Civil Liberties Expert Argues Snowden Was Wrong (usnews.com)

An anonymous reader writes that in 2014, Geoffrey Stone was given access to America's national security apparatus as a member of the President's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies. Last week Stone, a staunch civil liberties supporter, moderated a live discussion with Edward Snowden from Russia, and this week he actually praised the NSA in a follow-up interview: "The more I worked with the NSA, the more respect I had for them as far as staying within the bounds of what they were authorized to do. And they were careful and had a high degree of integrity... I came to the view that [the programs] were well intentioned, that they were designed in fact to collect information for the purpose of ferreting out potential terrorist plots both in the U.S. and around the world and that was their design and purpose...

"I don't doubt that Snowden was courageous and did what he did for what he thought were good reasons. But I think he was unduly arrogant, didn't understand the limitations of his own knowledge and basically decided to usurp the authority of a democracy."
Meanwhile, a new documentary about Julian Assange opened at the Cannes film festival this week, revisiting how Wikileaks warned Apple that iTunes could be used as a backdoor for spies to infiltrate computers and phones.

Comments

well intentioned?

[Black Parrot]

Good for pavement, I hear.

Re:well intentioned?

[Spazmania]

Exactly. The NSA reached spying on Americans one step at a time, each step thoughtful and with the best of intentions. Some paranoids may be shocked to learn there was neither nefarious intent nor careless disregard of people's rights. Just good intentions and thoughtful compromise.

Fascinating word, compromise. It's represents both the positive give and take of cooperation and the destructive loss of that which is important.

Re:well intentioned?

[Anonymous Coward]

When it comes to governance, good intentions aren't worth the air used to state them. The personnel in these institutions perpetually change, and there is no way to ensure that the new crop have the same good intentions as the prior crop.

So, any overboard powers you grant with the understanding that good intentions will prevent their abuse will eventually be abused.

More commonly than not, the original crop doesn't have good intentions either, they are just pretending in order to deceptively win hearts and minds, with abuse being the primary intention.

So, the trite saying might not be true in all cases, but in this case it applies.

Re:well intentioned?

[Anonymous Coward]

So why did Clapper commit perjury in front of congress to cover up these programs?

Re:well intentioned?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because most people who work for the government do so out of a feeling of patriotism and seeking to improve the common good? Sure there are a88holes in every job, but government jobs traditionally pay less than the civilian sector, many have a higher level of personal risk and those that require security clearances require you to forgo many experiences that the average citizen indulges in without worrying about the risk to their job.
I really don't think the majority of government workers, including the NSA workers, originally took the job because they want to engage in either power trips or voyeurism. I feel fairly confident most just want to do a good job defending their country.
But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Once you can look at everyone's data I imagine the temptation to shut down individuals and groups whose agendas you don't agree with are huge. And we can't for get the few a88holes who are in the system, who might rise to a position of power, as did J. Edgar Hoover.
These people generally aren't evil, they just are the victim of the boiling frog syndrome like the rest of us. In may ways they must be protected from themselves, for out sake and theirs.

Re:well intentioned?

[mspohr]

He had the best, highest, most pure intentions.

Re:well intentioned?

[ChromeAeonium]

The NSA reached spying on Americans one step at a time, each step thoughtful and with the best of intentions.

Bullshit. There is no possible noble justification for spying on and lying to the American public then trying to make an example out of the hero who revealed your treason. If some average person did something like that, say put a camera in a private area, then got caught, saying 'I had good intentions and just wanted to protect them' would look like a pathetic excuse. These assholes were on power trips, not making mistakes with good intentions.

"Civil Liberties Expert"

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously not.

So, post-Snowden

[93 Escort Wagon]

""The more I worked with the NSA, the more respect I had for them as far as staying within the bounds of what they were authorized to do."

Given the furor that was raised due to Snowden's revelations in 2013, it doesn't surprise me that - in 2014 - the NSA was sticking to the letter of the law with regards to their operations.

Re:So, post-Snowden

[clampolo]

The letter of the law would be "unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause" Randomly listening in on people doesn't qualify as "staying within bounds"

Re:So, post-Snowden

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the furor that was raised due to Snowden's revelations in 2013, it doesn't surprise me that - in 2014 - the NSA was sticking to the letter of the law with regards to their operations.

Or, more cynically, that the NSA was making the civil liberties guy think they were sticking to the letter of the law.

Re:So, post-Snowden

[hjf]

That's pretty much the problem. Sticking to the letter of the law instead of the spirit of the law.

Re:So, post-Snowden

[x0ra]

As pointed above, the law in itself might be written (and thought) in such a way it is incompatible with the Bill of Rights, yet, still be applicable because no judge ruled against it because of its secret nature.

Re:So, post-Snowden

[Anonymous Coward]

The government is not a monolithic entity, and it's possible for some parts of it to grow without harming civil liberties. Especially the parts that reign in corporations, such as the FTC can be funded in ways that would make America more free.

"it's possible" , "can be funded", "would make".

Really?

Nice hypothetical answer, and it's really nothing but a No true Scotsman fallacy: no true government would abuse its power. All you did was invent a form of "true" government.

Now, go out and learn about the REALITY of regulatory capture and how the business wind up using the government to help themselves.

Start THINKING, please.

Say what now?

[vux984]

"But I think he was unduly arrogant, didn't understand the limitations of his own knowledge and basically decided to usurp the authority of a democracy"

That argument fails basic logic.

Because of Snowden we know the NSA routinely misled and outright lied to the democracy it was supposedly acting under the authority of?

The "authority of the democracy" had been thoroughly undermined by the NSA. Snowden brought this fact to light.

Re:Say what now?

[guruevi]

You can't vote for or against the NSA, you can only vote or against someone which only informs a representative that may or may not vote the way you want them to. And it's not like you have a whole lot of choice in candidates, the only viable candidates have been and always will be the same people.

thats the problem

[geoskd]

The more I worked with the NSA, the more respect I had for them as far as staying within the bounds of what they were authorized to do. And they were careful and had a high degree of integrity... I came to the view that [the programs] were well intentioned, that they were designed in fact to collect information for the purpose of ferreting out potential terrorist plots both in the U.S. and around the world and that was their design and purpose...

That is the fundamental problem. Almost no one actually believes that the NSA was acting in an unprofessional manner. It is not, and never was the NSA people had specific issues with. The problem is the precedent this sets for future activities because sooner or later, someone comes along who isn't so diligent, and isn't so trustworthy, and they use these programs as precedent to justify all manner of nasty crap.

It should also be noted that the NSA is in a unique position to see what the worldwide effects of overreaching surveillance can be. They, of all the organizations on this planet, get a ring side view of just what oppression can come from universal surveillance. In a very real sense, they should have known better than to set the precedent they tried to set. They cannot justify their actions through the claim of combating terrorism because the situation this precedent would have created has the potential to be far worse than any terrorist organization could ever hope to achieve.

Re:thats the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the fundamental problem. Almost no one actually believes that the NSA was acting in an unprofessional manner.

Remember LOVEINT?

What about recent allegations that many NSA workers are child-porn fiends?

When you operate with basically no oversight whatsoever, what's there to keep you within the bounds of basic professionalism?

Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

>"The more I worked with the NSA, the more respect I had for them as far as staying within the bounds of what they were authorized to do."

"The more money the NSA give me, the more I'm willing to go out and schill for them in public."

Authority of a democracy

[Kohath]

But I think he was unduly arrogant, didn't understand the limitations of his own knowledge and basically decided to usurp the authority of a democracy.

He enabled democracy by telling voters what the government was doing. It's not democracy when leaders hide their actions from voters.

Isn't that adorable...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

So, tell me, how exactly does 'the authority of a democracy' exist when dealing with a program so secret that even the bulk of the congress knew relatively little about it, never mind the electorate at large?

It is nice that his conclusion(and he doesn't think that he is being arrogant in assuming his carefully curated little field trip is sufficiently accurate and representative?) was that the NSA was mostly abiding by the rules they made up, rather than going mad with power; but it's simply smarmy nonsense to pretend that anything that clandestine has any meaningful relationship to democracy. On a good day, such an enterprise might be an unaccountable black box more or less attempting to do what they interpret a democratic society's mandate for them to be; but you could say the exact same thing about a hereditary despot who tries to govern more or less according to the interests of the population as he understands them: aligned with the objectives of a democracy only by their own preference, if at all.

Potemkin Village

[mentil]

The NSA led Stone through a figurative Potemkin village.

Just doing its job

[Spazmania]

"This is not to say that the NSA should have had all of the authorities it was given. [...] The NSA did its job -- it implemented the authorities it was given."

Just did its job. I've heard something like that before. If I can only remember where...

Re: Just doing its job

[Anonymous Coward]

The NSA probably did stay within what the courts authorized. I don't see why anyone would doubt this.

The FISA court is a rubber stamp. They almost never reject an NSA request. Why would the NSA go around the FISA court when they know the court will say yes? That would be stupid.

The problem is the FISA court isn't following the law, sometimes carving out ridiculously large exceptions to the law and the Constitution. They legislate from the bench, and all of this is done in secret.

As I understand it, lawyers are appointed and paid to argue against the NSA before the FISA court. The problem is these lawyers are paid by the government to argue against the government, which is a conflict of interest. I'd say that because there's no reason to expect those lawyers to mount a serious defense, it should be legal for someone else like lawyers funded by the EFF or ACLU to instead argue before the FISA court.

I'd also say that it makes sense to allow secrecy for a limited period of time when a warrant is issued for surveillance of a particular suspect. You probably don't want to tip off a terrorist that you're specifically monitoring them. For general surveillance, when the scope goes beyond a specific individual, there should be no secrecy at all.

Re: Just doing its job

[Sarten-X]

The FISA court is a rubber stamp. They almost never reject an NSA request. Why would the NSA go around the FISA court when they know the court will say yes? That would be stupid.

This was debunked around the last time Slashdot covered it. I don't know if the debunking ever made it here, though. I saw it from SwiftOnSecurity, I think. In short, the FISA rubber-stamped most requests only after heavy revision that happened before the final request was submitted. The reviewers looked at requests, had a hearty laugh, and suggested changes to the search scope so it wouldn't be rejected.

Back when I worked in government contracting, we'd do the same thing. We'd get the test criteria from the customer and make sure our tests passed before the government representatives showed up. Our record never showed any failures, because they never made it to the final scored test.

As I understand it, lawyers are appointed and paid to argue against the NSA before the FISA court. The problem is these lawyers are paid by the government to argue against the government, which is a conflict of interest.

There's no evidence that any such conflict has actually affected anything. The government is not a coherent entity. It is a multitude of departments, agencies, and hierarchies, usually with very intentional disagreements in purpose. If one guy is being paid expressly to advocate for human rights, and another guy is being paid to advocate for security, there's no reason to assume either will shirk their duties, regardless of where their paycheck comes from.

Who to believe...

[DeVilla]

Who do we believe? The fellow who worked at/for the NSA back when they still have the cover of secrecy of a "pre-Snowden" world? Or the fellow who went for a rid-a-long after the NSA had knew they were being watched? One of them provided a bunch of evidence of NSA behavior. The other tells us they mean well.

The moment we were hearing the words "Unconstitutional but legal" the debate should have ended.