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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

I don't agree with your statement that the surveillance programs are not evil because their goal is to save lives. Essentially nobody is intentionally evil. There's a reason we say "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions", and it's not because we're all civil engineering aficionados.

Evil can and does arise from people trying to do their best to make the world a better place. To say that the program isn't evil because it's trying to save lives is incredibly dangerous.

At the risk of triggering a Godwin, let's all recall that Hitler rose to power "trying to defend the country from terrorism". We probably don't have any nascent Hitlers, but we certainly have people who will abuse power if they get it, and ignoring people with good intentions will make them impossible to detect.

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We don't even need to evoke Hitler. Let's look at a more recent American president: Nixon.

From Wikipedia:

> Nixon and his close aides ordered harassment of activist groups and political figures, using the FBI, CIA, and the Internal Revenue Service.

Imagine empowering Nixon with the abilities of today's intelligence community.

I sometimes amuse myself by thinking about how Nixon would be far too liberal to get elected today. Of course, a Nixon coming of age in today's climate might be quite different.

Barry Goldwater too.

The man did found the EPA.

This. As cliché as it may sound, John Dalberg-Acton was very very accurate when he said ""Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Right now, the way this agency is being run and the way it is being handed power by the few in Congress that know all the details is as close to absolute informational power as you can have.

>Imagine empowering Nixon with the abilities of today's intelligence community.

Imagine the President as an irrelevant figurehead doing the bidding of the NSA/Military.

I think people overlook this because it seems too far-fetched. But I don't think it's so outrageous that it shouldn't be considered. And whether the system is being used for these purposes or not, the fact that a system exists that could is a very dangerous situation.

Insofar as national policy is overdetermined, who the president happens to be for a given term is irrelevant. So the question becomes, is the surveillance state overdetermined? There's certainly a strong collation behind it--the money alone makes it so. I suspect the president has very little freedom in these matters.

Yet I wonder who's on the other side. Have all the major players just said, "sure, that works for me?" Surely someone powerful feels the risk.

Remember that it wasn't the Washington Post that drove Nixon's disgrace, it was the FBI using the Post as an instrument. It was government feuding, and I wonder if this latest episode is another instance of feuding. Maybe I hope it is.

Imagine another J. Edgar Hoover.

https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/nsa-whistleblowers-for-dum...

Imagine the President as an irrelevant figurehead doing the bidding of the NSA/Military.

Or the bidding of J. Edgar Hoover.

Imagining is fun because it doesn't require facts or logic. Pasting Nixon on to the current situation, while mildly amusing, does not clarify what is actually occuring. It is still far from clear. Is there a solid piece of evidence that Snowden is holding back for dramatic effect? Not releasing it, if he has it, lets the story become a mockery of itself because without any facts all you are left with is your imagination.

Okay then, hypothesize. Use J. Edna Hoover as a template if you think there's no precedent.

That's not even entirely relevant. Others have pointed to the example of J. Edgar Hoover, which is highly relevant. Imagine not a figurehead, or an evil president, imagine merely an ambitious civil functionary who abuses and misuses his secret powers outside of any oversight.

The difference is Nixon did this illegally while Obama cleared everything through those ridiculous secret courts. He has carte blanche to trample on the constitution all he wants

I see no difference at all. Nixon did something illegal and Obama wrote "this is legal" on a piece of paper that few people get to see. Hell, how do you know Nixon didn't scribble something in his private bathroom that said what he was doing was legal?

There's an important difference, in that Obama is using authority granted him by Congress and affirmed by the courts, whereas Nixon did his stuff independently of the other branches of government.

The consequences of this can be seen in what happened when they were found out. Nixon got drummed out of office, while Obama gets essentially a free pass. Sure, Congress is asking a few inconvenient questions, but about unimportant details.

Imagine Michele Bachmann requiring Congresspeople to undergo a "patriotism" test, and surveilling them to make sure they are "patriotic".

Unchecked power corrupts anybody that uses it. Obama should have closed these secret courts that authorize drone murder and mass spying the moment he took office, now it seems he's been sucked in and corrupted just like anybody else in his position.

Its not just domestic spying either, there is a whole gov propaganda chorus on social media to influence discussion and squash dissent run by centcom. At first they "promised" it would not be used domestically but if you were to go looking around twitter and online media comments you will easily find the centcom puppets demonizing and discrediting Snowden, drowning out the issues he leaked which is criminal domestic surveillance

m.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks

I'm not sure if its corruption/venality or if its the fact that he has a wife and kids that keep him from going up against those who seem to hold the true power but one way or another it's deeply disappointing.

He wouldn't really be interested in shutting down secret courts that authorize *the behavior he is interested in perusing". It wasn't Dubya who brought back assassination, it was Obama.

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