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Court Troubled By Surveillance Excesses At FBI, NSA (politico.com)
schwit1 quotes a report from Politico: In a just-released court opinion, a federal court judge overseeing government surveillance programs said he was "extremely concerned" about a series of incidents in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Security Agency deviated from court-approved limits on their snooping activities. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Judge Thomas Hogan sharply criticized the two agencies over the episodes, referred to by intelligence gatherers as "compliance incidents." He also raised concerns that the government had taken years to bring the NSA-related issues to the court's attention and he said that delay might have run afoul of the government's duty of candor to the court. Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice to reveal whether or not they ever forced a company to provide technical surveillance assistance in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
When it reaches the point where you are forced to cooperate and keep quiet about it at basically gunpoint, it's too damn late for being "concerned". What's next, "strong condemnation"? NSA, FBI and CIA (and others) are criminal organizations, and should be disbanded, stripped of all resources, and those responsible should be tried for running an organized crime syndicate, simply enough. What the hell does your "troubled" accomplish? Zip. It's to keep you idiots in the illusion that they are doing something about it.
When the FISA court starts questioning how the FBI and the NSA are doing their job you know there's a problem. I think this is the first time I've ever heard a FISA judge question the governments credibility albeit indirectly describing it as a lack of candor. The surveillance programs need to be brought out into the light and the FISA court need to be abolished, it's a dark government corner that needs to see the light of day.
"The court was extremely concerned about NSA's failure to comply with its minimization procedures—and potentially" a provision in federal law
So, the FBI and NSA both went beyond the scope of the court's instructions and may have violated the law. "Extremely concerned?" yeah there's nothing wrong here.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
If you like authoritarianism and hate freedom so much, then go somewhere else and stop ruining my country.
But for some reasons, people don't like this method of rooting out terrorism -- at least if it is happening at their own country. (In other countries, apparently, this method is often applied, and it is hailed to be a Good Thing[tm]).
So no, for some reasons we like to withheld some tools from people tasked with a job, though the tools seem to be very effective. They have some very problematic side effects.
When it comes to rooting out terrorist cells and keeping our citizens safe, I don't understand why we are trying to handcuff the people we've tasked with doing this. We've given them a job to do and withheld the tools they need to do it effectively.
The reason is that if they are not regulated and monitored (what you call handcuffing) they will exceed the scope of their mandate. They will spy for political, personal, and criminal reasons. They will do things with their powers other than rooting out terrorists and keeping people safe. Those with power are prone to abuse it. We cannot assume they are all benevolent or wise. So there must be limits on their power, and this is one of them.
I would also point out that the ends never justify the means; the ends are the means. The way in which you go about something determines the outcome. If I told you I wanted to build a functioning car engine out of cheese, would you say the ends justify the means? No, because the means I am using will not bring about the desired end. Likewise if I say I want to bring peace to a region by killing most of the people there, we cannot say the ends justify the means because killing people does not bring peace; only the choice not to kill brings peace. So there should be no question as to whether the ends justify the means. The question should be whether a given course of action will bring about the desired result and what the side effects will be. In the case of surveillance stopping terrorism, I don't think that question has been adequately answered.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
ditto, spoken like an anonymous coward. One who's perfectly willing to toss civil liberties in the name of an extreme edge case that's less likely than being struck by lighting, twice, on the same day.
Oh, and one more thing. We have more than one goal. We could stop all traffic fatalities by banning vehicles. But we would lose so much convenience and utility that the trade off would not be worth it. So in talking about the ends justifying the means, we have to not only make sure that our means will result in the desired end but also that we don't lose something more valuable in the process (like our privacy and freedom in the case of surveillance).
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
One of the best episodes of Star Trek TNG was The Drumhead. An explosion in the Enterprise's dilithium chamber leads to an investigation by Admiral Satie. At first, the investigation uncovers an actual Romulan spy named J'Dan, though he denies causing the explosion. That leads Picard and Satie to question the crew members who associated with the J'Dan. That leads them to suspect another crewman named Simon Tarses, whom Satie believes is concealing information. Meanwhile, evidence is found showing that the explosion was caused by wear and tear rather than sabotage. Instead of closing the matter, Satie interrogates Tarses in public and forces him to admit concealing that his grandfather was Romulan, ruining Tarses' career. Satie uses that admission as a pretext to expand interrogations, eventually interrogating Picard publicly and accusing him of being a traitor. Finally, another Admiral sees that the investigation has become a disgrace and puts an end to the interrogations.
It can be seen as a remarkably accurate allegory for surveillance in the western world. It's completely reasonable to carry out investigations of terrrorists and those who are reasonably suspected of terrorism. Investigating actual terrorist plots and stopping them clearly does help keep us safe. But we've long since moved on from that to suspecting everyone of terrorism. That's why most of us are subjected to the post-9/11 enhanced screening at airports. That's why the NSA collected and demanded access to metadata on everyone's communications. That's why the government wants backdoors in everyone's encryption so they can access private communications and data. At what point do we say that the surveillance and treating everyone as a terror suspect is a disgrace and demand that this stop?
Because this is America, not USSR. Freedom is more important than your agenda du jour, and that's even in spite of so many people voting Fear-Party.
There are plenty of other countries ruled with totally different priorities, to serve citizens who have a values than Americans. They can do their thing; we do ours.
About 220 years ago, the people of the USA revolted against their God-appointed ruler precisely because they objected to His Majesty's representatives doing "whatever it took" with "whatever tools they needed" to root out treasonable offences. And the term "treason" back then could be applied to just about anything at the time up to and probably including spitting on the pavement.
They wrote very explicit restrictions on what was and wasn't acceptable behavior in the investigation of and prosecution of crimes and wrote them with the mindset that it was better that 1000 criminals should go free tather than one innocent person be punished.
And they earned the name of the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.
Somewhere along the line, however, the streak of courage that led a small group of colonies to revolt against an empire drained out. Now the USA is the land of the Cowards and on track to become Home of the Slaves.
And the irony of it is, since their forebears made it possible to own guns, they'll think that they're still free because they're slaves with guns. Never realizing that it isn't the gun that makes you free.