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All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again. As bad as we think the NSA is today the FBI in its "glory days" under Hoover were far, far wo

All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again. As bad as we think the NSA is today the FBI in its "glory days" under Hoover were far, far worse. McCarthy was far worse. "Existential risk to the republic" worse. The NSA is not "that bad", yet, probably. But the potential is there, if anything the potential for badness is far worse and the ability to reign it in seemingly diminished. Edit: Also, the fundamental problem today is not the NSA, it's just a symptom. Even if we completely defunded the NSA tomorrow as well as put every NSA employee on a rocket and shot them into the Sun it would still not solve the underlying problem and it would just be a matter of time before we'd be facing the same issues from some other direction. The problem is that the constitution has been weakened, in pretty much every way. But one important aspect to that is the idea that things that happen on the internet aren't "real" in some basic way that makes the absence of legal protection of fundamental liberties online acceptable.

fit2rule 13y ago
>As bad as we think the NSA is today the FBI in its "glory days" under Hoover were far, far worse. McCarthy was far worse. I disagree, 100%. The NSA is far more powerful, and far - FAR - more dangerous now than the FBI ever was under Hoover. If you don't think this is the case, I don't think you're really looking honestly at the situation. In the Hoover/FBI days, we had a chance - the Operation Snow Whites' and so on. Now, however, there is no such chance: the NSA has far, far too many safe-guards in place to protect itself, and has infiltrated - and controls, directly - too many so-called 'peace movements' and other groups that might have a chance at awakening the sheeple. We must be more diligent, and with greater resolve to fight back now, than ever before in history - because we are at the cusp of allowing a seriously evil influence over the world to have its will - whereas in the 60's and 70's, people were willing to stand up and fight, now hardly anyone will. At all.
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
  As I said the potential is worse, likely far worse, but right now it's not quite there (maybe?). Back in the worst days with Hoover they were actively targeting specific political activists and basically running black ops against them. We haven't reached that stage with NSA, as far as I can tell, though the potential is certainly there. Maybe you misinterpreted what I said, it shouldn't be an excuse to wait until things get worse before taking action. The fact that the potential is there should be enough.
  - fit2rule 13y ago
    >We haven't reached that stage with NSA, as far as I can tell, though the potential is certainly there. We HAVE reached that stage, and worse. The NSA - and other spook agencies - are actively engaged in warfare with various social/peacenik groups, and has been demonstrated time and again as a constant source of infiltration, provocation, and so on. Agent-Provocateur isn't just the name of a knicker factory - its a real tactic deployed against enemies of the regime, which include civic groups (unions), churches and other citizen organizations. We simply cannot have this power out there, in the hands of these people.
  - revelation 13y ago
    I don't get it. If we start with COINTELPRO as the baseline, why would the current situation be any better? Nothing happened, the programs continued, the people running it back then are now happily retired or left the world without a mark on their record. There were no mass firings of the hundreds of agents directly implicated in these obviously unethical and illegal things. The people running COINTELPRO back then to find the communists tutored the government agents that are now trawling through the massive NSA data to find terrorists. The capabilities were only expanded.
ZoFreX 13y ago
In the UK the editor of the Guardian was pulled up in front of parliament (like congress but with a two drink minimum) and one of the questions he was asked was "Do you love this country?". It immediately brought to mind McCarthy.
bd_at_rivenhill 13y ago
One important thing to remember, not that it justifies these actions, was that the US faced a much more dangerous enemy at the time. The amount of damage that Al Qaeda can do is orders of magnitude lower than Soviet Russia.

fit2rule 13y ago

>As bad as we think the NSA is today the FBI in its "glory days" under Hoover were far, far worse. McCarthy was far worse. I disagree, 100%. The NSA is far more powerful, and far - FAR - more dangerous now than the FBI ever was under Hoover. If you don't think this is the case, I don't think you're really looking honestly at the situation. In the Hoover/FBI days, we had a chance - the Operation Snow Whites' and so on. Now, however, there is no such chance: the NSA has far, far too many safe-guards in place to protect itself, and has infiltrated - and controls, directly - too many so-called 'peace movements' and other groups that might have a chance at awakening the sheeple. We must be more diligent, and with greater resolve to fight back now, than ever before in history - because we are at the cusp of allowing a seriously evil influence over the world to have its will - whereas in the 60's and 70's, people were willing to stand up and fight, now hardly anyone will. At all.

InclinedPlane 13y ago
As I said the potential is worse, likely far worse, but right now it's not quite there (maybe?). Back in the worst days with Hoover they were actively targeting specific political activists and basically running black ops against them. We haven't reached that stage with NSA, as far as I can tell, though the potential is certainly there. Maybe you misinterpreted what I said, it shouldn't be an excuse to wait until things get worse before taking action. The fact that the potential is there should be enough.
- fit2rule 13y ago
  >We haven't reached that stage with NSA, as far as I can tell, though the potential is certainly there. We HAVE reached that stage, and worse. The NSA - and other spook agencies - are actively engaged in warfare with various social/peacenik groups, and has been demonstrated time and again as a constant source of infiltration, provocation, and so on. Agent-Provocateur isn't just the name of a knicker factory - its a real tactic deployed against enemies of the regime, which include civic groups (unions), churches and other citizen organizations. We simply cannot have this power out there, in the hands of these people.
- revelation 13y ago
  I don't get it. If we start with COINTELPRO as the baseline, why would the current situation be any better? Nothing happened, the programs continued, the people running it back then are now happily retired or left the world without a mark on their record. There were no mass firings of the hundreds of agents directly implicated in these obviously unethical and illegal things. The people running COINTELPRO back then to find the communists tutored the government agents that are now trawling through the massive NSA data to find terrorists. The capabilities were only expanded.

ZoFreX 13y ago

In the UK the editor of the Guardian was pulled up in front of parliament (like congress but with a two drink minimum) and one of the questions he was asked was "Do you love this country?". It immediately brought to mind McCarthy.

bd_at_rivenhill 13y ago

One important thing to remember, not that it justifies these actions, was that the US faced a much more dangerous enemy at the time. The amount of damage that Al Qaeda can do is orders of magnitude lower than Soviet Russia.