two rights don't make a wrong, and that argument is just as specious as those who argue that "Well there are already infringements on the second amendment, why shouldn't there be infringements on the fourth?" Logical fallacies notwithstanding, the real question is why don't we hold more elected officials and their appointees accountable? Because it is they who we entrust to police themselves.
The problem is that there are too few punishments meted out, and if we continue to allow our elected officials and their appointees to do what they like without fear of reprisal, it can only get worse.
But, I know quite a few folks who work for fort meade both govies and contractors, and it seems pretty clear to me that the nsa has significantly mutated in terms of their internal culture, goals and morality in the last 20 years. Primarily 2001+. I think most of them would agree with that though they might not consider it as bad as I do.
Based on how gen Alexander frequently takes his narrative straight to the press (+10 2-3 full page section A stories in the washington post in the last 12 months alone) and some other factors I honestly believe that organization has a life of its own and would at least take an unusual amount of effort to train.
Comparing them to the CIA it's very telling. WHile the CIA has traditionally done a lot of shit and been the "cowboys" if you will, they give the impression of an organization (today) that is much less prone to systemically "go rogue".
Not that I'm implying the NSA programs aren't with executive branch blessing. Just that if by some miracle you got someone running the show that didn't want to spy on every item on the earth, they might find it pretty hard to shut down the machine.
My (uninformed opinion) is that it mostly came from the sick, sick amounts of money they started getting post 911 as a big part - someone who knows the situation pretty well guessed that they may in fact be up 600% in total buget (combined) as compared to around y2k. The second biggest factor was the intelligance community reorginization 10ish years ago that created the DNI and has everyone including the NSA and CIA reporting to them. As an outsider, it seems the DNI never quite managed to be a strong enough organization to keep these proudly independent orgs under their control and working together. Both groups were thus left to do battle and arguable the NSA won at least budget wise, though CIA ultimately managed to bypass their boss and regain a quasi-independant status at least with Obama.
The last bit is tech, even though it's obvious. Things are just sickly out of balance now in terms of ease of surveillance, data storage, etc in favor of the eavesdroppers. It's like taking a junkie who's been pretty functional for 20 years and locking them in a room with unlimited drugs, strippers and so much money they make it rain just by walking. Who could resist?
Whatever other mistakes are being made (and there are plenty) the NSA is a big, lumbering, arrogant agency filled with political power. We've got to shoot it in the head and start over.
They're all in on it. Note today the GOP saying what interest they have in oversight, while Obama is just continuing what they supported under Bush and what Democrats are supporting under Obama. It's the same thing, the sides just switch based on elections, but the behavior of the government (all of them) remains the same. It's an anti-Constitutional racket.
The public was specifically told during the Bush administration that only specific international calls were being monitored to suspected terrorists overseas.
Now we have a blanket collection of all phone call data foreign and domestic. This is definitely worse than what was happening under Bush (as far as we were told).
USGov is broken.
Remember: in politics, results don't matter. The only thing that matters is the successfully giving the perception of working towards results. People who like to actually deliver results don't go into politics. They go into the private sector.
So, if the president is fine with them lying to congress, there isn't anything congress can do short of impeaching and removing the president. Good luck with that.
I remember during the Bush years where administration leaders were flat out ignoring congressional subpoenas, and there was nothing the investigating committee members could do to force them to show up since the justice department was instructed not to act.
Security clearances, especially TS ones, come with very elaborate requirements that I'm certain would include a requirement to disclose that you're being investigated by the SEC. Even if it doesn't (or the employee decides not to disclose it), I'd be surprised if there wasn't some exchange of data between the SEC and the clearance authorities. Since trading in the public markets based on classified information constitutes a leak, you wouldn't keep your clearance for long.
While I'm sure there are cases, I think the controls in place to guard against that kind of abuse are probably some of the most effective in government. More effective than polygraph programs to screen those moonlighting for a hostile party, for example.
Look, from what I've been seeing in the last few days (mostly from talking to friends), the "nothing to hide" people are usually white, middle-upper class, and citizens of the USA.
But let's try this: get out of your privileged world for a moment and pretend, just for a second, that you are a Middle-Eastern American. This is where shit gets pretty real.
Why? Because the reality is that with every email, telephone conversation, and internet search you ever commit to - you will pretty much always be censoring yourself in the back of your mind if the government may misinterpret what you are doing. One search term, one "trigger word" on a phone call, and you could be finding yourself having to defend yourself against some very serious allegations.
This is why PRISM is a completely INSANE breach of freedoms. Given that so much of human communication is now conveyed electronically, this is such a huge loss of freedom for those who are being racially and religiously profiled.
FYI, I'm a white dude. But if I had to seriously self-censor every every email, phone call, and text I wrote for fear of persecution - the US would feel to me like Syria with MTV.
Let's talk about it economically. To effect real change, there would have to be a huge shift in the number of upset and angry people. So one or two of a few things would have to happen:
1) right now, most people are working from paycheck to paycheck. They have no buffer, no savings, no freedom from their day job. In fact, they are sacrificing more and more basics just to have the privilege of a job. How do you expect them to find the time to rally?
2) Probably near half the people in the US believe they have nothing to hide and thus shouldn't care about these issues. Something very significant would have to happen to many of them to get them to take action on it. Just by the nature of intelligence, this is likely outside the realm of reality.
3) what's left after throwing all your time and energy at your work and dealing with torturous bureaucracies? Whatever it is that makes life worth living. Your family, entertainment, food; whatever it is, a person just wants to enjoy these things for the little time they have on this planet. When trying to wrangle an entrenched insititution like the US government seems like it would take an entire lifetime to make happen, people evaluate their lives and make that calculus. Most find its just not worth it.
I don't really know what the answer is except to say that for anything to happen, probably at least two of those three things have to affect most people in a negative way.
Notice how the government is putting much more money into the terrorist attack threat then the heart disease threat?
Here are some of the reasons why people are so bad and assessing risk: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/08/five_neglects_...
(note finding the actual risk of death by heart disease vs terrorist attack is left to the reader...you might be surprised)
My favorite part: "We don't say that pigs kill more people than terrorists every year."
It may also be the case that our perception is that politicians can have a more direct impact on terrorist attacks than on heart attacks.
They will not budge and those systems will never be switched off. I would bet my last dollar on that premise.
Our only choice is to accept this and live in the knowledge that we are always being watched, or go as dark as the modern world currently permits without hindering day to day life.
At a minimum, we now know that we are being watched and listened to on a massive scale. Previously we only suspected the worst. Sadly, the worst was not anywhere near how bad it actually is.
I agree - I can't imagine a scenario whereby these large scale systems are switched off. Even if we are told they have been switched off or the data destroyed, how would we (as everyday folk) ever verify this?
> Our only choice is to accept this and live in the knowledge that we are always being watched, or go as dark as the modern world currently permits without hindering day to day life.
You sound low here, but if the above were true then it'd mean that people are willing to live under a dictator too. That's simply untrue.
It's true now. But it might be true in future. Hate to sound pessimistic but there are benefits (however perverse they are) to dictatorship.
You aren't pestered every year to vote (unless it's a democratic dictator that rigs the elections). You aren't asked about lot of things. You don't have to worry about saving the environment or your impact, just what he does. Things most people dislike like gays or immigrants is taken care of by a dictator. As long as he doesn't piss off too many people or too influential people, he's golden (and even then). Also dictators are more predictable then a nation to deal with.
Dictatorship are great if your nation is compromised of lazy, mostly irresponsible people.
6 of one, half-dozen of the other.
I am playing devil's advocate a bit here. I actually do believe that we can stop data gathering on this scale. However, I don't have the certainty that comes from ignorance, nor the hauteur to condemn someone else for reaching a different conclusion. Let others have their say, even if you disagree. The urge to quash dissent is exactly what we're fighting.
At different points throughout history, it was unfathomable that women would be able to vote, black people would have equal rights or that dictator ships would end.
Is it realistic to think that these multi billion dollar projects would now be abandoned? It wouldn't be the first, in fact, a lot of these things are subjected to economic realities, any large financial project can come to a halt no matter how big the investment. Pressures can come politically, socially, technologically and economically, thinking certain things are set in stone, that's not just unrealistic, it is defeatist, pessimistic, and negative.
As for personal strategies, there's also a world of difference between settling for the status quo and working to fight against it, even in small ways. It's a different starting point, instead of powerlessness, it's a position of power. Want to diminish snooping? Be more discerning about what data you make available, close your FB account for example. That's saying: I don't accept the status quo set by corporations and agencies. That's just a small example. Choose webservices that provide better safeguards and respect personal data. Another small example.
I'm all for accepting reality if it means that in doing one can recognize a status quo that needs to be changed while understanding that a 'new' reality starts with an idea that change is possible, if not inevitable.
That leaves insane costs with little to no intentional value and tremendous risk for corruption. Hard to shutdown but not impossible.
"No taxation without representation" or something?
The whole point is over-sight, and making these spooks follow the laws of the land.
See, the point is we can all see and debate these laws and rules. We don't need to know about the operations of the NSA as long as we have confidence in the rules, over-sight and enforcement.
Here is my problem: When was the last time any of us, US or non US, heard of a senior spook employee sacked and jailed for breaking the laws governing their work, with out it becoming public first as an accusation in the media? The real problem is the closed loop shop which only respects the law one some one out side of the closed shop discovers the law breaking.
The over sight is totally broken, and worse still there is literally zero incentive for it to be fixed.
In a sense, Americans deserve what they got. They chose to re-elect the same party (Democratic/Republican party, is there a difference really?) over and over again when there is an alternative in the libertarian party which by the way, would most certainly not authorize or encourage what the NSA has been up to. Regardless of your political inclinations, I would strongly suggest you consider voting for them if only for the sake of shaking up the establishment.
Saying "you deserve your government" is like saying "you deserve to be raped because you didn't try to avoid it hard enough".
I don't care about losing money because of taxes. But if government kills people and I cannot withdraw financial support for it, then it bothers me. Then, its real mafia face is exposed. "Go vote for change, but still pay for our activity."
I meant Americans as a group, not the individuals. Also, while I mostly agree with you, I certainly hope you do not get into politics. This kind of discourse is fine amongst people who are already like minded but will assuredly fail to convince anyone who does not already share your ideas. I hope you realize that and tone it down a little according to your audience even if you are right.
Yup, I just won't listen to them.
Sure, there's a pretty big difference both practically and in terms of ideological PR (those two differences don't, of course, align perfectly; the former is largely, but not entirely, a subset of the latter.)
So, no, they didn't choose to re-elect the same party over and over again.
> when there is an alternative in the libertarian party which by the way, would most certainly not authorize or encourage what the NSA has been up to.
I'm not at all certain of that. Sure, the Libertarian Party ideological PR isn't that, but we really have no idea what the LP in practice would be like, and we certainly know that parties' ideological PR and actual actions in office are rarely universally consistent (and we know that from far more examples than just the US Democrats and Republicans, as its true of virtually every political party in existence.)
Further, I think its not all that true that the American people freely choose any party; each individual American voter makes a decision of how to maximize value out of a fixed game that is tilted in their favor, and where they have much less power to address the fundamental problems in the electoral structure than they have to choose to minimize the harms within the structure.
And, frankly, too many of the people who try to sell alternatives to the major parties aren't interested at all in exerting effort to get people behind measures that would actually fix the electoral structure to increase the potential for alternative parties to be viable. In addition to the fact that this makes it virtually impossible for them to succeed, since they aren't willing to highlight and correct the primary barrier to their success, it also makes me suspicious of both their honesty of purpose and their competence to follow through on their purpose if elected, since they either lack the former or have far too weak a grasp on the structure of the government they seek to run to have much of the latter.
> Regardless of your political inclinations, I would strongly suggest you consider voting for them if only to shake up the establishment.
For people who understand that political activity isn't limited to voting, there are a lot more effective means of shaking up the establishment than voting for a third party that you might agree with on only a very narrow range of issues for that purpose. In fact, of all the successful movements that shook up the establishment and shifted the ground of American politics, I can think of exactly zero for whom that was a central part of how they succeeded.
So if I kidnap you and give you the choice of dying from a pistol and dying from a shotgun, I'm off the hook for murder?
> there is an alternative in the libertarian party
Spoiler effect. Also, given that the party currently in control of the executive branch campaigned on the promise of stopping these surveillance programs and then went on to extend them, I question your certainty that the libertarians would actually stick to their values once in office.
Conversation in the media: Maybe citizens shouldn't have guns. At least not guns that can easily fire lots of rounds in a short period of time.
Massive well-funded response: Don't even think about it. This is a violation of a constitutional right (2nd amendment) which is a vital protection against a tyrannical government.
Result: Attempt to pass a bill in congress fails.
Event: Guy with access to highly classified information concerning massive surveillance programs leaks some of this information to the press, which makes some of that information public.
Conversation in the media: This sounds like George Orwell's “1984”. The government is monitoring everyone and lying to congress and to the people about it. The laws, interpretations and court rulings are all secret, preventing accountability. People should know what their government is doing.
Pitiful response from lots of people with no clout: Stop tracking all our calls, movements and internet traffic. This is a violation of our constitutional rights (1st and 4th amendments) which are a vital protection against a tyrannical government.
Counter-response from establishment people with lots of clout: This is necessary to protect you from terrorists.
Result: TBD...
Silly gun control (which is ineffective at addressing the threat to which it responds) isn't simply difficult to get passed because the NRA has a lot of money.
Conversely, in the second example, the clout/well-funded comparison argument is similarly ineffective.
It's not really that parallel, and there are a lot more factors involved.
If more people understood what the wars were actually about then they would have much more realistic expectations (none) in regards to the ethicality or legality of state actions.
Wait, seriously. Come back for a second. Porn.
We all know a significant fraction of internet traffic is porn. Most men probably watch it. Perhaps also a large fraction of women.
How much you want to bet the NSA knows lots and lots about people's porn habits. Maybe they know exactly what percentage of men and women watch it, browse it, and/or read it.
After all, if you want to threaten, embarrass or otherwise manipulate somebody, knowing their porn habits would probably be a good start.
"Simple question, why wasn’t Snowden’s girlfriend a Spook? Back in the 1990s, if any nerd/geek/brain had access to Top Secret data then one of 17 U.S. agencies would have paired such a person with a beautiful girlfriend with similar level of clearance with whom he could talk just so he wouldn’t run away or leak, and said girlfriend would go on to become wife and pop out a kid or two, preventing said nerd/geek/brain from ever leaking (even if he ran away) just to avoid starving his kid/s because their mommy would lose her security clearance. What happened to America after 9-11? Fear got rid of all the common sense? lol.
Let me guess, the Carlyles went Boozing with Allen and Hamilton and they supplied the intelligence community with so many thousands of geeks and nerds that America’s 17 intelligence services ran out of beautiful women with whom to keep them in line. Ofcourse Snowden would leave his pole dancing, nature loving girlfriend of 8 years (with whom he couldn’t talk about anything and who couldn’t share the burden to his conscience because she had no security clearance) to blow the whistle and expose the alarming surveillance of innocent Americans who have no way to prove their innocence if their innocent words and second or third degree online associations mistakenly put them under suspicion and surveillance just because some computer algorithm got triggered. Just how many Americans are under suspicion right now? What are the numbers exactly? Thousands? Millions? lol."
At least from my memory, It's varey rare to see a go-get-em special prosecutor attached to anything that didn't have a partisan political origin. And neither of the parties are anti-surveillance - the last thing they want to do is ruin their next chance at bat with it.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/opinion/friedman-blowing-a...
Both Brooks and Friedman have one great problem though - they fail to show some real and tangible harm brought to the US or their allies by this leak.
It is also interesting that the Editorial can be used as rebuttal to those articles.
Schneier is sober and sensible as usual. But sadly among the connected people the opinions are strongly against the leak.
"We can't find the needle. I know, let's stack more hay on top, that'll help!"
The fundamental concept of unions and collective bargaining are good and, if you will, wholesome. There are working environments where it would be difficult to have a voice without such a facility in place.
However, it is my opinion that, unions have degenerated into virtual viruses that kill their hosts. Unions have optimized their side of the equation to such an extent that they are now absolutely deadly for both industry and government. The simplest example of this are the ridiculous benefit and pension packages they have obtained. These packages are mathematically impossible to sustain without hurting both their host and people outside the union. Imagine hiring an employee, paying them above industry average and then having to continue paying them 90% of that salary for life once they retire.
How does that happen? Are these organizations evil? Are the people evil?
Well, no, the people in the unions, the average union member is not evil at all. Tese are generally good folks just like anyone else in the country, union or not.
Where is the evil?
At some level it is in the union's management. Perhaps not explicitly. Again, most of the people running unions are probably just as nice as anyone else.
The evil really resides in the system and its interaction with other systems. Union leadership and me bership seek to optimize the deals they make looking mostly only at their criteria: more money, more benefits, protections, etc. taken to an extreme this leads to evolving a "virus" genetically coded to kill the host.
Part of this is facilitated by incompetent negotiators on the other side of the table, particularly in government.
That was a long setup to draw a parallel between unions and government agencies entrusted with national security.
The vast majority of the people who work for these agencies are good people. The failure is in the system of rules that they operate under and, perhaps, a failure to, just like unions, look way beyond self needs and consider a sphere beyond theirs and a timeline far into the future.
In the end it is a failure in the leadership of these organizations. They all work for the executive branch, which means the buck stops with the President.
This is something someone in his position would know how to do, safely, and with a great reward to himself, given that he's probably read the outcomes of hundreds of informants defecting to other countries.
And given his CIA background, he knew enough about propaganda to know how to sell it to keep his family from being shamed by being related to a defector.
The idea that a guy that's smart enough to make 6 figures after not graduating high school can't plan far enough ahead to explain why he went to China is ludicrous. He's simply not telling the truth about his motives.
I keep reading this hypothesis
Am I right in thinking that it still has no evidence to support it whatsoever, excluding the fact that he announced his identity while in a Hong Kong hotel?
Or maybe he defected to Brazil? There's no proof one way or another, so let's just pick random countries and speculate.