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I’d rather have it abolished than persist in its current form. I think there’s a question about whether it’s possible to reform the NSA into something that’s more reasonable…But my feeling based on what I’ve read is that I don’t want to live in a country with an organization like the NSA is right now.
There's nothing like that out there today. Russian hatred for Islamism exceeds the U.S.'s, China is panicky about Xinjiang Province/Pakistan. China and Russia pretty much act purely on interests and have no ideology.
While there are few parallels to WWII, there are some with WWI. I hope that stark alliances don't form.
For example, one of the fake controversies after 9/11 involved NSA and domestic intelligence not sharing as much information as some believed might have been valuable in preventing the attacks, in retrospect. This sharing was prevented - very deliberately - by statute. Those statutes have been weakened since, in the name of security and with little consideration of why they existed in the first place.
edit: I was really only thinking of statutory control of intelligence gathering with my comments. Philwelch brings up an interesting point regarding (largely illegal) espionage, but I think the points still stand.
On the other hand, over the last 50 years, besides there having been built within every world-leader a strong awareness of the "final solution" (nukes) available to the major powers to put down any sufficient threat, a true global trade economy has also emerged, with strong economic interdependence between the major powers (China holding US debt &c). Every power is now just as much beholden, economically, to each other power, as if they were an export colony; the US going to war with China, for example, would be cutting off one's nose to spite one's face in the same way that Britain choosing, without provocation, to start warring with America in 1775 would have been. In this situation, I don't see much chance of a major power instigating an empire-building war.
Also, unlike in WWI, a country that isn't a major power doesn't have the political weight to instigate a major war--nobody will follow it into battle. Attacking a country in a union with a major power is implicitly attacking that power, and military strategists now treat it that way, instead of thinking they can "just" take the country. Instead, we merely see individual unallied states getting nasty to their unallied neighbors--free radicals bumping into one-another--and having to be calmed down by some third party. I would guess future "wars" all across the globe will look more like the US's dealings in Afghanistan/Iraq than it will like some sort of confrontation between NATO and some new Axis.
Another way to put it, is that national political borders across much of the globe have basically annealed down to a rest-state. The resignation to this fact is what seems to have spurred the EU into existence; if you can't invade your neighbor any more, you may as well cooperate and trade. I see this sort of idea spreading (though perhaps without the shared monetary policy aspect, which doesn't seem to be working out too well) as more regions of the world "settle", leaving basically four or five pretty-similar political bodies in a de-facto world-government union, and individual break-away states here or there which are filled up with "peacekeeping forces" by the one or another of the powers.
I think this logic is pretty common to people who don't have a dystopian view of the future. Do you see some major flaw in it?
And if you don't think small countries can drag larger ones into war, take a good look at the Korean peninsula. If that goes pear shaped, it could easily drag the US into a war with China.
Hypothesis: Wars are starteted out of emotion.
You've managed to eliminate a "war kills us all" dystopia. You've not managed to get past the "near-totalitarian neoliberal capitalism keeps us all in a neo-Malthusian struggle for subsistence for the Greater Glory of the Capitalist Class" issue.
That one's a bit tougher to crack, since at this point the "Perpetual Poverty Machine" has quite nearly integrated the entire productive and sustaining apparatus of the entire planet.
If it does happen, most likely it will be caused by the US itself. Many threats that exist today are largely created by the US short-sighted foreign policy or even worse - blatant disregard for any nation, but themselves.
It is clearly not the case that the NSA, in it's current form, is the lynchpin keeping global warfare at bay. There are strong arguments that it is in fact adding fuel to the ongoing smoldering economic and diplomatic conflicts. There clearly is a whole range of possible forms for the NSA between "no security" and "total global surveillance."
You also act like human conflicts are exogenous, that they just happen to us like natural disasters. Behind this is the idea that there will always be some other force or enemy that is beyond reason, engagement and diplomacy. That is a particularly ugly and simpleminded view.
I don't think it's all that clear.
The thought that what the NSA is doing (especially if we limit the discussion to what they are doing inside America) contributes even a little bit to preventing another WWII blows my mind. I don't even know how to argue with that. It seems so obvious that that couldn't be further from the truth.
If you behave in a way where others don't want to see you with total power they will have great incentive to find ways to have you lose power. The risks to the USA from being seen as thinking that might makes right is an acceptable philosophy (and since the USA has the might to pretty much do whatever it wants right now it can get away with doing so).
But those that must accept the bully today, will want to find a way out eventually. Currently the USA seems to mainly be aligning with short sited politicians the world over that trade off the rights of their citizens to domination by whatever they USA wants done. This actually works for the short term (to a degree).
But it likely creates situations where citizens elsewhere get tired of electing toadies to USA dictates and throw them out. And given the dynamics, those politicians pursuing anti-USA policies from those countries is increased as the flagrant might-make-right actions turn people off.
Balancing intelligence with diplomacy is wise. But the USA seems to have totally abandoned the idea that the rest of the world's population (95% of the total) matter. Diplomacy seems to have been abandoned for the much easier and funner (when you are the mightiest) policy of we have the might, do what we say or you will suffer.
I agree, that the world can become a huge mess fast. I believe diplomacy is critical in such a system - in order to protect yourself from the result of an out of control mess. But diplomacy is a mess and complicated and frustrating. I can see why you don't want to deal with it if you have the might to tell everyone to bow to your dictates. But I think it is foolish and risky to have limited diplomacy as much as the USA has. This limiting of diplomacy in the USA is not new, the consequences have just become much greater it seems to me in the last 20 years. We only seem to have really had any patience for it at all when dealing with the USSR - because we were worried about the damage that could be done if things went badly.
If there's anything that Obama shall be remembered for, it's that under his administration there was an astronomical consolidation of power. The DHS has progressively been getting more and more involved in pulling the strings of all levels of law enforcement.
This is not the case at all. The NSA has only existed for 65 years, we can do just fine without it.
I agree that the NSA needs to stop wholesale data gathering and needs public transparency, but the age of the NSA is not a useful argument that we can live without it, since we can't live without other things that are younger.
rhizome 7 hours ago | link | parent | flag
*something that the entirety of the federal and state
governments rely upon?*
This is not the case at all. The NSA has only existed for
65 years, we can do just fine without it.Is there a President this is not true for?
"Under Control" is a short documentary about it.
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1j6qo4/i_am_joseph_bon...
I'm curious if he will get a private reprimand from Google execs for unpleasant commentary on their partner :)
I'm not suggesting blindly trusting any company or person but do we have actual knowledge in this subject I missed or simply opinions?
"Nobody wants a box in their network...[Companies often] find ways to give tools to minimize disclosures, to protect users, to keep the government off the premises, and to come to some reasonable compromise on the capabilities."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57593538-38/how-the-u.s-fo...
Basically: in order to prevent the feds from installing boxes on their networks companies offer to do their own interception, which in my opinion is the far better alternative. "Direct access" isn't accurate.
Here's the blog post from the Google Engineer (Joseph Bonneau) about accepting the award: http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2013/07/19/nsa-award-for-...
Thought provoking.
That's one thing. Now make these 2 events happen in the opposite order.
;-)
There has been a lot of utter horseshit about how the NSA's activities will make Europeans distrust American cloud computing. Well the NSA is nothing compared to the Communist Party espionage organizations.
Citation ?