"We believe that a formal notification to the Supreme Court of the government's misrepresentations in the case--both relating to its notice policy and relating to its practice of 'about' collection under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act--woulcl be an important step in correcting the public record and would be in the interests of the public as well as of the Administration and the Supreme Court."
Also, this is the most important part of this entire scenario - not the spying, not the secrecy, not the internets, but the executive overreach. The use of spying and secrecy to gain tremendous power (including over the other branches of government). The ability for the executive to grab enough power to coopt the legislature and deceive the courts - and get away with it. Were that to have actually come to pass little else would have been important. It's intriguing and relevant (for us) that this overreach was made possible by the knowledge gap generated by rapidly advancing technology - 'trust us, we'll get the bad guys with this newfangled technology stuff like twitters and facebooks'. But in the end, it's just a power-grab.
while it make the events relevant to this audience, the technology involvement is a red-herring here as history is full of examples where executive branch was able to perform the power-grab utilizing the technology of the time, frequently an absolute power-grab and with wide popular support in the name of "the greater good" as perceived at the time by the populace. In its current form technology allows to minimize direct violence required to perform the grab, it allows to stretch and smooth the shock of the transition.
Of course, I disagree that the purpose of TIA is security, and I also disagree that it is even successful, but the real issue at hand is beyond that, and is about how the debate was had and who was involved. There was no public debate, and any that did leak was tightly brought under control (with NSL's etc). This is an affront to the democratic process imho, but even if one were to argue that our representatives were involved, I would say there has been a stratification of the congresspeople, so that only a select few people on a select few committees even get to participate, and even then the ones who do are unable to grasp the subject matter fully. Of course no staffers get to see it either.
With the knowledge of how intel agencies work, and more specifically, the contact sport of politics in the beltway, I would also venture to say that even if a fairly principled rep did make it on a relevant committee, though would quickly be brought back under control via the standard methods.
I won't get off too far into this rabbit hole, lest I am accused of conspiracy theory, but I truly think the system of checks and balances is not only crumbling, it is in ruins. Even worse, a facade is being put up to cover it up.
The trouble is not spying itself, it's that the cost of spying has become so low that states choose to spy everything by default. We need to revert to a state where all communications can be eavesdropped, but where there is non-negligible computational cost for doing it. One way might be to switch to encrypted communications for everything, but using keys that are strong enough to provide protection from wholesale dragnet surveillance, but weak enough for targeted brute-force decryption.
Are you simply referring to "terrorist" acts of violence, or a more abstract tension between traditional states and distributed transnational organizations?
We are the problem, we keep electing people who support this crap.
If you look at American policy, it's closely representative of the views of typical voters. High levels of welfare spending for the middle class (i.e. Social Security and Medicare?) What could be more representative of a voting population that consists to a large degree of middle aged middle class folks nearing retirement who won't be burdened with the bill? Foreign wars? How many liberals urged Obama to intervene in Syria even after their ostensible opposition to Iraq? How many liberals supported arming Syrian rebels after complaining for years about arming anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan? On either side of the aisle, Americans are broadly willing to resort to military solutions. The drug war? I grew up in the 1990's and remember being surrounded by suburban soccer moms who thought drugs were more evil than Hitler. The drug war was built on a solid coalition of social conservatives and Reagan Democrats that's only now chipping at the edges as a younger generation becomes parents themselves.
First past the post has notable theoretical weaknesses, but that weakness tends to be entrenching the voice of the mainstream consensus, to the exclusion of minority viewpoints.
Americans love to bitch about the government, but very few would change anything in a substantial way. They argue over issues at the edges because that's the only thing they disagree about. They might disagree with the amount of penalty BP should receive, but people on the right don't want to get rid of the regulatory regime surrounding oil drilling, nor do people on the left want to abandon drilling entirely.
The problem with democracy as it exists today is that policy also has a massive effect on public opinion - i.e. propaganda is effective. So it's not an effective check on power.
Huh?
They wrote a letter. With polite suggestions.
I like the letter, and I'm happy to see many more letters like this. Heck, I might write my own letter. But you are spinning this.
Play out the whole process of those hearings with teeth and see how long it takes and the chance of anything happening as a result. Normally and typically results in just outrage that plays well with voters and makes them look like they are doing something. Laws are not passed in hearings. Not to say that something can't or won't become of it. But the stakes are high here and if ("if") there is something expect it to take time and energy and involve a big back and forth.
I love both my Republican and Democratic friends (the two main political parties in the states), but I find their memory of how the political system actually works highly fluid.
I'm all for Rand Paul doing similar grandstanding. He's written letters, made speeches, and generally mucked about. Not much has changed though. He gets away with this because 1) His party is weakly held together so party discipline is light, 2) His party is out of power so they can really throw whatever mud they want and it doesn't matter, and 3)He can do his own thing and party leaders can kind of shrug and say "Well. There goes Rand!" while winking and smiling -- the message being: he's not actually doing anything.
Most of these statements are not true about the Democratic senators involved here, so they're on a shorter leash. Right now, as long as folks like raynier gush on about how great they are and the rest of the party pays little attention, there's little downside. But if this were to get anywhere near seriously damaging the administration, the party whip would politely take them aside and have a word with them about committee appointments. (That's his job). So right now, just like with Paul, I'm applauding and thinking this is great. But just like with Paul, I'm not naive enough to think this amounts to much more than the Democrats trying to take both sides of the issue at the same time.
Side note: if you'd like to have a fun history lesson, spend a day googling various senators and the letters they've sent. Now look at what they actually accomplished.
I had an interesting experience when I was just out of college (long time ago) and the power company cut off our power and damaged some machinery. I complained and the utility was totally accommodating of my complaints and it seemed as if for sure they were going to do something. After all they agreed with me. They were really nice and assured me I would get compensated.
So I had nothing to fight against after all they appeared to be on my side. And each time I followed up it was just a bit more time.
Well, as time went they actually did nothing other than importantly give me the impression they would do something. [1] They inserted as much time as possible between the event and doing something as they could. After it all played out I had lost my steam because the whole fight didn't seem as important as it did on the day it happened. And I dropped it. But learned a valuable lesson in terms of human behavior and how to divert anger by agreement.
[1] Happens with collecting bad debt as well (when you are owed money is what I mean). Customer strings you along maybe sends a bit of money or maybe nothing but always seem as if the big payment is right around the corner. Them bam! Sorry not paying anything.
In actual practice this is a form of grandstanding.
If you've ever tried to enlist the help of a legislator they will do all sorts of things that on the surface appear to have teeth.
In the end if they can't get a majority to agree with them nothing happens.
They will write the bill but if they can't get the votes your petty little issue dies.
But they always put on a good show. The question is whether they are willing to go to the mat for you and/or make a trade (of something someone else thinks is important) to get the votes.
Also whether the press runs with it and thinks it is important which depends on not only whether the press thinks it's important but whether they can see that others who are important also agree.
It was an incredible thing to watch. The formality of the occasion, the power of the judge, the power of the system he represented, the normal range of courtroom expression: they all set a context in which a slightly raised eyebrow was more powerful than the loudest shout, that arch deprecation was more cutting than a raft of verbal abuse.
I expect it's the same deal here. These are US Senators asking, and they're basically, in polite language, making direct accusations of lying to the Supreme Court. I suspect that they, mindful of the co-equal status of the government branches, very rarely say things like this. So when they do, everybody knows that they mean it.
http://abovethelaw.com/2013/09/who-wants-to-watch-a-prosecut...
1) There's a such thing as decorum.
2) One step at a time. "The mill of justice grinds slowly, but it grinds exceedingly fine."
2) When it comes to powerful people, it grinds so slowly and so fine that you can't even see the result.
http://www.justice.gov/osg/briefs/2008/3mer/2mer/2008-0681.m...
Additional details: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/justice-depart...