5 ms·

The NSA: ‘The Abyss from Which There Is No Return’

125 points by joeyespo 13y ago

scrrr 13y ago
> And once the government starts operating outside the law, answerable to no one but itself, there’s no way to rein it back in, short of revolution. Exactly. Or can somebody think of an example in history where a government gave up some of its rights? These sorts of authorisations (anti-terror laws and whatnot) don't go away, because they are too convenient for those in power.
- CapitalistCartr 13y ago
  In the early Nineties the White government of South Africa conceded power to the Black African National Congress. At that time, they had made about six nukes, with the help of Israel, which they weren't willing to hand over to the new government, so they dismantled them and the whole program.
- trebor 13y ago
  And a revolution fighting against modern weaponry is practically guaranteed to fail. With the government constantly trying to restrict the citizens' access to weaponry there's no way to even make parody (pun intended) to hold the government accountable. Add to that the fact we've a standing military, something the Constitution never authorized, that's professionally trained. We've had problematic generals before but none of them tried to seize control of the country, yet. If a revolution breaks out we aren't talking about a conflict the size of Syria's or Egypt's. We're probably talking about the biggest civil war ever, or a military coup. And the outcome of it (no matter if it worked or failed) would effectively gut the USA. Tyranny is almost assured. We're on the bubble right now if the outcome hasn't already been decided (and we won't know except in hind-sight).
  - abawany 13y ago
    I hope that just partly like in Syria, the troops would eventually balk at killing their fellow citizens. However, I admit that such a possibility is less likely for armed forces that are engaging in war remotely. *: I believe that at some point, the majority of Syrian resistance was formerly the Syrian army.
- jerf 13y ago
  The British Isles have a long history of the government relatively painlessly surrendering and/or distributing bits of its power going back centuries. It of course also has some examples of it being done only painfully and with blood, but there's still multiple existence proofs there. I don't think we've reached the point where this is out of the question per se. I do think it's pretty unlikely that we're going to be able to just extract out this particular bit of government, though. The only hope is a broad-based move in a libertarian direction. Plink just the NSA right now and adhoc combinations of other agencies will seamlessly move right in. To name one example, the DEA would happily step in to this sort of surveillance if the NSA wasn't there. (I operate on a "direction" theory of voting. You don't have to be a libertarian right now to vote that way. You just have to think we have too much government right now. It's not a forever commitment. If we somehow finally reach "too little", feel free to vote for "bigger".)
- kaonashi 13y ago
  The security state received a nice trim back in the 70's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee
- tomjen3 13y ago
  Cincinatti gave up his power to rule Rome absolutely as soon as his reason for becoming dictator ended, so there is that.
- gizmo686 13y ago
  Ignoring the cases where the government was on the loosing side of a war, the only example I can think of is the American colonies, which voluntarily gave up power when they formed the union.
- narrator 13y ago
  The Eastern Roman Empire gave up a lot of its power when they decentralized the military in favor of the "theme" system. Ironically, this reform was undertaken in order to more effectively combat the constant Islamic invasions that were taking place at the time (More at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_system).
Roboprog 13y ago
I sincerely hope any tech working for NSA is socially outcast. "Pardon us if we're not thrilled that you work for an unconstitutional institution." While the NSA is currently less harmful than say, the Mafia, it has the potential to be far worse. Contractors on the Death Star? Bleh, Godwin's Law and all that...
- RougeFemme 13y ago
  I don't think that people who work for the NSA generally acknowledge that they do. Not necessarily out of shame or fear of being outcast, but just because of the nature of working in the "black/top secret world". Some name some non-existent entity as their employer - in a social situation, who would really know if they were lying? And if they are working for a contractor, they can quite easily just name the contractor as the employer
  - rootbear 13y ago
    I live in the DC area and the people I know who work at NSA typically say they work "for the Department of Defense". That's a sure sign they work at NSA, since anyone else who works at DoD would just say more specifically whom they work for, like I did when I was a contractor at the Naval Research Lab.
masswerk 13y ago
And it's not only about US citizens. As things are, any non-US-citizen is under suspect by the US gov which is totally legal in the US. Now, just imagine the US outsourcing surveillance of homeland communications, say to the UK. Again, it would be totally legal in the UK — as in most countries — to monitor the communications of a foreign state. So the American people (same applies to other countries) shouldn't be concerned with domestic effects only. (As of writing this, most European democracies are co-operating with the US and are retrieving informations on their own citizens via US-intelligence.)
- regis 13y ago
  Exactly, this is the weirdest part to me. The US government feels alright with the fact that they have publicly declared anyone living outside the US a possible enemy. That is definitely not how I feel at all as a citizen and that viewpoint is obviously extremely dangerous. It seems like the US is becoming something like a xenophobic elderly person who isn't able to adjust to the times.
  - masswerk 13y ago
    Thanks for saying this! ("That is definitely not how I feel at all as a citizen") Yet another two cents: The idea of side-stepping national regulations isn't that farfetched: At least the UK and France are perfectly capable of operating their own systems (and are already employing them on a limited scale). So this isn't a constitutional affair of domestic interest only, but has a human rights aspect too. And as a European citizen, I'm feeling pretty much under attack by this. I think, there's a foreseeable point in the future, where the remote threat of terrorism begins to wear and people are still feeling their exposure to a foreign surveillance they can't help about. Eventually this could possibly be the single major damage to the reputation of the US.
  - AndrewKemendo 13y ago
    >The US government feels alright with the fact that they have publicly declared anyone living outside the US a possible enemy. I disagree with this. The people who are tasked to prevent foreign powers from attacking, destabilizing or hindering U.S. intentions have a stated mission to prevent them from doing so and as such have that as a minimum starting point. If you look at the other arms of the USG, namely the State department their charter is exactly the opposite, building partnerships, making friends etc... So yes, the DoD and CIA view the rest of the world as hostile to the US by default. That's what they are there to defend against so it would make sense. That said, there are tons of building partnerships, humanitarian relief and international relations missions stemming from the DoD to foreign allies and partners. Its actually growing quite a bit - and likewise makes defending the nation against materiel proliferation, attacks, espionage etc... harder.

125 points by joeyespo 13y ago

scrrr 13y ago

> And once the government starts operating outside the law, answerable to no one but itself, there’s no way to rein it back in, short of revolution. Exactly. Or can somebody think of an example in history where a government gave up some of its rights? These sorts of authorisations (anti-terror laws and whatnot) don't go away, because they are too convenient for those in power.

CapitalistCartr 13y ago
In the early Nineties the White government of South Africa conceded power to the Black African National Congress. At that time, they had made about six nukes, with the help of Israel, which they weren't willing to hand over to the new government, so they dismantled them and the whole program.
trebor 13y ago
And a revolution fighting against modern weaponry is practically guaranteed to fail. With the government constantly trying to restrict the citizens' access to weaponry there's no way to even make parody (pun intended) to hold the government accountable. Add to that the fact we've a standing military, something the Constitution never authorized, that's professionally trained. We've had problematic generals before but none of them tried to seize control of the country, yet. If a revolution breaks out we aren't talking about a conflict the size of Syria's or Egypt's. We're probably talking about the biggest civil war ever, or a military coup. And the outcome of it (no matter if it worked or failed) would effectively gut the USA. Tyranny is almost assured. We're on the bubble right now if the outcome hasn't already been decided (and we won't know except in hind-sight).
- abawany 13y ago
  I hope that just partly like in Syria, the troops would eventually balk at killing their fellow citizens. However, I admit that such a possibility is less likely for armed forces that are engaging in war remotely. *: I believe that at some point, the majority of Syrian resistance was formerly the Syrian army.
jerf 13y ago
The British Isles have a long history of the government relatively painlessly surrendering and/or distributing bits of its power going back centuries. It of course also has some examples of it being done only painfully and with blood, but there's still multiple existence proofs there. I don't think we've reached the point where this is out of the question per se. I do think it's pretty unlikely that we're going to be able to just extract out this particular bit of government, though. The only hope is a broad-based move in a libertarian direction. Plink just the NSA right now and adhoc combinations of other agencies will seamlessly move right in. To name one example, the DEA would happily step in to this sort of surveillance if the NSA wasn't there. (I operate on a "direction" theory of voting. You don't have to be a libertarian right now to vote that way. You just have to think we have too much government right now. It's not a forever commitment. If we somehow finally reach "too little", feel free to vote for "bigger".)
kaonashi 13y ago
The security state received a nice trim back in the 70's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee
tomjen3 13y ago
Cincinatti gave up his power to rule Rome absolutely as soon as his reason for becoming dictator ended, so there is that.
gizmo686 13y ago
Ignoring the cases where the government was on the loosing side of a war, the only example I can think of is the American colonies, which voluntarily gave up power when they formed the union.
narrator 13y ago
The Eastern Roman Empire gave up a lot of its power when they decentralized the military in favor of the "theme" system. Ironically, this reform was undertaken in order to more effectively combat the constant Islamic invasions that were taking place at the time (More at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_system).

Roboprog 13y ago

I sincerely hope any tech working for NSA is socially outcast. "Pardon us if we're not thrilled that you work for an unconstitutional institution." While the NSA is currently less harmful than say, the Mafia, it has the potential to be far worse. Contractors on the Death Star? Bleh, Godwin's Law and all that...

RougeFemme 13y ago
I don't think that people who work for the NSA generally acknowledge that they do. Not necessarily out of shame or fear of being outcast, but just because of the nature of working in the "black/top secret world". Some name some non-existent entity as their employer - in a social situation, who would really know if they were lying? And if they are working for a contractor, they can quite easily just name the contractor as the employer
- rootbear 13y ago
  I live in the DC area and the people I know who work at NSA typically say they work "for the Department of Defense". That's a sure sign they work at NSA, since anyone else who works at DoD would just say more specifically whom they work for, like I did when I was a contractor at the Naval Research Lab.

masswerk 13y ago

And it's not only about US citizens. As things are, any non-US-citizen is under suspect by the US gov which is totally legal in the US. Now, just imagine the US outsourcing surveillance of homeland communications, say to the UK. Again, it would be totally legal in the UK — as in most countries — to monitor the communications of a foreign state. So the American people (same applies to other countries) shouldn't be concerned with domestic effects only. (As of writing this, most European democracies are co-operating with the US and are retrieving informations on their own citizens via US-intelligence.)

regis 13y ago
Exactly, this is the weirdest part to me. The US government feels alright with the fact that they have publicly declared anyone living outside the US a possible enemy. That is definitely not how I feel at all as a citizen and that viewpoint is obviously extremely dangerous. It seems like the US is becoming something like a xenophobic elderly person who isn't able to adjust to the times.
- masswerk 13y ago
  Thanks for saying this! ("That is definitely not how I feel at all as a citizen") Yet another two cents: The idea of side-stepping national regulations isn't that farfetched: At least the UK and France are perfectly capable of operating their own systems (and are already employing them on a limited scale). So this isn't a constitutional affair of domestic interest only, but has a human rights aspect too. And as a European citizen, I'm feeling pretty much under attack by this. I think, there's a foreseeable point in the future, where the remote threat of terrorism begins to wear and people are still feeling their exposure to a foreign surveillance they can't help about. Eventually this could possibly be the single major damage to the reputation of the US.
- AndrewKemendo 13y ago
  >The US government feels alright with the fact that they have publicly declared anyone living outside the US a possible enemy. I disagree with this. The people who are tasked to prevent foreign powers from attacking, destabilizing or hindering U.S. intentions have a stated mission to prevent them from doing so and as such have that as a minimum starting point. If you look at the other arms of the USG, namely the State department their charter is exactly the opposite, building partnerships, making friends etc... So yes, the DoD and CIA view the rest of the world as hostile to the US by default. That's what they are there to defend against so it would make sense. That said, there are tons of building partnerships, humanitarian relief and international relations missions stemming from the DoD to foreign allies and partners. Its actually growing quite a bit - and likewise makes defending the nation against materiel proliferation, attacks, espionage etc... harder.