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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:
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.
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...
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.
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".
"Knowledge is power." Every government understands that. In the USA, so many businesses also know it, that most of the population knows it. PLUS, just about everyone in the USA is also told, "Power corrupts", and how important it is for citizens to be aware of what government officials are doing. There need be no cynicism in simple logic!
Now, if the government could prove it has a way to possess knowledge without becoming corrupted by the power it represents, the situation might be different. Good luck with that!
That's because he couldn't spell "extrajudicial".
You are welcome on my lawn.
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
This isn't "deep cynicism". This is the Founding Fathers' hard-won experience in freeing themselves from oppression.
The King, George III, used all kinds of tricks to keep opposition down. Warrantless searches, "general warrants", allowing them to root around your house and papers until they find something they can tag you with, which would be applied to uppity folks. Outlawing of speech. Outlawing or restriction of presses, the literal mechanical method of mass producing speech for distribution, a backdoor method of censorship. Using one particular popular denomination of one particular religion to stir outrage and knock down other opponents through religious laws.
These a d dozens of other concepts are not freaking cynicism!
Attention NSA leaders and politicians: You are constructing a panopticon (go look it up) that is literally more powerful than that which was cynically portrayed in "1984". With no mechanical methods to prevent, or even track its abuse, you cannot guarantes that the 1 out of 1000 agent who is a G. Gordon Liddy type won't abuse the spying to report on political opposition to his patron.
"Imagine a boot stamping on a human face...forever." Ancient Rome and Greece, 1930s Germany, these are democracies that handed over emergency power and The People never got it back.
The Founding Fathers knew the only way to guarantee (as far as such is possible) this cannot happen is to simply blanket forbid these powers to government. Now you want Eye in the Sky crap, too?
Yes I am sure you all fancy yourselves The Untouchables, but it's not you We, with our Founding Fathers hats, are worried about. It is those who would abuse these marvelous tools for dictatorship.
Do you think Putin, to whom you are selling Eye in the Sky to, won't abuse it to track opposition?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
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
Why not "People who don't trust the people are surprised that the people doesn't trust them either."
Trust is a two way street.
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.
The, where is the American Dictatorship?
Where are the death squads and ditches full of dead bodies?
Where are the crying survivors hoping to find their disappeared loved ones?
The problem is that the gas chambers didn't start claiming bodies on January 5, 1919, when the German Worker's Party was founded. No genocide occurred on July 28, 1921, when Adolf Hitler was elected party chairman. On November 8th, 1923, the rest of the world shrugged at (even if they were aware of) the Munich Beer Hall Putsch. No Jews fled the country on December 20th, 1924 when Hitler was released from the prison where he wrote Mein Kampf. The government of Germany showed no real concern in 1925, when Hitler re-founded the previously banned Nazi party. No death squads suddenly started roaming the streets after September 14, 1930 when the Nazis gained a significant representation in the legislature. No crying survivors searched for their loved ones on January 30, 1933, as Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor. Perhaps some concern was raised in February 28th, 1933 when government suspended civil liberties, but, hey, the main government building had been the victim of arson - the country was under attack, so suspension of civil liberties seems reasonable, no? And besides, where was the evidence of death squads and ditches full of dead bodies? And on March 23, 1933 when the parliament gave the Chancellor sweeping powers, it was passed by a large margin. "No, Hitler's not a dictator, he just has emergency powers, granted to him by the legislature. You Communists, complaining about it and weakening the ability of our government to exercise their duly appointed capabilities. Besides, they're just *emergency* powers, and will expire in four years ..."
The problem is that gross infringement of rights probably isn't going to happen with you waking up one morning with some oppressive regime goose-stepping through the streets. It's much more likely that it will creep up slowly. Germans in the '20s and early '30s all could have argued "Where is the German Dictatorship? Where are the death squads and ditches full of dead bodies? Where are the crying survivors hoping to find their disappeared loved ones?" The big atrocities didn't happen overnight, they only occurred once the Nazis has cemented their power and it was hopeless for anyone in Germany to resist them.
There were plenty of warning signs *in retrospect* that Hitler and the Nazis were bad apples - hell, as mentioned, the Nazi party was even banned at one point in time. The problem was that *at the time* no one took the red flags seriously. "Well, the Nazis haven't genocided anyone yet .. I guess they're okay." "Well, theoretically he *can* commit gross atrocities, but that would be crazy, so we don't need to worry about it."
I'm certainly not saying that any current government - American or otherwise - is as bad as the Nazis. I'm not even saying that they are definitely, probably, possibly, or even vaguely on the road in that direction. What I am saying is that "they haven't instituted a brutal, oppressive regime" isn't a ringing endorsement. If you *were* going to flagrantly violate someone's rights, you'd make sure to hide that fact until you know no one could oppose you. If an American Dictatorship ever does come about, at the point in time that there are death squads, ditches and crying survivors, it's likely going to be too late for anyone to do anything. The time to act is not when the megalomaniacs are in charge of the military and all the government and can deport your to an interment camp for disagreeing with them. The time to act is when they're a fringe group in a remote province, or minor players in the government, trying to extend their power by questionable means. An ounce of prevention, and all that.
"Besides, he looks like such a sweet young man. Who would he ever harm?"