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Other Agencies Clamor For Data NSA Compiles
schwit1 writes "The National Security Agency's dominant role as the nation's spy warehouse has spurred frequent tensions and turf fights with other federal intelligence agencies that want to use its surveillance tools for their own investigations, officials say. Agencies working to curb drug trafficking, cyberattacks, money laundering, counterfeiting and even copyright infringement complain that their attempts to exploit the security agency's vast resources have often been turned down because their own investigations are not considered a high enough priority, current and former government officials say. Intelligence officials say they have been careful to limit the use ... for fear they could be misused in ways that violate Americans' privacy rights."
So, it has come to this.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
1) " for fear they could be misused in ways that violate Americans' privacy rights"
The act of spying & collecting this data didn't already pass this threashold?
2) Every government agency takes the permitted rules and pushes them to the limit & a bit beyond. In no time at all, the Smallville dog catcher's dept will have access to NSA data. "Think of the children - we need to know which houses have mean dogs, and which ones have small children! For their own good!"
This should be no surprise.
Right across the free world we're told this these giant databases are there to keep us safe.
The question is more who is being kept safe who. Is the purpose of these databases to protect me or protect the politicians? Is to protect me or big business? Is it to protect my right to process or restrict it?
In my own country, William Hague said that it was unthinkable that GCHQ would be operating outside of the law. The problem is I don't believe you!
Practically every time the government has secrecy it abuses that power to its own ends. This is just the nature of power held in secret with a lack of transparency. The entire span of human history shows that kind of power is hugely destructive.
The cure is worse than the disease here. Honestly, I'd rather have more terrorist attacks that having my privacy systematically shredded for the greater good. All terrorists can ever do is kill people. It takes a government to kill a society.
Is the new Al Qaeda scare, U.S. still on edge in face of uncovered terror plot, just manipulation to scare people into accepting NSA and other "security" agencies doing anything they like?
If they do insist on gathering this data they should
a) make all gathered data available by request for each individual citizen
b) disclose who made use of that data and also discolse the reason for it
This level of transparency would be required to make this anywhere near OK. But their underhanded tactics they use make this very unlikely. They don't spy on US citizens(except by accident) but they do get data from the Brits who it turns out have the legal framework to spy on everyone. NSA financed the GCHQ site in Bude and has lots of staff "liaising" with the GCHQ. Which all is perfectly legal.
I wonder why there is no bigger outcry in the UK that the main selling point of the GCHQ to the NSA is the relatively lax legal framework in the UK. It is perfeclty legal, yes. But if questions have been asked about if the laws powering this festering dungheap are ok I have totally missed that. And I'm subscribed to The Guardian which would totally pick this one up.
It seems that the main discussion is happening in Germany and the US. While the biggest culprit, namely the GCHQ, has very little to fear. As always with these leaks, the US reputation isn't as damaged as everybody else's. And I totally buy into the NSA not sharing any data. But I do not buy that FISA courts are actually doing their jobs as this would require blind trust. How should I trust the integrity of secret courts? Their mere existence is a travesty in a democracy.
This is all so wrong on so many levels...
Alas, the geeks in the cubicles of the NSA/GCHQ propably don't even understand this outrage. And when you think about it, it is no mean technological feat. They managed to acquire lots of data, store it and search it. On a massive scale. That's cool and scary at the same time.
20 minutes into the future
To protect national security is one thing, but to conduct non-national security operations using the data seems to me to be a blatant violation of the constitution.
Except that part of the reason for the Bill of Rights is specifically to protect the citizens from having the government infringe on their rights for "national security" reasons. Saying it's for "national security" doesn't make it better, really.
What the founders feared, what the Bill of Rights was intended to be a protection against, was an oppressive government using its power to subdue people who opposed the government. So the First Amendment is not saying, "You have the freedom to express yourself artistically," so much as, "You have the freedom to speak out *against the government*." The Second Amendment is not saying, "You're allowed to have guns for hunting purposes," as much as, "You have the right to have military weapons *to protect yourself from the government*." And the 4th Amendment was not really focused on preventing overzealous police officers as much as it was about preventing the government from going after dissidents, rifling through their lives, looking for a pretext to arrest them.
It's really all about protecting people from the danger of a government using "national security" as a pretext for shutting down dissent. This NSA stuff is *exactly* what the founding fathers were worried about.