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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
...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-
"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...
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".
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.
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?"