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No new boss at NSA until it answers questions on buying location, browsing data

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Re: No new boss at NSA until it answers questions on buying location, browsing data

#191

Post by appplication »

remram wrote: post #190
appplication wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t have that luxury in the US. It’s not that voters don’t want it, it’s that there is no feasible way to get there (without structural change to our voting system). Sure, US voters like the above comment have generally developed strong political identities to one of the two parties. But there is no chance for any third party under the current system. It allows for overwhelmingly entrenched party lines. Should y…

This is such a wrong take. Sure, you have to vote for a single party, but that doesn't mean you can't support specific ideas no matter where they come from. And not even that, mostly voting does nothing either, because winner-takes-all: the way to be heard is packing up and moving to another state. Make a blue state bigger demographically because voting blue in a red state does nothing (and vice versa).

I’m not sure I see how my comment is at odds with yours. As you point out, voting and ideological support are orthogonal concepts, if intertwined. I agree with you there.

As far as voting not mattering, it both does and it doesn’t. Your individual vote may not matter, but convincing large groups of people their vote does not matter does matter and has also been historically exploited as a voter suppression technique.

There’s a lot of game theory one could reason about optimizing your ability to participate in the US democracy, but unfortunately the outcomes of that exercise are generally quite depressing.

Re: No new boss at NSA until it answers questions on buying location, browsing data

#193

Post by autoexec »

barrysteve wrote: post #142
Dalewyn wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans are Constitutionally guaranteed a right to privacy in the home, among other rights, and that's what the NSA is hung up on. The NSA spying on foreigners, who enjoy no protections from the Constitution, is part of its intended agenda.

The NSA does not reveal what technology it uses or how they use it. Snowden had to leak that information, for it to come to light. The public has no way of knowing if the NSA follows the law and the theoretically available technology for the NSA to use, means it's extremely unlikely they have restrained themselves from gazing into your private life at home.

I think Snowden proved that the NSA does routinely spy on the American public and the fact that the director of the NSA outright lied to congress under oath and never faced any consequence for it shows that the public will never be allowed to know the truth and that congress will never be able to stop them.

Re: No new boss at NSA until it answers questions on buying location, browsing data

#194

Post by injeolmi_love »

ericmay wrote: post #185
injeolmi_love wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s limits to property rights even among the most extreme voluntaryist political philosophers. Rothbard, a famous anarchocapitalist, wrote extensively about why property rights don’t extend to slaveowners. Unlike private households and businesses, public companies only exist due to licenses from the state. These include limitation on liability, protection for many types of property, and much, much more. The prote…

I don’t think I argued that there weren’t limits to property rights. Did I? > Unlike private households and businesses, public companies only exist due to licenses from the state. There are a few problems with this. To start, private business and private households also exist due to licensure from the state. The distinction between public and private is a matter of technicality, not categorical difference. The monopo…

Humans can be born without a license, and frequently are. Same with private businesses. Public companies cannot exist without a license. Just because birth, household formation, and private business are heavily regulated in some times and places does not mean they always are. We humans were all stateless tribes once, and some of us still are.

Regarding your second issue, we’re in agreement. Yes it’s true under capitalism that with the heavy regulation of private individuals and firms, everything becomes the public sphere. Your house becomes a public place where your actions are subject to judgement.

Re: No new boss at NSA until it answers questions on buying location, browsing data

#196

Post by autoexec »

rtpg wrote: post #21
School-Cotton wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NSA doesn’t follow the law, so why would that matter?

People say this but probably underestimate how much the NSA at least pretends to follow the letter of the law compared to intelligence services in almost any other nation on the planet. Them following the law is entirely downstream from Congress doing things like what Wyden is doing. Their existence is predicated on congressional satisfaction, and many congresspeople are at least fellow travellers to the practical fr…

> Them following the law is entirely downstream from Congress doing things like what Wyden is doing. Their existence is predicated on congressional satisfaction

The director of the NSA outright lied to congress while under oath and has faced zero consequences for it. There is zero meaningful oversight in the US and congress is absolutely powerless to do anything but bitch and moan about it publicly just like the rest of the American people. That was what drove Snowden to finally leak what he knew. He saw that congress had no means of knowing what was happening and therefore they couldn't do anything to stop it.

Not even the president can do anything about the NSA. Obama campaigned on ending the mass surveillance of the American people. Presidential candidates tell a lot of lies while trying to get elected, and Obama was an effective orator, but he was also a civil rights attorney and taught constitutional law. I believed he meant what he was saying when he said that the NSA was ignoring the law whenever it was convent for them, and that he would oppose any bill that included retroactive immunity for telecom companies that were handing over American's data to the NSA illegally.

Of course, once he got into office everything changed and he very quickly spoke out in favor in the NSA, he vastly expanded their powers to spy on Americans, and he granted immunity to those same telecom companies. I figure that means that once he was elected the NSA showed Obama some super secret information that convinced him that violating the constitution was necessary or perhaps he was shown exactly how much dirt they had on him and his family and he was threatened to fall in line.

Either way, it doesn't appear that anyone at any level of government can oppose the NSA in a meaningful way.

Re: No new boss at NSA until it answers questions on buying location, browsing data

#197

Post by creer »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #70
tempodox wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when questioned, they lie to courts and Congress with impunity.

Clapper and Brennan should absolutely be in jail. Instead, they are still treated as respectable authorities by our media.

Which most likely is part of the problem. There is no major outcry about any of this. It's a mere inconvenience to agencies, congress, courts, press, etc - nobody seems to care much about it.

Re: No new boss at NSA until it answers questions on buying location, browsing data

#198

Post by Eumenes »

krapp wrote: post #174
Eumenes wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The project seeks to revive a Trump administration effort to include a question of whether an individual counted in the decennial Census is a U.S. citizen. The census population count is used to reapportion congressional seats and the Electoral College. This is incredibly based. Letting tens of millions of illegal immigrants be counted towards appropriating congressional seats/electoral votes is literal insanity.

>Letting tens of millions of illegal immigrants be counted towards appropriating congressional seats/electoral votes is literal insanity. No, it isn't. Those people hold residence in the US, they work and they pay taxes, they exist as the persistent underclass in the American economy. If we're going to allow and maintain that underclass - which, despite rhetoric to the contrary, we clearly will, then they deserve to…

They should be deported immediately. Imagine believing they're actually seeking asylum and not just opportunistic economic migrants. Every nation in the world has a secure border but for some reason the US can't. Wonder why.

Re: No new boss at NSA until it answers questions on buying location, browsing data

#199

Post by remram »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #192

wait, if the NSA needs to buy location data, does that mean they can't get it directly from the mobile phone carrier?

They could get it with a warrant, buying it allows them to circumvent due process entirely.

Re: No new boss at NSA until it answers questions on buying location, browsing data

#200

Post by barrysteve »

eurebus wrote: post #144
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a world where democracies have enemies, how do you not have govt secrets?

Security through obscurity is inferior to security through transparency. Imagine if every interaction with the government; every contract, negotiation, communication was a matter of easily searchable public record. Try sneaking a little graft in there and get laughed at in public. It'd be great.

Security through obscurity is fine if everyone can do it.

Security for me, clarity into you, is a big problem. We should build unsurveillable homes.

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