Earlier quoted context omitted.
The USA is a federal republic, not a democracy.
These are not mutually exclusive categories.
Yet, materially different.
Secret FBI Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data from Scores of Companies
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Re: Secret FBI Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data from Scores of Companies
#22We can't keep pretending this is still a Democracy when we have a completely unaccountable NSA/CIA/FBI that seems to repeatedly hide their mistakes and the dubious legality of their sources & methods behind the classification and national security walls.
It was very eye opening to me when I had a conversation with a family member who is retired CIA/NSA/Rand. Not a low level person. I was asking them about when President Clinton asked about the UFO's, and why the president was not told the answers he was seeking. Their reply: the presidency is not the highest security clearance and the president does not have a right to know everything. I wonder if that's what the fou…
The result is pretty simple. The intelligence agencies become a fourth branch of government and likely the dominant one.
It would be interesting to better understand the dynamics between the military and the NSA/CIA/FBI/etc..
I suppose that one good thing that came out of the 2016 election was that it become more obvious that the intelligence services run their own domestic policy, what I don't understand is how monolithic that newish branch of government is.
Re: Secret FBI Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data from Scores of Companies
#23We can't keep pretending this is still a Democracy when we have a completely unaccountable NSA/CIA/FBI that seems to repeatedly hide their mistakes and the dubious legality of their sources & methods behind the classification and national security walls.
> We can't keep pretending this is still a Democracy when we have a completely unaccountable NSA/CIA/FBI that seems to repeatedly hide their mistakes and the dubious legality of their sources & methods behind the classification and national security walls. And people still call Snowden a traitor for revealing this kind of practice in 2013.
The claim that Snowden is a traitor is inseparable from the idea that the government and the people are separate entities, so that it's possible to betray one in service of the other. In that world Snowden would be a traitor to the US and everybody else at the NSA would be a traitor to the people. Obviously such a thing is only possible if democracy breaks down to the point where the government no longer expresses the will of the people, and if that is happening anywhere, it's happening in the high clearance world where voters never get to see whether or not they're happy with what's going on.
Re: Secret FBI Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data from Scores of Companies
#24We can't keep pretending this is still a Democracy when we have a completely unaccountable NSA/CIA/FBI that seems to repeatedly hide their mistakes and the dubious legality of their sources & methods behind the classification and national security walls.
> We can't keep pretending this is still a Democracy when we have a completely unaccountable NSA/CIA/FBI that seems to repeatedly hide their mistakes and the dubious legality of their sources & methods behind the classification and national security walls. And people still call Snowden a traitor for revealing this kind of practice in 2013.
... and fault him for not using the "appropriate channels" to air his grievances. It's too soon to know what will come of the current whistleblower kerfuffle, but it's making the "appropriate channel" take look more foolish by the hour.
Re: Secret FBI Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data from Scores of Companies
#25We can't keep pretending this is still a Democracy when we have a completely unaccountable NSA/CIA/FBI that seems to repeatedly hide their mistakes and the dubious legality of their sources & methods behind the classification and national security walls.
I'm not sure what kind of accountability you're looking for that doesn't already exist.
IC Oversight [1] is a massive and well known program, which requires extensive yearly training from every IC member and even more from supervisors and executives.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Com...
Re: Secret FBI Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data from Scores of Companies
#26We can't keep pretending this is still a Democracy when we have a completely unaccountable NSA/CIA/FBI that seems to repeatedly hide their mistakes and the dubious legality of their sources & methods behind the classification and national security walls.
It was very eye opening to me when I had a conversation with a family member who is retired CIA/NSA/Rand. Not a low level person. I was asking them about when President Clinton asked about the UFO's, and why the president was not told the answers he was seeking. Their reply: the presidency is not the highest security clearance and the president does not have a right to know everything. I wonder if that's what the fou…
> the presidency is not the highest security clearance
Presidents usually have the same clearance as the highest clearance.
> the president does not have a right to know everything
This is true, clearances are need-to-know compartmentalization. I was only briefed on stuff required for my job... and would often be told something was outside of scope.
Re: Secret FBI Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data from Scores of Companies
#27We can't keep pretending this is still a Democracy when we have a completely unaccountable NSA/CIA/FBI that seems to repeatedly hide their mistakes and the dubious legality of their sources & methods behind the classification and national security walls.
It was very eye opening to me when I had a conversation with a family member who is retired CIA/NSA/Rand. Not a low level person. I was asking them about when President Clinton asked about the UFO's, and why the president was not told the answers he was seeking. Their reply: the presidency is not the highest security clearance and the president does not have a right to know everything. I wonder if that's what the fou…
I wonder if that's what the founders had in mind when they formed our government.
FWIW, the founders didn't intend for presidents to have nearly as much power as they have today.
Perhaps you can research intelligence operations during the Revolutionary War to glean some of their thoughts on how intelligence and the intelligence community should be set up. Of course, I don't know if our founding fathers were burdened with the task of maybe or maybe not covering up the existence of UFO's. :)
Re: Secret FBI Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data from Scores of Companies
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's still a democracy, just a very sick one. The United States is like a 243-year-old engine with a desperate need of an oil change. That oil is us... ...ok. Horrible metaphor but you get it. Not calling you out just saying just don't let cynicism take hold. Remember, we pushed Bush out and he was a war criminal.
> Remember, we pushed Bush out and he was a war criminal But never tried him, Rumsfeld or the rest - the only ones who really got a kick to their butts were those implicated in Abu Ghraib. And now you elected a president who not only is a serial liar, probably a sexual assaulter ("grab them by the ..."), but also someone who is involved in multiple lawsuits and probably either unwittingly (the satellite photo) or wil…
As Secretary of State and EPA Director, Rex Tillerson and Scott Pruitt did massive damage to our diplomatic and environmental bureaucratic corps. see https://www.vox.com/world/2018/3/13/16029526/rex-tillerson-f...
Of course I couldn't deny there are deeper parts of the state than the Secretary of State
Re: Secret FBI Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data from Scores of Companies
#29We can't keep pretending this is still a Democracy when we have a completely unaccountable NSA/CIA/FBI that seems to repeatedly hide their mistakes and the dubious legality of their sources & methods behind the classification and national security walls.
I would say the western intelligence community actively created rumors of the Russia scare 2.0. This should have severe consequences on every level of relevant institutions.
Thanks for pointing this out.. I (like most other US citizens) have zero idea of what things are actually like in Russia. The news reminds us daily that Russia is a frozen hellscape filled with miserable savages, Russians are the 'bad guys' of choice in a disproportionate amount of high visibility movies and Netflix shows (Stranger Things season 3 comes to mind), our school system teaches kids next to nothing about the country.
It's a bit reminiscent of North Korea's daily news blasts showing fabricated footage of how miserable life in SK and USA is. Probably not as extreme a slant going on here, but there's an awful lot of anti-Russia sentiment floating around with no readily apparent basis in fact.
Re: Secret FBI Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data from Scores of Companies
#30Based on what I read online in discussions and in the news, there's little nuance into the circumstances around the data retrieval:
- Is it related to someone stealing classified information, spying / or spy cell, or could be planning a terrorist attack? In that case, they may be more sophisticated, or the investigation shifts to preventing something from occurring in the future, or its a matter of trying to figure out what a cell of foreigners from Russia/etc. are trying to get.
- Is it something related to a drug investigation? If it's involving drugs, countries everywhere have roving wiretap abilities because druglords use burner phones, and like above, they go to great lengths to hide / mask what they're doing as if it's legitimate business.
- Is it related to any other criminal investigation? Police has more ability to intercept communications than civilians. There is a whole world inside here of nuances. An example in USA is subpoena'ing email records where unopened email is treated as abandoned, they don't require a search warrant. Not that there's many cases prosecuted relying on abandoned email retrieved that'd be thrown out if the law changed :P
- Protect/regulation around data of medical (HIPAA in US, I think GDPR in EU), children (COPPA in US)
- Normal consumer privacy protections (GDPR in EU)
Here's an example of Germany's constitution (Article 10 [Privacy of correspondence, posts and telecommunications] , https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-en/chancellor/basic-law-...):
> (1) The privacy of correspondence, posts and telecommunications shall be inviolable.
But, then it says:
> (2) Restrictions may be ordered only pursuant to a law. If the restriction serves to protect the free democratic basic order or the existence or security of the Federation or of a Land, the law may provide that the person affected shall not be informed of the restriction and that recourse to the courts shall be replaced by a review of the case by agencies and auxiliary agencies appointed by the legislature.
The above basically gets you what most countries have anyway, so maybe it wouldn't address the concerns people have. If there was a constitutional check for privacy over the wire/data in the cloud it'd be upheld at the judicial level to check the executive / legislative branch. However, there'd still be mechanisms where the government can access data, one way or another. It'd probably end up having the phraseology around them narrowly tailored, there'd be less swept in when decisions are in a gray area.