4 ms·

Whenever I see such news and then look around at what they’ve been doing and continue to do (revealed sometimes in congressional hearings), it seems to me that

by AnonHP 6y ago

Whenever I see such news and then look around at what they’ve been doing and continue to do (revealed sometimes in congressional hearings), it seems to me that the executive and the legislature are truly toothless in the face of these three-letter agencies. Nothing they say or put forth as law will be obeyed. So why even have laws then? Then you also have top representatives from these agencies lying outright in public hearings with hardly a consequence. There ought to be criminal proceedings and punishments for this. A resignation here and there isn’t enough (one way they’d handle that is by joining the privacy sector and getting back into the game by proxy).

AndrewBissell 6y ago
> it seems to me that the executive and the legislature are truly toothless in the face of these three-letter agencies. This is by design, a design which was cemented in place on November 22, 1963. If real accountability ever comes to the intelligence agencies, it won't come from the executive or legislative branches over which they exert a lethal veto.
- jacobn 6y ago
  For those of us with less detailed knowledge of US history: I take it you are referring to the assassination of president John F Kennedy?
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    Yes. The CIA had already started circumventing the POTUS's executive authority in Eisenhower's administration with unauthorized U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union, but it was when a rogue faction within it assassinated Kennedy (with some "special" help) that the CIA became the final word on any matters of real consequence to the U.S. empire.
    - chmod775 6y ago
      Assuming the CIA assassinated a president because at one point someone gave a command without being explicitly authorized from their superior is quite a leap, don't you think? I have heard many different equally baseless conspiracy conspiracy theories about this by now, and they all have two things in common: They each conflict with the other theories and their adherents all sound utterly convinced they are right. Which tells you something about people and their theories.
      - AndrewBissell 6y ago
        > Assuming the CIA assassinated a president because at one point someone gave a command without being explicitly authorized from their superior is quite a leap, don't you think? Indeed it would be, and that's not what I was doing in my post. I brought up the U-2/Eisenhower history only to establish that the CIA was already taking steps to make itself the final arbiter on policy, above and independent from the POTUS. Especially when it came to any potential rapprochement in the Cold War, toward which JFK was also making serious overtures just before he was killed. You can go looking through the vast numbers of theories around JFK's killing and find absurd ones I'm sure, but lumping them all together into one big undifferentiated mass hardly makes for a good argument. In favor of the existence of a conspiracy, there are numerous witnesses and extensive documented and circumstantial evidence, and the motive for such a conspiracy is clear. It's one thing if you don't find that evidence persuasive but it's ridiculous to call it "baseless."
runawaybottle 6y ago
Few things can stand up against the ‘national security’ argument in America (maybe even nothing). A court ruling like this will be overturned in a heartbeat with any kind of terrorist attack. Don’t count out the current domestic unrest to lead to legislation that buffs up these agencies going forward if the Republicans win again.
- hedgedoops2 6y ago
  There is a Decemberists refrain about the reaction to 9/11, the war on terror: "Because America can, and America can't say no." Or at least, I thought it stood for that, at the time. Part of a solution may be to introduce a "principle of proportionality" like [1] (if one does not already exist), and to aggressively remove the bugs in the US judicial system that prevent ordinary courts from examining the spies, the military and the executive. Like the state secrets privilege [2]. Then the system can prevent itself from backsliding during crises. Laws are no good if courts take 10 years or more to figure out whether they have jurisdiction over, or are able to subpoena evidence relating to, crass, publicly known, obviously illegal, civil rights violations. If courts take too long, standards shift, are forgotten, then abolished. The normative power of the facts. Jewel vs NSA has taken 10 years and has gotten nowhere. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportionality_(law)#European_Union_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportionality_(law)#European... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_secrets_privilege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_secrets_privilege
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    The problem is any contemporaneous litigation on any of these programs is always thwarted with ‘endangering ongoing investigations’ excuses.
tialaramex 6y ago
They're spooks. This is what they're for. The constraints are at best just theatre, obviously their adversaries aren't going to obey these rules, and they know that so if they are to be effective (and if they aren't why would they exist at all?) they will also disobey these rules. The purpose of such rules in practice is to help the American public to sleep at night despite having tacitly authorised a nightmare. You know the scene in Casablance, even if you've never watched the movie - it has permeated our culture Captain Renault claims to be shocked to discover that the club is being used for gambling, undercut by a croupier giving him his winnings. If you don't want spooks to do what spooks do, don't pass a law saying it mustn't happen, don't vote for a government that promises they'll exercise oversight over the spooks to prevent it. Just get rid of the spooks. Congress could, if the American people wanted - which they do not - abolish these agencies entirely. They'd just cease to exist and while I'm sure some small scale abuses would continue you just can't run programmes to snoop these huge volumes on pocket change, and companies would be less likely to co-operate with informal requests than with the Department of Justice. But as much as they enjoy bluster, Americans are afraid, and so the spooks will certainly continue to be authorised and "outrages" will happen when once in a while it is revealed that the spooks are doing what spooks do but nothing actually changes. Eventually it'll get to be so routine the The Onion has a pre-built news article for it like for the mass shootings.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  Huge parts of these agencies' activities have been moved off the books or to private entities. It's not as simple a matter as just cutting off their funding anymore.
  - culturestate 6y ago
    The off-the-books money that the CIA uses to pay those shady Raytheon subsidiaries doesn't appear out of thin air. It may be several layers removed and cycled through a few South American laundromats, but its genesis is always the U.S. Treasury.
    - AndrewBissell 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
CamperBob2 6y ago
Whenever I see such news and then look around at what they’ve been doing and continue to do (revealed sometimes in congressional hearings), it seems to me that the executive and the legislature are truly toothless in the face of these three-letter agencies. If that were true, I think Trump would already be gone.
maeln 6y ago
They are not toothless, they put them in those positions of power and do so gladly. Remember that Snowden always said he was ready to come back to the U.S and be trialled, as long as the trial wouldn't be a secret trial. Those who created the laws for those secret trial where not the CIA or the NSA, it was politician. The same way they made it so that it is forbidden to talk about the programs of certain agencies, even for law maker, meaning they approve programs without debate, with only a few senator knowing what the program is even about. They created those laws, not the NSA, not the CIA, they could choose as easily to remove them. But it is too useful for them. The NSA can create a massive surveillance network that serves them without having to ever disclose it to the public.
- pulse7 6y ago
  Trials are secret because they don't want to reveal further secrets. On the other hand you hear people saying: "If you are doing everything right, you have nothing to hide."
  - raxxorrax 6y ago
    The difference is that in a democracy you should be responsible for the actions of government and you need to be able to audit governmental action, not the other way around. I am surprised that they really have zero cases where mass surveillance helped. I would have thought they would make some up at least, but that got probably too hot. Of course there is a massive amount of secret cases where it did help, but they just cannot tell you about... It is a bad excuse that can be used to justify anything. Instead the case for secrecy needs justification.
  - bdamm 6y ago
    If you have nothing to hide, it's only because there's nobody trying to hurt you right now.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  Far as I understand the first director the FBI J. Edgar Hoover had blackmail on a lot of federal politicians. Which is why he left his position feet first. When Hoover died Nixon replaced him with someone with no previous ties to the agency. The CIA has deep ties to the American upper classes. And probably serves their interests over the states. Or their own interests. Aldrich Ames was living well beyond is means for years. A good supposition is people at his level routinely trade intel to 'friendly' government an corporate interests.
eqvinox 6y ago
These agencies are part of the executive and greenlit by the legislature. Mentally divorcing them from that is part of the problem and creates this exact situation where the agencies roam uncontrolled. The chain of accountability for their actions does not end at the head of the agency. It extends into both the White House as well as Congress. As indeed "resignations here and there" are pointless, the public perception needs to shift to a point where elected officials are actually held to what they do (as opposed to, as is frequently happening, what they say.)
MichaelMoser123 6y ago
i wonder if this this state of affairs is the result of the patriot act [1]; or did they have similar regulations in the US before that event? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act,_Title_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act,_Title_II

by AnonHP 6y ago

AndrewBissell 6y ago

> it seems to me that the executive and the legislature are truly toothless in the face of these three-letter agencies. This is by design, a design which was cemented in place on November 22, 1963. If real accountability ever comes to the intelligence agencies, it won't come from the executive or legislative branches over which they exert a lethal veto.

jacobn 6y ago
For those of us with less detailed knowledge of US history: I take it you are referring to the assassination of president John F Kennedy?
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  Yes. The CIA had already started circumventing the POTUS's executive authority in Eisenhower's administration with unauthorized U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union, but it was when a rogue faction within it assassinated Kennedy (with some "special" help) that the CIA became the final word on any matters of real consequence to the U.S. empire.
  - chmod775 6y ago
    Assuming the CIA assassinated a president because at one point someone gave a command without being explicitly authorized from their superior is quite a leap, don't you think? I have heard many different equally baseless conspiracy conspiracy theories about this by now, and they all have two things in common: They each conflict with the other theories and their adherents all sound utterly convinced they are right. Which tells you something about people and their theories.
    - AndrewBissell 6y ago
      > Assuming the CIA assassinated a president because at one point someone gave a command without being explicitly authorized from their superior is quite a leap, don't you think? Indeed it would be, and that's not what I was doing in my post. I brought up the U-2/Eisenhower history only to establish that the CIA was already taking steps to make itself the final arbiter on policy, above and independent from the POTUS. Especially when it came to any potential rapprochement in the Cold War, toward which JFK was also making serious overtures just before he was killed. You can go looking through the vast numbers of theories around JFK's killing and find absurd ones I'm sure, but lumping them all together into one big undifferentiated mass hardly makes for a good argument. In favor of the existence of a conspiracy, there are numerous witnesses and extensive documented and circumstantial evidence, and the motive for such a conspiracy is clear. It's one thing if you don't find that evidence persuasive but it's ridiculous to call it "baseless."

runawaybottle 6y ago

Few things can stand up against the ‘national security’ argument in America (maybe even nothing). A court ruling like this will be overturned in a heartbeat with any kind of terrorist attack. Don’t count out the current domestic unrest to lead to legislation that buffs up these agencies going forward if the Republicans win again.

hedgedoops2 6y ago
There is a Decemberists refrain about the reaction to 9/11, the war on terror: "Because America can, and America can't say no." Or at least, I thought it stood for that, at the time. Part of a solution may be to introduce a "principle of proportionality" like [1] (if one does not already exist), and to aggressively remove the bugs in the US judicial system that prevent ordinary courts from examining the spies, the military and the executive. Like the state secrets privilege [2]. Then the system can prevent itself from backsliding during crises. Laws are no good if courts take 10 years or more to figure out whether they have jurisdiction over, or are able to subpoena evidence relating to, crass, publicly known, obviously illegal, civil rights violations. If courts take too long, standards shift, are forgotten, then abolished. The normative power of the facts. Jewel vs NSA has taken 10 years and has gotten nowhere. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportionality_(law)#European_Union_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportionality_(law)#European... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_secrets_privilege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_secrets_privilege
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  The problem is any contemporaneous litigation on any of these programs is always thwarted with ‘endangering ongoing investigations’ excuses.

tialaramex 6y ago

They're spooks. This is what they're for. The constraints are at best just theatre, obviously their adversaries aren't going to obey these rules, and they know that so if they are to be effective (and if they aren't why would they exist at all?) they will also disobey these rules. The purpose of such rules in practice is to help the American public to sleep at night despite having tacitly authorised a nightmare. You know the scene in Casablance, even if you've never watched the movie - it has permeated our culture Captain Renault claims to be shocked to discover that the club is being used for gambling, undercut by a croupier giving him his winnings. If you don't want spooks to do what spooks do, don't pass a law saying it mustn't happen, don't vote for a government that promises they'll exercise oversight over the spooks to prevent it. Just get rid of the spooks. Congress could, if the American people wanted - which they do not - abolish these agencies entirely. They'd just cease to exist and while I'm sure some small scale abuses would continue you just can't run programmes to snoop these huge volumes on pocket change, and companies would be less likely to co-operate with informal requests than with the Department of Justice. But as much as they enjoy bluster, Americans are afraid, and so the spooks will certainly continue to be authorised and "outrages" will happen when once in a while it is revealed that the spooks are doing what spooks do but nothing actually changes. Eventually it'll get to be so routine the The Onion has a pre-built news article for it like for the mass shootings.

AndrewBissell 6y ago
Huge parts of these agencies' activities have been moved off the books or to private entities. It's not as simple a matter as just cutting off their funding anymore.
- culturestate 6y ago
  The off-the-books money that the CIA uses to pay those shady Raytheon subsidiaries doesn't appear out of thin air. It may be several layers removed and cycled through a few South American laundromats, but its genesis is always the U.S. Treasury.
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

CamperBob2 6y ago

maeln 6y ago

They are not toothless, they put them in those positions of power and do so gladly. Remember that Snowden always said he was ready to come back to the U.S and be trialled, as long as the trial wouldn't be a secret trial. Those who created the laws for those secret trial where not the CIA or the NSA, it was politician. The same way they made it so that it is forbidden to talk about the programs of certain agencies, even for law maker, meaning they approve programs without debate, with only a few senator knowing what the program is even about. They created those laws, not the NSA, not the CIA, they could choose as easily to remove them. But it is too useful for them. The NSA can create a massive surveillance network that serves them without having to ever disclose it to the public.

pulse7 6y ago
Trials are secret because they don't want to reveal further secrets. On the other hand you hear people saying: "If you are doing everything right, you have nothing to hide."
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  The difference is that in a democracy you should be responsible for the actions of government and you need to be able to audit governmental action, not the other way around. I am surprised that they really have zero cases where mass surveillance helped. I would have thought they would make some up at least, but that got probably too hot. Of course there is a massive amount of secret cases where it did help, but they just cannot tell you about... It is a bad excuse that can be used to justify anything. Instead the case for secrecy needs justification.
- bdamm 6y ago
  If you have nothing to hide, it's only because there's nobody trying to hurt you right now.
Gibbon1 6y ago
Far as I understand the first director the FBI J. Edgar Hoover had blackmail on a lot of federal politicians. Which is why he left his position feet first. When Hoover died Nixon replaced him with someone with no previous ties to the agency. The CIA has deep ties to the American upper classes. And probably serves their interests over the states. Or their own interests. Aldrich Ames was living well beyond is means for years. A good supposition is people at his level routinely trade intel to 'friendly' government an corporate interests.

eqvinox 6y ago

These agencies are part of the executive and greenlit by the legislature. Mentally divorcing them from that is part of the problem and creates this exact situation where the agencies roam uncontrolled. The chain of accountability for their actions does not end at the head of the agency. It extends into both the White House as well as Congress. As indeed "resignations here and there" are pointless, the public perception needs to shift to a point where elected officials are actually held to what they do (as opposed to, as is frequently happening, what they say.)

MichaelMoser123 6y ago

i wonder if this this state of affairs is the result of the patriot act [1]; or did they have similar regulations in the US before that event? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act,_Title_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act,_Title_II