This is a tough topic with lots of nuance required, it seems to me. It's hard to address all the issues you've brought up, but I'll try here.
"The future looks obscure," as some scholar once said. :-)
One could imagine a future where GCHQ and the NSA have a terrible time trying to intercept signals intelligence. Various quantum effects can be used to determine whether a message has been intercepted or tampered with in transit. If such techniques are perfected, it will change the communications-privacy vs. intelligence equation.
Will it mean that governments will give up collecting intelligence and doing secret things? Of course not.
I'm sorry it comes across that way.
I recognize the dangers - really I do. I don't like the idea of President Cruz having such an apparatus at his disposal, either.
Where I differ is with the usually unstated beliefs that:
1) Any weapon or technology will ultimately be used, and usually used in ways that will do tremendous damage - up to genocidal levels of damage.
I don't accept that.
2) Data collection and "spying" by the NSA on Americans, at whatever level, with or without a warrant, is more important than any other public policy issue now because it is fundamentally different than any other civil rights issue.
I don't accept that.
3) It doesn't matter what the laws and regulations and procedures are that govern the operation of the NSA. We cannot trust them. The "deep state" that is being constructed by the NSA and international security agencies it too big and too powerful to be controlled.
I don't accept that, either.
A police state doesn't live in isolation. A police state that doesn't arrest or murder its critics on a vast scale; doesn't throw poets and artists in prison; etc., isn't much of a police state.
If President Cruz wants to declare a State of Emergency and lock up his critics, he doesn't need the NSA to do it. He just needs compliant local police departments. He can buy, or demand, information from Yahoo or Google or Verizon or Wal-Mart or Brett Glass if necessary. Having a reigned-in NSA won't protect us from abuses like that.
I'm much more worried about a President Cruz destroying the civil rights of my fellow humans, destroying the economy, getting us involved in yet more wars, destroying the environment, and destroying the commons, than him reading my e-mail.
Greenwald and Snowden paint this picture of some all-seeing eye that will suck the freedom out of everyone. But they don't connect the dots to the people who would use that power. People who would do such a thing will do it with or without an NSA at their beck and call.
An intelligence system that is able to get accurate information about what is happening outside our borders is a vital tool for keeping the paranoids like Perle and Addington in line. The politicization of the intelligence was the problem - not having an agency whose job is to gather and distill foreign signals intelligence.
The US needs foreign signals intelligence. That need is not going to go away, and it gets more difficult every day. It's too difficult to know a priori what is US and what isn't. Yes, the NSA (and other agencies) need to follow the rules about getting warrants. And Congress needs to do its oversight job.
It'll be interesting to see how the NSA evolves in a world of cheap quantum cryptography - if that ever happens...
I hope it's clear from the above that I see things differently. The NSA supplies intelligence - it's not an agency that makes policy or acts on its findings. If one is concerned about violations of our liberties and rights, and we all are, then I think ire directed at the NSA is misplaced. I worry about yahoo sheriffs like Arpaio. I worry about legislatures that try to gerrymander their way to permanent power and who write restrictive voting rules. I worry about religious and economic ideologues in positions of power that refuse to let science and evidence inform the policies they wish to impose on us.
Such people don't need an NSA to be a threat to us.
See above. :-)
See above. :-)
Dystopia is certainly possible. But it won't be dystopia because of spying by the NSA...
Have a read of The Handmaid's Tale if you haven't already.
Again, I don't see it. 9/11 and Iraq and the rest weren't a disaster because of the NSA - they were a disaster because W and his people refused to listen to evidence.
Police states have existed for hundreds of years without things like the NSA. All it takes is a ruthless ruler and compliant police. Ubiquitous spying isn't necessary, and all the evidence we have (even from Snowden) is that the NSA isn't spying on everyone and it's impossible for them to do so in the way he and Greenwald want us to believe. They don't have enough people, they don't have enough money, and there's too much information for them to sort through even if they wanted to.
We all have "1984" in the back of our minds. Cameras everywhere, ubiquitous spying, ubiquitous informants. Scary stuff. But we're not there, and we're not on our way there by having an NSA that is doing its job.
What's the alternative? Seriously.
The US government needs the best information possible on what is happening outside our borders. It is information that is needed for treaty negotiations; to help prevent international conflicts; to help prepare for and prevent man-made disasters; and, yes, to catch evil-doers before they can do their evil.
If we suddenly say, "The NSA cannot touch any US person's communications or information about them, not even accidentally!", well, given the way the Internet works, it means that the NSA cannot collect signals intelligence any more. If we say, "The NSA cannot break or put back-doors in encryption used by Americans!", well, it means that everyone in the world who wants to communicate in secret, for any reason, will do it through the US. "So what! The NSA should get a warrant!" They do (except when they have apparently wiggled around that requirement).
I agree that the NSA should get a warrant to look at individualized information about US persons. I don't see a problem with the "metadata" collection and data retention, myself, as long as they are required to get a warrant to at it for a particular person. Why don't people get as upset by Verizon having all that information??)
The NSA isn't going to go away. The NSA serves a legitimate function. Just as we don't argue that police forces should be abolished after reports of abuse, we can't (and won't) get rid of the NSA even as their capabilities evolve and improve over time.
Let's keep our eyes on the ball. The NSA is a small problem (that can and should be addressed in sensible ways, but given the composition of the House, ...) - it's about #12 on the list of important issues we face now.
My $0.02.
(I haven't had time to proof-read this - I hope it is clear. Gotta work on some plumbing now - wish me luck!)
Cheers,
Scott.
(Yes, probably most daily work is done via the Rules, currently (if not always before: as ProPublica notes in their useful compilation of factoids.) Etc. Etc.
Since this exact topic has arisen in other venues, with many exchanges, shall try to address our real?/imagined? clashing POVs. Lengthy, though:
But there's hope that we can cut-out much future rhetoric on this permanent topic, en fin?). (No time today to cut out some repetition/Style's a bitch-goddess.)
I've been pondering implications beyond the appearances of how this agency does/does not actually 'operate' today: but 'next', and attempting to see that in perspective of so much that is "irregularly-irregular", not only in the zeitgeist, but in our present inability to project--with any confidence--(and quite unlike the scenario of Potiphar Breen's statistical dilemma!) an idea of what some 'incipient chaos'? might provoke. This, from the angle of how political Power is usually exerted--and often precipitated by--'Emergencies' (genuine or manufactured.)
"The future looks obscure," as some scholar once said. :-)
One could imagine a future where GCHQ and the NSA have a terrible time trying to intercept signals intelligence. Various quantum effects can be used to determine whether a message has been intercepted or tampered with in transit. If such techniques are perfected, it will change the communications-privacy vs. intelligence equation.
Will it mean that governments will give up collecting intelligence and doing secret things? Of course not.
You are hand-waving away a seeming-tamed Tyrannosaurus (whose mien is that of a house-pet with a good vocabulary.) As he plays well with the other house-pets, with nary a quiver or clue about how tasty each of these would be, instinctively.. we are advised to accept this docile view that he's just a kinda Big-raccoon (or maybe ferret?--that's what he's kept around for) and, our Friend forever.
I'm sorry it comes across that way.
I recognize the dangers - really I do. I don't like the idea of President Cruz having such an apparatus at his disposal, either.
Where I differ is with the usually unstated beliefs that:
1) Any weapon or technology will ultimately be used, and usually used in ways that will do tremendous damage - up to genocidal levels of damage.
I don't accept that.
2) Data collection and "spying" by the NSA on Americans, at whatever level, with or without a warrant, is more important than any other public policy issue now because it is fundamentally different than any other civil rights issue.
I don't accept that.
3) It doesn't matter what the laws and regulations and procedures are that govern the operation of the NSA. We cannot trust them. The "deep state" that is being constructed by the NSA and international security agencies it too big and too powerful to be controlled.
I don't accept that, either.
We are talking past each other; you are offering reassurance that, the System today is properly staffed, properly overseen and Properly Directed--via these quite sane-sounding rule sets. I'm saying that, like Rumpelstiltskin's magnificent … but obvious … ploy: you are nailing-down the Obvious in this forest-of-trees, barely addressing the huge implications, the n-capabilities of near-instant morphing and especially: the Realities of how people-with-great-Power Will act to preserve, enhance (or otherwise defend) their perquisites, cf. all history libraries: that reptile brain is only a few mm away-from the rational face for public iconography. (Not just in Murica, either: though.. well, you. know.)
You elide my concern and its basis: the mere fact-of-existence! of this unprecedented, perpetually expanding/perpetually refining System. And its potential usage, especially: should an 'Emergency' happen?/be declared. The combination of extreme scope (that's what unprecedented means) extreme secrecy (which is Not the same word as 'security', let alone all the BS-rhetorical obfuscations of Security-Theatre) abetted by all sorts of 'Classification neologisms' quite beyond Eyes Only, Top Secret of yore. It's designed to be impenetrable-to … (any 'outside Forces', let-alone Reasoned debate.)
A police state doesn't live in isolation. A police state that doesn't arrest or murder its critics on a vast scale; doesn't throw poets and artists in prison; etc., isn't much of a police state.
If President Cruz wants to declare a State of Emergency and lock up his critics, he doesn't need the NSA to do it. He just needs compliant local police departments. He can buy, or demand, information from Yahoo or Google or Verizon or Wal-Mart or Brett Glass if necessary. Having a reigned-in NSA won't protect us from abuses like that.
I'm much more worried about a President Cruz destroying the civil rights of my fellow humans, destroying the economy, getting us involved in yet more wars, destroying the environment, and destroying the commons, than him reading my e-mail.
Greenwald and Snowden paint this picture of some all-seeing eye that will suck the freedom out of everyone. But they don't connect the dots to the people who would use that power. People who would do such a thing will do it with or without an NSA at their beck and call.
Hence my brickbat about insufficient perspicuity or perhaps a tendency to dismiss-early a particular POV, because such imaginations are also the playground of so many nutters of paranoid kind. (To that serious conflation I can only reply that … enough paranoia? over the machinations of the neoconmen + Cheney (+ that now permanently-disgraced General) might not have compensated for the mediocre-mind of Shrub/himself: but I think it unarguable that the entire Planet would be immeasurably saner, less conflicted and with FAR-better chances of survival, as we speak: had more than a mere handful said STOP! This Race to a land-war in the most unstable, utterly religio-confounded place on the planet!
An intelligence system that is able to get accurate information about what is happening outside our borders is a vital tool for keeping the paranoids like Perle and Addington in line. The politicization of the intelligence was the problem - not having an agency whose job is to gather and distill foreign signals intelligence.
This 'System' cannot be examined at all IMO without peering well into the philosophical implications of such a Power- creating, altering, enforcing! 'Device'. I'd welcome your rebuttal to this angle of view; I'm more than curious about how easily you seem to have dismissed that angle and its mares-nest of sub-angles.
(However tmi to find out: I'm thinking that we may not be so far apart as it appears, so long as our [referents] are made clear enough.)
The US needs foreign signals intelligence. That need is not going to go away, and it gets more difficult every day. It's too difficult to know a priori what is US and what isn't. Yes, the NSA (and other agencies) need to follow the rules about getting warrants. And Congress needs to do its oversight job.
It'll be interesting to see how the NSA evolves in a world of cheap quantum cryptography - if that ever happens...
So it just may be worth it to see we are at least in same Chapter: when the Scale of matters is extended beyond the stated, official "utility" of this System -vs- variant-intentions about its employment: especially as strife is just one misplaced air-strike away--for all players in today's hair-trigger milieu--that trigger often operated by Religio-fanatics who recognize-not their own bestiality and whose minds are as closed as in any marlowes (many dreaming of 17 virgins as they slaughter. Dunno what marlowe ever dreamed-of??)
I see this entire System for what it means: a multiplier of Power: political, social, financial: all corruptible by humans. That is the theme of the classics as have become cliches, re the homogenization, next regimentation.. then subjugation of the majority of worker-bees by [whatever clique has won the last revolution or coup?] Metadata by the yottabyte (and perpetually expanding, refining, encompassing)--we know what you can do with metadata, whatever were? the originally intended rules and oversights. We need to see this Before … some event precipitates/or is claimed to precipitate: a change in the entire focus of the System aka a Re-Purposing.
I hope it's clear from the above that I see things differently. The NSA supplies intelligence - it's not an agency that makes policy or acts on its findings. If one is concerned about violations of our liberties and rights, and we all are, then I think ire directed at the NSA is misplaced. I worry about yahoo sheriffs like Arpaio. I worry about legislatures that try to gerrymander their way to permanent power and who write restrictive voting rules. I worry about religious and economic ideologues in positions of power that refuse to let science and evidence inform the policies they wish to impose on us.
Such people don't need an NSA to be a threat to us.
Via its new Owner (and however that new one got there.. and, for how long?) In sum: the full potential of this System can/probably-will be invoked, for all obvious reasons of consolidating and next wielding all-the-new-Powers of a [perhaps sElected, again?] President/C-inC, junta (or 'temporary'-Regent?)
Hey, It Happens! even with fewer seeming-insoluble Issues than our current dis-USA's (never-mind "the Planet's prognosis?" where human egos dwell.)
We already see why This System bloody-well had Better-be! competently overseen! perpetually. … As-if..
What I see is: an Edifice, constructed for un-tellable $Bs (much of those details Secret/diffused elsewhere too) and expanding--as the techno does, thus with new capabilities, thus.. an illimitable-process … except via funding as the Real-limit. Why should one ƒeare such a creation? you. ask. implicitly. Metaphors are less wordy:
What I also see: is conceptually akin to the Doomsday Device (yes, in that rollicking send-up of modrin man's warfare-gene/repetitively in-charge.)
Strangelove's McGuffin was a bomb: physical destruction via radiation effects. This one is a bomb too; its fuze is: any next chaotic human circumstance.
This 'Thing' is malleable, extensible, perfectible: but it all comes down to how that explosive-Power is actually used (today, and in any next.)
See above. :-)
This could be deemed, at worst--mere paranoid dystopian fantasy--were our current expectations: ~more of the same as recent past. Here we may diverge in assessing probabilities; we'll see. I deem that, like this System, unprecedented--the dis-USA's near-(or far-) future has never been as unfathomable as now (not even on Dec. 6th 1941; we'd broken the Japanese code quite earlier.)
[Abetting say, forces-toward -chaos? may be the subtler observation that, 'governance itself' may be in jeopardy: in our case, the 'President' IMO is in a situation like, 'TFFO' re cycles: Too Fast for Owner. (Any 'owner'.) Not just our dilemma: that worry is about 'governing of hundreds of millions'--now being faced by all the hugely-overpopulated places.. India, China, Russia at al.]
[If you remain comfortable with the Power-of-secret-things: withstanding all political processes, indefinitely (?) then this also is only a scary, also perpetual mere What-if? matter..]
See above. :-)
But I'm not comfortable with either Secret-massive-Power(s) or with any supposition that our near-future shall bear much resemblance to our recent-past; all one need do to arrive here is: examine the roster of 100 Important Matters we (and most others) are either ignoring, 'misunderestimating' or Denying-existence-of, to test this hypothesis. Well? Is this the spot for: Wondermark??
If only rhetoric next addresses the ludicrous division of the National Spoils of our own peculiar strain of capitalism? What then? (Already the inflation rate of decent food quite surpasses those fanciful official, 'averaged' numbers.) I hear from pensioners, especially those trying to pay rent and eat too--that corporate supermarket fare is escalating similarly; could give some local #s but even-more tmi.
We'll have to agree to disagree as to the stability, predictability--and limits of legal-compliance--as we watch 'governability' go wherever it does. D'overai ni proverai and like that. You appear to trust not only today's performance of secret bureaucracies and their Boss(es), but also expect that tomorrow's crises won't alter where you've placed your faith. (This, while having a much better grasp of the present and future capabilities of this (System? Albatross?) than what, 95% of the population?!)
Dystopia is certainly possible. But it won't be dystopia because of spying by the NSA...
Have a read of The Handmaid's Tale if you haven't already.
I see the success of bin-Laden, abetted by the Shogunate's ignorant decisions and all which has led to today's dysfunctionality, (such that neither shall there be any authentic redress of the division of profits nor, attention to most of the other 99 on that List of crucial matters unaddressed. We aren't Adults! here.)
While the 'NSA Albatross' might be adequately inspected, corralled, overseen just-now.. 'might be' (we aren't really sure of even that) I deem that its Potentialities, combined with the dysfunction of most-all US "governance" AND this power-magnifier of-an-individual, the President (and all he retains control-over) … is a confluence capable of creating an Inflection-point, one currently under-most-radars and: that is a Bad. Thing. It could be a Decisive thing, via only some next utterly-unpredictable event.
Again, I don't see it. 9/11 and Iraq and the rest weren't a disaster because of the NSA - they were a disaster because W and his people refused to listen to evidence.
Police states have existed for hundreds of years without things like the NSA. All it takes is a ruthless ruler and compliant police. Ubiquitous spying isn't necessary, and all the evidence we have (even from Snowden) is that the NSA isn't spying on everyone and it's impossible for them to do so in the way he and Greenwald want us to believe. They don't have enough people, they don't have enough money, and there's too much information for them to sort through even if they wanted to.
We all have "1984" in the back of our minds. Cameras everywhere, ubiquitous spying, ubiquitous informants. Scary stuff. But we're not there, and we're not on our way there by having an NSA that is doing its job.
This is why I think that this unprecedented-System is an Albatross, should not have been constructed and, because it Works: adds unmeasurable (and accelerating-->) new-Powers to the Executive and n-Agencies. It is hard to imagine that any citizen-plebiscite could, alone--overturn/cancel/remove it ... already.
Were Martial Law ever declared--under whatever pretext--The Device (this entire system) could quickly be re-purposed: alacrity! is its raison d'etre. And from a national or planetary overview: all would learn (or experience) what it means: that so much personal data--however once sequestered--might be used. (And not just 'the personal data' … as that 'cyberwarfare'-pit-of-death gets its first real Test.)
What's the alternative? Seriously.
The US government needs the best information possible on what is happening outside our borders. It is information that is needed for treaty negotiations; to help prevent international conflicts; to help prepare for and prevent man-made disasters; and, yes, to catch evil-doers before they can do their evil.
If we suddenly say, "The NSA cannot touch any US person's communications or information about them, not even accidentally!", well, given the way the Internet works, it means that the NSA cannot collect signals intelligence any more. If we say, "The NSA cannot break or put back-doors in encryption used by Americans!", well, it means that everyone in the world who wants to communicate in secret, for any reason, will do it through the US. "So what! The NSA should get a warrant!" They do (except when they have apparently wiggled around that requirement).
I agree that the NSA should get a warrant to look at individualized information about US persons. I don't see a problem with the "metadata" collection and data retention, myself, as long as they are required to get a warrant to at it for a particular person. Why don't people get as upset by Verizon having all that information??)
Rest case. Make it Go Away. If you can.
The NSA isn't going to go away. The NSA serves a legitimate function. Just as we don't argue that police forces should be abolished after reports of abuse, we can't (and won't) get rid of the NSA even as their capabilities evolve and improve over time.
Let's keep our eyes on the ball. The NSA is a small problem (that can and should be addressed in sensible ways, but given the composition of the House, ...) - it's about #12 on the list of important issues we face now.
My $0.02.
(I haven't had time to proof-read this - I hope it is clear. Gotta work on some plumbing now - wish me luck!)
Cheers,
Scott.