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Remember that Obama has access to privileged information we don't. This could go beyond advising. There may be threats that are unsafe to discuss that he sees

by Pxtl 10y ago

Remember that Obama has access to privileged information we don't. This could go beyond advising. There may be threats that are unsafe to discuss that he sees an urgent need to track down. I've seen many politicians describe the same thing - once they get security clearance, they see all these horrible threats... and it becomes very hard to explain the situation to the public, so they just give up on justifying it.

wfo 10y ago
Except they could say exactly that and none of them do, and over time incidents /can/ be revealed to the public where surveillance was instrumental in stopping terror/hunting down terrorists/preventing attacks but it never has been. Their crowning achievement was locking up a taxi driver who gave to a Muslim charity overseas that spent some of its money on terror. Don't you think the surveillance boosters would love to provide proof that it actually works while right now all we have is proof of its failures? "Classified" information can be quickly declassified if it helps the public perception of intelligence agencies; Zero Dark Thirty was a propaganda film built on classified intelligence leaked because it made intelligence agencies look good and glorified torture. Incidentally, the people who leaked information for that film were surprisingly not targets in Obama's war on intelligence leakers.
Eephas2o 10y ago
> There may be threats that are unsafe to discuss Fear porn. Point to the scary unknown as a justification for X. I tend to think our math teachers were right. If you can't show your work, then didn't do any. (Not an absolute but I lean heavily that way.) > once they get security clearance Or it could be that once they get authority, the intelligence community tries harder to scare the shit out of them. There's no way to know if Obama, for example, is getting more legitimate info. I don't buy off on it being safe to assume that he is. If you listened to the intelligence community they'd have you believing that everyone on your block is a lone wolf, bomb wielding, child porn collector. Or that the only reason we haven't had another 9/11 was because of the NSA's phenomenal cosmic power. Is Obama getting more honesty from the NSA or is he getting more bullshit? We don't know. We only know that he's getting more something. Do you expect the NSA to say something other than "Boss, I'm doing good work"? Are they going to say "um, yeah, so, that big spy network we built... um... it basically doesn't do shit for us"? The TL;DR is that it's not just the scary details he's getting access to but the high level political shenanigans too.

by Pxtl 10y ago

wfo 10y ago

Except they could say exactly that and none of them do, and over time incidents /can/ be revealed to the public where surveillance was instrumental in stopping terror/hunting down terrorists/preventing attacks but it never has been. Their crowning achievement was locking up a taxi driver who gave to a Muslim charity overseas that spent some of its money on terror. Don't you think the surveillance boosters would love to provide proof that it actually works while right now all we have is proof of its failures? "Classified" information can be quickly declassified if it helps the public perception of intelligence agencies; Zero Dark Thirty was a propaganda film built on classified intelligence leaked because it made intelligence agencies look good and glorified torture. Incidentally, the people who leaked information for that film were surprisingly not targets in Obama's war on intelligence leakers.

Eephas2o 10y ago

> There may be threats that are unsafe to discuss Fear porn. Point to the scary unknown as a justification for X. I tend to think our math teachers were right. If you can't show your work, then didn't do any. (Not an absolute but I lean heavily that way.) > once they get security clearance Or it could be that once they get authority, the intelligence community tries harder to scare the shit out of them. There's no way to know if Obama, for example, is getting more legitimate info. I don't buy off on it being safe to assume that he is. If you listened to the intelligence community they'd have you believing that everyone on your block is a lone wolf, bomb wielding, child porn collector. Or that the only reason we haven't had another 9/11 was because of the NSA's phenomenal cosmic power. Is Obama getting more honesty from the NSA or is he getting more bullshit? We don't know. We only know that he's getting more something. Do you expect the NSA to say something other than "Boss, I'm doing good work"? Are they going to say "um, yeah, so, that big spy network we built... um... it basically doesn't do shit for us"? The TL;DR is that it's not just the scary details he's getting access to but the high level political shenanigans too.