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Spy Industry Leaders Befuddled Over 'Deep Cynicism' of American Public
New submitter autonomous_reader writes: Ars Technica has a story on this week's Intelligence & National Security Summit, where CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey had a lot to say about the resistance of the American public to government cyber spying and anti-encryption efforts. Blaming resistance on "people who are trying to undermine" the intelligence mission of the NSA, CIA, and FBI, John Brennan explained it was all a "misunderstanding." Comey explained that "venom and deep cynicism" prevented rational debate of his campaign for cryptographic backdoors.
Setting aside the Constitution, it's the double standard. We can save you, but we can't even tell you when or how.
The one thing that would save the US government is the elimination of classification. Simple, easy. Nothing secret except for active actions, and none of those allowed over 20 years, and any over 2 years must be disclosed and revealed.
Would that make their jobs harder? Maybe. Just maybe, and if so, only a little. But it would eliminate any doubt over what's going on.
The current rules classifies everything, and for the maximum allowable time. Policies and procedures are classified. Ones that are not classified are classified. TSA traning docs are refused FOIA for "national security" reasons, when clearance isn't required to be trained with those docs. In an abstract sense, the DHS is violating classification by training un-cleared people with documents they claim are classified.
Eliminate it all.
And while doing so, make the US government copyright holder over all materials that are funded with government funds, then have them release all materials into the Public Domain as they are copyrighted (or free and open license to all citizens or some such).
The secrecy is killing the secret organizations. I had a friend who joined the FBI. She thought it would be fun and interesting. Instead, she spent all her time sending people to decades of prison for clerical errors on Katrina relief forms. Her conscience wouldn't let her work as an FBI agent. She was ordered into situations where she was only punishing innocent people, and wasn't "allowed" to find guilty people.
They aren't the good guys. They never were. Hoover was evil, and tainted the FBI with that until the end of time.
Learn to love Alaska
In 1928 there was a court case called "Olmstead v. United States" in which the government tapped a telephone wire (relatively new technology at the time) and caught a Roy Olmstead and several others who were allegedly distributing Alcohol, which violated the National Prohibition Act.
One of the justices, Louis Brandeis, argued that the government's actions were not lawful because it violated the principle which the Fourth Amendment stood for; here is a quote of his dissent:
You can read more of it here (law.cornell.edu)
Where are the death squads and ditches full of dead bodies?
Where are the crying survivors hoping to find their disappeared loved ones?
What is scary is that you even thin you can get away with asking the question given that the answer is so obvious.