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Gen. Keith Alexander On Metadata, Snowden, and the NSA: "We're At Greater Risk"
An anonymous reader writes with some snippets pulled from a lengthy Q&A session at The New Yorker with former NSA head Keith Alexander, in which Alexander defends the collection of metadata by U.S. spy agencies both abroad and within the United States: "The probability of an attack getting through to the United States, just based on the sheer numbers, from 2012 to 2013, that I gave you—look at the statistics. If you go from just eleven thousand to twenty thousand, what does that tell you? That's more. That's fair, right? [..] These aren't my stats. The University of Maryland does it for the State Department. [...] The probability is growing. What I saw at N.S.A. is that there is a lot more coming our way. Just as someone is revealing all the tools and the capabilities we have. What that tells me is we're at greater risk. I can't measure it. You can't say, Well, is that enough to get through? I don't know. It means that the intel community, the military community, and law enforcement are going to work harder."
why is this shithead talking of probabilities? let's talk about REAL attacks. Like the one where the government of an immigrant called our Homeland Security morons and actually warned us about someone. And our Homeland Security statsi did exactly nothing. Then, the person who was the subject of that call blew up the finish area of the Boston Marathon. For that matter, what about 9/11, our intelligence and national police watching those Saudi terrorists for years to see what they would do; well, we saw what they did.
We are less likely to be attacked on our own soil right now than we were at any point in the preceding two centuries. That likelihood hit a plateau in the 1970s. The World Trade Center collapse was a statistical anomaly.
Well worth the watch if you have the time, gives a very good overview of how the NSA amassed as much power as it has: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
Cry me a river. I'm sure that we could reduce that possibility ten fold if we placed cameras and microphones inside everyone's house. Does that mean we should do it? Absolutely not.
If you go from just eleven thousand to twenty thousand, what does that tell you? That's more. That's fair, right?
Given who is speaking I had to do some fact checking before accepting it as truth.
Gen. Keith Alexander,
http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/...
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
It means that the intel community, the military community, and law enforcement are going to work harder.
No. It means that your efforts are turning more and more people against the United States of America. It means that your actions have made people hate you more. Rather than putting more efforts into improving people's feelings towards America, you're turning more people against you.
And it should be noted that it's no longer just foreign individuals who are growing to hate you - your efforts are making more and more Americans hate you too.
Maybe - and this is just a wild idea here - you should stop being complete asses. You know, stop treating everyone in the damn world like the enemy. Maybe, just maybe, that might help make people hate you less which will probably help reduce the number of actions against you.
But, let's be honest here, that's not what the power brokers want. The power brokers want to clamp down a polio state upon America and the world at large and the only way to do that is to foster the hate and continue to make America the victim of increasing hostility from malicious interests. You're fostering the hatred because it makes it easier for you and your ilk to justify strengthening the police state that you so dearly want.
bleh.
There's like, a lot of numbers.. ya'know? that means stuff can happen. If stuff might happen, then stuff can happen because ... stuff!
A spymaster asserts spying is important! Details at 11.
Who gives a shit?
If you own a clothing store and want to prevent theft by increasing security you can:
Add metal tags to clothing
Hire more security guards inside the store
Install cameras in the ceiling and watch shoppers
The NSA opts instead to
Ask shoppers to wear metal tags
Hire agents to follow them after they leave
Install video cameras in their homes
And now we call it "America"
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
There is also no question that spying on people will damage our society. Some innocent people will have their non-criminal secrets revealed, damaging their lives beyond reason. Some innocent people will be falsely accused of crimes they did not commit - perhaps even going to jail or being killed by a drone. Certain people will become accustomed to violating the law for valid reasons and will start to violate it for personal reasons - the cases where US intelligence agents spied on ex-lovers are just the start.
The question is, is the damage done greater than the damage prevented. From the huge and vast history of spying, we also know that we can not simply take the government's word. Even if they start good, they too often end up going too far.
So we set up a system that is supposed to not only prevent the worst damage done by spying, but to prevent even the APPEARANCE that that damage might be occurring.
General Keith Alexander's article talks a lot about the damage the spying prevents. It totally ignores the massive damage he and his ilk does.
As such it is not convincing at all. It's like a gold miner talking about how much gold they are going to get out of the mountain without even mentioning the massive amounts of toxic materials he is dumping directly into the town's reservoir.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
i take the 911 conspiracies with a pinch of salt. but if something were to happen now... that the NSA could turn around and say see - we need these capabilities then it would scream conspiracy at me...
"It means that the intel community, the military community, and law enforcement are going to work harder."
Yes, I agree. Good conclusion.
intel community, the military community, and law enforcement are going to work harder
The freedom of a people is inversely proportional to the effeciency of its govermental instituions.
The more hurdles in the way of these bozos the better
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
If they are at greater risk, it is because of their own activities and decisions. Corruption and illegal activity should not be shielded by National Security. Or more simply put, their security is not national security.
Why is this guy still called a General, he's a fucking politician already, a political appointee and from his spintalk he's learning the DC shuffle pretty well. A real general would lead his troops into battle and kill the fucking enemy, not continually spy on the citizens or trample on the constitution he's sworn to protect. You have soliders to fight wars, not play political games and trying to color everything with spintalk.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
If the NSA mission is so important, they should never have broken the law and betrayed the trust Americans placed in them. The NSA is supposed to use targeted intelligence on foreign agents. Instead they spy on the citizens they are expressly forbidden from spying on.
So yeah, it's terrible that the NSA can't do their job, breaks the law, and people like Snowden have to hold them accountable. FFS. Stop whining about the fuck ups and go back to doing what Truman asked you to do in the first place. Jeeze. NSA acts like my kid who is angry that I caught him doing something he knows is wrong, knows he shouldn't be doing, and is upset that I found out. Hilarious. Bunch of children.
Remember when hard work was actually considered noble and highly valued?
I'd rather take my chances and live in a free society with some "risk" than in an oppressive nanny state that feels the need to increasingly monitor every aspect of my life.
That's what he's missing, the 'risk' he's talking of is the price to pay for living in a free society.
Our fathers, grandparents, and great great great grandparents fought for this country on the basis of freedom, and if we're not going to maintain that freedom what is the point of fighting at all? There is none. Terrorism does not justify war.
If I had a choice between a 9/11 attack happening once a year in every major city until the day I died I'd rather see that than lose a single freedom. While 9/11 was a horrible and unnecessary tragedy the number of lives lost on 9/11 was minuscule in the scheme of the wars fought against terrorism.
There are more than 140,000 people in the world that die every day. 9/11 didn't even increase the daily death count by a noticeable figure. It increased it by at best 1.4%. Far more innocent lives were lost from frighting illogical wars against “terrorism”. Terrorism doesn't justify war. Terrorism doesn't justify terrorism, torture, or “irregular interrogation methods” . Wars the US gets involved in on the other hand kill millions of innocent people. A far worse thing in the scheme of things.
Don't support our leadership in these wars, or any action that attacks American's freedom, or that the of rest of the world.
If I go from eleven thousand to twenty thousand it means I'm rich and can go on a vacation. What's this nonsense about dangers?
Rather than taking actions that short cuts the Constitution of the United States and infringes the rights of the citizen populace you claim to want to protect. Guess what, if the people of the US have lost faith and trust in the Military, Judiciary, Executive, and Legislative branches, as well as in Law Enfiorcement there is a reason for it. It's not some mass hallucination or mob mis-perception. The US Government has undermined the trust of the populace and now it is reaping the consequences. Don't bitch that the job is now harder because of infringements caused by corruption and incompetance within the highest corridors of power within the U.S.
" It means that the intel community, the military community, and law enforcement are going to work harder."
the enforcement community working harder is what caused the problem with overreach in the first place.
if they aren't careful how they "work harder" they will create even more work for themselves
Instead of spying on everyone why don't you go undermine that Wahhabi fount of fundamentalism that is the ultimate source of most of our terrorist fears.
We're trying to put out a fire we've been fueling for nearly a century. It's embarrassing.
The three main weapons in the arsenal against freedom.
Guess what, everyone? The number of threats against the United States has likely been about the same from year to year for decades and decades now, they're just trotting out these 'independently gathered statistics' because they've been caught with both hands in the surveillance cookie jar and crumbs all over their faces, so now they trot out the FU&D to try to justify themselves. Them, them, fuck them, I say. Go back to traditional spycraft techniques and stop rummaging around in America's underwear drawer, you fucking creeps.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
The portion of government workers that are criminals probably mirrors the levels of criminals in the general population. The percentage of elected officials that are criminals is probably higher than the percentage in the general population. The percentage of elected officials at the national level that are criminals is far higher than the general population, and the criminals at the national level can cause far more damage to the country than your average low-level criminal.
Since the government in general and the NSA in particular believes it is legal and proper to collect all this information on citizens and residents without obtaining warrants, why shouldn't they collect all of the same information for all politicians and then make it 100% public? Any argument they use against this practice should then be considered a valid reason why they shouldn't be able to do it against the general population.
I propose that we put at least 2 cameras in every room. This way we can catch everyone committing a crime and reduce dramatically the risk of crime in the USA. I propose that the NSA, who has the expertise, would expand its role and electronically monitor the cameras. The computers would flag potential crimes happening for the NSA experts to look at. They would maintain the database and rules would be in place to prevent any abuse by the NSA professionals. Oversight of this NSA operation will be by a secret court that will punish those breaking the rules. All proceedings and transcripts of the court will remain secret to protect the work of the NSA and not increase the risk of crime.
Without the exaggeration of "at least 2 cameras in every room", I feel this is what is happening right now around the world. By upping the surveillance we would be safer but our quality of life would be less without any privacy, and the potential for abuse would be very great. There is no significant oversight and transparency happening at the NSA. This needs to change and people's rights (including non-Americans) need to be respected. Knowing human nature, abuse is happening and the database is being misused. The NSA needs to be reigned in and its operations limited. We may end up being at a very slight larger risk for a terrorist attack but people's lives and rights would be respected.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/united-states-of-secrets/
Required viewing.
All external and internal threats abated. So easy.
What the shit is this about making things easier anyway? Does somebody running a race complain that cutting corners would make it easier for him to finish?
So what? The Constitution is the set of rules the government has to operate with. No matter whether it is hard or easy.
If they want to have different rules, they should emigrate to states with a different constitution. The U.S. is not supposed to make fascism easy.
What that tells me is we're at greater risk.
Risk of what exactly?
Because you're talking about taking away my constitutional freedoms. That's a big deal. You need to give me some idea of what I'm being protected from. A terrorist attack? Because, the chances of that are 1 in 9,138,785. I'm willing to take that risk if it means I get to remain free.
"It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace â" but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"--accredited to Patrick Henry
Giving up the Freedoms that so many have died to protect does an extreme disservice and dishonor to those that died, including those that died simply enjoying those Freedoms as did those on 9/11.
Probabilited be damned! We have not been a "shining light" for a long time, if ever. If we can't live with honor, if we can't demonstrate and allow the Freedoms we have promoted so much around the world rather then denying it to ourselves and others while destroying "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" then how can we (citizens of the USA) be so surprised when others attack us? When our own government contributes to such events? When we steadily lose those much ballied Liberties?
It is but simple Common Sense that all governments are evil! It is a measure of the citizens of a government as to how well they limit that evil. Lets get this protection racket under control!
And yet despite his scaremongering, which coincidentally means he needs more money and resources, I'm more likely to die of a heart attack or get hit while riding my bike than to ever even SEE a terrorist.
We should take all their money and spend it on automobile safety and heart disease prevention....
Everytime some dude says "Death to America!" or something like that on the Internet, that's a credible threat. Oh look, there's another one. If you don't stop it, it'll be like nine eleven times a hundred!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Some people ask whether Edward Snowden can get a fair trial in the US. The real question is whether Keith Alexander can get a fair trial in the US. He was the head of an organization which was doing illegal things. Will he get a fair trial? Will he get a trial at all? No.
The government does a great job of keeping the conversation focused on "terrorism" and the inevitability of it.
They never allow the dialogue to shift to the causes of terrorism. We never see discussions about the specific foreign policy elements that generate the hatred and anger that leads to people getting to the point where they are willing to sacrifice their lives to inflict harm to the American economy and way of life.
Until people begin having real conversations about what we are doing, why we are doing it, what the benefits of doing it are, and what the risks associated with it are, this is going to continue.
Unfortunately it seems that any sort of multi-faceted conversation like that is not of interest to most of the population. Those who are interested in having those conversations have already had them, and decided that the benefits outweigh the risks. Money in their pockets is worth the cost of a few lives and civil liberties.
It all comes back to the 1%. There is a small portion of the population that is gambling with the lives of everyone else. Everyone else is too disorganized to remove the 1% from power.
Until people get to the point where they are willing to publicly stand up and say, "I am tired of living in fear for my life so that WE can make money at the expense of the rest of the world." Nothing is going to change. And that is the truth of it. On some level, all of us, ALL OF US, benefit from the current system and are too comfortable with it to do anything more than whine about it online.
Has the calculus really changed? The threat has always been quite low. Sure, there's people that hate the US and we've adopted the tactic of kicking the hornets nest to flush them out, but ignoring that, the single biggest threat was from the NSA involvement in undermining the integrity of ALL "secure" network traffic and leaving technical back-doors all over the place. Not only did the NSA have access to all this copies SIGINT, but so did anyone with an Internet connection, the know-how, and the inclination. It's not as simple as NSA agents eavesdropping on soldiers' phone calls to their spouses and laughing at the awkward sexy-talk. They exposed every bank transaction, every diplomatic cable, every phone system, everything to monitoring and subversion. The billion dollar back-lash against American tech firms is nothing compared to the collective cost of making swiss-cheese of security on a global scale. Of course the US government is worried about cyberwarfare, they themselves tore down the walls, stripped everyone naked, and marched them up to the front line.
To his credit, the General is towing the line. Whether or not it has made a difference, he absolutely has to say that it did.
And that's one more, isn't it !!
There are more people in the world, therefore more bad people in the world with no respect for life, so yeah the 'chances of a single event over time increases'...even the number of people impacted will increase. Guess what, freedom means you are less safe...do NOT give up freedom for security.
Auto-correct (from police) I'm guessing ... but considering the recent outbreaks ... it may have been intentional.
The military officers I have known have at least been coherent.
Cold hard reality check: More than 95 percent of all actual threats originate in or have data collection endpoints in one of the following: Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, or Afghanistan.
Individual warrants on directly (not indirectly) connected US citizens could be done within the context of the US Constitution.
The methods that ARE in use, regardless of what he's telling you, are, for the most part, in direct and certain violation of the US Constitution and in direct and certain violation of the Data treaties (which have the force of law and override Congressional Law and any MOUs) with both the EU and Canada.
Period.
Oh, and this has been going on a lot longer than they pretend. No, even longer than that.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
...and start respecting other states' sovereignty. I mean for real, not just with words. Maybe then the number of attacks will start dropping...
I'd rather deal with a higher level of threat then accept extra legal NSA/CIA spying within the US.
The politically incorrect reality is that we've probably let too many bad people into the US and the western world at large. Say you want to keep radical elements out and they cite you for racism because the people trying this crap lately tend to not be white. That said, were they white, I'd have the same attitude about it so I don't see how race comes into it. Obviously, people shouldn't be excluded based on their race. BUT ideology might be fair game. I don't think being islamic should be enough to trigger a ban. But if you are then it is a risk factor. Sorry... it is. And that risk factor might trigger a deeper evaluation and that evaulation might find that a particular person is dangerous.
Regardless we can have two types of security. Internal security and external security.
I prefer the heavy handed stuff be kept external. Which means filtering visas more aggressively, securing the boarders, and dealing with foreign threats on foreign soil.
The alternative is that we turn the US into a police state with intelligence agencies scouring the nation looking for all the enemies the external filters didn't stop.
Choose. Its that or we just get bombed whenever they want. External security means I stay safe AND free.
Internal security means I MIGHT be safe but I lose my freedoms. Neither means I could easily lose both my freedoms and my security.
So... is there really more then one option here? Secure the border, be more careful with travel visas, and make a point of dealing with foreign threats on foreign soil.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Stop being imperialist, corporate dicks on the international stage (including propping up tin pots du jour just for stinking profits). This will never happen.
"Avoid foreign entanglements (including Israel)." -- George Washington
Just violate a basic human right of most humans in the planet, including foreing governments and normal citizens, and you will have a lot less friends. And that will be your fault, your actions, not theirs or Snowden's.
Dear Mr Alexander, fuck you. No, seriously, fuck you all to hell. At this point I would rather be attacked than be your slave. At least if I am attacked I will have an enemy that I can fight instead of some asshole trying to justify his own slimeball existence. Your fear mongering can go right back up your ass for all I care. I'm sure you can get the University of Maryland to do a study on that for you as well, so long as you pay them enough.
Sincerely, Bob
P.S. Fuck off.
Looks like the world of data analysis is conflicting with the world of common sense. Of course, it is not the data which is wrong, but the vested interest's interpretation of it.
Afraid to do what is right. Yes there are risks to Americans, so to counter that threat they spend a Trillion Dollars and take away the freedom of us all?
It is cold-blooded, but, let's face it, human lives have a price. The price they have chosen to pay to potentially protect a few of us is too damn high. They surveill us to a degree that damages us all. They spend money doing so to such an extent that if the money were re-purposed each of us would have a much higher standard of living. They use scare tactics to bolster their own power and prestige. In my view, they just demonstrate their weakness, greed, and lack of foresight.
President Obama, congress, and the rest need to grow a spine.
The problem is that the US government owes too much money to foreign entities to secure the borders as nations currently experiencing trade and budget surpluses. There was an article in the NY Times written by Thomas Friedman titled "Swedish Spoken Here". [nytimes.com] With having to leave the borders unsecured, the presumption is that the enemy is already here. Since the enemy save the Tsarnayev brothers, John Walker Lindh, Adam Gadahn, and a handful of others, the enemy belongs to one or more PROTECTED CLASSES. This converts our civil rights jurisprudence into a suicide pact. This is where the need to WATCH EVERYONE arises. Freedom of religion means freedom to plot and plan because all are free to convert to Islam. Understand?
His first example in the New Yorker was how the NSA thwarted Basaaly Moalin.
Some background: Basaaly Moalin emailed Najibullah Zazi asking how to make a bomb. Zazi was already under FBI investigation. The NSA is scanning all email traffic, finds the word "bomb" in this email, and they foward this to the FBI, and they go forward from there. The two end up arrested.
This is a good turn of events. Bravo FBI for doing a good job. We are not saying that this is a bad thing, nor are we saying that these things should not be investigated.
What we want is for them to get a warrant before scanning all the email. The FBI was already investigating him for some reason. Would it have been that hard to ask a judge first? Someone sent a clear-text email to a person under investigation asking how to make a bomb. You don't need a complete dragnet of all the populaces communication to go find that terrorist. We have perfectly legal tools written into the bloody constitution about how you're supposed to go about this. USE THEM.
Around 9/11, we intercepted some of [the hijackers’] calls, but we couldn’t see where they came from. So guys like [Khalid al-]Mihdhar, [one of the 9/11 hijackers who was living] in California—we knew he was calling people connected to Al Qaeda in Yemen.
That sounds like a REAL EASY case to get a warrant for. "Hey judge, there's this guy calling Al Qaeda. We intercepted his phone call going from point A to point B and we'd like to ask the phone companies where those points are. You know, so we can keep tabs on where the terrorist cells are calling from. Just might be coming from within the states. ... Yeah, I know right? Just like that scene 'the call is coming from inside the house!'. That'd be funny if we weren't talking about thousands of dead people. So mother-may-I-gimme a warrant already."
And they’re going to say, Well, you eliminated all the tools to catch the terrorists!
We want to remind you that the tools need to require you to jump through a hoop, just like the RAS you described in your example. You need your tools. But you must jump through the legal hoop.
We saw what happened when Edgar Hoover had his dragnet on everyone. It didn't turn out well. And we certainly can't trust you with similar power.
A lot of folks are attacking the the use of probabilities and statistics. Here is one, if there are 10 deaths you know of, but 1,000 or even 100 or even 10 or just 1 more that didn't happen (maybe you), because of the efforts of the NSA, maybe it is worth it. What if we didn't have the NSA at all, or what if they weren't collecting and having automated systems analyzing all of the data collected, and there were a bunch more terror incidents in our country, wouldn't you all be asking, why isn't the most capable intelligence and military machine on earth doing more to stop this. So, here we are. They are doing the collection, how many incidents haven't happened because of it (they can't tell you)? Do you want to find out? Ok, lets stop them.
Oh, and how have they affected your life? Have you lost your job, or your car? Is your quality of life worse, how? Are you just more paranoid because you think you are so interesting to the government that you think of the 300 million+ people they are collecting data on, they are actually looking at you? Or do you think they have hired 300 million+ people to read every American's information as they collect it? Because they both seem plausible don't they?
Stop and think about the details you are really worried about. Do your worries scale with the big data being collected on you, and the other people in and outside of this country? Is the NSA really trying to make this country better or worse? Did you know that many of those employed by the NSA are American citizens who are subject to what they are doing?
Using global statistics isn't relevant to US operations. So, the relevant question would be how do US deaths due to terrorists acts compare before and after. Sandy Hook, Boston Marathon, and the Aurora Shooting would arguably all fit the bill of terrorism in the US and are less than a year before Snowden's leaks, and the death toll exceeds what we've had in the time since then.
So, General Alexander, you are cordially invited to shut the hell up.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Does it matter if some random citizen is killed by a criminal or terrorist? They are dead by malevolent hands either way.
We have a situation where a 9/11 number of people are killing each other in a more or less statistically predictable fashion every quarter decade over decade. It happened this quarter, it will happen the next and the one after that...yet nobody at NSA seems to be talking or otherwise giving two shits about that.
I think we should be looking at ALL risks and reallocate funds away from NSA,TSA,CIA military industrial machine toward endeavors which in the real world stand most chance of providing highest ROIs based on objective evidence rather than current environment of allocation based on fear and politics.
After all list of attacks actually prevented by these agencies appears quite pathetic commensurate with expenditures.
Quite stunning not one of these goons have been able to articulate how collection of everyone's phone records is necessary to conduct a specific authorized investigation while continuing to publically seek retroactive authorization.
The "intelligence community" breaks the law and knowingly enabled wars directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands based on information they knew at the time to be factually deficient. "Traitors" seems too kind.
An NSA which is able to respond to legitimate dangerous elements would be in a better position to protect the interests of the United States.
Unfortunately, the NSA has demonstrated that their mission is identical to that of modern american law enforcement: to illegally monitor, hassle and incarcerate as many people as possible without allowing normal citizens any chance to fight these overreaches.
The revelations by Snowden only serves to rile up those with their heads in the sand (and inflate his sense of self-worth), but serves little other useful purpose.
Yeah, transparency, open democratic debate server little purpose.... you troll.
By putting back doors in our communications infrastructure, the NSA is creating an attack vector for enemies to use.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Do the phone companies and internet companies get ordered to hand over our meta-data? Or are they volunteering the information of their own free will? The answer to this question will determine our plan of attack on fixing this situation. Do we need to punish the corporations for selling us out, or do we need to crucify our politicians for selling us out? We have limited resources, we can't effectively do both.
The U.S has not been attacked since WW2, and the whole time since it has instead been busy doing nothing but attacking others. What a load of bullshit.
The job of the NSA in broad terms is to collect data (whether that be from cellphone companies, ISPs, web companies or wherever else) and then feed that to analysts who will take that data, sift through it and pull out useful pieces of information.
The problem the NSA has right now is that they seem to want to collect ever greater amounts of data (with no effort made to target the data that is most likely to contain useful information) yet the number of analysts they have turning that data into information is nowhere near what it needs to be to handle that data.
They should stop trying to collect every piece of digital data in the known universe and instead go on a recruitment drive to hire A.Experts who can help the NSA figure out which bits of data are most likely to contain the useful information so they can target those specifically and B.Expert analysts who can help them to turn that data into useful information.
It was almost as if the USA was already imploding and just needed a nudge...
Authoritarians have weaknesses. And the USA is an authoritarian society. People living a culture are also limited in their ability to self-reflect; in addition, Americans live in a bubble already (it's so bad that it's pretty much a global impression of Americans. The stereotype is not unfounded. )
No leader realizes they are too authoritarian; many tricks to manipulate their character flaws works on societies as well. Maintaining control (aka "Order" or even a custom definition of "Peace") is of the up most importance to the authoritarian. Ultimately, it is their own insecurity that they can not handle which causes them to go to great lengths to compensate by attempting to control as much as they can. The psychology is not unknown. You can manipulate these types based upon their flaws. Add to their fear of insecurity etc; the more their core flaw is hit the greater the defensive mechanisms will be.
You can probably think of people who on their own little scale fit some of this. It's not unlike many psychological flaws where people show their flaws by their over compensation for them. Like a gay man in denial can be extremely anti-gay, having to try as hard as their doubt/fear -- the more fearful, the stronger the compensation. You can make them stand out by seeding doubts in their mind and they will respond with more defensive behaviors until they stand out from normal people as an extremist or even as somebody in self-denial. For a control freak, this isn't hard to do - if they are not already illustrating the traits clearly for people to pick up on... You just have to make them see how much is out of order and how much that is a threat to their feeling of security.
When you have a SOCIETY which is authoritarian and as a result their leaders are also (usually worse than the population) a lot of the same tactics work. A general may not start out with the flaws, they will develop them from their experience/job. These are mental conditions, not genetic diseases. Generals foster the well known stereotype of them being paranoid because their environment produces it, not to mention it also tends to filter out the type of people least susceptible by the process they are hired/created. Leaders have a high susceptibility as well; although, I would guess a statesman politician would be one of the least susceptible types of people... So it's more a function of the environment; of which culture plays a really big role.
This is why when you have an amendment for free peaceful assembly which is every bit as strongly worded as free speech, the society allows it to be trampled upon in the name of "order" far more than it does free speech, which has less impact on the insecurity weakness. (But it can push buttons so you use speech to decide who to spy on and monitor... and it's not so much the crazies actually shooting and bombing, it's the ones saying things that actually could change the culture towards more chaos.. )
Chaos, the ultimate threat... eventually, democracy is too chaotic and it has to be controlled or forbidden. If you've been paying attention, that has already been done.
No, I'm not an anarchist. I don't read their stuff; but I'm sure the articulate ones do a great job pointing these things out. You need to listen to the intelligent people saying things that are uncomfortable, that is where you'll find the truth - one person simply lacks perspective to grasp reality.
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The cause is Islam. You can't say that. The solution isn't politically acceptable either.
I'm sure you think there would be peace on Earth if only the USA would isolate itself. We could stay home, stop meddling, whatever... but NO.
Note that every muslim country has an **internal** terrorism problem. Anybody following the wrong kind of Islam is as risk. (meaning everybody, because "wrong" is disputed by the various types)
You want to decrease the probability of the US getting hit with some terrorist bullshit ?
Quit bombing half the damn planet.
Quit sending drones out to kill folks.
Quit sticking your nose in EVERYONE elses business.
Quit trying to install friendly yes men into other countries governments.
Basically, just mind your own damn business for a while. You have plenty of things that need
fixing in your own country without stirring shit up across the planet.
Infrastructure, unemployment, poverty, homelessness, corruption, healthcare, immigration, just to name a few off the top of my head.
Take all that money you're dumping into defense / military spending and actually do something useful with it for a while. Hell, you quit .. . Just a thought.
kicking the hornet's nest for a while, you might not actually NEED to spend so much on defense. .
911 was a setup by Bush/Cheney/Koch bros., and everything else has been a result of our warmongering.
We aren't at risk. We were never at risk. But we are taking actions that are risky now.
Alexander would shred the Constitution to save us from some hypothetical risk that doesn't exist.
As the last 6 presidential electiona have shown, too many people (in ALL parties) want government to make life "safe" for them no matter what it costs "everybody else"
Why do I say 6 elections? Because I'm NOT going partisan on this and pretending only the guys on "the other side" are to blame:
When the choice was Clinton vs Bush41 and then Clinton vs Dole, the average person chose Clinton who promised more social spending (make ME safe from life's bumps, and make SOMEBODY ELSE pay for it...)
When the choice was Bush43 vs Gore, the average person went for Bush who promised fewer foreign entanglements (make ME safer) than Clinton-Gore who'd dragged us into Bosnia, Mogadishu, etc and more for education (protect MY kids from the educational equality and pass the bills elsewhere).
When the choice was Bush43 vs Kerry, the average person went for Bush (post-911 make ME safe at all costs, except higher taxes on ME... make somebody else pay, both financially and in loss of freedom and privacy)
When the choice was Obama vs McCain the people were very explicitly offered huge invasive government vs limited government (with vp candidate Palin pushing the GOP in a more libertarian direction than in decades) and the people went for WAY more government (make ME safe from healthcare issues and make somebody else pick up the tab). Oh, and forget any claim Obama was going to reign-in spying - he SAID he was for less spying on the one hand, but explicitly demanded more on the other hand as part of his healthcare "reform" which demands cradle-to-grave electronic (easily "mined") records of the details of everybody. Oh, and any "tax the rich" play that is legitimate (not just a deceptive campaing pledge) would require more snooping on everybody's financial matters.
When the choice was between Obama and Romney, the people doubled-down on big spying government, even though [1] they had been told Obama was using government as a weapon against his political opponents (i.e. the accepted using govt against citizens), [2] they'd been told that his super-invasive healthcare law had been sold to them on lies (i.e. they accepted government deception on programs), [3] they'd learned he had a "kill list" and was actively killing people with drones (i.e. they accepted the most severe consequences of secret govt actions), [4] they'd learned he and had doubled-down on the Bush-era spying ... now doing things to US citizens within the US that had previously been done only outside the US and things he had specifically denounced when he was a candidate. The 2012 election results proved that the bulk of the people continue to say: "Make ME safe, no matter the cost" (the COST being TRILLIONS of borrowed dollars (financial), nearly universal spying and wiretapping (privacy), airport groping (personal space), "metadata" vacuuming (personal papers) etc)
It's just not enough anymore to say "spy on me less, I'll take the risks" ... we're gonna get spied on, groped, attacked, (killed?) as long as most of our neighbors are taking the position Ben Franklin warned us all not to take. It turns out that things like "privacy" and "money" ARE related and a government that wants to take the one also wants to take the other. It also turns out that when you put the government into some aspect of life, it will then be driven to "secure" that area of life, because a constituency will be created to do it/demand it.
The thing that puts us at risk is our own damned selves. We butt into everyone else's business, give billions in aid to other nations when we're already broke, and we warmonger. If we didn't do all that shit we wouldn't be running into problems.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
The NSA let this random guy Snowden walk away with all of their secrets. Snowden isn't some genius mastermind; if he could do it, I'll bet there are other people who did it too. Only they didn't go public, they just sold the information to China or Russia or al Qaeda (assuming they weren't spies to begin with).
So it doesn't matter what Snowden announced to the world, because chances are the people we're most worried about already knew about it.
If the bloody National SECURITY Agency can't secure itself, we can't rely on it to secure anything else.
Pathetic.
Their cavemen! Most "terrorists" are just mentally unstable children, but we need a multi-trillion dollar defense structure to deal with it? We've given up how many rights? How about just sending in some freakin social workers and stop pissing them off? Then the problem could go away and our taxes could be cut! Please find another political topic and way for defense contractors to collect profits, this is boring already... Thanks.