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> By all appearances, a significant chunk of the US law enforcement apparatus has simply gone rogue, stopped respecting Congress and the courts and is instead f

by raquo 11y ago

> By all appearances, a significant chunk of the US law enforcement apparatus has simply gone rogue, stopped respecting Congress and the courts and is instead focused on increasing its own power. I truly don't understand why nothing is done about that. Why doesn't anyone lose their job over this, let alone go to jail? I mean, I've gotten used to such indifference in Russia, but US seemed like the country that shouldn't tolerate shit like this.

cowardlydragon 11y ago
We are Aldous Huxley's version of totalitarianism, where we are drugged and entertained into submission.
- raquo 11y ago
  Yeah, but I'm wondering more about the inaction of other federal powers. Congress, President, I don't really know whose job it is, but someone in this country should have the power to deal with rogue government agencies? They don't appoint themselves.
  - poof131 11y ago
    The President has all the power to curtail these abuses. Unfortunately, reducing your own power is not something that comes naturally to most people. Additionally, any reduction in the national security apparatus will be a political disaster if another terrorist attack happens, so inaction is the prudent political course. It’s a tough problem to deal with and currently it seems a majority of Americans are more concerned with security than freedom. Until that changes, our elected officials will likely just voice concern and persist with the status quo.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      The President technically has that power, but in reality the DOJ's policy is set by the Attorney General, and the historical relationships between Presidents and their A.G.s has tended to be fraught. Mostly, what the President can do in reality is fire the AG. But if Obama does that, he'll have to find and get confirmed a new AG. If you're outraged by NSLs, the new AG Obama could confirm in this climate is unlikely to be an improvement.
      - idlewords 11y ago
        That's an odd view of the relationship. The President gets to set policy, and the AG can comply or resign. The responsibility rightly lies with the President, and Cabinet officers are unlikely to resign over issues unless their own views are irreconcilable with their boss's wishes.
        tptacek 11y ago
        That's the theory of the Unitary Executive, made famous by Bush's OLC head John Yoo. But there are statutes that delegate powers directly to agency heads and cabinet members, and not to the President, others that expressly limit the President's authority over agencies, and there are independent agencies that the President can appoint people to but cannot directly control --- despite residing in the Executive Branch. Also, the Constitution gives Congress the authority to vest the appointment of "public ministers, consuls, and all other officers of the United States" directly to the heads of departments, explicitly bypassing the President, who is mentioned earlier in that sentence of the text. Ultimately I think you're mostly right in one sense, and the President has so much authority over the DOJ that resignation is the only real authority the AG has --- which explains things like the Saturday Night Massacre --- but that the day-to-day authority of the AG and the leverage they have over the President by threatening to resign makes the balance of power here tricky. Again: John Ashcroft thwarted not just Bush but the real President at the time, Dick Cheney; so far as we know, he didn't threaten to resign in protest, but rather just refused to authorize STELLARWIND. And, unlike the Saturday Night Massacre, Bush's party controlled Congress, and was not hostile to what he was trying to do.
    - tormeh 11y ago
      This. Reducing the size of the security apparatus is a very politically costly move. Politicians sometimes do politically costly things, e.g. Merkel and the refugees, but it really has to be tremendously important for them to do that thing for them to put their political life on the line. Few politicians has hitherto had privacy as their personal favorite value and therefore few politicians has been willing to put his political life on the line for privacy. Anyway, it's not a very inspiring thing to care about - some security hawk is probably going to just reverse everything you've done afterwards.
      - narrator 11y ago
        We have our collective chains jerked all the time over some random lunatic shooting a few people for some random lunatic reason if it happens to fit some political narrative. My facebook feed gets absolutely flooded by this stuff on a regular basis. Until people wake up and learn that they are just being thrown around emotionally like a dog being tempted with a snack, they are going to have an easy time influencing the public to do whatever they want. For some reason, I am regularly downvoted when I make comments like this. The key thing is that people don't think about how something in the media affects them directly. It's like shark attacks. The risks are negligible, yet they captivate the imagination. The mental images and pictures that they are exposed to on a regular basis by the media, both news and fictional tv shows and movies, are specifically chosen to get a response out of them, like a bully getting a rise out of taunting his victim. People don't think they can be manipulated, because they don't like to think they are that stupid, yet it ridiculously common.
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    Dan Geer at his important talk at Black Hat: The central dynamic internal to government is, and always has been, that the only way for either the Executive or the Legislature to control the many sub-units of government is by way of how much money they can hand out. [...] Suppose, however, that surveillance becomes too cheap to meter, that is to say too cheap to limit through budgetary processes. Does that lessen the power of the Legislature more, or the power of the Executive more? I think that ever-cheaper surveillance substantially changes the balance of power in favor of the Executive and away from the Legislature. While President Obama was referring to something else when he said "I've Got A Pen And I've Got A Phone," he was speaking to exactly this idea -- things that need no appropriations are outside the system of checks and balances. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI#t=642 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI#t=642 http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt While Congress has been occupied with infighting and stupid political theater, the Executive branch has been taking a lot of their power. Is it "making war" when Congress is clearly abdicating their responsibilities? It has certainly done more damage to the country than any army has ever accomplished.
jamoes 11y ago
> I truly don't understand why nothing is done about that. Why doesn't anyone lose their job over this, let alone go to jail? My suspicion is that the FBI and various three-letter-agencies have dirt on most of the elected representatives. The mass surveillance apparatus is the perfect tool for collecting blackmail material on current and future leaders.
- raquo 11y ago
  That would also explain why corruption is allowed to happen, kinda. Is there a realistic exit from that situation?
  - jsnathan 11y ago
    IF this were the case, then the solution would be a whistleblower. Or someone hacking into the system, who makes the information collected public. Of course this person would face even more risk than Snowden ever did.
    - r00fus 11y ago
      On could argue that was why Aaron Swartz died. Of course discussing this is considered "CT".
- tptacek 11y ago
  That is certainly the most amusing and dramatic explanation of what's happening. A simpler explanation might just be that Congress broadly supports what DOJ is doing, and cares a lot less about the integrity of specific online services than they do about DOJ's role in combating terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and foreign intelligence services.
  - saosebastiao 11y ago
    The FBI's founding director had this very tactic as his modus operandi. It isn't hard to speculate that the culture of the FBI has supported political extortion for well over 80 years now.
pyrocat 11y ago
There's no incentive to fix it and plenty of incentive to let it remain "Someone Else's Problem" or indeed make it worse. See also: military industrial complex, corporate lobbying, the blue line, security theater, budget in-fighting
tn13 11y ago
I think FBI and other related agencies share their power with those who are responsible for holding them accountable. We will see more and more of these problems as Federal government tries to snatch more power from states in the name of national security, welfare or environment. This is not a problem that can be solved through evolutionary way but would require some real drastic moves by some courageous political leader. We could find one Snowden among several Fed employees I am pretty sure we will find more.
CamperBob2 11y ago
I can understand why LE goes rogue; it's simply in the nature of police to expand their power whenever possible. What I can't understand is why judges tolerate it.
JupiterMoon 11y ago
> > By all appearances, a significant chunk of the US law enforcement apparatus has simply gone rogue, stopped respecting Congress and the courts and is instead focused on increasing its own power. This is one of my specific concerns about these programs. I worry that in order to correct the current state we will have to eventually disband some of these agencies and that this will leave a gap in our countries' ability to prosecute serious crimes.

by raquo 11y ago

cowardlydragon 11y ago

We are Aldous Huxley's version of totalitarianism, where we are drugged and entertained into submission.

raquo 11y ago
Yeah, but I'm wondering more about the inaction of other federal powers. Congress, President, I don't really know whose job it is, but someone in this country should have the power to deal with rogue government agencies? They don't appoint themselves.
- poof131 11y ago
  The President has all the power to curtail these abuses. Unfortunately, reducing your own power is not something that comes naturally to most people. Additionally, any reduction in the national security apparatus will be a political disaster if another terrorist attack happens, so inaction is the prudent political course. It’s a tough problem to deal with and currently it seems a majority of Americans are more concerned with security than freedom. Until that changes, our elected officials will likely just voice concern and persist with the status quo.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    The President technically has that power, but in reality the DOJ's policy is set by the Attorney General, and the historical relationships between Presidents and their A.G.s has tended to be fraught. Mostly, what the President can do in reality is fire the AG. But if Obama does that, he'll have to find and get confirmed a new AG. If you're outraged by NSLs, the new AG Obama could confirm in this climate is unlikely to be an improvement.
    - idlewords 11y ago
      That's an odd view of the relationship. The President gets to set policy, and the AG can comply or resign. The responsibility rightly lies with the President, and Cabinet officers are unlikely to resign over issues unless their own views are irreconcilable with their boss's wishes.
      - tptacek 11y ago
        That's the theory of the Unitary Executive, made famous by Bush's OLC head John Yoo. But there are statutes that delegate powers directly to agency heads and cabinet members, and not to the President, others that expressly limit the President's authority over agencies, and there are independent agencies that the President can appoint people to but cannot directly control --- despite residing in the Executive Branch. Also, the Constitution gives Congress the authority to vest the appointment of "public ministers, consuls, and all other officers of the United States" directly to the heads of departments, explicitly bypassing the President, who is mentioned earlier in that sentence of the text. Ultimately I think you're mostly right in one sense, and the President has so much authority over the DOJ that resignation is the only real authority the AG has --- which explains things like the Saturday Night Massacre --- but that the day-to-day authority of the AG and the leverage they have over the President by threatening to resign makes the balance of power here tricky. Again: John Ashcroft thwarted not just Bush but the real President at the time, Dick Cheney; so far as we know, he didn't threaten to resign in protest, but rather just refused to authorize STELLARWIND. And, unlike the Saturday Night Massacre, Bush's party controlled Congress, and was not hostile to what he was trying to do.
  - tormeh 11y ago
    This. Reducing the size of the security apparatus is a very politically costly move. Politicians sometimes do politically costly things, e.g. Merkel and the refugees, but it really has to be tremendously important for them to do that thing for them to put their political life on the line. Few politicians has hitherto had privacy as their personal favorite value and therefore few politicians has been willing to put his political life on the line for privacy. Anyway, it's not a very inspiring thing to care about - some security hawk is probably going to just reverse everything you've done afterwards.
    - narrator 11y ago
      We have our collective chains jerked all the time over some random lunatic shooting a few people for some random lunatic reason if it happens to fit some political narrative. My facebook feed gets absolutely flooded by this stuff on a regular basis. Until people wake up and learn that they are just being thrown around emotionally like a dog being tempted with a snack, they are going to have an easy time influencing the public to do whatever they want. For some reason, I am regularly downvoted when I make comments like this. The key thing is that people don't think about how something in the media affects them directly. It's like shark attacks. The risks are negligible, yet they captivate the imagination. The mental images and pictures that they are exposed to on a regular basis by the media, both news and fictional tv shows and movies, are specifically chosen to get a response out of them, like a bully getting a rise out of taunting his victim. People don't think they can be manipulated, because they don't like to think they are that stupid, yet it ridiculously common.
- pdkl95 11y ago
  Dan Geer at his important talk at Black Hat: The central dynamic internal to government is, and always has been, that the only way for either the Executive or the Legislature to control the many sub-units of government is by way of how much money they can hand out. [...] Suppose, however, that surveillance becomes too cheap to meter, that is to say too cheap to limit through budgetary processes. Does that lessen the power of the Legislature more, or the power of the Executive more? I think that ever-cheaper surveillance substantially changes the balance of power in favor of the Executive and away from the Legislature. While President Obama was referring to something else when he said "I've Got A Pen And I've Got A Phone," he was speaking to exactly this idea -- things that need no appropriations are outside the system of checks and balances. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI#t=642 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI#t=642 http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt While Congress has been occupied with infighting and stupid political theater, the Executive branch has been taking a lot of their power. Is it "making war" when Congress is clearly abdicating their responsibilities? It has certainly done more damage to the country than any army has ever accomplished.

jamoes 11y ago

> I truly don't understand why nothing is done about that. Why doesn't anyone lose their job over this, let alone go to jail? My suspicion is that the FBI and various three-letter-agencies have dirt on most of the elected representatives. The mass surveillance apparatus is the perfect tool for collecting blackmail material on current and future leaders.

raquo 11y ago
That would also explain why corruption is allowed to happen, kinda. Is there a realistic exit from that situation?
- jsnathan 11y ago
  IF this were the case, then the solution would be a whistleblower. Or someone hacking into the system, who makes the information collected public. Of course this person would face even more risk than Snowden ever did.
  - r00fus 11y ago
    On could argue that was why Aaron Swartz died. Of course discussing this is considered "CT".
tptacek 11y ago
That is certainly the most amusing and dramatic explanation of what's happening. A simpler explanation might just be that Congress broadly supports what DOJ is doing, and cares a lot less about the integrity of specific online services than they do about DOJ's role in combating terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and foreign intelligence services.
- saosebastiao 11y ago
  The FBI's founding director had this very tactic as his modus operandi. It isn't hard to speculate that the culture of the FBI has supported political extortion for well over 80 years now.

pyrocat 11y ago

There's no incentive to fix it and plenty of incentive to let it remain "Someone Else's Problem" or indeed make it worse. See also: military industrial complex, corporate lobbying, the blue line, security theater, budget in-fighting

tn13 11y ago

I think FBI and other related agencies share their power with those who are responsible for holding them accountable. We will see more and more of these problems as Federal government tries to snatch more power from states in the name of national security, welfare or environment. This is not a problem that can be solved through evolutionary way but would require some real drastic moves by some courageous political leader. We could find one Snowden among several Fed employees I am pretty sure we will find more.

CamperBob2 11y ago

I can understand why LE goes rogue; it's simply in the nature of police to expand their power whenever possible. What I can't understand is why judges tolerate it.

JupiterMoon 11y ago

> > By all appearances, a significant chunk of the US law enforcement apparatus has simply gone rogue, stopped respecting Congress and the courts and is instead focused on increasing its own power. This is one of my specific concerns about these programs. I worry that in order to correct the current state we will have to eventually disband some of these agencies and that this will leave a gap in our countries' ability to prosecute serious crimes.