America’s Open Wound
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America’s Open Wound
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Re: America’s Open Wound
#2Did any American read this without alarm? If so, why not?
Re: America’s Open Wound
#3it is not clear what could be done should an intelligence agency turn rogue, and become operationally independent from the government. It's basically a non-democratic power centre which - because it is not subject to elections - will always outlast any politician, and because of the nature of the work, has vast powers of direct and indirect influence.
Good job that this is not the case in the US
Re: America’s Open Wound
#4We have known for many years the CIA is awful. Get rid of it. We can achieve national security goals via alternate means.
It's probably going to get me banned, but we know they interfere in foreign elections. Why is it such a long shot to believe they don't interfere locally?
Re: America’s Open Wound
#5Did any American read this without alarm? If so, why not?
[flagged]
Re: America’s Open Wound
#6it is not clear what could be done should an intelligence agency turn rogue, and become operationally independent from the government. It's basically a non-democratic power centre which - because it is not subject to elections - will always outlast any politician, and because of the nature of the work, has vast powers of direct and indirect influence. Good job that this is not the case in the US
It gets extra fun when you realize that all of this also applies to the police.
Re: America’s Open Wound
#7it is not clear what could be done should an intelligence agency turn rogue, and become operationally independent from the government. It's basically a non-democratic power centre which - because it is not subject to elections - will always outlast any politician, and because of the nature of the work, has vast powers of direct and indirect influence. Good job that this is not the case in the US
It gets extra fun when you realize that all of this also applies to the police.
And now google "J. Edgar Hoover blackmail" and despair...
Re: America’s Open Wound
#8No post body was provided.
Re: America’s Open Wound
#9it is not clear what could be done should an intelligence agency turn rogue, and become operationally independent from the government. It's basically a non-democratic power centre which - because it is not subject to elections - will always outlast any politician, and because of the nature of the work, has vast powers of direct and indirect influence. Good job that this is not the case in the US
It's worse, because intelligence agencies surveil politicians, and can manipulate both them directly and the elections that get them their jobs. It's inevitable that the government will be controlled by the person at the highest levels of surveillance (the unsurveilled one) in a world of complete surveillance. Surveillance gets you power, and more power gives you better ability to exploit and increase surveillance.
SF idea: The secrecy around your intelligence budget rises along with the size of your intelligence budget. Eventually the intelligence budget completely disappears, and people forget that there ever were intelligence agencies. But that's only because everything is now actually part of the intelligence budget, and the publicly-released budget numbers are determined by an team for the purpose of creating popular support for current initiatives, creating popular rage at troublesome trends, and designing election outcomes.
Re: America’s Open Wound
#10We have known for many years the CIA is awful. Get rid of it. We can achieve national security goals via alternate means. It's probably going to get me banned, but we know they interfere in foreign elections. Why is it such a long shot to believe they don't interfere locally?
> Why is it such a long shot to believe they don't interfere locally?
Because this goes strongly against the culture of the organization?
People are funny. They may be willing to bend any law and/or see themselves as above the law in some aspects (see i.e. the Iran/contra affair), yet will honor-bind themselves to other ways.
Because at the end of the day they want to be the heros, the good guys.
And the C.I.A. is an organization, so people within it are bound to a culture which is part of the organization. They might be perfectly willing to betray the American people (as you or I might see it), but they will not betray the C.I.A.
Part of C.I.A. is that it operates outside of US territory.