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 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).
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.
USGov is broken.