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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.
Mr Fox feels misunderstood and would like to continue guarding the hen house.
Requiem for the American Dream
"You see, we thought that the Constitution doesn't apply to us. Why can't anyone understand that we're the good guys?!?"
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Is personal, is not yours. Not allowed. Like you're not allowed to rape my girlfriend even if you say its for national security.
Not yours, never was, hands off.
...that these men are just acting. They cant be that naive that they dont understand the resistance to their designs.
--- I was far from home, and the spell of the Eastern sea was upon me. -Lovecraft-
... is concerned that we don't trust them, and don't really want them keeping tabs on us? I mean that would never happen! Next thing you'll tell me people are throwing tea in the ocean to protest their unelected government! Insanity!
"I don't think we've really tried to find answers yet because no one in the private sector has been properly incentivized."
They haven't been properly motivated. We'll help them come around to our way of thinking.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
"Comey explained that "venom and deep cynicism" prevented rational debate of his campaign for cryptographic backdoors."
That's called poisoning the well. - Albert Einstein
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
He sees it perfectly clearly when he states, "because of people who are trying to undermine" the mission of the NSA, CIA, FBI and other agencies. This is because their mission is to protect the Government, not the people.
I'll tell you who is undermining it. It's the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, and Homeland Security. They have already demonstrated, unequivocally, that they will happily fuck over every last man, woman and child, not just in the US, but around the entire planet, if they could get away with it. The list of abuses is already long, and at no point have they shown any interest in stopping.
The fact that they are accusing unknown people "trying to undermine" them, and that these people are "fueled by their adversaries" just tells you how completely and utterly out to lunch these dimwits are.
They don't seem to understand that, the tighter they squeeze their fist, the more that squeezes out from between their fingers.
We have as President a lying demagogue who ran against "warrantless wiretaps" and "unconstitutional acts" whilst a candidate, but once in office went far beyond what his predecessor did.
Even Bush II didn't have "extrajudicial killings" of US citizens.
Why would us peons be cynical?
The FBI engaged in a massive amount of illegal wiretapping. It was MASSIVE. It was also quite illegal--and completely unpunished. This was organized violation of civil rights--a plain crime.
The FBI engaged in massive surveillance of student demonstrators, including infiltrating student protest movements. This wasn't for suspicion of crime--this was for intelligence. That was plain wrong.
The FBI burgled--there is no other word for it--the office of Daniel Ellsberg and others. That is wrong.
Then there was FBI Director L. Patrick Gray and the Nixon coverup.
AND THEY ASK US WHY WE DON'T TRUST THEM NOT TO VIOLATE OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO PRIVACY?
Oh, come on now...
If you have nothing to hide, why would you be afraid of the authorities?
- the authorities
Holy fuck, seriously?
So the spies and fascists who have been ignoring the Constitution and demanding technology can be less secure so they can fumble around like idiots claiming to make us more secure .. spying on Congress and lying about it ... coming up with the form of perjury known as "parallel construction" (which is perjury because it's intended to lie about if they had legally obtained information or probable cause, and to deny the opportunity to see the evidence) ...
Suddenly these fucking clowns are feeling all misunderstood and don't understand why there is hostility?
I'm sorry, this is Chairman Fucking Mao talking about counter-revolutionary elements who must be purged ... "Blaming resistance on "people who are trying to undermine" the intelligence mission" is code for "all those pinko commies who expect us to respect fucking civil liberties".
Every asshole fascist claims to be a patriot. They're still asshole fascists.
Yeah, right ... tell us another fucking lie.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
'Get up,' said O'Brien. 'Come here.'
Winston stood opposite him. O'Brien took Winston's shoulders between his
strong hands and looked at him closely.
'You have had thoughts of deceiving me,' he said. 'That was stupid.
Stand up straighter. Look me in the face.'
He paused, and went on in a gentler tone:
'You are improving. Intellectually there is very little wrong with you.
It is only emotionally that you have failed to make progress. Tell me,
Winston--and remember, no lies: you know that I am always able to detect
a lie--tell me, what are your true feelings towards Big Brother?'
'I hate him.'
'You hate him. Good. Then the time has come for you to take the last step.
You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him: you must love
him.'
He released Winston with a little push towards the guards.
'Room 101,' he said.
I think what we are seeing here is progress, albeit slow and with a long road ahead. Their stated purpose of having a dialogue is, in itself, an important and positive step forward. Comey's remark on skepticism being fair, but cynicism being problematic, is reasoned and nuanced. I think this is a good sign that the intelligence community is starting to grapple with the need for open discussion, and is making a case towards that end.
The United States was founded and structured around a deep cynicism towards government. I'm surprised members of the intelligence community haven't picked up a history book before.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Taken at face value, it's a very simple statement of how paternalistic and condescending their perspective is. Yes, we do want people to protect us from bad guys - we have police, and we have security agencies - and we give them some slack on how much control they can have, but we don't want them to BECOME bad guys. Why should that be hard to understand? (Assuming, of course, that they're not lying about that too.)
Today's example, fortunately non-fatal: A former tennis star (and former US Olympian) was arrested in a case of mistaken identity. Should be a non-story, except the arresting plainclothes officer chose to make a flying tackle and knock the guy to a concrete sidewalk, when there was no hint of resistance or even awareness on his part (and this happened in front of a big hotel with very clear security video). These "intelligence" people have exactly the same mindset - there's no such thing as overkill.
Seems to me that many of the problems organizations like the FBI think they face stem more from the change from law enforcement to crime prevention. Crime prevention requires massive amounts of data to be collected and ultimately freedoms curtailed for specific individuals who evince a pattern of behavior demonstrated to lead to crime. With organizations like the FBI, NSA, CIA, etc. all tasked with preventing another 9/11/2001, they understandably want the data to be able to proactively root out those individuals who might be likely to pull something like that off.
I'm not saying I agree with what guys like Brennan are asking for, but I am saying that they realize their responsibilities have changed and they are demanding the tools to do so. From their perspective, they probably don't understand how the people can say over and over "you'd better not ever let anything like that happen again but you can't infringe on any of my rights in order to make that happen". To a professional law enforcement officer, even a bureaucrat, that is a contradictory statement. Worsening matters is the ham handed way in which they've chosen to implement everything and how the American people have come to know how these things are being done.
You can't have the kind of safety people seem to expect today without a significant infringement of your rights.
On the other hand, the article is a bit more than the headline. A pretty decent article for Ars, actually, if you read it remembering that these guys have been given a specific job to do.
If by saying
"people who are trying to undermine" the intelligence mission
actually means "Secure their freedom", then yes he's correct.
I thought GM already provided that in many vehicles.
John Brennan was a career CIA analyst, focussing on the Middle East. James Comey was trained as a lawyer, and has been a law clerk, lawyer, and prosecuting attorney.
Neither one is qualified to participate in this discussion - they don't know enough about how encryption works. They need to step aside and let their technical "underlings" speak for them, if they really want to engage in a meaningful dialogue on this topic.
#DeleteChrome
there are more, and more concrete reasons to deny you these things than there are to allow them. I want better reasons than a vague "we can catch bad guys". It's way past time to start releasing specific and detailed accounts of how the post 9/11 power surge in the intelligence community has actually stopped something. Again, fluctuations in the "threat meter" and assurances that "we stopped a threat" are just not instilling any confidence. With the time between terrorist attacks in the U.S. measured in years, I want to see proof that we're not just in a lull. Maybe, just maybe, if you could tie things you want to actual results, people might be more sympathetic... then again, this is government...
I woke up yesterday at 5 am for a call with a colleague in China. Fifteen minutes from quitting time, a critical system died, and I was here until 1 am fixing it. A mile from home, achingly tired and needing a bed, a police car pulled me over for having one brake light out. After 10 minutes of staring at incredibly bright, flashing blue lights in the mirror, they let me go with a warning. Got home, and because of said flashy bright lights, I couldn't go to sleep. So here I am back at work, hour 34 of wakefulness.
From her perspective, the police officer was trying to protect and serve (I know her vaguely through friends and she sounds like a decent person) From my perspective, I'm probably more dangerous to my fellow drivers due to my lack of sleep during rush hour commute than I would be for having 1 (out of 4) rear lights out at 2 am a mile from home. From my perspective (and almost certainly from society's perspective), her actions *did not* protect or serve either myself or society very well.
I don't think the leaders of the NSA, CIA, etc are a bunch of Dr Evil wanna-be's. I suspect they are in fact decent, well-intentioned people. But what from their perspective seems rational, can be contrary to the greater good.
In that, their job is somewhat like mine as a sysadmin. I have never once had someone email me and say "Hey, everything was working great this morning, just wanted to say good job!". But when something breaks, there are a hundred people complaning loudly. There's a fundamental asymmetry there, and it can lead to personal incentives that are in conflict with the greater good.
The NSA/CIA/etc are graded on "how successful they can defeat/thwart the bad guy", and not "doing what is in the best interest of society". Perfect is the enemy of the good, and it's better for society to preserve our hard-won freedoms, even at the cost of the bad guys winning occasionally. But they get yelled at (Congressional hearings, public firing etc.) when they do the right thing, so they do the "right" thing instead.
The "Spy Industry" had their golden chance to do it right after 9/11, and they demonstrated their inability to behave in a manner that honors the cause of freedom and liberty for our citizens. They earned the venom and cynicism by their misbehavior, and until they own up to that, I can't see cause for the American Public giving them a free pass again. Brennan and the rest are seriously in deepest denial if they are truly thinking that the backlash against government spying comes from a desire to undermine the mission of the Three Letter Agencies fueled by our adversaries.
If they want to have keys to our backdoors, they'd better come up with lube.
These people "may be fueled by our adversaries"
When you claim that your political enemies are being 'fueled' by enemies of the state, YOU are the one that is exhibiting "venom and deep cynicism", not your enemies.
The basic problem is that our intelligence enemies have paranoia as a primary job requirement. If you want to protect a country, you must assume the worst and think of the worst so that you can take steps to prevent it. But that does not mean your worst scenarios are true, or even likely. You have to recognize that because it is your job to assume the worst, it is totally reasonable for you to go way too far, and that government MUST reign in the intelligence group from doing so.
Because if your Espionage agency does not intentionally go too far, then they have failed to do their job. Similarly, if your government bows down to the Espionage people, that means the government has failed to do THEIR job.
In the ideal situation, working in Espionage should constantly complain about how the government won't let them take all the necessary steps to protect the people - while realizing that this is a GOOD thing.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
...look at the source. The caption of the article's main photo tells it all:
"The directors of the FBI, CIA, NSA, NGO, DIA, and NRO stand for a group picture with Fox News' Catherine Herridge (second from left) and executives of INRA and AFCEA at the conclusion of their panel discussion at the Intelligence & National Security Summit in Washington on September 10."
The supersilly quotes were directed at Fox News viewers. They were never intended to be taken seriously.
It ain't cynism. It's practicality. There is no such thing as a government-only backdoor. Any backdoor, no matter how you want to secure it, will be in the hands of nefarious groups faster than you might consider possible. We are not talking about some script kiddy hackers, this is the playground of hackers employed and funded by nation states. Nation states that have a vested interest in harming also the United States.
In a nutshell, so even you get it: You can't have a backdoor for the US government only. China and Iran will be able to use it, too.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
TFS title:
Spy Industry Leaders Befuddled Over 'Deep Cynicism' of American Public
Seem to me it could simply have read:
Spy Industry Leaders Befuddled
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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)
FTA: Rogers said, "I don't think we have fundamentally destroyed the public's trust. Some feel that way, but we are accountable to the citizens of the nation, and the nation is counting on us. The nation needs the insights we generate and our computer expertise."
No, you're not accountable to the citizens of the nation, Mr. Rogers. If you were, many of you would be in jail right now. Was James Clapper "held accountable" for the felony crime of lying to Congress?
Once you understand that you're not above the law, and once you truly become accountable to those you ostensibly "serve", then the cynicism will die down. Until then, you're continuing to reinforce that cynicism on your own by your actions, your attempts to hide them, and your willingness to lie about them. You have no one else to blame for it other than yourself.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
...understand.
It all stems from the idea that principles only mean something when you stick to them when its difficult. After 9/11 the intelligence agencies were only to happy to abandon some of our most fundamental principles all in the name of "security."
The irony is that more people died in car accidents over the next 45 days - and yet we dumped some of the most sacred aspects of our country virtually without hesitation - and they were only too eager to justify it. FUCK them.
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It reads like a headline from The Onion.
Korea - clearly a draw. South Korea is a highly successful state in its own right
You left out Greece and Italy in the 1940s / 1950s, which were successfully kept in the US column till the end of the cold war.
Iran in the 1950s was subverted for the US cause - and kept under control until Khomeni came along
You've left out Grenada in the 1980s - Reagan's successful reversal of a Soviet backed coup.
Yugoslavia is mostly a success - and the Kosovo exercise of beating Serbia by air power is a textbook success. Of the 8 republics or bits, Slovenia and Croatia are stable and in the European Union. The rest are largely stable.
Libya's the fault of the Europeans; they forced the intervention - with less than stellar enthusiasm from the US. On the whole the Europeans were right - the alternative would have been a massacre. Instead we've got a divided country and a low level civil war.
So probably the fairest score since the founding of the CIA is of the order of 4-4. Not as good a record - but against far more problematic opponents. Up till WWII simple force was sufficient to win the day - now the joys of asymmetric warfare make it FAR harder. but that's leaving out the overall defeat of the USSR in the cold war; its final defeat released 10 countries from tyranny. So let's go for 14-4 shall we?
I don't normally hold with quoting from fiction, but Firaxis had some damn sharp writers and this resonates *much* more today than it did in 1999.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
When I was in the 4th grade, I learned that "Russia" (meaning the USSR) was evil because they tracked where you went and who you talked to even if you weren't a criminal and because the police just did what they wanted when they wanted and the U.S. was great because none of that happened here.
In other words, the USSR was evil because it did what these assclowns want to do here. How can I possibly see them as anything but a domestic enemy that must be rooted out? They want to turn us into the USSR.