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I've been saying this for a long time, but pre-Snowden I was always met with heavy deference of trust for the checks and balances system. I claim that there has

I've been saying this for a long time, but pre-Snowden I was always met with heavy deference of trust for the checks and balances system. I claim that there has been a backroom debate in the higher level Military Industrial Intelligence Complex (Top tier NSA, CIA, DoD, Pentagon, NSC) in which it was concluded that technology has created a potential for a single non-state entity to cause massive damage, and that "Total Information Awareness" is the only way to prevent it. Of course, I disagree that the purpose of TIA is security, and I also disagree that it is even successful, but the real issue at hand is beyond that, and is about how the debate was had and who was involved. There was no public debate, and any that did leak was tightly brought under control (with NSL's etc). This is an affront to the democratic process imho, but even if one were to argue that our representatives were involved, I would say there has been a stratification of the congresspeople, so that only a select few people on a select few committees even get to participate, and even then the ones who do are unable to grasp the subject matter fully. Of course no staffers get to see it either. With the knowledge of how intel agencies work, and more specifically, the contact sport of politics in the beltway, I would also venture to say that even if a fairly principled rep did make it on a relevant committee, though would quickly be brought back under control via the standard methods. I won't get off too far into this rabbit hole, lest I am accused of conspiracy theory, but I truly think the system of checks and balances is not only crumbling, it is in ruins. Even worse, a facade is being put up to cover it up.

md224 13y ago
> technology has created a potential for a single non-state entity to cause massive damage Are you simply referring to "terrorist" acts of violence, or a more abstract tension between traditional states and distributed transnational organizations?
nknighthb 13y ago
Checks and balances are alive and well. No system of governance will prevent an action if everyone in that system supports it, nor should it. We are the problem, we keep electing people who support this crap.
- newman314 13y ago
  Correction: we keep allowing political parties to give us less than ideal candidates that combined with the first-past-the-post election method ends up having people voting for what they perceive to be the least evil candidate and not an actual representation of, for and by the people.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    First past the post election system is a problem, but the fact is that only a hip minority of people vote for what they perceive to be the "least evil" candidate. I went to grad school in Chicago, and all the people I know who support Obama genuine think he's a great candidate. Maybe not their ideal candidate, but one they can get behind that they think will be able to build a coalition. If you look at American policy, it's closely representative of the views of typical voters. High levels of welfare spending for the middle class (i.e. Social Security and Medicare?) What could be more representative of a voting population that consists to a large degree of middle aged middle class folks nearing retirement who won't be burdened with the bill? Foreign wars? How many liberals urged Obama to intervene in Syria even after their ostensible opposition to Iraq? How many liberals supported arming Syrian rebels after complaining for years about arming anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan? On either side of the aisle, Americans are broadly willing to resort to military solutions. The drug war? I grew up in the 1990's and remember being surrounded by suburban soccer moms who thought drugs were more evil than Hitler. The drug war was built on a solid coalition of social conservatives and Reagan Democrats that's only now chipping at the edges as a younger generation becomes parents themselves. First past the post has notable theoretical weaknesses, but that weakness tends to be entrenching the voice of the mainstream consensus, to the exclusion of minority viewpoints. Americans love to bitch about the government, but very few would change anything in a substantial way. They argue over issues at the edges because that's the only thing they disagree about. They might disagree with the amount of penalty BP should receive, but people on the right don't want to get rid of the regulatory regime surrounding oil drilling, nor do people on the left want to abandon drilling entirely.
    - dTal 13y ago
olifante 13y ago
This is the crucial point that we as community are missing: yes, dragnet total surveillance is unacceptable, but it's just as unacceptable to have perfect secrecy for any entity. States MUST have the power to snoop any traffic they desire, otherwise we theoretically risk states being hijacked by small bands of effective conspirators. The trouble is not spying itself, it's that the cost of spying has become so low that states choose to spy everything by default. We need to revert to a state where all communications can be eavesdropped, but where there is non-negligible computational cost for doing it. One way might be to switch to encrypted communications for everything, but using keys that are strong enough to provide protection from wholesale dragnet surveillance, but weak enough for targeted brute-force decryption.

md224 13y ago

> technology has created a potential for a single non-state entity to cause massive damage Are you simply referring to "terrorist" acts of violence, or a more abstract tension between traditional states and distributed transnational organizations?

nknighthb 13y ago

Checks and balances are alive and well. No system of governance will prevent an action if everyone in that system supports it, nor should it. We are the problem, we keep electing people who support this crap.

newman314 13y ago
Correction: we keep allowing political parties to give us less than ideal candidates that combined with the first-past-the-post election method ends up having people voting for what they perceive to be the least evil candidate and not an actual representation of, for and by the people.
- rayiner 13y ago
  First past the post election system is a problem, but the fact is that only a hip minority of people vote for what they perceive to be the "least evil" candidate. I went to grad school in Chicago, and all the people I know who support Obama genuine think he's a great candidate. Maybe not their ideal candidate, but one they can get behind that they think will be able to build a coalition. If you look at American policy, it's closely representative of the views of typical voters. High levels of welfare spending for the middle class (i.e. Social Security and Medicare?) What could be more representative of a voting population that consists to a large degree of middle aged middle class folks nearing retirement who won't be burdened with the bill? Foreign wars? How many liberals urged Obama to intervene in Syria even after their ostensible opposition to Iraq? How many liberals supported arming Syrian rebels after complaining for years about arming anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan? On either side of the aisle, Americans are broadly willing to resort to military solutions. The drug war? I grew up in the 1990's and remember being surrounded by suburban soccer moms who thought drugs were more evil than Hitler. The drug war was built on a solid coalition of social conservatives and Reagan Democrats that's only now chipping at the edges as a younger generation becomes parents themselves. First past the post has notable theoretical weaknesses, but that weakness tends to be entrenching the voice of the mainstream consensus, to the exclusion of minority viewpoints. Americans love to bitch about the government, but very few would change anything in a substantial way. They argue over issues at the edges because that's the only thing they disagree about. They might disagree with the amount of penalty BP should receive, but people on the right don't want to get rid of the regulatory regime surrounding oil drilling, nor do people on the left want to abandon drilling entirely.
  - dTal 13y ago

olifante 13y ago

This is the crucial point that we as community are missing: yes, dragnet total surveillance is unacceptable, but it's just as unacceptable to have perfect secrecy for any entity. States MUST have the power to snoop any traffic they desire, otherwise we theoretically risk states being hijacked by small bands of effective conspirators. The trouble is not spying itself, it's that the cost of spying has become so low that states choose to spy everything by default. We need to revert to a state where all communications can be eavesdropped, but where there is non-negligible computational cost for doing it. One way might be to switch to encrypted communications for everything, but using keys that are strong enough to provide protection from wholesale dragnet surveillance, but weak enough for targeted brute-force decryption.