The Next Wave
nsa.gov
nsa.gov
https://www.nsa.gov/research/tnw/tnw204/articles/pdfs/TNW_20...
Page 9 of that report essentially says 'we read all your social media, browsing, and email'. I've always been ok with corporations doing this because they'll never kick down my door in the middle of then night, unlike governments. But the NSA isn't kicking down doors either (not that I've heard of). Even their most famous malware (Stuxnet and Flame) were carefully designed only to screw over certain people. Sure, they're grey-hats; testing systems and not reporting bugs. But they're not yet black hats. They haven't been caught yet fucking over innocent people (I think we can agree the Iranian nuclear program doesn't qualify as innocent people, though again an act of war against it isn't exactly white-hat activity).
Maybe they're not guilty until they commit a more egregious crime?
Probably not. Probably they're still a negative influence in the world. But it's interesting to consider other perspectives.
Maybe not, however they cooperate with those who do kick down doors. Eg:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/05...
They have other people kick the doors in for them. [1] Parallel construction is how it gets done in the real world.
[1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140203/11143926078/paral...
Yes, they have been:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/24...
I also think you're incredibly naive. I don't understand how people can give such a massive organization funded by tens of billions of dollars a year, that doesn't even let Congressmen properly audit it, the benefit of the doubt. Even Feinstein said she doesn't know about all of of NSA's programs. Why would you assume then that they are trust-worthy? Just because we haven't found out about some super-secret stuff that they wouldn't allow you to see anyway "because national security"?
You know what they say - trust, but verify. Except the NSA doesn't let you verify. If the NSA ever does anything against you, you're never going to know about it. They can spy on all of your communications and online activities (which can include e-commerce and other stuff), and then set the IRS on you. You'll just think the IRS caught you, not the NSA.
What about running Congress or presidential candidates? They can spy on all of their activities from 10-20 years ago until now, then send an "anonymous tip" along with all the data to a newspaper to destroy that politician's chance of winning. That politician may have wanted to rein in on NSA's powers or simply do anything those who really run the NSA wouldn't have liked. Again, you're never going to know it was NSA behind something like that.
Those are just example of what they can do with their extreme, unaccountable, overboard and secretive spying powers.
http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2013/07/19/if-criminals-i...
I agree with the sentiment, although I might rephrase it as "There should be no surveillance without a warrant," since in some cases you can't know who is innocent or not without doing surveillance. A warrant is a good implementation of due process for people you want to investigate, but who are still (in theory) presumed innocent.
Imagine you find out your roommate is running tcpdump -w log.pcap on the router. He hasn't been reading your conversations or anything though, yet. Would you consider this behavior acceptable?
That being said, I don't think NSA is going anywhere until USG falls apart, and even then it'll continue operating independently. Nor are they the only group doing such things. Fixing the glaring security bugs of IP and HTTPS is the only way forward.
I can't even imagine the thought process of someone who thinks it's okay to participate in these sorts of operations. I shudder at the thought of what else a person like that might be able to justify doing that hasn't been revealed. Imagine if the government had these sorts of powers in the mid twentieth century. The FBI attempted to stop the civil rights movement. In the 21st century they would have succeeded.
Because the NSL orders are kept secret. If you're going to take an evidence-oriented approach, they shouldn't have the ability to censor speech - because that is how the evidence will be discovered.
You might start to think otherwise when corporations either when requested (forcefully) or voluntarily will hand over your data to the government, whom then might kick down your door in the middle of the night when you say or do something they don't like.
Oh by the way, this is already happening.
"But you find out immediately after you click the link" is not an acceptable argument. We have this website exactly to not click all the links on the internet to find out what they contain.
I think the NSA has already hired most of the people qualified to understand how best to build NSA 2.0 which I can only hope will lead to USA 2.0. A crack team of political scientists, social scientists, computer scientists, some historians, some mathematicians, and a couple of representatives from the organization without a name should be able to come up with something.
The democratic processes need to be renewed from time to time...isn't the NSA in the best vantage point to understand the future of democracy? If we could all get together and just nudge it in the right direction...