NSA Reports Improper Surveillance of Americans
businessweek.com
businessweek.com
Individuals will be described to have violated the NSA's strict internal rules and snooped on their cheating spouse or whatever. One, two, three incidents. Look, we've come clean!
Not mentioned will be the wholesale storage of every communication of every American, which the NSA does not deem to be surveillance until they specifically search on your name while knowing you are an American.
This is pretty much the exact same playbook as we observed with Abu Ghraib. Rape rooms run by the government are NOT illegal; that's official US government rape, and covered by memos saying it is legal, so everything is fine. And if over 100 people are killed by U.S. official torture and rape, that too is just fine.
But if overenthusiastic PFCs make prisoners lay on top of each other and give a thumbs-up, that's an error that needs to be disclosed and heavily punished.
The idea in each case is to make the unobservant member of the public think that all the abuses have been disclosed, and they are minor, and the individuals responsible have been punished.
How is this not a crime? It they can come over you from downloading off JSTOR using legitimate access, why is this person still employed at the NSA rather than behind bars?
It is. But a crime does not need to be punished if those that commit it are powerful enough.
People in the NSA know lots of secrets of everybody. They know if the president has a mistress. They know if members of congress or their family do take drugs. They know who is corrupt and who does not. They know all the mistakes people did for getting where they are.
Remember that the NSA records and stores all telephone conversations so they can years later analyze and make sense of it.
So telling the person not to be a bad boy again is the best solution for everyone involved. Angry employees are not good here.
On the contrary they're good for everybody.
That's amazing that you know this, when it isn't mentioned in the official report about exactly what things they look up.
Obviously at any big organization, you will get misbehaving employees. But the way you prevent misuse and handle incidents defines whether it's a major issue or just a minor annoyance.
What possible use could this person serve after they've proven they had no qualms willfully and grossly misusing their position of power? How could they keep such a person employed?
You spelled scrapped incorrectly.
Compare this to how a corporation deals with a negative branding windfall. Take the case of GM this year in dealing with their ignition switch recall. The controversy increased as their response was based on rationalization without dealing with the fallout of trust. Eventually the increased negativity brought their CEO to practically beg the public for forgiveness.
The US Gov, perhaps just another corporation, stands in contrast by conducting a rational response like Toyota, albeit slower, but it has no reason to consider the wider trust fallout, apart from measures this article mentions. It feels there is no reason to prosecute anyone for torture (Obama's look forward not backward argument). This protection of their gangsters [1] is a mentality that trickles down through the whole system of governance including how wrongful acts by the police are handled.
When Toyota's trust was damaged they had to beg to keep customers. When the US Gov's trust is damaged... meh, you're not going anywhere.
From Websters:
Synonyms: benediction, benefit, boon, felicity, godsend, good, manna, blessing
Antonyms: affliction, bane, curse, evil, plague, scourge
The original 1755 version only had "Fruit blown down from the tree" - http://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/?page_id=7070&i=2282 . Etymonline says 'Figurative sense of "unexpected acquisition" is recorded from 1540s' - http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=windfall&allowed_in_fra... .
It's also used in the 1800s as the tornado track. See https://books.google.com/books?id=1GQJAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA324&dq=w... .
No, they give off the appearance of having been coerced by an unfavorable FOIA ruling to release as little as they can.
Therein lies one of the major problems with these mass surveillance programs. Not only are they collecting information on millions of innocent Americans, but now it appears that they are not properly securing that data. This whole thing just makes my blood boil.
I cannot tell whether you're being paid for by these folk, or just plain politically naive, or suffer from induced helplessness.
Your argument of "outrage" has levels built into it.
L1: collect information
L2: of innocent
L3: americans
L4: properly securing data
L1+L2+L3+L4 => boiling your blood.
For one, why do you even care about L4? Who cares if they secure data properly, they are already doing L1+L2+L3
Why do you care that it is Americans? Would it be better if they focused only on non-Americans, would you have cared less? They are already doing L1+L2.
What is the reason you are hanged up on "innocent"? What does that even mean? Who and how do you determine if someone is innocent? Are you that devoid of critical thinking that you fail to see the rhetoric of "innocents" legitimizes whatever is to be done to those deemed not innocent? They are already doing L1.
They are doing L1. That by itself should have boiled your blood without any regard for L2+L3+L4, which are false arguments inserted into the debate in order to legitimize the actual assault on human rights under the disguise of "better security" by the same agencies that always turn these kind of tricks time and time again.
Of course, the problem is that innocence in this case is determined behind closed doors and secret courts, instead of public courts.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/15/1351990/-Dick-Chene...
... if you don't count the millions of Americans' phone records that were logged
Because of course, spying on people outside one's own country is what intelligence agencies are supposed to do.
Throughout the history of America we've seen the tension shift to one side of this rope or the other. through a series of Supreme Court decisions in the very early 1900's (during the Spanish American war) it was settled at the highest level that American occupied territories do not have a right to self-determination nor to many other constitutional rights. Today this is status quo.
This isn't true.
"Richard O'Dwyer, a computing student at Sheffield Hallam University, faces a potential 10-year term in a US jail despite never having been to America or using web servers based in the country."
http://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/jan/13/piracy-student-lo...
There was right of privacy mentioned in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
Spying on allies... is also expect, but there's a catch: you're not supposed to get caught. This might mean avoiding some types of spying that are too risky. As long as everybody uses spies "under the table" so nobody notice, it's hard to accuse each other of impropriety.
If a spy screws up badly and IS caught, it IS going to cause a scandal. Traditionally, this means the spying country is going to have to make some sort of gesture or reparation to patch over the relationship. In extreme cases this could be real payments of cash or goods (rarely, even letting the spy be tried in the foreign court). Modern realpolitik probably requires only a minor concession in a future trade agreement.
This isn't a law or treaty; failure to do something to amend the relationship simply leave the insult/animosity unresolved which is probably bad for future negotiations.
So yes, spying will happen on our European allies. We just weren't supposed to get caught at it. Now that we are, it's on us to patch over that relationship, if we care about the future of those relationships.
[0]: http://usa-the-republic.com/revenue/true_history/Chap8.html