Big Brother is Watching You

[O Really]

I don't go that far, Snowden did break the law. I just don't mind, so far, that he did. Americans and the world will be better off for it.

How so? Allies, already a shrinking club because of war-mongering imperialism and inflated national ego, are majorly pissed. Citizens, the vast majority of whom have never been affected at all by NSA are bat-shit paranoid. The valid reasons and value of covert intelligence are irretrievably damaged, at least for the medium term. If you've got a list of ways Americans and the world will be better off, let's have it. Remember that the interests of "America" and "the world" are not necessarily congruent. (And that's from somebody who theoretically has no problem with international government)

[O Really]

I posted "Americans", not "America" and "How so?" is apparent if one objects to any of these:
.

OK, "Americans." Correction noted. But "how so" is not so apparent, Grasshoppah. Not all solutions or "cures" to problems are equally desirable. I may object to my broken finger, but I don't agree that chopping off my hand is the best solution. I may object to the relationship with my wife, but I don't think the best way to improve it is to tell a reporter, post on Facebook, Tweet, and give a list of my complaints to her social enemies. Snowden's solution is to take a sledgehammer to an issue and not worry if the pieces ever come together again. I disagree with that approach, and disagree that it is in the best interest of "Americans".

[O Really]

I may object to the relationship with my wife, but I don't think the best way to improve it is to tell a reporter, post on Facebook, Tweet, and give a list of my complaints to her social enemies.

Personal experience?

...
I doubt that Snowden saw any realistic alternative, as is the case with most whistleblowers. We even had Senators warning us obliquely that bad things were happening and yet we weren't discussing the issue much and nothing was being done. Rather, it turns out to have been worse than they or anyone else knew.

Not my personal experience, but one can always learn from the screw-ups of one's friends and acquaintances, right?

Yes, people get a solution in their head and can't see any other alternative. They're frustrated that nobody is listening to them, nobody loves them, they're gonna eat some worms. Doesn't mean they're right.

[rstrong]

Uh-uh, monitoring of 35 world leaders, many of them allies, does not happen on "automatic pilot".

Undoubtedly not. But your point is? Simply to demonstrate that government leaders lie about intelligence activities? What - you've never even watched a Bond or Bourne film?

O Really, you seem to define the problem only in terms of the American People vs. the American Government, as if those are the only two players involved. And then letting only one of those players define the rules.

New technology has enabled spying in whole new ways and at whole new levels. The NSA, by far the biggest player with the biggest budget and the most resources, IS the leading edge of that.

One thing Snowden has woken Americans up to, is that the oversight process - "courts", politicians and laws - effectively didn't exist. Everything the NSA did was rubber-stamped. Even the warrantless wiretapping scandal in 2006 - illegal and unconstitutional dragnet communications surveillance - was "cleaned up" by retroactively making it legal.

As issue here is what the acceptable limits are. You would have the NSA alone determine those limits. Not the American people.

But even then, there are other players involved. The "limits" on the NSA's domestic spying - listening in on Americans' phone conversations - apply only to the NSA and Americans. They have no such limits on listening in on Canadians, Germans, etc.

Turnabout is fair play. The NSA, the leading edge of what technology can do for spying on allied countries, is setting the standard for what's acceptable for allied countries to do in return. Sure, countries have always spied on their allies, but there have been limits. Listening to radio traffic from your embassy is one thing, but actively tapping phone lines was something you do only to enemies.

If US agencies have no limits on spying on Europeans, then Europeans agencies had no limits on listening to Americans. Or American politicians. Or American businesses. Suppose Germany were found to be tapping communications lines in America, handing over any technology secrets or advanced knowledge of business decisions to German industry. Or collecting information on American politicians that could be used to blackmail them when they become more powerful. Would America have any right to protest? Should it have any right to protest?

Now consider the standards America set for "extraordinary rendition", kidnapping over one hundred people from EU countries alone in the 2000s, and torturing many of them. "National Security" was the key phrase that overrode any laws. As turnabout is fair play, other countries are equally allowed to kidnap those they're vaguely suspicious of off American streets. But it's more than people with possible connections to terrorists:

Snowden has certainly demonstrated that what he knows is important to the national security of other countries. If an allied country kidnapped someone with Snowden's old job off the streets of America and tortured information out of him - in the interests of their National Security - would America have any right to protest? Should it have any right to protest?

With the most resources and the newest technology, America is setting the standards. And by America I mean the three-letter agencies, not the America people. You might not like those standards when other countries adopt them.

[indago]

rstrong wrote:

New technology has enabled spying in whole new ways and at whole new levels. The NSA, by far the biggest player with the biggest budget and the most resources, IS the leading edge of that.

Yes, and they didn't build all this for nothing:


NSA Complex



From Pinkerton...



to US Currency...

[indago]

Wouldn't surprise me that soon a chip would be implanted within the currency to record everything nearby.

[O Really]

[.

New technology has enabled spying in whole new ways and at whole new levels. The NSA, by far the biggest player with the biggest budget and the most resources, IS the leading edge of that.
...

With the most resources and the newest technology, America is setting the standards. And by America I mean the three-letter agencies, not the America people. You might not like those standards when other countries adopt them.

And happily so. But let's say the US sees the error of its ways, comes up with some "Forgive us for we have sinned" and go forward never to sin again. Turn the NSA building into a giant WalMart. Bring in all the electronic spooks from the cold. How many other countries would join us, and who would they be?

[O Really]

Maybe these guys would join. ... http://news.msn.com/world/european-agen ... ass-spying

[rstrong]

And happily so. But let's say the US sees the error of its ways, comes up with some "Forgive us for we have sinned" and go forward never to sin again. Turn the NSA building into a giant WalMart. Bring in all the electronic spooks from the cold. How many other countries would join us, and who would they be?

That's a lame cop-out. No-one is calling for all spying to end. Not even on allies.

As I've said before, some spying on allies is routine and everyone knows it. But there are limits. Tapping the phones of other leaders for example goes far beyond those limits.

If you put limits on spying on your allies - and non-enemies - the kind of reasonable limits they thought were in place - then most will join you. And for those who don't, you can put sanctions on them. Heck, you can simply tell them that you'll respond in kind, and you're better at it and have far more resources to do it.

But when you're doing unlimited spying on your allies and non-enemies by default, you can't protest when they do the same to you. You would expect them to. You can't put sanctions on them for acting as you do. (That also applies to kidnapping people off their streets and torturing them.) Responding in kind isn't a threat when you're already doing it. You simply run out of allies, and non-enemies.

[rstrong]

It's the nuclear arms "race" that we always led and continue to lead at such enormous cost all over again. "Someone or something else would be worse," gets pretty lame after several decades. How could anyone know?

Just so. Think of the "bomber gap" and the "missile gap", both used to panic Congress into more defense spending, and both of which never existed.

But more than that, the country on the leading edge of weapons technology tends to set policy for how others use it. Like America saying, "No, nukes are NOT just another weapon. We are NOT going to toss them into Korea, etc." And "We're dumping all our chemical weapons off the coast. We will not use them against another country. Only against the Carolinas when the barrels and barges rust out. From now on a chemical weapon equals a biological weapon equals a nuclear weapon."

Which is why America's drone policy is so insane. The US is a superpower, and drones are an equalizer that puts small countries on the same level. We live in a world where a decade ago a legally blind guy built a drone and flew it across the Atlantic. Tin-pot dictatorships and terrorist organizations can build a drone and fly it into a target after launching from dozens, hundreds or thousands of miles away. The US probably has the most to lose from this, and it's the US that has paved the way for their indiscriminate use among civilian populations to be acceptable.

[O Really]

I'd agree that tactics of intelligence gathering should have limits, but comparing intelligence gathering to nuclear arms? I don't think so.

But from a practical standpoint, limits are hard to police. For example, back in my (stone age) day, the rule was, you couldn't monitor your host country. So my team couldn't monitor Greece. But the guys in Turkey could.

[O Really]

I'd agree that tactics of intelligence gathering should have limits, but comparing intelligence gathering to nuclear arms? I don't think so...

In what ways is it different from the connections we've made?

Potential body count?

[O Really]

Neither rstrong nor my posts were comparing NSA abuses to the mortality and morbidity of nuclear weapons use. I'd prefer it if you addressed the comparisons we did make.

Sorry. Other than a general comparison as considering both as "arms races," I must have been whooshed.
Again, please?

[O Really]

Summaries, subject to correction by rstrong:

rstrong:
Limits are appropriate.
Limits lead to more security for all.
Consequences for ignoring limits are possible.
Our abuses justify abuses by others, including our enemies.
We're harming ourselves internationally.
Exaggerations and lies about threats are used to justify and fund our abuses.
We're direct victims of our abuses.

Me:
We've long been the most excessive abuser.
We can't know that others would be as bad as we've been if we exert leadership in the other direction unless we try.

Those are the comparisons to the nuclear arms race, not potential mortality and morbidity.

I'd generally agree with rstrong's statements, but probably have a different view on what to do about it. I probably have a different definition of "abuse" than either of you. I think until we can come up with at least one significant example of a country's opposers behaving better because they were following a positive example of the country they opposed, we probably shouldn't be optimistic about anybody reducing their intelligence gathering even if the US did. Allies migt if shown they would gain by it, but most of the people we really want to defend against would consider it a weakness and exploit it.

Maybe I could summarize my general view like this - I frequently criticize cops, individually and sometimes entire police departments. But warts and all, I'd like cops to have better weapons than the bad guys, and to be provided with the best training and the best resources. I don't expect the cops to use weapons or tech that is less than that available to the potential evil-doers. And I expect no less from the US intelligence agencies.

[O Really]

I'd have no problem with treaties; I have no problem with sharing and collaborative effort. Of course, as you may have noted, the US's history in adhering to treaties is a bit spotty, so why anybody would trust a US treaty in the first place is peculiar. At to Geneva conventions, most civilized countries generally follow; none of the actual bad people do.

[O Really]

Real disclosure: BS (before Snowden), I would have happily found fault with some of the NSA practices, and particularly with regard to its, ummm, "rights" under PATRIOT. And I still could and would, except the reaction to Snowden's, ummm, "whistleblowing," creates an entirely separate reality. NSA isn't a bunch of accountants or bureaucrats. They're warriors, no less so than soldiers, sailors, or marines, despite not getting shot at so much. They've got a mission and have capably performed within that mission since way before Obama won his first grade school class officer election, and Snowden made performance of that mission destructively more difficult. So yeah, if somebody in the conversation needs to defend what they do and how they do it - warts and all - I guess that's me.

[rstrong]

At to Geneva conventions, most civilized countries generally follow; none of the actual bad people do.

Most civilized countries generally abide by their treaties, and that means very nearly all countries.

The remaining ones tend to be pariah states, isolated so they can do little damage, and easily countered by sanctions both economic and ballistic. They're also the states who ARE your enemies, not the friends and allies who reasonably expect you not to tap their leaders' phones.

[rstrong]

They're warriors, no less so than soldiers, sailors, or marines, despite not getting shot at so much.

The same can be said for general counsel G. Gordon Liddy, Acting Chairman Jeb Stuart Magruder, Attorney General John Mitchell, and Presidential Counsel John Dean, when they arranged the wire-tapping and intelligence burglaries of the Democratic Party headquarters.

No, really, O Really. The NSA dragnet warrantless surveillance in the 2000s was illegal, only made legal after the fact. Much of what Snowden has revealed was thought to be illegal, except that the laws had been thoroughly gerrymandered. Snowden also showed that NSA outright lied to Congress about its activities. Which some say may still be illegal.

And of course tapping the German Prime Minister's phone and 70.3 million recordings of French citizens' telephone data in one month alone breaks more than a few laws - which is significant when it's your allies.

It's been shown that any oversight was a rubber stamp process, anything the NSA wanted approved. Any concerns from Congress dismissed with a casual lie.

Nixon said that "it's not illegal when the president does it." At least Nixon was elected. And his wire-tapping and break-in crew faced a legal system when they went too far. YOU would have the NSA face no limits. Face no credible oversight. Face no legal system when they go too far, because "it's not illegal when the NSA does it." EVEN AFTER what's been uncovered you would have the NSA alone, in secret, decide what's OK, with the American people having no say. Not even Congressional or legal oversight.

[O Really]

EVEN AFTER what's been uncovered you would have the NSA alone, in secret, decide what's OK, with the American people having no say. Not even Congressional or legal oversight.

Not really. Since Congressional, military, and legal oversight processes are in place, I'd like them to do their jobs better. But I don't think you can run an intelligence agency by popular vote any more than you can run a football team by fan vote. There are Congressional intelligence committees. They should be more involved and take the time and effort to achieve a bit of expertise to go along with their posturing. Courts should hold NSA and the other alphabet agencies to the same legal standard as everybody else. But no, I don't think there's much room for "transparency" in intelligence gathering.

[rstrong]

EVEN AFTER what's been uncovered you would have the NSA alone, in secret, decide what's OK, with the American people having no say. Not even Congressional or legal oversight.

Not really. Since Congressional, military, and legal oversight processes are in place, I'd like them to do their jobs better.

The problem is, they're not doing so.

Nor can one claim that having been caught over-extending their reach, NOW we'll have better oversight. When the NSA was caught doing illegal dragnet warrantless surveillance in the 2000s, the "oversight processes" responded by retroactively making it legal. And helping them gerrymander their way around remaing laws. And STILL the NSA lied to Congress. Without penalty.

But I don't think you can run an intelligence agency by popular vote any more than you can run a football team by fan vote. [...] But no, I don't think there's much room for "transparency" in intelligence gathering.

There may not be room for "transparency" in intelligence gathering, but there's plenty of room for "transparency" in intelligence gathering policy. Especially when it comes to how far intelligence agencies can go in treating allies - and America's own citizens - as the enemy.