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I think this is a misconception, but I totally do understand where it comes from. The OGC and IC IG genuinely do care a lot about these things but due to the cl

I think this is a misconception, but I totally do understand where it comes from. The OGC and IC IG genuinely do care a lot about these things but due to the classified nature of the NSA's work any disputes and arguments about all the nuances are occurring behind closed doors. The specific big case which the public knows about would be the domestic telephony metadata collection. Nobody knows about the discussions related to this or any pushback, or how exactly this was deemed to be a legal practice, and so on. This looks very bad as it causes the assumption to be that there is no proper oversight rather than seeing this as a bad interpretation. Instead of the learned helplessness and assumptions about NSA, it would probably be far better to have an aggressive push for declassified briefings regarding these kinds of decisions. After the Snowden leaks I recall ODNI declassified and published a good amount of documentation in order to demonstrate the IC"s side of the matter, so it is known that declassification reviews for very sensitive subjects can occur when they put ample resources into it. The IC is very sensitive regarding sources and methods, so that's why most declassified information usually comes from FOIAs and specific "IC On The Record" releases. If they would declassify and publicize information regarding these decisions, there can at least be more of a dialogue on the topic using concrete facts versus assumptions.

fnordfnordfnord 10y ago
It takes a lot of chutzpah to make that kind of defense of the IC in 2017. It is also incredibly insulting to imply that nobody was aware of or upset about any of this before Snowden. What's clear to see is that when these concerns were being hashed out, the Tom Drakes and Bill Binneys lost. What won was so bad that we haven't even discovered the bounds of their malfeasance. The mistrust that the IC has rightly earned won't go away with such a trite dismissal. There is no proper oversight, not for any reasonable definition of the word. We wouldn't be here today if there had been.
- willstrafach 10y ago
  > There is no proper oversight, not for any reasonable definition of the word. Could you elaborate on what practices you precisely take issue with? If it is regarding domestic telephony metadata collection, I am in agreement and I am glad that the USA Freedom Act restricted that. Otherwise, I don't really know how to answer you as you haven't stated any specific problem that you have. Additionally, I'm not so sure my reply is that great of a defense, I am only stating facts because I do not believe that spreading misconceptions is very helpful to discussion on this kind of topic.
  - grandalf 10y ago
    > Additionally, I'm not so sure my reply is that great of a defense, I am only stating facts because I do not believe that spreading misconceptions is very helpful to discussion on this kind of topic. This is an interesting point. Over the past few years I've come to think that the most responsible perspective to adopt as a citizen is that officials and government are all, to some extent, bad actors who deserve a good measure of scrutiny and accountability. The biggest breakdown in the democratic process has been a lack of appreciation on the part of the public for all that we consent to by not actively dissenting and demanding answers and accountability. Frankly, the response by officials to the Snowden revelations was deeply embarrassing to our nation.
    - willstrafach 10y ago
      > The biggest breakdown in the democratic process has been a lack of appreciation on the part of the public for all that we consent to by not actively dissenting and demanding answers and accountability. I agree. I don't intend to defend anything problematic. I just worry that it will be hard to demand actual changes if people are concerned about vague issues driven by a misunderstanding of how things work, versus actually being able to call up their representatives with specific changes and demands in mind. > Frankly, the response by officials to the Snowden revelations was deeply embarrassing to our nation. I think this was due to the amount of material he leaked. If it was only the metadata-related material or other material related to problematic practices, I would think there would be far more leniency. But because he had taken and leaked everything he could get his hands on, much of it unrelated to anything domestic, the disclosures were viewed very differently. I personally think it makes no sense to charge him with relation to the leaks regarding domestic metadata collection since it was already admitted that this was overreach, but it is hard to figure out why he would blindly copy and leak other sensitive unrelated material (Easy example: I do not understand how he justifies scraping the content of certain internal wiki pages and giving it to The Intercept, there are no injustices described there, just legitimate sensitive intelligence information).
      - grandalf 10y ago

fnordfnordfnord 10y ago

It takes a lot of chutzpah to make that kind of defense of the IC in 2017. It is also incredibly insulting to imply that nobody was aware of or upset about any of this before Snowden. What's clear to see is that when these concerns were being hashed out, the Tom Drakes and Bill Binneys lost. What won was so bad that we haven't even discovered the bounds of their malfeasance. The mistrust that the IC has rightly earned won't go away with such a trite dismissal. There is no proper oversight, not for any reasonable definition of the word. We wouldn't be here today if there had been.

willstrafach 10y ago
> There is no proper oversight, not for any reasonable definition of the word. Could you elaborate on what practices you precisely take issue with? If it is regarding domestic telephony metadata collection, I am in agreement and I am glad that the USA Freedom Act restricted that. Otherwise, I don't really know how to answer you as you haven't stated any specific problem that you have. Additionally, I'm not so sure my reply is that great of a defense, I am only stating facts because I do not believe that spreading misconceptions is very helpful to discussion on this kind of topic.
- grandalf 10y ago
  > Additionally, I'm not so sure my reply is that great of a defense, I am only stating facts because I do not believe that spreading misconceptions is very helpful to discussion on this kind of topic. This is an interesting point. Over the past few years I've come to think that the most responsible perspective to adopt as a citizen is that officials and government are all, to some extent, bad actors who deserve a good measure of scrutiny and accountability. The biggest breakdown in the democratic process has been a lack of appreciation on the part of the public for all that we consent to by not actively dissenting and demanding answers and accountability. Frankly, the response by officials to the Snowden revelations was deeply embarrassing to our nation.
  - willstrafach 10y ago
    > The biggest breakdown in the democratic process has been a lack of appreciation on the part of the public for all that we consent to by not actively dissenting and demanding answers and accountability. I agree. I don't intend to defend anything problematic. I just worry that it will be hard to demand actual changes if people are concerned about vague issues driven by a misunderstanding of how things work, versus actually being able to call up their representatives with specific changes and demands in mind. > Frankly, the response by officials to the Snowden revelations was deeply embarrassing to our nation. I think this was due to the amount of material he leaked. If it was only the metadata-related material or other material related to problematic practices, I would think there would be far more leniency. But because he had taken and leaked everything he could get his hands on, much of it unrelated to anything domestic, the disclosures were viewed very differently. I personally think it makes no sense to charge him with relation to the leaks regarding domestic metadata collection since it was already admitted that this was overreach, but it is hard to figure out why he would blindly copy and leak other sensitive unrelated material (Easy example: I do not understand how he justifies scraping the content of certain internal wiki pages and giving it to The Intercept, there are no injustices described there, just legitimate sensitive intelligence information).
    - grandalf 10y ago