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Unintended Consequences: How NSA Revelations May Lead To Even More Surveillance
Lauren Weinstein writes with a slightly depressing end-of-year prediction. An excerpt: "This then may be the ultimate irony in this surveillance saga. Despite the current flood of protests, recriminations, and embarrassments — and even a bit of legal jeopardy — intelligence services around the world (including especially NSA) may come to find that Edward Snowden's actions, by pushing into the sunlight the programs whose very existence had long been dim, dark, or denied — may turn out over time to be the greatest boost to domestic surveillance since the invention of the transistor."
Nobody will want to have anything to do with USA
It's not about USA per se.
The entire thing is actually a reflection of the arrogance of those so-called "UNTOUCHABLES"
They do not need to face the voters once every x-number of years, nor they need to answer to anyone.
They are the bureaucrats, the non-elected bureaucrats that have grabbed hold of power through the back door method.
Even the TFA itself is full of shit.
If the net-surveillance scheme that has been exposed by Snowden is like giving the NSA (or any other spook organization) a blank check on what they do, we might as well stop catching murderers/rapers, and let them go on raping / murdering even more people, at will.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Nonsense. People in general don't care about in privacy, right up to the point where it suddenly works against them. It's just the laziness and apatheticness of human nature. It'll take a lot more than these leaks before people are really enraged, because at the moment everyone is still happy that "it's catching terrorists".
It's just another example of "First they came..." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
First they came for the terrorists, and I didn't care because I wasn't a terrorist. Then they called me a terrorist, and nobody cared because I was a terrorist. I hear rumors that some people might consider becoming enraged someday, but enraged people are terrorists and nobody listens to terrorists.
I'd wager that the NSA are happy with Snowden's activities, as they've found out that the majority of people don't give a fuck, and of the minority who do, hardly any are actually taking action.
The primary outcome of Snowden is a carte blanche to the state, and the particular businesses on behalf of which it works, to do whatever the fuck it wants.
Boeing lost a $4.5 billion fighter aircraft contract to Saab in Brazil because of the revelations about spying. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-19/nsa-spying-blowback-continues-boeing-loses-brazil-jet-order
Cisco has also seen major losses, and lots of other companies big and small are hurting as well.
The US Constitution may have been put in the shredder, the courts may be rubber stamps for the US version of the STASI, and the Congress may be brain dead along with the DOJ, but now it turns out that all this useless spying has hurt the bottom line of Big Corporate American. You screw these people over, and your government funding is going to be severely impacted.
The NSA and the other alphabet soup spying agencies have hurt the only group in the US with the clout to shut them down. The are going to be backing off big time.
On the individual level, government intelligence insiders are going to discover that they will have a much harder time finding those cushy high paying civilian jobs that they expect to be handed when they leave the government. That's what happens when you bite the hand that feeds you. This could have the biggest impact of all, because the revolving door is a major motivation for the entire system in the first place.
Why is Snark Required?
A big issue next election will be privacy.
No it won't.
The next election is going to be the same old bullshit issues: gay marriage, abortion, "when life begins", taxes, guns, Israel and a couple of other distraction issues that Rush and Fox News create.
The nutty conservative fringe - I'm not talking about rational conservatives who want to put checks on government power and spending - I'm talking mostly about social conservatives who want government to regulate what one does behind closed doors. They seem to be driving the talking points in elections because they are the most shrill and irrational.
Acid test: if a minister (Warren or whoever) gets quoted about an issue, then it's a distraction issue.
Counterintuitively perhaps, once these programs are made visible they become vastly easier to expand under one justification or another, because you no longer have to worry so much about the very existence of the programs being exposed.
TFA argues:
1) Snowden blows the lid off surveillance schemes, many of which are conducted illegaly.
2) Intelligence agencies would like to continue these programmes and push for legislation to legalize them.
3) Said legislation is passed.
4) Surveillance continues unabated.
5) Profit, sort of.
Our "profit" is that we now know about these surveillance schemes. The problem however is that they will disappear underground again and increase in size and pervasiveness; once they are made legal, politicians (even the opposition) will no longer be much interested in attacking or exposing individual schemes, they will be attacking the legislation. And if the public forgets about the issue quickly enough, they will not succeed there.
Only thing we can do now is push legislation the other way while we have some momentum:
- Make "dragnet"-style surveillance illegal
- Allow wiretapping in individual cases, after approval by a judge (and not a secret panel of judges)
- If a company is not compelled by law to surrender information, they are forbidden to volunteer it.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Let me tell you how this may really backfire on the US.
All those greedy leaders of multi-national companies that have spent hundreds of millions on armies of lobbyists to manipulate Congress and lawmakers to make hundreds of billions in revenue are now going to start feeling the sting as they start losing business.
You think this has to do with the average citizen dealing with privacy issues as the NSA snoops in? Like Boeing could give a shit right now about you as they've lost a multi-billion dollar contract. This has to do with greed. Always has. And to ensure those greedy leaders maintain their revenue streams, they WILL start putting pressure on Congress and lawmakers to stop the bleeding and contain this as best as possible. If that means re-gaining the trust of other countries by dismantling surveillance programs, then that may be what happens. If it means impeaching a President, then that may be what happens.
Congress has not been under the control of the American voter for a very long time. Lobbyists control our government and laws, driven by greed, which is all-powerful. When business losses start climbing up into the hundreds of billions and unemployment rockets to 15% due to all of this, change will happen. Greed will ensure it.