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We can't keep pretending this is still a Democracy when we have a completely unaccountable NSA/CIA/FBI that seems to repeatedly hide their mistakes and the dubi

We can't keep pretending this is still a Democracy when we have a completely unaccountable NSA/CIA/FBI that seems to repeatedly hide their mistakes and the dubious legality of their sources & methods behind the classification and national security walls.

president 7y ago
What would be the alternative? For a functional national security program, some aspects need to be secret from the general public in order to protect against compromise.
- cwkoss 7y ago
  Judges should have to sign off on warrants to access data, and there must be a process to (at least retroactively) sue if the basis of the warrant was fraudulent or fabricated. Further, the 'gag order' component should be temporary and of minimum necessary duration. The arrest of a target should automatically invalidate the gag order because keeping this information from the defendant is a violation of due process.
  - cwkoss 7y ago
    If anyone really wants to poke the tiger, they could get a bunch of cheap data by sending out fake National Security Letters. Good way to go to prison for a long time, but one person's success could force the system to overhaul.
tempodox 7y ago
Data seizures of this kind used to be based on probable cause. Now the probable cause is “living on this planet in this time”. Like, “you're a suspect, we just don't know of what yet”.
- aphextim 7y ago
  >Data seizures of this kind used to be based on probable cause. I think they get away with this because they are just collecting the information in mass and are not targeting an individual. There was a point where they were only scooping up information on foreign entities, and at some point that shifted and they started collecting all foreign and domestic information. I believe it was right around the time 9/11 happened. This is what caused William Binney to leave the NSA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_(intelligence_official) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_(intelligence_o... In order to parse that information and look up information about a particular subject or individual, I believe they still require a subpoena, but who is to say someone with access doesn't use this giant trove of information nefariously. It also opens up the possibility of someone getting blackmail/dirt on a competitor and bribing a NSA employee to get the information. Also what is to prevent someone from retroactively going back through the information on what used to be allowed but now has changed to being illegal because of an administration change/laws being passed. The alphabet agencies definitively need more oversight, however I feel anyone tasked with that job ends up becoming entrenched in the corruption and have a hard time holding them accountable.
  - neom 7y ago
    I think this is the act you are referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act :)
catacombs 7y ago
> We can't keep pretending this is still a Democracy when we have a completely unaccountable NSA/CIA/FBI that seems to repeatedly hide their mistakes and the dubious legality of their sources & methods behind the classification and national security walls. And people still call Snowden a traitor for revealing this kind of practice in 2013.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  The claim that Snowden is a traitor is inseparable from the idea that the government and the people are separate entities, so that it's possible to betray one in service of the other. In that world Snowden would be a traitor to the US and everybody else at the NSA would be a traitor to the people. Obviously such a thing is only possible if democracy breaks down to the point where the government no longer expresses the will of the people, and if that is happening anywhere, it's happening in the high clearance world where voters never get to see whether or not they're happy with what's going on.
  - cwkoss 7y ago
    >In that world Snowden would be a traitor to the US and everybody else at the NSA would be a traitor to the people. I think the dissonance in your argument is that the US is the people. Snowden betrayed the intelligence community who is betraying the US.
  - kazagistar 7y ago
    While I think Snowden is a hero and whatnot, I think a black and white reasoning about being a traitor isn't particularly helpful. If anything, the concept of a traitor is a weak one, and shouldn't matter in discourse... it's not a harm or benefit in and of itself, and any celebration or punishment should rest on the extent of those harms and benefits themselves rather then some abstract and largely tribal concept like "traitor". Maybe the NSA needs to be taken apart or heavily restructured, but this can be done without using their words or us vs them worldview.
    - cwkoss 7y ago
hsnewman 7y ago
The USA is a federal republic, not a democracy.
- Tarq0n 7y ago
  These are not mutually exclusive categories.
  - RyanAF7 7y ago
    Yet, materially different.
- RyanAF7 7y ago
  Truth always incurs downvotes. Oddly enough, it perfectly highlights the reason it's a republic.
burtonator 7y ago
It's still a democracy, just a very sick one. The United States is like a 243-year-old engine with a desperate need of an oil change. That oil is us... ...ok. Horrible metaphor but you get it. Not calling you out just saying just don't let cynicism take hold. Remember, we pushed Bush out and he was a war criminal.
- mschuster91 7y ago
  > Remember, we pushed Bush out and he was a war criminal But never tried him, Rumsfeld or the rest - the only ones who really got a kick to their butts were those implicated in Abu Ghraib. And now you elected a president who not only is a serial liar, probably a sexual assaulter ("grab them by the ..."), but also someone who is involved in multiple lawsuits and probably either unwittingly (the satellite photo) or willingly (the recent whistleblower case) discloses classified information to all of Western enemies. The party of the President is absolutely unwilling to hold him accountable for his (non)actions as long as they get their abortion bans. And there is no real progress in holding the real deep state (=three letter agencies - not all government employees that don't like the President) accountable and transparent, as evidenced in the original submission.
  - celticmusic 7y ago
    having a disrespect of women doesn't imply that he runs around sexually assaulting them. There are plenty of women I have no respect for, in none of those cases has it caused me to even have the urge to sexually assault them. It's important to keep your objectivity.
  - MertsA 7y ago
    >as long as they get their abortion bans. I disagree that the Republican party as a whole wants an abortion ban. The Republican party had control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Presidency, a large chunk of the Judiciary and 5 Supreme Court seats. If they wanted an abortion ban as much as they repeatedly claim they do, they would have it. If Republicans couldn't run on promises of banning abortions anymore that would substantially impact their voter base. Actually following through on that promise seems a bit like sawing off the branch you're sitting on.
raxxorrax 7y ago
I would say the western intelligence community actively created rumors of the Russia scare 2.0. This should have severe consequences on every level of relevant institutions.
- Liquix 7y ago
  Thanks for pointing this out.. I (like most other US citizens) have zero idea of what things are actually like in Russia. The news reminds us daily that Russia is a frozen hellscape filled with miserable savages, Russians are the 'bad guys' of choice in a disproportionate amount of high visibility movies and Netflix shows (Stranger Things season 3 comes to mind), our school system teaches kids next to nothing about the country. It's a bit reminiscent of North Korea's daily news blasts showing fabricated footage of how miserable life in SK and USA is. Probably not as extreme a slant going on here, but there's an awful lot of anti-Russia sentiment floating around with no readily apparent basis in fact.
  - kirykl 7y ago
    This youtube channel is a great way to get a picture of Russia from a foreigners perspective, its basically a vlog made by an English guy backpacking thru rural Russia and former Soviet countries. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxDZs_ltFFvn0FDHT6kmoXA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxDZs_ltFFvn0FDHT6kmoXA
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    >Russians are the 'bad guys' of choice in a disproportionate amount of high visibility movies and Netflix shows Because the Chinese are off limits now (because the studios want to make money there and throwing evil Chinese billionaires into your rotation for super-villain of the month is a great way to not do that) so that basically leaves Russian billionaires and middle eastern oil moguls as your two picks for low effort evil foreign characters.
cronix 7y ago
It was very eye opening to me when I had a conversation with a family member who is retired CIA/NSA/Rand. Not a low level person. I was asking them about when President Clinton asked about the UFO's, and why the president was not told the answers he was seeking. Their reply: the presidency is not the highest security clearance and the president does not have a right to know everything. I wonder if that's what the founders had in mind when they formed our government. And what happens when those people disagree with whoever is in office? They control what the president knows, as they are the ones who brief him, and only what "they" think is appropriate. They decide.
- choult 7y ago
  If that is indeed the case then I am very thankful for the past couple of years and next year.
- PorterDuff 7y ago
  The result is pretty simple. The intelligence agencies become a fourth branch of government and likely the dominant one. It would be interesting to better understand the dynamics between the military and the NSA/CIA/FBI/etc.. I suppose that one good thing that came out of the 2016 election was that it become more obvious that the intelligence services run their own domestic policy, what I don't understand is how monolithic that newish branch of government is.
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
  > the presidency is not the highest security clearance Presidents usually have the same clearance as the highest clearance. > the president does not have a right to know everything This is true, clearances are need-to-know compartmentalization. I was only briefed on stuff required for my job... and would often be told something was outside of scope.
- dfxm12 7y ago
  I wonder if that's what the founders had in mind when they formed our government. FWIW, the founders didn't intend for presidents to have nearly as much power as they have today. Perhaps you can research intelligence operations during the Revolutionary War to glean some of their thoughts on how intelligence and the intelligence community should be set up. Of course, I don't know if our founding fathers were burdened with the task of maybe or maybe not covering up the existence of UFO's. :)
AndrewKemendo 7y ago
I'm not sure what kind of accountability you're looking for that doesn't already exist. IC Oversight [1] is a massive and well known program, which requires extensive yearly training from every IC member and even more from supervisors and executives. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Community_Oversight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Com...
buboard 7y ago
Are they really unaccountable? The silence of people seems to affirm their choices.

president 7y ago

What would be the alternative? For a functional national security program, some aspects need to be secret from the general public in order to protect against compromise.

cwkoss 7y ago
Judges should have to sign off on warrants to access data, and there must be a process to (at least retroactively) sue if the basis of the warrant was fraudulent or fabricated. Further, the 'gag order' component should be temporary and of minimum necessary duration. The arrest of a target should automatically invalidate the gag order because keeping this information from the defendant is a violation of due process.
- cwkoss 7y ago
  If anyone really wants to poke the tiger, they could get a bunch of cheap data by sending out fake National Security Letters. Good way to go to prison for a long time, but one person's success could force the system to overhaul.

tempodox 7y ago

Data seizures of this kind used to be based on probable cause. Now the probable cause is “living on this planet in this time”. Like, “you're a suspect, we just don't know of what yet”.

aphextim 7y ago
>Data seizures of this kind used to be based on probable cause. I think they get away with this because they are just collecting the information in mass and are not targeting an individual. There was a point where they were only scooping up information on foreign entities, and at some point that shifted and they started collecting all foreign and domestic information. I believe it was right around the time 9/11 happened. This is what caused William Binney to leave the NSA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_(intelligence_official) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_(intelligence_o... In order to parse that information and look up information about a particular subject or individual, I believe they still require a subpoena, but who is to say someone with access doesn't use this giant trove of information nefariously. It also opens up the possibility of someone getting blackmail/dirt on a competitor and bribing a NSA employee to get the information. Also what is to prevent someone from retroactively going back through the information on what used to be allowed but now has changed to being illegal because of an administration change/laws being passed. The alphabet agencies definitively need more oversight, however I feel anyone tasked with that job ends up becoming entrenched in the corruption and have a hard time holding them accountable.
- neom 7y ago
  I think this is the act you are referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act :)

catacombs 7y ago

> We can't keep pretending this is still a Democracy when we have a completely unaccountable NSA/CIA/FBI that seems to repeatedly hide their mistakes and the dubious legality of their sources & methods behind the classification and national security walls. And people still call Snowden a traitor for revealing this kind of practice in 2013.

whatshisface 7y ago
The claim that Snowden is a traitor is inseparable from the idea that the government and the people are separate entities, so that it's possible to betray one in service of the other. In that world Snowden would be a traitor to the US and everybody else at the NSA would be a traitor to the people. Obviously such a thing is only possible if democracy breaks down to the point where the government no longer expresses the will of the people, and if that is happening anywhere, it's happening in the high clearance world where voters never get to see whether or not they're happy with what's going on.
- cwkoss 7y ago
  >In that world Snowden would be a traitor to the US and everybody else at the NSA would be a traitor to the people. I think the dissonance in your argument is that the US is the people. Snowden betrayed the intelligence community who is betraying the US.
- kazagistar 7y ago
  While I think Snowden is a hero and whatnot, I think a black and white reasoning about being a traitor isn't particularly helpful. If anything, the concept of a traitor is a weak one, and shouldn't matter in discourse... it's not a harm or benefit in and of itself, and any celebration or punishment should rest on the extent of those harms and benefits themselves rather then some abstract and largely tribal concept like "traitor". Maybe the NSA needs to be taken apart or heavily restructured, but this can be done without using their words or us vs them worldview.
  - cwkoss 7y ago

hsnewman 7y ago

The USA is a federal republic, not a democracy.

Tarq0n 7y ago
These are not mutually exclusive categories.
- RyanAF7 7y ago
  Yet, materially different.
RyanAF7 7y ago
Truth always incurs downvotes. Oddly enough, it perfectly highlights the reason it's a republic.

burtonator 7y ago

It's still a democracy, just a very sick one. The United States is like a 243-year-old engine with a desperate need of an oil change. That oil is us... ...ok. Horrible metaphor but you get it. Not calling you out just saying just don't let cynicism take hold. Remember, we pushed Bush out and he was a war criminal.

mschuster91 7y ago
> Remember, we pushed Bush out and he was a war criminal But never tried him, Rumsfeld or the rest - the only ones who really got a kick to their butts were those implicated in Abu Ghraib. And now you elected a president who not only is a serial liar, probably a sexual assaulter ("grab them by the ..."), but also someone who is involved in multiple lawsuits and probably either unwittingly (the satellite photo) or willingly (the recent whistleblower case) discloses classified information to all of Western enemies. The party of the President is absolutely unwilling to hold him accountable for his (non)actions as long as they get their abortion bans. And there is no real progress in holding the real deep state (=three letter agencies - not all government employees that don't like the President) accountable and transparent, as evidenced in the original submission.
- celticmusic 7y ago
  having a disrespect of women doesn't imply that he runs around sexually assaulting them. There are plenty of women I have no respect for, in none of those cases has it caused me to even have the urge to sexually assault them. It's important to keep your objectivity.
- MertsA 7y ago
  >as long as they get their abortion bans. I disagree that the Republican party as a whole wants an abortion ban. The Republican party had control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Presidency, a large chunk of the Judiciary and 5 Supreme Court seats. If they wanted an abortion ban as much as they repeatedly claim they do, they would have it. If Republicans couldn't run on promises of banning abortions anymore that would substantially impact their voter base. Actually following through on that promise seems a bit like sawing off the branch you're sitting on.

raxxorrax 7y ago

I would say the western intelligence community actively created rumors of the Russia scare 2.0. This should have severe consequences on every level of relevant institutions.

Liquix 7y ago
Thanks for pointing this out.. I (like most other US citizens) have zero idea of what things are actually like in Russia. The news reminds us daily that Russia is a frozen hellscape filled with miserable savages, Russians are the 'bad guys' of choice in a disproportionate amount of high visibility movies and Netflix shows (Stranger Things season 3 comes to mind), our school system teaches kids next to nothing about the country. It's a bit reminiscent of North Korea's daily news blasts showing fabricated footage of how miserable life in SK and USA is. Probably not as extreme a slant going on here, but there's an awful lot of anti-Russia sentiment floating around with no readily apparent basis in fact.
- kirykl 7y ago
  This youtube channel is a great way to get a picture of Russia from a foreigners perspective, its basically a vlog made by an English guy backpacking thru rural Russia and former Soviet countries. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxDZs_ltFFvn0FDHT6kmoXA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxDZs_ltFFvn0FDHT6kmoXA
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >Russians are the 'bad guys' of choice in a disproportionate amount of high visibility movies and Netflix shows Because the Chinese are off limits now (because the studios want to make money there and throwing evil Chinese billionaires into your rotation for super-villain of the month is a great way to not do that) so that basically leaves Russian billionaires and middle eastern oil moguls as your two picks for low effort evil foreign characters.

cronix 7y ago

It was very eye opening to me when I had a conversation with a family member who is retired CIA/NSA/Rand. Not a low level person. I was asking them about when President Clinton asked about the UFO's, and why the president was not told the answers he was seeking. Their reply: the presidency is not the highest security clearance and the president does not have a right to know everything. I wonder if that's what the founders had in mind when they formed our government. And what happens when those people disagree with whoever is in office? They control what the president knows, as they are the ones who brief him, and only what "they" think is appropriate. They decide.

choult 7y ago
If that is indeed the case then I am very thankful for the past couple of years and next year.
PorterDuff 7y ago
The result is pretty simple. The intelligence agencies become a fourth branch of government and likely the dominant one. It would be interesting to better understand the dynamics between the military and the NSA/CIA/FBI/etc.. I suppose that one good thing that came out of the 2016 election was that it become more obvious that the intelligence services run their own domestic policy, what I don't understand is how monolithic that newish branch of government is.
WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
> the presidency is not the highest security clearance Presidents usually have the same clearance as the highest clearance. > the president does not have a right to know everything This is true, clearances are need-to-know compartmentalization. I was only briefed on stuff required for my job... and would often be told something was outside of scope.
dfxm12 7y ago
I wonder if that's what the founders had in mind when they formed our government. FWIW, the founders didn't intend for presidents to have nearly as much power as they have today. Perhaps you can research intelligence operations during the Revolutionary War to glean some of their thoughts on how intelligence and the intelligence community should be set up. Of course, I don't know if our founding fathers were burdened with the task of maybe or maybe not covering up the existence of UFO's. :)

AndrewKemendo 7y ago

I'm not sure what kind of accountability you're looking for that doesn't already exist. IC Oversight [1] is a massive and well known program, which requires extensive yearly training from every IC member and even more from supervisors and executives. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Community_Oversight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Com...

buboard 7y ago

Are they really unaccountable? The silence of people seems to affirm their choices.