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> but there was zero evidence that I’m aware of where they were misusing that to go after illegitimate targets How could you claim that without (a) having insi

by roenxi 2y ago

> but there was zero evidence that I’m aware of where they were misusing that to go after illegitimate targets How could you claim that without (a) having insider knowledge of the secret activities of the FISA court and (b) violating some sort of legal restriction on publicising your knowledge of said court? One of the major complaints about the US surveillance program (indeed any surveillance program) is almost nobody is allowed to know who the targets are or why. > I think the most controversial thing on that front from memory was Angela Merkel and other EU heads of state And I think the most controversial target to date was actually Trump.

mdhb 2y ago
[flagged]
- roenxi 2y ago
  > The fact he happened to suddenly become a politician doesn’t mean he is suddenly in the untouchable category only that the level of scrutiny goes way up. So when you say "legitimate targets" does that include all US politicians? Or only ones that you think are a threat to your interests? Perhaps we can speed up the argument and you outline what you think the illegitimate targets would be. Because that case sounded like clear cut abuse of the spying apparatus to me. Bearing in mind that people involved in obtaining the warrant ended up being charged with related crimes of falsifying documents.
  - mdhb 2y ago
    Listen Trump was running a whole lot of policies entirely off the books that wasn’t publicly declared and was entirely inconsistent with the goals of both the US and all of their allies but was entirely consistent with personal enrichment. He had multiple people go down around him that were actively working as Russian agents and then he had Kushner working to set up a secret communications channel out of the Russian embassy that was actively designed so that it couldn’t be intercepted by US intelligence. When you do that kind of thing, no matter if you’re a politician or not, in fact ESPECIALLY if you’re a politician you should absolutely expect people to start asking questions and opening investigations. We don’t need to pretend he was some normal candidate who had a couple of whacky ideas.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      Just to hammer on the point here, the polling is close to wall-to-wall that people prefer him as the next US president - so in that sense he is probably slightly above normal. Are you saying you consider deploying the spying apparatus to monitor domestic political candidates is legitimate? What is the line where you consider it illegitimate? They bought this system in notionally to fight terrorists. It has in short order turned out that "terrorists" include someone who can be described as a relatively popular (!) Republican candidate. Are you contending that this is legitimate use of the foreign intelligence apparatus? Most US presidents have dealings with foreign countries. The Biden family are famously involved in Ukraine (& others), Trump was all over the place including Russia. Obama was probably just domestic but the Bush family have a lot of interest in oil which is going to involve foreign contact and the Clintons are closely involved in US foreign policy. There'd be a case for spying on almost every president in the last 30 years!
      - mdhb 2y ago
        You seem to have so many different things mixed up here that I don’t even know where to begin. Being popular has nothing to do with it, being a politician has nothing to do with it, what others may or may not have done has nothing to do with it. There were a whole range of specific actions that occurred that resulted in an investigation as it should.
        roenxi 2y ago
        > There were a whole range of specific actions that occurred that resulted in an investigation as it should. One of the FBI lawyers involved plead guilty to a felony false statement charge. They were literally making up pretexts to spy on the Trump campaign. I think the issue here is when you talk about "legitimate" you mean that you are happy enough to see the FISA system used as an internal political club. There is no way that it is being used legitimately, we're in the opening stages of a process where every single incoming US president is going to have their communications examined by the incumbent's administration. Or at least when the party in power changes. There isn't anything special about Trump here. He turned out not to be doing anything suspicious, or they'd be going after him for it (or have gone after people in his campaign). Ergo, any clean candidate is probably suspicious enough to warrant surveillance.
- rubytubido 2y ago
  > There is a significant amount of evidence Can you share it?

by roenxi 2y ago

mdhb 2y ago

[flagged]

roenxi 2y ago
> The fact he happened to suddenly become a politician doesn’t mean he is suddenly in the untouchable category only that the level of scrutiny goes way up. So when you say "legitimate targets" does that include all US politicians? Or only ones that you think are a threat to your interests? Perhaps we can speed up the argument and you outline what you think the illegitimate targets would be. Because that case sounded like clear cut abuse of the spying apparatus to me. Bearing in mind that people involved in obtaining the warrant ended up being charged with related crimes of falsifying documents.
- mdhb 2y ago
  Listen Trump was running a whole lot of policies entirely off the books that wasn’t publicly declared and was entirely inconsistent with the goals of both the US and all of their allies but was entirely consistent with personal enrichment. He had multiple people go down around him that were actively working as Russian agents and then he had Kushner working to set up a secret communications channel out of the Russian embassy that was actively designed so that it couldn’t be intercepted by US intelligence. When you do that kind of thing, no matter if you’re a politician or not, in fact ESPECIALLY if you’re a politician you should absolutely expect people to start asking questions and opening investigations. We don’t need to pretend he was some normal candidate who had a couple of whacky ideas.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    Just to hammer on the point here, the polling is close to wall-to-wall that people prefer him as the next US president - so in that sense he is probably slightly above normal. Are you saying you consider deploying the spying apparatus to monitor domestic political candidates is legitimate? What is the line where you consider it illegitimate? They bought this system in notionally to fight terrorists. It has in short order turned out that "terrorists" include someone who can be described as a relatively popular (!) Republican candidate. Are you contending that this is legitimate use of the foreign intelligence apparatus? Most US presidents have dealings with foreign countries. The Biden family are famously involved in Ukraine (& others), Trump was all over the place including Russia. Obama was probably just domestic but the Bush family have a lot of interest in oil which is going to involve foreign contact and the Clintons are closely involved in US foreign policy. There'd be a case for spying on almost every president in the last 30 years!
    - mdhb 2y ago
      You seem to have so many different things mixed up here that I don’t even know where to begin. Being popular has nothing to do with it, being a politician has nothing to do with it, what others may or may not have done has nothing to do with it. There were a whole range of specific actions that occurred that resulted in an investigation as it should.
      - roenxi 2y ago
        > There were a whole range of specific actions that occurred that resulted in an investigation as it should. One of the FBI lawyers involved plead guilty to a felony false statement charge. They were literally making up pretexts to spy on the Trump campaign. I think the issue here is when you talk about "legitimate" you mean that you are happy enough to see the FISA system used as an internal political club. There is no way that it is being used legitimately, we're in the opening stages of a process where every single incoming US president is going to have their communications examined by the incumbent's administration. Or at least when the party in power changes. There isn't anything special about Trump here. He turned out not to be doing anything suspicious, or they'd be going after him for it (or have gone after people in his campaign). Ergo, any clean candidate is probably suspicious enough to warrant surveillance.
rubytubido 2y ago
> There is a significant amount of evidence Can you share it?