Hacker News Reader

Comment by esbranson | Hacker News Reader

If its genocide you are worried about, best pay more attention to those committing genocide rather than murderers and rapists. If its freedom of information you care about, best pay more attention to the FSBs, KGBs, BNDs and Säpos of the world than the CIAs, NSAs and FBIs.

But I guess you can't hate what you can't see. And I say that with the understanding that FOIA + CIA is probably as uniquely American as it gets.

View on HN

Sure, you're the best in the world. Nobody else has any kind of Freedom of Information Act. And nobody else but freedom-loving Americans would ever dare to direct such a request towards his own intelligence service.

Wait, three seconds of googling resulted in https://fragdenstaat.de/files/foi/2812/antwort.pdf

And in Sweden, "Offentlighetsprincipen" is not only much older than the America FOIA (let's say... ten years older than your Declaration of Independence!), but even part of the country's constitution.

It's a good point, but my point was that it's not an either/or thing. There's plenty of outrage to go around, and the fact of the matter is that the NSA has enjoyed a very privileged position on the internet that the FSB simply doesn't have, so even if they're relatively transparent and respect the rule of law more than the FSB, we never trusted the FSB with anything sensitive in the first place, so they had no opportunity to commit the crimes that the NSA has perpetrated.

Not to mention, the NSA are the ones that the Americans are actually paying for and who we have some (albeit low) chance of stopping. There's no point letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

It is an either/or thing. Either you have a robust American FOIA-like system... Or you don't. (If you're outside America: You don't.) You want us to hate them all, I argue it is practically impossible to hate anyone else besides the NSA/CIA/FBI without an equivalent to the FOIA. Its epitomized by the American phrases "what you don't know can't hurt you", "what the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over" and "ignorance is bliss". I think where people get it wrong is when non-Americans think America is the problem--and that is because they lack a FOIA.

> we never trusted the FSB with anything sensitive in the first place, so they had no opportunity to commit the crimes that the NSA has perpetrated.

Don't mistake absence of evidence as evidence of absence. And I say that knowing full well that without a FOIA, such a mistake is impossible to avoid. The fact is you have no clue about any agencies besides the NSA/CIA/FBI. Be careful how reliant your hatred is upon knowledge when your knowledge is deficient.

> the NSA are the ones that the Americans are actually paying for and who we have some (albeit low) chance of stopping

The NSA/CIA/FBI are the ones that anyone has any chance of stopping. Because its the only one where FOIA information can overcome your ignorance that "they had no opportunity" or some such nonsense. But the first step is to enact FOIAs, not stopping the NSA/CIA/FBI.

>It is an either/or thing. Either you have a robust American FOIA-like system... Or you don't. (If you're outside America: You don't.)

You might not have meant it that way...but there are other FOIA-like laws in other countries. For example, RTI (Right to Information) Act of India - I have several people that I know who have used it for great success. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, it is broader in scope than the FOIA - since it is used to get information on things like why a certain person was rejected for a govt promotion, the internal status of my passport application, etc

Indeed I did. Specifically in the context of FOIA requests for CIA-like agencies. I am sure other countries have them; I am unsure how many apply them to their foreign intelligence services.

Does India's RTI Act apply to agencies like the RAW?

From what wikipedia says[1], it seems that in India you can't get information that would affect national security, but I highly doubt you can get that in USA either. You brought up BND and SäPo earlier, and from the same article it appears that both Germany and Sweden do guarantee access to all official federal information.

[1] http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_information_laws_by_cou...

I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index also relevant

I think it's also worth mentioning that the NSA and CIA apparently side-step or white-wash FOIA requests whenever they really don't want to turn over information, for "reasons"? What good is the FOIA in regards to intelligence agencies if requests are either not fulfilled, whitewashed, or involving people long retired/dead? At that point it's all theatre.

Yes. And I'm hoping the more countries that apply FOIAs to their intelligence/security services, the more likely we are to get a robust solution to these problems.

You might want to edit all your very sure posts about how this is an american thing, seeing as you've been corrected now. Being that it's what you base most of your argument on you might as well just delete them entirely.

Can't. And yes, I have been aware that other countries have FOIA-like legislation, just as I am aware the Soviet Union and China had/have constitutional rights to freedom of speech.

I am still of the opinion that this means little if nothing without a discussion of implementation details. I.e., whether or not they match American jurisprudence on application to intelligence services such as the case at hand. (E.g., It is on the implementation details when you discover that China and the USSR do NOT have freedom of speech, their constitutions be damned. The devil's in the details.) Wikipedia does not go this in-depth, the UK has stare decisis but lacks codified laws, Germany's FOIA laws are very recent, Sweden is small with an even smaller pool of lawyers and law professors who write about such issues, and in general these countries don't seem to have well-developed "constant jurisprudence" to compliment their very ambiguous statutory law, so the state of things can be extremely difficult to ascertain. (I admit I did not know Sweden's freedom of the press "constitutional law" was applicable, nor about Germany's recent legislation which is not very tested AKAIK. I assume Russia has one as well, leftover from Soviet times. The UK, Russia, Germany and Sweden are the only countries who's legal systems I have knowledge of.)

Just as in America, there is statutory law, then there is reality. They can, and do, deviate significantly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com