4 ms·

The CIA, FBI, etc. have never been held accountable for their countless crimes. There is every reason to believe they are committing more every day. I honestly

The CIA, FBI, etc. have never been held accountable for their countless crimes. There is every reason to believe they are committing more every day. I honestly have no clue how the American people have an ounce of trust in them.

sneak 4y ago
They got caught lying under oath to Congress, about hacking Congressional computers (to delete files to cover up their torture program) and nothing happened. This is a string argument for the US being no more a country with the rule of law than China or Russia.
- somenameforme 4y ago
  It gets far more sordid than that if you're willing to look back to times long enough for classified material to have been declassified. Operation Northwoods [1] is something that somehow was formulated, discussed, and made its way all the way to the top. It was stopped only because one man refused to sign it into action - JFK. Then there was the FBI trying to get MLK to commit suicide [2], and much more. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_lette...
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  Congress doesn’t care about how strictly any agency follows its mandate. Its kind of fortunate that the agencies follow it so closely at all. When agencies learn how to make their own money, there is even less accountability because they don’t have to beg Congress. Things would be different if this funding and mandate enforcement process was also delegated to an agency, or maybe better: a court.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  We will never know for sure whether these agencies (the NSA especially) do what they want because the elected officials like the idea of getting illegal shit done OR because no sane official can cross them and live. Or rather what the mix is between those two motives. They really are parallel power structures...
  - thewildginger 4y ago
    The best way to describe the government of the US, and as far as I've read any powerful ruling organization, is they end up running like a mob in that people might disagree with how something was done, boss might not like what enforcers are doing, people are getting politically whackes or punished for doing not exactly what boss told them, but above all else, they will be damned before someone outside the family knows about it. I believe the US IC is no different.
- trabant00 4y ago
  > This is a string argument for the US being no more a country with the rule of law than China or Russia. As somebody who has lived in the soviet bloc I get goosebumps every time I hear something like this. "Corruption is everywhere", yeah, sure. But how much? This like saying the pacific ocean has water, the sahara desert has water, so there's no difference.
  - hulitu 4y ago
    > "Corruption is everywhere", yeah, sure. But how much? www.lobbyfacts.eu A lot.
    - mopsi 4y ago
      That's nowhere near Soviet Union or modern-day Russia. For starters, there's virtually no reliable economic stats for the Soviet Union, because every level fudged numbers and no-one knew then and even knows today what the actual ground truth was. The TV series Chernobyl illustrates that very well when a high-tech German robot breaks down because Soviet authorities had told Germans "propaganda numbers" instead of true radiation values at the damaged reactor. There was so much lying at every level that eventually no-one knew the truth anymore. Such level of dysfunction is simply incomprehensible to an average western citizen. The latest documentary series TraumaZone by Adam Curtis gives perhaps the best impression that is possible without personally experiencing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDA3hIsf7LA&list=PLSjQL8MYniTTLA3wnZ25U-s6RgR4uJNvL&index=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDA3hIsf7LA&list=PLSjQL8MYni... The current Russian military fiasco is also a symptom of the same deep dysfunction. Before the invasion began, military units positioned near Ukraine sold their fuel to local population and then ran out of what they had left on the way to Kyiv. Many units were understaffed because they had "dead souls": commanders listed non-existing soldiers and embezzled their pay, thus no-one knows how many actually attacked Ukraine. Latest military radios turned out to be cheap Aliexpress junk that relied on civilian 3G/4G cellular network. Many missiles failed before reaching target because they were unmaintained: a small amount was kept in order for military drills, money for maintaining the rest was embezzled. Body armor is filled with cardboard, helmets can be cracked with bare hands. Imagine this in every facet of your life. Everything is shit, but if you go around saying it, then you'll eventually get locked up in a psychiatric hospital, because "it's been scientifically proven that Soviet communism is the best system in the world and anyone who doubts it must be mentally ill".
trabant00 4y ago
Because it's a little more complicated than "entity does bad things = entity is bad". Intelligence agencies have a inherent high risk of abuse by their form and function. This has been true all throughout history and all over the world. But they are also absolutely required. So you accept the risks and try to deal with them as best as you can.
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  "So you accept the risks and try to deal with them as best as you can." Dealing with it, would mean there would be consequences. Are there? I rather see they get more and more power. Not exactly how I would reward wrongdoing. (not US citizen, but here in the EU it is pretty much the same)
  - trabant00 4y ago
    I honestly don't think I have the information to judge if there are appropriate consequences or not. And it's that way by design, you simply can't have such things in public. Could it all be going very very wrong right now? Possible but not very probable. Intelligence agencies working against the interest of the state leads to quite obvious disasters.
    - hutzlibu 4y ago
      "And it's that way by design, you simply can't have such things in public." Of course you can. Not the concrete, secret cases, but the mechanisms of oversight, checks and balance, etc. Make it clear, what is allowed and what is not allowed. And who controls it, so the rules are followed. The freedom of information act for example is a very important thing in this regard. Here in germany we don't have the exact same thing, but something similar. And also a trusted comitee from the parliament, that checks indeed secret cases. And there were special comitees formed to investigate many wrongdoing, related to nazi and islamic terrorism, where the services fucked up big time. But they were fighting uphill battles ("oh they accidently lost important documents again") and achieved little.
- mike_hock 4y ago
thinking4real 4y ago
Nobody trusts them or anything else in the govt if they have a room temp iq. What does my lack of trust do to the cia or fbi? They both still track my every move. The govt makes laws I despise. We have no control.

sneak 4y ago

They got caught lying under oath to Congress, about hacking Congressional computers (to delete files to cover up their torture program) and nothing happened. This is a string argument for the US being no more a country with the rule of law than China or Russia.

somenameforme 4y ago
It gets far more sordid than that if you're willing to look back to times long enough for classified material to have been declassified. Operation Northwoods [1] is something that somehow was formulated, discussed, and made its way all the way to the top. It was stopped only because one man refused to sign it into action - JFK. Then there was the FBI trying to get MLK to commit suicide [2], and much more. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_lette...
yieldcrv 4y ago
Congress doesn’t care about how strictly any agency follows its mandate. Its kind of fortunate that the agencies follow it so closely at all. When agencies learn how to make their own money, there is even less accountability because they don’t have to beg Congress. Things would be different if this funding and mandate enforcement process was also delegated to an agency, or maybe better: a court.
LatteLazy 4y ago
We will never know for sure whether these agencies (the NSA especially) do what they want because the elected officials like the idea of getting illegal shit done OR because no sane official can cross them and live. Or rather what the mix is between those two motives. They really are parallel power structures...
- thewildginger 4y ago
  The best way to describe the government of the US, and as far as I've read any powerful ruling organization, is they end up running like a mob in that people might disagree with how something was done, boss might not like what enforcers are doing, people are getting politically whackes or punished for doing not exactly what boss told them, but above all else, they will be damned before someone outside the family knows about it. I believe the US IC is no different.
trabant00 4y ago
> This is a string argument for the US being no more a country with the rule of law than China or Russia. As somebody who has lived in the soviet bloc I get goosebumps every time I hear something like this. "Corruption is everywhere", yeah, sure. But how much? This like saying the pacific ocean has water, the sahara desert has water, so there's no difference.
- hulitu 4y ago
  > "Corruption is everywhere", yeah, sure. But how much? www.lobbyfacts.eu A lot.
  - mopsi 4y ago
    That's nowhere near Soviet Union or modern-day Russia. For starters, there's virtually no reliable economic stats for the Soviet Union, because every level fudged numbers and no-one knew then and even knows today what the actual ground truth was. The TV series Chernobyl illustrates that very well when a high-tech German robot breaks down because Soviet authorities had told Germans "propaganda numbers" instead of true radiation values at the damaged reactor. There was so much lying at every level that eventually no-one knew the truth anymore. Such level of dysfunction is simply incomprehensible to an average western citizen. The latest documentary series TraumaZone by Adam Curtis gives perhaps the best impression that is possible without personally experiencing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDA3hIsf7LA&list=PLSjQL8MYniTTLA3wnZ25U-s6RgR4uJNvL&index=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDA3hIsf7LA&list=PLSjQL8MYni... The current Russian military fiasco is also a symptom of the same deep dysfunction. Before the invasion began, military units positioned near Ukraine sold their fuel to local population and then ran out of what they had left on the way to Kyiv. Many units were understaffed because they had "dead souls": commanders listed non-existing soldiers and embezzled their pay, thus no-one knows how many actually attacked Ukraine. Latest military radios turned out to be cheap Aliexpress junk that relied on civilian 3G/4G cellular network. Many missiles failed before reaching target because they were unmaintained: a small amount was kept in order for military drills, money for maintaining the rest was embezzled. Body armor is filled with cardboard, helmets can be cracked with bare hands. Imagine this in every facet of your life. Everything is shit, but if you go around saying it, then you'll eventually get locked up in a psychiatric hospital, because "it's been scientifically proven that Soviet communism is the best system in the world and anyone who doubts it must be mentally ill".

trabant00 4y ago

Because it's a little more complicated than "entity does bad things = entity is bad". Intelligence agencies have a inherent high risk of abuse by their form and function. This has been true all throughout history and all over the world. But they are also absolutely required. So you accept the risks and try to deal with them as best as you can.

hutzlibu 4y ago
"So you accept the risks and try to deal with them as best as you can." Dealing with it, would mean there would be consequences. Are there? I rather see they get more and more power. Not exactly how I would reward wrongdoing. (not US citizen, but here in the EU it is pretty much the same)
- trabant00 4y ago
  I honestly don't think I have the information to judge if there are appropriate consequences or not. And it's that way by design, you simply can't have such things in public. Could it all be going very very wrong right now? Possible but not very probable. Intelligence agencies working against the interest of the state leads to quite obvious disasters.
  - hutzlibu 4y ago
    "And it's that way by design, you simply can't have such things in public." Of course you can. Not the concrete, secret cases, but the mechanisms of oversight, checks and balance, etc. Make it clear, what is allowed and what is not allowed. And who controls it, so the rules are followed. The freedom of information act for example is a very important thing in this regard. Here in germany we don't have the exact same thing, but something similar. And also a trusted comitee from the parliament, that checks indeed secret cases. And there were special comitees formed to investigate many wrongdoing, related to nazi and islamic terrorism, where the services fucked up big time. But they were fighting uphill battles ("oh they accidently lost important documents again") and achieved little.
mike_hock 4y ago

thinking4real 4y ago

Nobody trusts them or anything else in the govt if they have a room temp iq. What does my lack of trust do to the cia or fbi? They both still track my every move. The govt makes laws I despise. We have no control.