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Let's say you tear down the FVEY agencies. Enemy nations can then go rampant. If we collect, then it's obvious they must as well and they have less laws than we

Let's say you tear down the FVEY agencies. Enemy nations can then go rampant. If we collect, then it's obvious they must as well and they have less laws than we do limiting what we can do. Having been on both sides, it is difficult to see the good they are doing, because they are shrouded in secrecy due to necessity.

pastProlog 10y ago
The US did shut down its WWI-era spying in 1929. The (Republican!) Secretary State did so with the simple comment "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail". > Enemy nations can then go rampant The main enemy of the FVEY agencies has always been the population of the FVEY countries. This goes back a long time - in the era that US Republicans actually did believe in smaller government and Stimson was shutting down the Black Chamber, British intelligence was manufacturing the Zinoviev letter to bring down the Labour government in 1924. Peter Wright discussed more modern efforts by MI5 against the Labour party in Spycatcher, especially in the 1970s, and this has been discussed in other sources. Similar machinations were happening in the USA in the 1970s, with Nixon using ex-CIA operatives to, among other things, break in to the national Democratic campaign headquarters in order to rig the election his way. That's against the background of COINTELPRO, spying on blacks seeking their civil right to vote and such, or that part of the electorate that wanted to withdraw from a war in Vietnam that the top brass and chiefs were privately saying was a lost cause. FVEY intelligence also helped bring down Gough Whitlam's Australian Labour government in the 1970's, an American, Christopher Boyce went to jail for, among other things, revealing this news to the Russians. Insofar as enemy nations, England has had a litany of enemy nations in the 20th century - Indians who wanted independence, Argentinians who wanted the Malvinas returned, Irish who wanted English troops out of Ireland and on and on - think of John Cleese in the Meaning of Life waning on about efforts to "keep China British!" US intelligence caused Daoud Khan to turn his back on the Soviets who had helped propel him to power, and when the Russians backed another horse and their former friend was ousted, the US said the "enemy nation" of Saur Afghanistan with Soviet backing was "going rampant", so the US helped launched a mujahideen-led jihad against secularizing Afghanistan, financing and arming Osama bin Laden and other proto-Al Qaeda and Taliban forces. Then years later the US decided to plant military bases in Saudi Arabia, causing this Arab nationalist to send his fighters with planes into the Pentagon. Now we're told we need we need to work and be taxed to finance these FVEY agencies to protect us from these dangers which they themselves created. Whereas the real enemy they are fighting against is their own populations - as MacDonald, McGovern and Whitlam could all attest to.
- astronautjones 10y ago
  Great comment. Can you recommend any further reading?
  - AlexCoventry 10y ago
    Tim Weiner's history of the FBI's intelligence operations, Enemies.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    "The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5" and "Spycatcher" (the very unauthorised book, which again had to be written overseas).
    - JimmyAustin 10y ago
      A curious footnote on "Spycatcher" is that the lawyer who defended the author against a gag order in Australian courts, Malcolm Turnbull, is now the PM.
- selimthegrim 10y ago
  A movie was made about the Boyce case, The Falcon and the Snowman.
gaius 10y ago
Enemy nations can then go rampant. Let them. I've never been to I dunno, North Korea, I have no plans to go there, let them know whatever they like about me. It's a problem however when a government that DOES have some say over my life does it.
- 086421357909764 10y ago
  The problem is you can't control countries or ideologies by a border so that approach simply doesn't work.
  - deciplex 10y ago
    > The problem is you can't control countries... by a border so that approach simply doesn't work. Countries are kinda defined by border control, in some sense. Unless you're posting from some alternate reality where the Korean People's Army is free to march on Times Square.
- handedness 10y ago
  That weaponizes–as if it hasn't been already–personal data collection. Collect data on a foreign nation's citizens, preferably the only global hegemon, which also happens to have internal constraints on what it can collect on its own citizens. Then play Let's Make a Deal. Trade personal data for foreign aid, arms deals, oppression of rivals, etc. Anyone on the planet should be concerned about personal data collection by anyone else on the planet, whether that be North Korea, Google, or anyone else.
  - gaius 10y ago
    Then the mission of GCHQ, NSA et al should be on hardening our own networks, commercial and governmental, rather than exploiting the same holes that allow foreign threats in. In the current scenario, our own governments are incentivised to leave us vulnerable so they can exploit us themselves!
hackenthorpe 10y ago
Indeed. It's true to say that there would have been a lot more terrorist attacks, and more serious organised crime, were our security services not using the bulk surveillance data sets for their analyses. Of course, none of the details can be revealed for operational reasons, so the more paranoid fill in the blanks with 1984-style dystopian fantasy. It's unfortunate, as they really are doing good work.
- lqdc13 10y ago
  "It's true to say that there would have been a lot more terrorist attacks" Why is it true to say? I doubt there would have been more terrorist attacks. They definitely would have mentioned at least one such planned attack that was stopped as it is in their best interest to change public perception. https://theintercept.com/2015/11/17/u-s-mass-surveillance-has-no-record-of-thwarting-large-terror-attacks-regardless-of-snowden-leaks/ https://theintercept.com/2015/11/17/u-s-mass-surveillance-ha...
  - buttcoin 10y ago
    Would they? Acknowledging attacks could give clue to operations in play. They're certainly not going to risk sources and or collection that's proven valuable. And to be fair there have been a good amount of publicly acknowledged plot disruptions. http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/09/05/german-police-arrest-3-in-plot-to-attack-americans.html http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/09/05/german-police-arrest... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsuccessful_terrorist_plots_in_the_United_States_post-9/11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsuccessful_terrorist...
    - lqdc13 10y ago
      Except for this German one, I haven't found another story on that Wiki page that wasn't clearly some other source.
      - buttcoin 10y ago
        Except you can't prove that. Are they going to directly say, Satelite XYZ in geostationary orbit was monitoring data link 111322, during which we captured intelligence on platform 2342342 which resulted in a lead then passed on to domestic intelligence agencies. Nope, not going to happen. Everyone here likes to talk about the government and their parallel construction when it supports a negative notion, yet forget that it's also a legitimate tool to protect origination sources.

pastProlog 10y ago

The US did shut down its WWI-era spying in 1929. The (Republican!) Secretary State did so with the simple comment "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail". > Enemy nations can then go rampant The main enemy of the FVEY agencies has always been the population of the FVEY countries. This goes back a long time - in the era that US Republicans actually did believe in smaller government and Stimson was shutting down the Black Chamber, British intelligence was manufacturing the Zinoviev letter to bring down the Labour government in 1924. Peter Wright discussed more modern efforts by MI5 against the Labour party in Spycatcher, especially in the 1970s, and this has been discussed in other sources. Similar machinations were happening in the USA in the 1970s, with Nixon using ex-CIA operatives to, among other things, break in to the national Democratic campaign headquarters in order to rig the election his way. That's against the background of COINTELPRO, spying on blacks seeking their civil right to vote and such, or that part of the electorate that wanted to withdraw from a war in Vietnam that the top brass and chiefs were privately saying was a lost cause. FVEY intelligence also helped bring down Gough Whitlam's Australian Labour government in the 1970's, an American, Christopher Boyce went to jail for, among other things, revealing this news to the Russians. Insofar as enemy nations, England has had a litany of enemy nations in the 20th century - Indians who wanted independence, Argentinians who wanted the Malvinas returned, Irish who wanted English troops out of Ireland and on and on - think of John Cleese in the Meaning of Life waning on about efforts to "keep China British!" US intelligence caused Daoud Khan to turn his back on the Soviets who had helped propel him to power, and when the Russians backed another horse and their former friend was ousted, the US said the "enemy nation" of Saur Afghanistan with Soviet backing was "going rampant", so the US helped launched a mujahideen-led jihad against secularizing Afghanistan, financing and arming Osama bin Laden and other proto-Al Qaeda and Taliban forces. Then years later the US decided to plant military bases in Saudi Arabia, causing this Arab nationalist to send his fighters with planes into the Pentagon. Now we're told we need we need to work and be taxed to finance these FVEY agencies to protect us from these dangers which they themselves created. Whereas the real enemy they are fighting against is their own populations - as MacDonald, McGovern and Whitlam could all attest to.

astronautjones 10y ago
Great comment. Can you recommend any further reading?
- AlexCoventry 10y ago
  Tim Weiner's history of the FBI's intelligence operations, Enemies.
- pjc50 10y ago
  "The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5" and "Spycatcher" (the very unauthorised book, which again had to be written overseas).
  - JimmyAustin 10y ago
    A curious footnote on "Spycatcher" is that the lawyer who defended the author against a gag order in Australian courts, Malcolm Turnbull, is now the PM.
selimthegrim 10y ago
A movie was made about the Boyce case, The Falcon and the Snowman.

gaius 10y ago

Enemy nations can then go rampant. Let them. I've never been to I dunno, North Korea, I have no plans to go there, let them know whatever they like about me. It's a problem however when a government that DOES have some say over my life does it.

086421357909764 10y ago
The problem is you can't control countries or ideologies by a border so that approach simply doesn't work.
- deciplex 10y ago
  > The problem is you can't control countries... by a border so that approach simply doesn't work. Countries are kinda defined by border control, in some sense. Unless you're posting from some alternate reality where the Korean People's Army is free to march on Times Square.
handedness 10y ago
That weaponizes–as if it hasn't been already–personal data collection. Collect data on a foreign nation's citizens, preferably the only global hegemon, which also happens to have internal constraints on what it can collect on its own citizens. Then play Let's Make a Deal. Trade personal data for foreign aid, arms deals, oppression of rivals, etc. Anyone on the planet should be concerned about personal data collection by anyone else on the planet, whether that be North Korea, Google, or anyone else.
- gaius 10y ago
  Then the mission of GCHQ, NSA et al should be on hardening our own networks, commercial and governmental, rather than exploiting the same holes that allow foreign threats in. In the current scenario, our own governments are incentivised to leave us vulnerable so they can exploit us themselves!

hackenthorpe 10y ago

Indeed. It's true to say that there would have been a lot more terrorist attacks, and more serious organised crime, were our security services not using the bulk surveillance data sets for their analyses. Of course, none of the details can be revealed for operational reasons, so the more paranoid fill in the blanks with 1984-style dystopian fantasy. It's unfortunate, as they really are doing good work.

lqdc13 10y ago
"It's true to say that there would have been a lot more terrorist attacks" Why is it true to say? I doubt there would have been more terrorist attacks. They definitely would have mentioned at least one such planned attack that was stopped as it is in their best interest to change public perception. https://theintercept.com/2015/11/17/u-s-mass-surveillance-has-no-record-of-thwarting-large-terror-attacks-regardless-of-snowden-leaks/ https://theintercept.com/2015/11/17/u-s-mass-surveillance-ha...
- buttcoin 10y ago
  Would they? Acknowledging attacks could give clue to operations in play. They're certainly not going to risk sources and or collection that's proven valuable. And to be fair there have been a good amount of publicly acknowledged plot disruptions. http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/09/05/german-police-arrest-3-in-plot-to-attack-americans.html http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/09/05/german-police-arrest... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsuccessful_terrorist_plots_in_the_United_States_post-9/11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsuccessful_terrorist...
  - lqdc13 10y ago
    Except for this German one, I haven't found another story on that Wiki page that wasn't clearly some other source.
    - buttcoin 10y ago
      Except you can't prove that. Are they going to directly say, Satelite XYZ in geostationary orbit was monitoring data link 111322, during which we captured intelligence on platform 2342342 which resulted in a lead then passed on to domestic intelligence agencies. Nope, not going to happen. Everyone here likes to talk about the government and their parallel construction when it supports a negative notion, yet forget that it's also a legitimate tool to protect origination sources.