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> 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 dissentin

> 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
> I would think there would be far more leniency. I'm less concerned with Snowden's treatment than with the way that our leaders dealt with the revelation that crimes had been committed in the excessive collection of data. In my opinion, at least a few senior intelligence officials should have faced prison time, several more should have stepped down, and we should have seen full details disclosed about the problematic programs and seen the technology infrastructure get dismantled. But we saw nothing like this. President Obama pretended nothing had happened and things just continued on pretty much the way they had been. The key point is that the surveillance programs Snowden revealed are illegal, criminal programs and there is zero accountability for those whose misdeeds and lies led to the programs. While I have no doubt that the vast majority of intelligence agency employees are honest, law-abiding people, I am not comfortable with a massive surveillance system being built behind closed doors with no democratic oversight. The stakes are just too high. I have a number of friends who work in government and I wonder whether they feel comfortable expressing their honest opinions about the programs since for all we know there is a sentiment analysis being done on the emails, tweets, texts, and phone conversations of all government employees with security clearance. From the standpoint of preventing crimes by leveraging surveillance and data mining, of course there would be a sentiment analysis system, and the threat level posed by dissenting sentiment would be easy to monitor so that measures could be taken to prevent undesirable occurrences from happening. Can a democracy exist when there is a massive surveillance system that everyone realizes is lurking behind every web cam and ISP? I'm not sure it can. We've seen a handful of generals and public officials get destroyed by "leaks" of data that were quite likely obtained via the surveillance infrastructure. This should probably terrify us, but there is very little scrutiny of the methods used, including parallel attribution, and most government claims are taken at face value.
- lern_too_spel 10y ago
  There was only one illegal program in the leaks — the phone metadata collection program that the GP mentioned. At the time it was leaked, its legality was unknown, but the leaks contained arguments from the government's attorneys explaining why it was probably legal. Their arguments had merit and were supported by the District Court of Judge William Pauley, who agreed that Smith v. Maryland's ruling was precedent. Only after appeal was the program ruled illegal, but by that time, the government had already stated the program would be replaced.
  - grandalf 10y ago
    > the government had already stated the program would be replaced. Has the program been replaced? How do comments from high level officials denying that US citizens were being surveilled en mass fit into the picture? What justification exists for such a program to be created without any public debate? Why should we believe that clearly illegal programs don't also exist? Considering that there is outrage about Trump commenting that he wishes to re-institute a "Muslim watch list", how is a metadata program that is essentially a meta-watchlist about all affiliations, creeds, etc., not expected to be rejected by the public?
    - lern_too_spel 10y ago
      > Has the program been replaced? Yes. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/11/29/457779757/nsa-ends-sept-11th-era-surveillance-program http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/11/29/457779757/... > How do comments from high level officials denying that US citizens were being surveilled en mass fit into the picture? There was a comment, singular, from a high-level official, singular, denying collection of data on US citizens en masse. There was never surveillance en masse, so any denying that would be completely kosher. > What justification exists for such a program to be created without any public debate? Most government programs are created without a public debate, just as most private sector advertising programs are created without a public debate. As long as in-house counsel says it is probably fine, the programs go ahead. > Why should we believe that clearly illegal programs don't also exist? We have no way to know for sure, but since no clearly illegal programs existed in the indiscriminate dump provided by Snowden, and since the one program that was questionably legal had plenty of legal documentation in the dumps, we can conclude that it is unlikely that any clearly illegal program exists. > Considering that there is outrage about Trump commenting that he wishes to re-institute a "Muslim watch list", how is a metadata program that is essentially a meta-watchlist about all affiliations, creeds, etc., not expected to be rejected by the public? The difference is in how the data is used. One is used to harass Muslims and their acquaintances. The other is used solely to find affiliates of a known threat to national security by anonymized ID, which then requires a court order to be deanonymized.

grandalf 10y ago

> I would think there would be far more leniency. I'm less concerned with Snowden's treatment than with the way that our leaders dealt with the revelation that crimes had been committed in the excessive collection of data. In my opinion, at least a few senior intelligence officials should have faced prison time, several more should have stepped down, and we should have seen full details disclosed about the problematic programs and seen the technology infrastructure get dismantled. But we saw nothing like this. President Obama pretended nothing had happened and things just continued on pretty much the way they had been. The key point is that the surveillance programs Snowden revealed are illegal, criminal programs and there is zero accountability for those whose misdeeds and lies led to the programs. While I have no doubt that the vast majority of intelligence agency employees are honest, law-abiding people, I am not comfortable with a massive surveillance system being built behind closed doors with no democratic oversight. The stakes are just too high. I have a number of friends who work in government and I wonder whether they feel comfortable expressing their honest opinions about the programs since for all we know there is a sentiment analysis being done on the emails, tweets, texts, and phone conversations of all government employees with security clearance. From the standpoint of preventing crimes by leveraging surveillance and data mining, of course there would be a sentiment analysis system, and the threat level posed by dissenting sentiment would be easy to monitor so that measures could be taken to prevent undesirable occurrences from happening. Can a democracy exist when there is a massive surveillance system that everyone realizes is lurking behind every web cam and ISP? I'm not sure it can. We've seen a handful of generals and public officials get destroyed by "leaks" of data that were quite likely obtained via the surveillance infrastructure. This should probably terrify us, but there is very little scrutiny of the methods used, including parallel attribution, and most government claims are taken at face value.

lern_too_spel 10y ago
There was only one illegal program in the leaks — the phone metadata collection program that the GP mentioned. At the time it was leaked, its legality was unknown, but the leaks contained arguments from the government's attorneys explaining why it was probably legal. Their arguments had merit and were supported by the District Court of Judge William Pauley, who agreed that Smith v. Maryland's ruling was precedent. Only after appeal was the program ruled illegal, but by that time, the government had already stated the program would be replaced.
- grandalf 10y ago
  > the government had already stated the program would be replaced. Has the program been replaced? How do comments from high level officials denying that US citizens were being surveilled en mass fit into the picture? What justification exists for such a program to be created without any public debate? Why should we believe that clearly illegal programs don't also exist? Considering that there is outrage about Trump commenting that he wishes to re-institute a "Muslim watch list", how is a metadata program that is essentially a meta-watchlist about all affiliations, creeds, etc., not expected to be rejected by the public?
  - lern_too_spel 10y ago
    > Has the program been replaced? Yes. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/11/29/457779757/nsa-ends-sept-11th-era-surveillance-program http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/11/29/457779757/... > How do comments from high level officials denying that US citizens were being surveilled en mass fit into the picture? There was a comment, singular, from a high-level official, singular, denying collection of data on US citizens en masse. There was never surveillance en masse, so any denying that would be completely kosher. > What justification exists for such a program to be created without any public debate? Most government programs are created without a public debate, just as most private sector advertising programs are created without a public debate. As long as in-house counsel says it is probably fine, the programs go ahead. > Why should we believe that clearly illegal programs don't also exist? We have no way to know for sure, but since no clearly illegal programs existed in the indiscriminate dump provided by Snowden, and since the one program that was questionably legal had plenty of legal documentation in the dumps, we can conclude that it is unlikely that any clearly illegal program exists. > Considering that there is outrage about Trump commenting that he wishes to re-institute a "Muslim watch list", how is a metadata program that is essentially a meta-watchlist about all affiliations, creeds, etc., not expected to be rejected by the public? The difference is in how the data is used. One is used to harass Muslims and their acquaintances. The other is used solely to find affiliates of a known threat to national security by anonymized ID, which then requires a court order to be deanonymized.