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This statement indicates real progress and is a fantastic step in the right direction

It read, to me, like nothing but a blowhard spouting hot-air and empty rhetoric, while desperately hoping to spike morale and discourage the next Edward Snowden from doing The Right Thing.

I mean, it's already well established that the NSA operates with almost zero effective oversight: given that the FISA courts are nothing but a rubber-stamp, Congress is lied to and accepts the lies - or engages in willful ignorance - about this whole situation (well, up until it breaks to the public thanks to Snowden), and the NSA operate under their own interpretation of the law anyway.

There's no real judicial oversight of the NSA, there's no Congressional oversight, so that leaves the Executive branch... and does anybody trust them to exercise restraint???

I think he's petrified that Snowden's heroic leadership in this area will inspire more leaks. One can only hope.

No doubt.

I agree with what you're saying, but the mere existence of this letter is indicative of the fear gripping those in power whom would rather their illegitimate authorities remain a secret.

   ...given that the FISA courts are nothing but a rubber-stamp

How is this 'given'? Do we have any evidence of this whatsoever?

It's been publicly revealed that they only deny something like .03% of all requests.[1] If that isn't a "rubber stamp" then I don't know what is. Of course they have a response to that "Well, the requests are so well done that there are very few that there is any reason to deny them" but that doesn't pass the "smell test" as far as I'm concerned.

[1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=fisa+.03%25

   but that doesn't pass the "smell test" as far as I'm concerned.

So it's gone from a 'given' to 'in your opinion'.

It's easy to explain the 0.03 figure if there are a large number of routine boilerplate small scale requests. It seems highly plausible that this is the case.

The fact that the figure is plausible doesn't rule out the possibility that abuses might be being rubberstamped, but the truth is that we don't know, not that it's a 'given'.

Anything can be argued... I take it as a given that we aren't living inside a computer generated simulation known as The Matrix. But somebody, somewhere, could make a case that we might be. But for all practical purposes, it is a given that we don't.

For all practical purposes, it is a given that the FISA courts are a rubber stamp. Just because there is some amazingly-low-probability and unlikely scenario to explain that away, is no reason not to accept the utter and obvious truth.

So obvious to you that it would seem that you need no evidence at all, other than your preconceptions.

.03% is a disturbingly small number. I don't agree that it constitutes "no evidence at all".

Without knowing anything about the nature of the requests it doesn't tell us anything.

Imagine there are something like 800 actual terrorist suspects - people who have been identified via human intelligence, e.g. Known to have met with terrorist cells, visited training camps, etc.

Of 10,000 requests, it's easily possible that the vast majority could be simply following up on the immediate network surrounding those people - e.g. 'Suspect X called person Y, person Y is new to us, let us check whether person Y is linked to other suspects by phone or email'.

Requests like that would be made using a boilerplate form, and would be correctly rubber-stamped as long as they were closely connected to suspects identified by other means. We should expect many of those kinds of requests to be being generated every day by analysts.

The .03 needs to be put in the context of the number of non-routine requests that are being approved. It doesn't seem at all unreasonable that for every 10,000 boilerplate followups generated by desk clerk analysts, there are 10 more speculative ones generated as a result of more specific investigations, and of these 30% are deemed overreaching.

The vast majority of requests are likely to be boring inquiries generated by bureaucrats following procedure, rather than Jack Bauer like rogues constantly overstepping their authority.

I agree that more context is needed to really know what this number means, and I agree that mindcrime is overstating the case by claiming that it is sufficient to let us conclude absolutely that the FISA court is not doing its job.

But I still think the number probably indicates that there is a serious problem. Further investigation is certainly warranted.

Definitely. My guess is that the system is much less corrupt than people think in practice, although no less fundamentally dangerous.

The secrecy of the process is definitely harming the government's image here, but I can also see that if the exact limits of what could be approved were public, terrorists would be able to develop communications strategies to counter them.

Ironically if his happened, the government would probably react by escalating to broader approvals. So the secrecy might actually be helping to limit the scope of the surveillance.

We see on full display the "ends justify the means" attitude that the NSA argues. It is not an invalid argument, but it is one that I'm sure the vast majority of the HN audience would disagree with. Hopefully this attitude is debated in the national spotlight alongside the validity of the programs themselves.

I do think that the "ends justifying the means" will resonate with most of the US population. And I think that's one reason it won't be a big deal in this country over the long haul. As it is, even among my less technically sophisticated senior-citizen in-laws the attitude is really, "Why is this news? Of course we're doing this!"

I think there is a bit of naivete with a lot of the HN crowd. It's sort of the same naivete that the RIAA has. You can't stop the flow of information. The information will find its way into the hands of the determined. You can't transmit data over virtually public networks and not expect it to be observed.

This all goes together with the discussion between on-site and cloud storage. If you want your data to be private, don't hand it to a 3rd party. That 3rd party includes Google, Verizon, ATT, or Comcast. Once you hand your data to a 3rd party, all bets are off.

This needs to be the way we think about data. We should learn the lesson from the RIAA that fighting a losing battle, just puts us in worse shape when we come to our senses. We should start teaching people that their data over these networks isn't private. Even if the gov't didn't look at it, someone from Google/Facebook/Verizon can do the same -- and is potentially more likely to sell to foreign nations.

This battle is over. Most Americans know this. The tech sector ironically seems to be the ones who are having the most trouble seeing how this plays out.

It is very depressing to me, knowing that computers, which I grew to love as a child are now the driving force behind enabling the new surveillance/police state (formerly thought of as science-fiction).

Everything we do is tracked, recorded. Our information is sold without our consent. Zero privacy and it only gets worse.

I disagree. What we need, and what we can really achieve if we put enough pressure on congress, is sweeping legislation that protects our privacy. I believe there's a tipping point beyond which even the least privacy-conscious of citizens becomes angry. Once that happens - hopefully within the span of these leaks - we have the opportunity to force congress's hand in making explicit our privacy protection in the digital age.

Just because there are two sides to an argument does not mean they are both equally valid, and that the argument itself is debatable.

Stupid false choice BS spread by modern media. You can have safety, privacy and security all at the same time.

   You can have safety, privacy and security all at the same time.

Is there a single explanation anywhere of how this can be achieved? If it is so straightforward that anyone who thinks otherwise is 'stupid', I would love to know.

Total surveillance has nothing to do with the security of the average citizen and all to do with keeping and extending the current elite powers. We're slowly transforming from a democracy to a totalitarian state.

   Total surveillance has nothing to do with the security of the average citizen...

If you really mean this, you are beyond reason. I don't disagree about the slow transformation you describe, but it's hard to believe that no NSA operatives are working towards preventing terrorism.

One of the problems is that surveillance can be used for both purposes.

However neither of your statements are an actual attempt to answer my question.

I agree with most of what you said. I want to nitpick one thing though. I don't agree that "the ends justify the means" is a valid argument. It's not an argument at all, it's a premise in the argument at hand.

And, as you alluded to, the majority of us here seem to disagree with the premise, making the overall argument invalid. Probably not the case for the rest of the country th ough. I'd like to think that we represent the "thoughtful minority", but doesn't everyone.

It's interesting you pointed that out. I wanted to explore the workings of that argument a little more (I choose my words carefully when constructing posts on this site) using "validity" and "soundness", but I was in a bit of a hurry as I have a lot of work to do today. Thank you for your response.