What I'm refering to is exactly what I said I'm refering to: the full spectrum of issues related to unchecked executive power. In other words, I'm not looking at these as seperate problems which can be stacked from bad to worse. Which is not to say people can't consider things in these terms, just that I'm not doing this. I'm doing what mathematicians do when they look for the most general yet concice expression to cover a range of instances.
And yes, that obviously includes the NSA. But it also includes the transformation of the CIA into a paramilitary force, the transformation of the FBI from a federal level police force into a domestic intelligence agency focused on "national security", secret interpretations of law surrounding the the Patriot Act, unaccountable militarization of police forces up to and including the offices of prosecutors (tactics driven largely by the Drug War), and of course, the explosive growth of what has become the world's largest prison system, which we chillingly refer to as 'an industry' as though there were anything productive about destroyig people's minds using solitary confinement. And let's not forget prisons that operate completely outside the law, where the normal rules about trials, evidence, and expediency are a abandoned altogether. Topping it all off is the culture of fear, suspicion, and paranoia that pervades the agencies involved. The unprecedented use of the Espionage Act to terrify whistle blowers, actual or potential, fits squarely with a general pattern of escalating abuse. Indeed, that's one of the most frightening aspect of this entire development since it indicates that the people at the heart of this know that what they're doing is wrong and that it won't stand up to public scrutiny, but they're doing it anyway.
HN is full of people attuned to systems. And what we're seeing here is a system getting completely, dangerously, wildly out of control. And not just any system, but one that keeps coming back to work done by a lot of people here. Even if it weren't for these unnerving personal connections, HN readers are far more likely than most to recognize deep systemic problems when they occur, and to see them in those terms. That leads to a desire to identify root causes, which leads to a general problem in the inescapable lawlessness of the Executive Branch. In essence it is treating the problems and conditions of normal life as though they were a formal state of war, and adopting the vastly more expansive and unaccountable set of powers that actual war permits.
That must end.