Obama Is Announcing His NSA Reforms Tomorrow - Use This Scorecard To Judge Them
thedaywefightback.org
thedaywefightback.org
"On June 19, 2013, Tice claimed while being interviewed that the NSA had spied on Barack Obama while he was a senator, along with monitoring federal judges, ranking military officials, and other members of Congress, saying he himself had seen and held papers ordering such actions.[12][13] He went on to say, "This thing is incredible what NSA has done. They've basically turned themselves—in my opinion—into a rogue agency that has J. Edgar Hoover capabilities on a monstrous scale on steroids"."
Remember, this has already happened very recently in our nation's history, during J. Edgar Hoover's direction of the FBI:
"Hoover became a controversial figure, as evidence of his secretive actions became known. His critics have accused him of exceeding the jurisdiction of the FBI.[1] He used the FBI to harass political dissenters and activists, to amass secret files on political leaders,[2] and to collect evidence using illegal methods.[3] Hoover consequently amassed a great deal of power and was in a position to intimidate and threaten sitting Presidents.[4]"
This part of american history needs to be shouted from the mountain tops. "The Burglary" and COINTELPRO need to be mandatory teaching subjects in our schools. It's not a conspiracy theory to suspect NSA of controlling politics and activism through blackmail and coercion. This is exactly what has happened before with Hoover's FBI, and there's every reason to believe this is happening again with the NSA.
No, there isn't -- there is no such evidence that our elected officials are being coerced by the NSA.
Let me say it again, if such proof is revealed then it would be absolutely terrifying for everybody involved and all over the news (be it MSM or social or whatever). As it stands now there are only claims, and there is a distinct lack of evidence and facts surrounding such claims.
Now, with regards to blackmailing our elected officials, I think we can put it simply as such: the fear of just the possibility that we might be blackmailed is enough to cause self-censorship. This is a historical truth and accepted as self-evident.
That said, our elected officials are no less victims than we are. They are spied on as much as -- if not more than -- us.
Please acknowledge this one thing, if you will acknowledge anything in my post: our elected officials are no less victims than we are.
If I hire someone to walk around a room punching everyone in the face, my nose may be broken, but I'm not a victim in any real sense. These officials made their choice and it came back to bite them in the ass.
Your demand for evidence and facts is bogus, since there cant really be any. What we are talking about is what goes on in the mind of an individual. We cant prove that. But we do know that, for want of a better term, implied pressure to conform works. Its the same reason belief in a god works. God knows all and will punish us if we don't follow his rules. So, if we believe in the god/NSA, we do what is wanted because we don't want to be punished.
We know people act like this. We know it is possible that the NSA has information that might damage us, or ones we love. We know what the NSA wants. Therefor we have reason to believe someone who might want to control the NSA won't out of personal fear.
A reasonable deduction, based on what is known and history. No, sorry, no evidence. That one of the nice things about blackmail, there usually isn't because the victim obviously doesn't want to be outed.
Yes, of course the elected officials are victims in this, potentially. But as elected officials, with the power of democracy, they are, IMHO, duty bound to put that aside. Not doing so is selfish cowardice. Some one has to be as brave as Snowden, and I don't see that in our elected officials.
In light of what we do know about the NSA, it is completely reasonable to assume (and in fact believe) the worst when we speculate on what we don't know. If people ask, "what evidence do you have?" I just respond with, "I'm sorry, but have you actually been paying any attention to Snowden's revelations and have you done any critical thinking about what they actually mean?" That is enough to shut them up.
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And the NSA has as close to absolute power as one can reasonably reach today: in the Age of Information, they have access to almost all information. What makes them especially dangerous is that their deeds are powered by their misguided conscience. They strongly believe that what they are doing is the Right Thing because it protects America. People who have succumbed to such fundamentalist thinking will do anything with the power they have, including blackmailing politicians.
Down that path lays dragons and madness.
How logical and reasonable. /s
Instead, people who run afoul of their agenda will have damaging information leaked through seemingly unrelated channels, or be targeted by other law enforcement agencies after parallel construction tip-offs.
This instills more fear and creates stronger influence than the threat of direct blackmail. Rather than being faced with explicit demands, anyone in power with something to hide must continually assess whether anything they say or do could be construed as offensive to the intelligence community.
Smoking marijuana, using cocaine a bit? Admitted in an autobiography, there are even pictures of the former.
There are the usual rumors he's homosexual, although his daughters would indicate he's at "worse" bisexual. After getting reelected, this would result in exactly what???
To paraphrase Edwin Edwards, he'd only be in danger if "caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy".
Bullshit.
A guy who the MSM regularly photographs with a halo, or publishes such pictures as supplied by the White House (there's a bit of a tiff right now about all that). Who's described as "sort of a god" by Newsweek's Evan Thomas. Etc. etc. ad nauseam.
The scandals for which we have firm evidence, and actual bodies (dead boys, as it were, but a number of dead girls in Mexico too) are so numerous that we can be very sure the dominate culture that makes or ignores scandals will continue to do the latter.
As for future prospects, you really believe Obama could have done something that only the NSA knows that will keep him off the speech circuit, unlike Clinton??? He's set for life ... or perhaps only until the Federal government runs out of money, but that's a very different thing. The scandal of "trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see" is not in the least hidden.
Your Clinton example again fails to impress, plus moves the goalposts (considerably less damage; heck, Hillary! becoming Secretary of State did more damage to his opportunities and income than anything else, Obama's low cunning WRT to that was much remarked on at the time).
I'm not aware of any damage that did to what Clinton worked on during his presidency (although I could have forgotten), you're going to need to expand on "affected leadership in the House of Representatives" since as I remember the Republicans captured it in 1994, halfway through the 1st term (although, yes, scandals were a part of that, e.g. Waco), and I suppose the razor thin margin of 2000 means that any single thing like that could have flipped it to Gore. Joining a crime family does have its downsides....
Now a case can be made that all this will harm Hillary! ... but that's complicated by the palpable desire of a lot of Democrats to avoid having her on the ticket, e.g. she doesn't have a fraction of Bill's political skills.
But I think all this still falls substantially short of the impact you claim is possible, I still maintain he's in Edwin Edwards territory.
Many important political figures have been involved with adulterated sex and illegal drugs. Mass surveillance can uncover these scandals and use them as leverage to coerce and blackmail. The FBI put MLK under mass surveillance, uncovered evidence of his sexual deviancy, and sent him threatening letters in an attempt to suppress his civil rights activism.
BTW, what is "adulterated sex"??? Adultery? Only seems to matter in the military, where it's still a crime and grounds for discharge, at least for officers. And for many Republican politicians, but certainly not all, Mark Sanford being only the latest infamous example I can recall.
Try again.
That has nothing to do with my example. I don't believe you are really that naive.
adul·ter·at·ed: to corrupt, debase, or make impure by the addition of a foreign or inferior substance or element;
You could have easily looked this up. You are being purposefully obtuse and it's not fooling anyone. I'll call a spade a spade.
I could also add "look at the Abscam aftermath" if you think these potential targets are toothless.
And of course I know what adulterated means, I've just never seen that formulation with sex; Google comes up with 4,600 entries, perhaps I'm just behind the times. However I'd use "scandalous", which is in common use, and alliterates.
And sharing memes on Facebook? What the fuck is that going to do?
You want real actual measurable change? Get your fucking congressman out of office.
My congressman is voting the exact way I like, its the rest of your congresspeople that are screwing it up.
// truth and the actual situation for many in one statement
It also might help if you could point to why some particular congressperson was objectionable, like if you actually had metrics for what you were trying to achieve so we would all vote in bunch of people that were worse that the status quo. Like a scorecard.
Promises made before elections are just phrases used to put the other side off balance or force the other side to react. They are never really meant to be acted upon if there is any political cost.
Playing the long game, nah just waiting out inevitability, as in it wasn't going to stand anyway and he had that luxury to rely on
That's one reason he's such a polarizing figure. Yeah, he promised to bring us together, but to bring up one particularly relevant to Hacker News example, look at his "you didn't build that" speech. Coming from an entrepreneurial family and having working in a number of startups, I couldn't take that as anything but an attack on me and mine.
The actual text:
There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me –
because they want to give something back. They know they didn't –
look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own.
You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who
think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot
of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than
everybody else. Let me tell you something – there are a whole bunch
of hardworking people out there.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.
There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to
create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed
you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've
got a business – you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.
The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created
the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our
individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are
some things, just like fighting fires, we don't do on our own. I mean,
imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way
to organize fighting fires.
Were you equally insulted when Romney said:
You Olympians, however, know you didn't get here solely on your own power.
For most of you, loving parents, sisters or brothers, encouraged your
hopes, coaches guided, communities built venues in order to organize
competitions. All Olympians stand on the shoulders of those who lifted
them. We've already cheered the Olympians, let's also cheer the parents,
coaches, and communities. All right!
Look, it doesn't matter a wit how you interpret his words and actions, what matters is how hostile around half the nation finds them. Nothing in my politically aware lifetime, which starts with Nixon's first term (1969-1972), comes even close. I've read that FDR was this bad, don't really know enough about the ones in-between.
I mean, he said just before the 2008 election "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America." You don't think that included the social contract???
Announce all you want, it will still be there tomorrow.
The ignorance and overall un-literacy (not illiterate, unliterate, meaning they're too fucking lazy to read) of the American public, and the high turnout ratio of elderly, and I'm sorry to say, gullible senior citizens doesn't help.
I don't want to elect someone who will force their ideas into law. I want to elect someone who will force the people's ideas into law. What's wrong with a politician saying "I had this idea, but I changed my mind because the people told me I was wrong"?
What about when the people choose an ethnic group that they want to lynch en masse, or a particular type of music that they want to make it a crime to distribute, or to start a mass extermination of sharks in coastal waters, or to have the EPA offices torn down and replaced with a massive monument to the 10 commandments?
The latter two are just reflections on shifting cultural trends. E.g. replace sharks with wolves for the first ... but the latter is cute. Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wetlands....
That's a reflection on the quality of the president, not checks and balances.
Such objections were predictable when he made that pledge, nothing's changed in your claimed reasons of "ignorance and overall un-literacy" and high turnout elderly. It says nothing good if all this was enough to stop him once he became President, whatever the exact reason(s), and it's remains another broken promise.
There was also the wrinkle of trying them in normal civilian courts, which would have been a logistical nightmare.
Ah, yeah, don't forget the usual suspects would be out there protesting 24x7. Not saying that's not their right, but what Congresscritter wants that?
(And all rather silly, at least for the unlawful combatants, which per international war conventions can be killed out of hand.)
Logistical nightmare? We try more dangerous people than this every single year. It's hardly insurmountable.
2) Protect "privacy rights" of foreigners: Foreigners don't have privacy rights under our Constitution, and by and large Americans don't have a problem with the NSA spying on foreigners. Indeed, that's the purpose of the NSA.
5) Stop undermining internet security: what does this even mean? Should the NSA stop figuring out how to break encryption? Stop inserting backdoors into equipment sold to China? Again, that's the purpose of the NSA.
7) Reject the third party doctrine: the third party doctrine is a legal doctrine; the President cannot reject it, only the Supreme Court.
It's a mistake to believe that just because many Americans are upset with the NSA over recent revelations, that they embrace the leftist/globalist sentiments that are common in the tech community with regards to the NSA. To the extent the public opposes the NSA programs, they oppose mass-collection of call data from Americans. That's it.
And, obviously, there's the widely held (and very plausible) belief that NSA backdoored random number generator standards. Those backdoors probably aren't currently doing much harm to the Internet, because they aren't in use on systems whose random numbers we (a) care much about and (b) are exposed 32 bytes at a time. But still, it's reasonable to expect NSA to stop doing that kind of thing.
But "stop subverting Internet security" does seem to be a bright line we should be able to get agreement on.
Since our European friends have lesser resources, I cannot imagine they have done/would even conceive of doing anything so cold-blooded as our NSA has done. Which internet authorities are centered in Germany? Any?
In fact, I imagine a new Internet rule will have to be created, where invoking the NSA as hyperbole ends a thread in much the same way as NAZIs or Hitler do now.
Essentially the NSA has been working against the interests of all of the rest of us in a measurable, negative way for years. Weighing that against the admittedly negligible positive results achieved, the NSA becomes little better than a massively-funded exploit-creator who, by the way, we all pay our own money to fund.
So what could be a healthy tension becomes a rigged game, with the NSA busting heads and breaking things all over the place.
Curious - what can it mean for the NSA not to be capturing resources? Surely they use competent engineers to do what they do - who could have been directed at improving software instead of subverting it?
Once again: it's fine if NSA is discovering exploits, as long as they aren't also paying off commercial researchers not to disclose flaws to vendors. A private NSA exploit development capability merely puts them in competition with commercial industry, and industry has the upper hand, because they can actually fix whole bug classes all at once, and NSA has to find them piecemeal.
Competition implies some sort of level ground. But they gag the communications suppliers as they subvert the networks. If not for a whistle-blower this could have continued undetected for decades.
I wish I were some sort of conspiracy-theorist spouting hyperbole. I know this sounds like one.
I guess I'm not qualified to speak on this subject, I can't say anything without sounding like a newb. The NSA requires Google, wireless operators, everybody who has or transmits data, to hand it over assembly-line fashion and that's not an 'exploit'. But if I managed to do that, it would be.
So the NSA doesn't get labeled as a rogue hacker or exploit-creator because, well, because of semantics.
5) It most especially means "stop pushing the use of compromised encryption standards". If there is a weakness for the good guys to exploit, the bad guys will find it as well - it is better that we strive to be secure. Attempting to break encryption standards the world has come to through legitimate processes is an entirely different thing, and totally compatible with that striving to be secure. Backdoors into equipment sold internationally are less of an issue - and the more targeted, the less of an issue - I'm not sure what the right call is there, once we're generally respecting point 2.
7) The president can state that he doesn't believe it is appropriate (bully pulpit...), and can instruct the Justice Department not to rely on it. He could also ask for legislation that closes the loophole explicitly - we already do that for HIPAA.
I'm not saying any of these are politically expedient (though I would prefer the political environment to be such that it is) or likely, but "the President can't do this" is wrong, and "it is not politically expedient" is reason not excuse.
Re: "stop pushing the use of compromised encryption standards" is a lot narrower than "stop undermining internet security." Politically, the former might be possible, but the latter certainly wouldn't be, at least to the extent they involve breaking encryption standards and the like.
Finally, while the President could theoretically instruct the Justice department not to rely on the doctrine, he can't "reject it" as the law of the land. He also can't, practically, tell the DOJ not to rely on it. U.S. v. Miller is the underpinning of a huge portion of white-collar and antitrust enforcement activity.
Yes, and I'm not sure I disagree with that statement. My responses weren't directed to that statement, but to the more specific enumerated critiques. In any event, "X is seen as politically impossible" shouldn't become "never ask for X", or X will never be seen as politically possible because no one is asking for it.
'Recognizing foreigners as having "rights" that constrain the security-related operations of the NSA would be a political non-starter.'
I think that's something we should fix (and I think doing so would be in our long-term interest on several fronts, including security). We start by stating that it's something we want.
Re internet security: Breaking encryption standards, and then recommending that it's time to move to new standards when the breaks become sufficiently significant, is not undermining internet security - it is furthering internet security.
'Finally, while the President could theoretically instruct the Justice department not to rely on the doctrine, he can't "reject it" as the law of the land.'
"Rejecting" a law doesn't have a precise legal meaning that I'm aware of. The call is for him to 1) say that it's bad, and 2) to take steps to curtail it.
"He also can't, practically, tell the DOJ not to rely on it. U.S. v. Miller is the underpinning of a huge portion of white-collar and antitrust enforcement activity."
So call for legislation that restricts it without overly restricting it (granting that the costs of going all the way would exceed the benefit), or find some other means of enabling that enforcement.
Installing backdoors in private equipment might be the first modern case for a 3rd Amendment challenge.
This might be from having politicians in the 90's lie to my face and then vote totally different.
E.g. the common Senate trick of voting for cloture, that is, the end of modern version of the filibuster which needs 60 votes (not that that is likely to survive very long now that the "nuclear option" has been launched) and then voting against the bill. That gives 9-10 Senators room for posturing, and underlines how you need to learn some of each house's procedures to know what's really going on.
Not all that much, that plus paying attention to a few bills you consider telling, and a little search fu on thomas.gov the day after a vote goes a long way.
ADDED: For the House, you need to learn, generally from other sources, the rules under which a bill was brought to the floor and the associated votes. Whatever you knew about the Senate is now subject to abrupt change: among other things, the nuclear option was launched with a majority vote of the Senators, and the sources I've been reading say a rules change by majority vote was either unprecedented or not done for more than a century.
Senate Majority Leader Reid has also de facto changed rules like the ability to offer amendments (the words of art are "filling the amendment tree"), and has recently? formally stated that right is over.
Lord knows what's going to happen when the Republicans regain control of the Senate someday; even the "why can't we all be friends?" Republican Senate old bulls are very unhappy about these changes.
It saddens me that reporters don't explain the rules to people. The misreporting on what a vote means and why some voted Yeah to one vote and Nay to another really bugs me. Certain news outlets have actually lied about what was going on.
It is a bit hard to follow. Locally, one ND reporter followed the ND session on twitter and did a remarkably good job including explaining the reasons for the 1 vote in a 99-1 vote that looked correct but could have been horribly (and maliciously) misreported.
[edit] as to the "nuclear option" - very short-sited and makes one see that Pres. Clinton was a much better manager of the executive branch.
You can't fix culture. You can only shut it down and start over. And that will not happen.
I fully expect the NSA reform to make even the financial reform look harsh in comparison.
See also 18 USC 2705(b):
> A governmental entity acting under [18 USC 2703(d)] [...] may apply to a court for an order commanding a provider of electronic communications service or remote computing service to whom a warrant, subpoena, or court order is directed, for such period as the court deems appropriate, not to notify any other person of the existence of the warrant, subpoena, or court order.
Note that 18 USC 2703 and 18 USC 2705 were part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986.
But I suppose that's in the realm of fantasy?
The text on the scorecard picture is repeated below it in plain text, plus commentary.