3 ms·

I am going to quote your own article back to you verbatim because it says something entirely different to what you seem to be claiming. “The letter sent to Gra

by mdhb 2y ago

I am going to quote your own article back to you verbatim because it says something entirely different to what you seem to be claiming. “The letter sent to Grassley reveals that there have been at least 12 recorded cases of spies abusing their powers since 2003”. So, no, the NSA is not out there abusing their powers to go after illegitimate targets. It’s also worth keeping the context that this was in a pre-Snowden era. In 2024 you can’t access a single thing without their being a log of who you are and why you are looking at it and under what legal statute that is allowed precisely to prevent something like that ever happening again. What you are implying simply isn’t true.

somenameforme 2y ago
You claimed there was zero evidence that the NSA was spying on illegitimate targets. Both articles emphasize there were numerous incidents of exactly this, both discovered and undiscovered. Snowden in particular emphasized the rather poor level of content auditing that was (and probably still is) going on.
- mdhb 2y ago
  Listen, everybody can read the exact same comment I wrote and see how you are ignoring all the parts that are inconvenient to you. It’s there in black and white. We are talking about if the NSA abuses its power to go after illegitimate targets. You quoted the same single source twice but written by different people which when we got down to the heart of the claim showed that there was actual evidence of approximately 1 incident per year over more than a decade time frame. I also explained precisely how and why things had changed in the past decade since that quote was relevant so that it wasn’t possible for people to do that any longer without tripping all kinds of alarms. If you have other evidence then please share it but what you have so far doesn’t support your claim at all.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    Read the articles - they describe two very different scenarios. One is spies spying on love interest (wives, girlfriend, somebody they might want to date, etc). The other is spies collecting sexually explicit media of more random people. And the auditing systems at the NSA were obviously very poor, and there's no reason to think that has meaningfully changed. Of the very few cases they were able to "catch", a sizable chunk were from self reporting in polygraph exams or even more absurd things like a girlfriend reporting a guy who she suspected was spying on him - and he was, as well as 9 other women. In no cases were there any meaningful penalties, with the worst case being resignation. And similarly, it seems people engaging in the harvesting of sexually explicit material Snowden described were never caught, which is likely why he referred to it as something like a "fringe benefit".
    - mdhb 2y ago
      Sigh… Listen when I talk about single source. I’m talking about “Edward Snowden made a claim”. It doesn’t magically become two sources because he gave two examples. Moving on from the technicalities though because it’s a dumb argument to get stuck in and into the heart of it. We are still stuck with the problem however that there wasn’t ever any evidence of this happening that anyone could point to even after an in depth investigation into the topic beyond the dozen incidents over more than a decade time period. Snowden (and now you) made the claim that in fact it was much higher but you simply can not prove it which is awfully convenient but does leave the question open of how could he possibly have known this? Are you meaning to tell me that the biggest leaker of classified information in the US’s history for some reason chose to hold back on what he knew about that topic? He must have known of specific people and incidents and could have cross referenced what was in the investigation with what he knew. He couldn’t have dreamed up a more perfect gotcha moment if that was the case to come out and say what about incidents X, Y and Z. That never happened and you should naturally wonder why that might be. He either didn’t actually know of any or he chose not to reveal it for undisclosed reasons beyond a vague insinuation. I also want to put it to you that perhaps Edward Snowden was not exactly an honest broker in the way he claims to be. I know it’s somewhat blasphemous here but as I mentioned in another thread this week there is actually a rather compelling theory in the IC that he might have been part of an malicious insider campaign from the very start. In part because of things like this ironically.

by mdhb 2y ago

somenameforme 2y ago

You claimed there was zero evidence that the NSA was spying on illegitimate targets. Both articles emphasize there were numerous incidents of exactly this, both discovered and undiscovered. Snowden in particular emphasized the rather poor level of content auditing that was (and probably still is) going on.

mdhb 2y ago
Listen, everybody can read the exact same comment I wrote and see how you are ignoring all the parts that are inconvenient to you. It’s there in black and white. We are talking about if the NSA abuses its power to go after illegitimate targets. You quoted the same single source twice but written by different people which when we got down to the heart of the claim showed that there was actual evidence of approximately 1 incident per year over more than a decade time frame. I also explained precisely how and why things had changed in the past decade since that quote was relevant so that it wasn’t possible for people to do that any longer without tripping all kinds of alarms. If you have other evidence then please share it but what you have so far doesn’t support your claim at all.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- somenameforme 2y ago
  Read the articles - they describe two very different scenarios. One is spies spying on love interest (wives, girlfriend, somebody they might want to date, etc). The other is spies collecting sexually explicit media of more random people. And the auditing systems at the NSA were obviously very poor, and there's no reason to think that has meaningfully changed. Of the very few cases they were able to "catch", a sizable chunk were from self reporting in polygraph exams or even more absurd things like a girlfriend reporting a guy who she suspected was spying on him - and he was, as well as 9 other women. In no cases were there any meaningful penalties, with the worst case being resignation. And similarly, it seems people engaging in the harvesting of sexually explicit material Snowden described were never caught, which is likely why he referred to it as something like a "fringe benefit".
  - mdhb 2y ago
    Sigh… Listen when I talk about single source. I’m talking about “Edward Snowden made a claim”. It doesn’t magically become two sources because he gave two examples. Moving on from the technicalities though because it’s a dumb argument to get stuck in and into the heart of it. We are still stuck with the problem however that there wasn’t ever any evidence of this happening that anyone could point to even after an in depth investigation into the topic beyond the dozen incidents over more than a decade time period. Snowden (and now you) made the claim that in fact it was much higher but you simply can not prove it which is awfully convenient but does leave the question open of how could he possibly have known this? Are you meaning to tell me that the biggest leaker of classified information in the US’s history for some reason chose to hold back on what he knew about that topic? He must have known of specific people and incidents and could have cross referenced what was in the investigation with what he knew. He couldn’t have dreamed up a more perfect gotcha moment if that was the case to come out and say what about incidents X, Y and Z. That never happened and you should naturally wonder why that might be. He either didn’t actually know of any or he chose not to reveal it for undisclosed reasons beyond a vague insinuation. I also want to put it to you that perhaps Edward Snowden was not exactly an honest broker in the way he claims to be. I know it’s somewhat blasphemous here but as I mentioned in another thread this week there is actually a rather compelling theory in the IC that he might have been part of an malicious insider campaign from the very start. In part because of things like this ironically.