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I'm assuming that two you're referring to Anwar Al-Awlaki and his son, Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki, since they seem to be the most famous. Just to get some facts str

I'm assuming that two you're referring to Anwar Al-Awlaki and his son, Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki, since they seem to be the most famous. Just to get some facts straight, to date there's only been one US citizen targeted and killed by US drones: Anwar Al-Awlaki. As of last year, three other Americans are known to have been killed by drone strikes outside the US: Samir Khan, Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki and Jude Kenan Mohammed. None were specifically targeted - Samir Khan was killed during the strike against the elder Al-Awlaki, the younger Al-Awlaki was killed during a strike targeting Ibrahim al-Banna in Yemen, and Jude Kenan Mohammed was killed during a strike against a compound in Pakistan. All were killed by CIA drones, not DOD drones (NSA is part of the DOD; CIA is not). The Attorney General declassified the reasoning for targeting the elder Al-Awlaki[1], which was ultimately decided at the Presidential level - not by the NSA. That said, this is beside the point - when the media is stirring up a frenzy about the NSA and civil liberties, they're not talking about CIA drone strikes in Yemen. It's a little disingenuous to lump the two together. It also doesn't go very far in answering my question regarding evidence of harm to US citizens. Maybe I'm out of touch with the rest of America, but I don't see the USA Freedom Act gaining much traction based on public outrage that 3 people over the last decade were accidentally killed by drones while hanging out with members of a militant group that had declared war against the US, especially when the purpose of said bill is to limit FISA warrants and FBI use of NSLs[2]. [1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/703181/ag-letter-5-22-13.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/7031... [2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-bill/2685 https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-bill/268...

xnull2guest 12y ago
Yes Al-Awlaki and his son were the civilians I was referring to. It was my understanding that Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki was a targeted kill; I seem to be in error. I was not aware of Samir Khan nor Jude Kenan Mohammed. Regarding [1]: the justification was 'immediate threat', however it appears there was no immediate threat in the common sense usage of the term and the justification is askew with the prior drone strike that attempted but failed to kill him (he did nothing after the strike worthy of the label 'immediate' or 'threat'). Furthermore squaring 'immediate threat' with constitutionally garunteed rights is something that the administration has not done (can not do?). US citizens are guaranteed a trial. Principles are worth a lot less if the administration gets to decide when to apply them. Regarding NSA v. CIA, I admit coming into the conversation without having read the thread. I merely sought to add information to the leaf. Thank you very much for the high quality comment and information. Regarding damage to US citizens, one reason is that we do know that NSA contractors and employees stalked lovers and rivals and used these capabilities for personal means. There were also reports of nude photo sharing. There were also several prominent Muslim community leaders with no connection to any terrorists or extreme ideas inside the United States who were targeted by the surveillance apparatus merely for their religious expression. I don't think I need to argue why profiling individuals based on their creed or color causes harm to these classes of people. Extending this analysis - we do not know how these systems will be used in the future. In particular Nixon left office for spying on a handful of people. What would a Hoover or a Nixon do with the NSA capabilities? The broader point here is that the calculus of damage should not merely be about singular instances of damage today. It's a bad idea to build a nuclear reactor on a fault line. Not because it has already done damage. But because of the magnitude and the likelihood of what it may contrasted with alternatives. Another example of damage to US citizens is the use of purposefully backdoored services and infrastructure. It is not theoretical or speculative to suggest that these weaknesses may be used by maligned actors: there are several examples today of intercept systems being compromised by interested parties for geopolitical and economic reasons. Finally, we adhere to principles of civil liberties not just because they are good things on individual bases but also because adopting them as policies gives a net benefit to society (see historical evolutions of Utilitarianism and arguments against forced organ donation). That is one could argue as Bentham did, that rights are nonsense on stilts, except that societies that don't guarantee these rights suffer the pychological consequences of living in a state where no rights are garunteed. To presuppose that all damage must be physical in nature is to be ignorant of the history of the organization of men.
- csandreasen 12y ago
  I'll definitely agree that the drone strikes are controversial and leave it at that since I think it's separate topic altogether. On the other topics you brought up: there were a total of 12 cases reported by the NSA in the LOVEINT scandal, and an additional 3 were said to be under investigation without further details[1]. The violations varied in severity: of the 12 for which details were given, 7 resigned or retired, 3 others had their clearances revoked, 1 was stripped of his promotion and given a 10-day suspension without pay, and the last was given a written reprimand. 7 of them had their cases either forwarded to the DoJ or their military command (or both). Of those 12 cases, only 3 were targeting US citizens - the other 9 were instances of NSA employees abusing the system to target foreign nationals for their own purposes. I stress the word abuse - that's exactly what was going on, but this is also an example of the system working to find bad apples and kick them out. You see the same thing with cops - you expect there to be bad ones here and there. It's the police force's responsibility to identify them and either discipline them or kick them out; it's not indicative of systemic police corruption. The only report of nude photo sharing was one that Snowden said himself. He made the claim a full year after his initial leaks and never substantiated it with any evidence. With regards to the Muslim targeting, if you look at the original article[2], every one of the 5 people listed by Greenwald has "FBI" in the responsible agency column. According to the article, there are 7485 e-mail addresses in the list who were under surveillance between 2003-2008 by the NSA, FBI, and CIA. Based on a survey of 5 of the individuals targeted by the FBI, Greenwald somehow concludes that there's systemic targeting of Muslim Americans by both the FBI and NSA solely for their religious views. He gives a half-hearted guess as to why each of them might have been under investigation, but ultimately leaves it an open question. I think it's intentional - he wants you to walk away from the article thinking that because he didn't give a reason, there must not be one. Ultimately, we may never know - several others, however have given their own thoughts as to why[3][4]. > Another example of damage to US citizens is the use of purposefully backdoored services and infrastructure. Could you provide an example of this? I think I know what you're getting at but I don't want end up assuming wrong, put words in your mouth and waste a lot of time ripping down a strawman. > The broader point here is that the calculus of damage should not merely be about singular instances of damage today. It's a bad idea to build a nuclear reactor on a fault line. Not because it has already done damage. But because of the magnitude and the likelihood of what it may contrasted with alternatives. But you don't just avoid building on a fault line because someone says it's a bad idea - you build elsewhere because there are certain standards for safety with regards to building nuclear reactors that have been agreed upon by experts who are intimately familiar with nuclear engineering, and a fault line doesn't meet the standards. In my opinion, this is where the NSA issue really gets derailed. Most of the articles I've read will explain the technical capabilities of specific NSA programs without going into the policies that limit them. Snowden has stood up and said that so long as they have the technical ability to do something, you can't trust them to follow policy, but his disclosures have shown the NSA auditing their collection, bringing issues up to the FISA court, removing identifying information about US citizens from collection, etc. When no one was looking, they were following the law. If there's been a failure, it's been a failure of insufficient law and oversight. And this is where I differ from most of the tech community. The solution isn't to take away technical capability because it could be abused in the future, it's to craft laws and policies to limit what the NSA can do with its technical capability and provide effective oversight. I don't think anyone from even before the Snowden disclosures has argued for less oversight. As an analogy, the police have the technical capability to walk into every house on the city and shoot everyone inside. But they don't - it's both illegal and makes no sense in terms of law enforcement. For some reason, though, everyone seems to assume that given the fact that the NSA has enormous technical resources for gathering foreign intelligence that could be abused, without any further evidence to back up the claim they must also be carrying out the worst possible abuse and doing so for purposes that have nothing to do with foreign intelligence. [1] http://www.grassley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/judiciary/upload/NSA-Surveillance-09-11-13-response-from-IG-to-intentional-misuse-of-NSA-authority.pdf http://www.grassley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/judiciary... [2] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/09/under-surveillance/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/09/under-surveill... [3] https://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2014/07/09/misleading-claims-by-greenwald-and-new-york-times-on-nsafbi-spying-on-american-muslims/ https://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2014/07/09/misleadin... [4] http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/071514-708936-snowden-mouthpiece-shills-for-islamist-terror-targets-of-fbi.htm http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/071514-708936-snowd...

xnull2guest 12y ago

Yes Al-Awlaki and his son were the civilians I was referring to. It was my understanding that Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki was a targeted kill; I seem to be in error. I was not aware of Samir Khan nor Jude Kenan Mohammed. Regarding [1]: the justification was 'immediate threat', however it appears there was no immediate threat in the common sense usage of the term and the justification is askew with the prior drone strike that attempted but failed to kill him (he did nothing after the strike worthy of the label 'immediate' or 'threat'). Furthermore squaring 'immediate threat' with constitutionally garunteed rights is something that the administration has not done (can not do?). US citizens are guaranteed a trial. Principles are worth a lot less if the administration gets to decide when to apply them. Regarding NSA v. CIA, I admit coming into the conversation without having read the thread. I merely sought to add information to the leaf. Thank you very much for the high quality comment and information. Regarding damage to US citizens, one reason is that we do know that NSA contractors and employees stalked lovers and rivals and used these capabilities for personal means. There were also reports of nude photo sharing. There were also several prominent Muslim community leaders with no connection to any terrorists or extreme ideas inside the United States who were targeted by the surveillance apparatus merely for their religious expression. I don't think I need to argue why profiling individuals based on their creed or color causes harm to these classes of people. Extending this analysis - we do not know how these systems will be used in the future. In particular Nixon left office for spying on a handful of people. What would a Hoover or a Nixon do with the NSA capabilities? The broader point here is that the calculus of damage should not merely be about singular instances of damage today. It's a bad idea to build a nuclear reactor on a fault line. Not because it has already done damage. But because of the magnitude and the likelihood of what it may contrasted with alternatives. Another example of damage to US citizens is the use of purposefully backdoored services and infrastructure. It is not theoretical or speculative to suggest that these weaknesses may be used by maligned actors: there are several examples today of intercept systems being compromised by interested parties for geopolitical and economic reasons. Finally, we adhere to principles of civil liberties not just because they are good things on individual bases but also because adopting them as policies gives a net benefit to society (see historical evolutions of Utilitarianism and arguments against forced organ donation). That is one could argue as Bentham did, that rights are nonsense on stilts, except that societies that don't guarantee these rights suffer the pychological consequences of living in a state where no rights are garunteed. To presuppose that all damage must be physical in nature is to be ignorant of the history of the organization of men.

csandreasen 12y ago
I'll definitely agree that the drone strikes are controversial and leave it at that since I think it's separate topic altogether. On the other topics you brought up: there were a total of 12 cases reported by the NSA in the LOVEINT scandal, and an additional 3 were said to be under investigation without further details[1]. The violations varied in severity: of the 12 for which details were given, 7 resigned or retired, 3 others had their clearances revoked, 1 was stripped of his promotion and given a 10-day suspension without pay, and the last was given a written reprimand. 7 of them had their cases either forwarded to the DoJ or their military command (or both). Of those 12 cases, only 3 were targeting US citizens - the other 9 were instances of NSA employees abusing the system to target foreign nationals for their own purposes. I stress the word abuse - that's exactly what was going on, but this is also an example of the system working to find bad apples and kick them out. You see the same thing with cops - you expect there to be bad ones here and there. It's the police force's responsibility to identify them and either discipline them or kick them out; it's not indicative of systemic police corruption. The only report of nude photo sharing was one that Snowden said himself. He made the claim a full year after his initial leaks and never substantiated it with any evidence. With regards to the Muslim targeting, if you look at the original article[2], every one of the 5 people listed by Greenwald has "FBI" in the responsible agency column. According to the article, there are 7485 e-mail addresses in the list who were under surveillance between 2003-2008 by the NSA, FBI, and CIA. Based on a survey of 5 of the individuals targeted by the FBI, Greenwald somehow concludes that there's systemic targeting of Muslim Americans by both the FBI and NSA solely for their religious views. He gives a half-hearted guess as to why each of them might have been under investigation, but ultimately leaves it an open question. I think it's intentional - he wants you to walk away from the article thinking that because he didn't give a reason, there must not be one. Ultimately, we may never know - several others, however have given their own thoughts as to why[3][4]. > Another example of damage to US citizens is the use of purposefully backdoored services and infrastructure. Could you provide an example of this? I think I know what you're getting at but I don't want end up assuming wrong, put words in your mouth and waste a lot of time ripping down a strawman. > The broader point here is that the calculus of damage should not merely be about singular instances of damage today. It's a bad idea to build a nuclear reactor on a fault line. Not because it has already done damage. But because of the magnitude and the likelihood of what it may contrasted with alternatives. But you don't just avoid building on a fault line because someone says it's a bad idea - you build elsewhere because there are certain standards for safety with regards to building nuclear reactors that have been agreed upon by experts who are intimately familiar with nuclear engineering, and a fault line doesn't meet the standards. In my opinion, this is where the NSA issue really gets derailed. Most of the articles I've read will explain the technical capabilities of specific NSA programs without going into the policies that limit them. Snowden has stood up and said that so long as they have the technical ability to do something, you can't trust them to follow policy, but his disclosures have shown the NSA auditing their collection, bringing issues up to the FISA court, removing identifying information about US citizens from collection, etc. When no one was looking, they were following the law. If there's been a failure, it's been a failure of insufficient law and oversight. And this is where I differ from most of the tech community. The solution isn't to take away technical capability because it could be abused in the future, it's to craft laws and policies to limit what the NSA can do with its technical capability and provide effective oversight. I don't think anyone from even before the Snowden disclosures has argued for less oversight. As an analogy, the police have the technical capability to walk into every house on the city and shoot everyone inside. But they don't - it's both illegal and makes no sense in terms of law enforcement. For some reason, though, everyone seems to assume that given the fact that the NSA has enormous technical resources for gathering foreign intelligence that could be abused, without any further evidence to back up the claim they must also be carrying out the worst possible abuse and doing so for purposes that have nothing to do with foreign intelligence. [1] http://www.grassley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/judiciary/upload/NSA-Surveillance-09-11-13-response-from-IG-to-intentional-misuse-of-NSA-authority.pdf http://www.grassley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/judiciary... [2] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/09/under-surveillance/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/09/under-surveill... [3] https://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2014/07/09/misleading-claims-by-greenwald-and-new-york-times-on-nsafbi-spying-on-american-muslims/ https://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2014/07/09/misleadin... [4] http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/071514-708936-snowden-mouthpiece-shills-for-islamist-terror-targets-of-fbi.htm http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/071514-708936-snowd...