Senate Why do we complain about the NSA

Criticism is valid. You can provide a critique and you can provide a critique with alternatives. One is criticism and the other is alternatives. They're two different things.

 

Not you, sport, but rather the Guardian chap in the interview.

As for the Oxbridge stuff, it was a hotbed of homosexuality and Communism as you well know, and bugger me (ha! A pun!) if Burgess, Maclean, Philby et al didn't end up spying for Mother Russia.

You said this: "it's pretty fair to assume that the most intrusion any of us are likely to have had is a quick, cursory check after raising a flag or two."

I take no issue with this - on the off chance any of us raise a flag or two, this is what happens. There's no file on boring Americans who are nonetheless a touch miffed about this, as they somehow like to flatter themselves with (see also: LaMent, Victims; One point five, Rogue). It's simply that as they go looking for coded messages between villains if their name comes out it's checked and then checked off a list. Easy as that.

I think the fact we've got the Security Service and the SIS and Official Secrets Act and all that makes us less upset over nothing than our cousins in the US. Plus I had a positive vetted clearance from my time as a humble servant of the Commonwealth so there's little the secret squirrels didn't know about me.

There's plenty wrong with it. You don't like something because you don't quite understand its operation or scope (nor would you be expected to, as you've not had a toe in that water) and you feel it wrongs you. But you at least allow that it has uses as well, by way of not coming up with an alternative - "I don't like it but I suppose it's fine" or thereabouts. And when you hear stories about these terrorist chaps using draft emails to communicate via Hotmails or the like, and you have to ask how the security mob are meant to detect this without some form of cinematic wizardry. The answer is, of course, by trawling as they do, but then again - you're not an idiot, Rogue. You probably figured that much out.

 

Ah, fair enough old boy. Guardian chaps are a rummy lot.

 

Ender, it's not necessary to come up with alternatives in order to make valid criticism. You can go on believing that if you'd like, but I think you'll find that it's a minority opinion here.

 

I did not troll him whatsoever. I completely agree with what he has to say. Despite our differences and they are vast the man understands the intelligence community. He understands what you guys are so afraid to look at. I feel sorry for you guys. I really do, you are such idealists.

 

I don't rewrite the screenplay for every movie I don't like. It is perfectly acceptable to criticize something without creating an alternative plan. I have the right to criticize public actions by public agencies that effect my life, but I don't have the responsibility to do their job for them. It's their job to come up with a workable, hopefully ethical, way of doing their job; that's what they get paid for.

Secondly, I'm not comfortable with these agencies holding my data because we have only their word that they're doing what you say they're doing with it. I understand that you have more experience with intelligence analysis than I do, but it's pretty clear to anyone that's been paying attention that the government has, for the past . . . well, however far you want to trace it back, been doing more than they're telling us they're doing. I don't suppose you have specific knowledge of the chain of custody for this data - on some level, sure, this is all that's happening with it, what you're saying. On another level, well, we don't have any idea, do we?

And if these actions are as easily defensible as you say they are, then why did they hide it for so long? Why not just openly tell the American people what they were doing? If it's as innocuous as you claim?

And, finally, what the government is doing is treating me, and in fact every citizen of the United States, in a way that they once only treated criminals. I'm just not that cool with that. It's a subversion of the innocent until proven guilty principle. Did you hear that the LAPD recently said that every car in the Los Angeles metro area is under active investigation? That's ****** up. Quite literally, every person in LA is now guilty until proven innocent. That's not the way it's supposed to be. I am not okay with this. And if, in order to retain my basic civic rights to not be treated like a criminal until I'm proven to be one, I have to take some miniscule risk that the terrorists will carry out some kind of an attack . . . well, so be it. Because the terrorists don't win when they attack us with violence; they win when they terrify us into becoming a police state. Who said it? I forget, but it bears repeating: "We will remain t, land of the free only so long as we remain the home of the brave." I'll take a little extra risk in order to retain my civil rights. If others are scared enough to turn over those hard won civil rights, that's their look out. I'm going to criticize those decisions. So, that's my alternative plan; back down the paranoia and stop playing spy games. More than likely, nothing will happen even if these spying programs are ended. And if it does, well, that is definitely a tragedy, but at least we didn't compromise our morals. And as long as we maintain our morals, no matter how many people they kill, the terrorists will never win.

Yes, I know, I'm talking principles and you're talking pragmatics. It's what I do.

beezel26, please don't make having ideals into a flaw.

 

Ok, but you have to accept or at least realise that it sounds as if you accept the method works, but don't particularly like it.

 

I for one am fine with shelving all that data collection and risking more terrorist attacks. We've spent trillions of dollars for no good purpose, and are no better off than we were in 2001. If we had just gone on as we were then, how many more attacks really would have happened? I think this country is so afraid of death and the other and the unknown that we let ourselves be collectively terrorized, instead of mourning our losses and then moving on. If we minded our own business far more than we do, we'd have a lot fewer people interested in attacking us, and any attacks that did happen would be roundly condemned by the world community, rather than being cheered on by a hefty percentage of the global population. And, of course, there wouldn't be all that misuse of data collection, no torture programs, and so on.

Yes, some bad things would happen, but we would move on. This country is invulnerable from outside attack, but extremely vulnerable from within. Our worst and most effective enemies continue to be ourselves.

 

Hahaha! Pitied by beezel. That's... that's something.

 

You're basing this off how many stopped or thwarted attacks?

 

To paraphrase Mark Twain, because nobody does anything about it.

 

Thanks Danthe.

 

Also, the idea that the NSA have "a file on you" is laughably naive, born of watching the insipid Bourne films where intel services are omniscient and omnipresent. "Pull up the file on Rogue" - ha. Do you think anyone in intelligence work uses the phrase "off the grid"? It's adorable that the line between fact and fiction has blurred, but maybe it's time to recognise the line exists for a reason.

 

The number of attacks is unlikely to have been more than a few, and any successful attack would have had international ramifications for any people or group that claimed responsibility.

Ender, the reality is that there are many things in life more dangerous on a regular basis than terrorists. Driving kills thousands of people every year. People die in hospitals of preventable illnesses and reasons in numbers as high as a hundred thousand a year or more. That's just two right there. Neither get a fraction of the attention of terrorism, which gets most of its money and attention because it's perpetrated (or perceived to be perpetrated) by "the other." Also, there's not much in the way of defense contracts for making safer roads and hospitals.

 

Criticizing something doesn't preclude the possibility there is no better alternative.

 

OK so basically you're upset that the 20% or so of the picture you've been fortunate enough to grasp looks awful, and that makes you scared, nervous and cross but also unwilling to change it?

 

Ender, none of us are in a position to make any changes. You know than better than most.

 

I also know that from what I do know there's a whole lot of fuss about nothing going on.

 

"Task a selector for Rogue" just doesn't have that ring to it, does it?

The specifics of the situation you're describing are silly, but the capabilities may not be substantially different. Given that the NSA/GCHQ/etc. have access to a huge amount of archived internet and telecommunications traffic, as well as global realtime monitoring capabilities, they could hypothetically build a "file" on a target at will. Success would be variable, depending on the target's internet use and information sharing promiscuity. And I assume a human analyst would still be involved to compile the raw intercepts into meaningful intelligence. But if they have easy access to your emails, chat logs, browsing history, telephone metadata (and call contents, depending on where you live), et cetera, I don't feel that's substantially different from having "a file on you".

So it comes down to whether you're interesting enough to be put under surveillance. (On that front, I agree with you: not a concern for most of us.)

Also, I would point out that the idea of organizations having "a file on you" is no longer as absurd as it once was. The advertising industry profiles internet users using cookies and other tracking methods. Unless you rigorously use ad-blockers, they quickly learn what you've been browsing and shopping for, even if you don't buy anything. This small amount of information is annoying, if relatively benign, but it is a precedent for automated profiling.

 

Well, again, I would rather see all of those programs ended. I'd rather see attention on things that definitely happen on a regular basis every day, every month, and every year. If we're so concerned about saving lives, we would be better off picking a lot more low-hanging fruit than preventing terrorist attacks. If it's not actually about saving lives, but is instead about other things (like defense contracts, money in general, fear of the other, and so on), that needs to be dealt with honestly by everyone.

How many lives would be saved by everyone having comprehensive health care? Expensive, of course, but not so much when you consider all the money that was spent on terrorism-related items.

 

WTF boards? What happened to my post? Damn NSA.

 

That's exactly what people would have said a few years ago about the assertion that the United States government was torturing people. Conspiracy theories created by crackpots mixing the fantastic plots of films with reality in order to create an idea that's unrealistic, in which the US Government actually holds people without trial, tortures them, ships them off to other countries to be tortured. Ha.

And it was happening the whole time. I just think the government has more than proved that it can't be trusted to be honest with the American people. I'm a Native American; I know you can trust the government about as far as you can throw it. Can you blame me for wanting them to have a little less information about me? I'm simply not going to take their word on how they're using the data; the government has proved that it has no compunction about lying to me. I'm not going to trust them to only use the data in ways that will benefit me; the government has proved that it has no compunction about screwing innocent people over.

Though, all that said, I know they don't have a "file" on me. I don't think I ever intimated they did. They have a tremendous amount of data about me stored in a mass of other data. They're not actually looking at it or organizing it in regards to me or planning to use it against me. At the moment. But is there a single thing in place that would prevent them from doing any of those things on any given day someone might decide to do so? Nobody thinks this is the Bourne films; but you need to understand reality if you want us to do so. What on earth has given you the idea that a government, any government, is something to be trusted? I'll stop watching the Bourne movies if you'll start watching the news. They lie, they cheat, they steal, they torture, they imprison, they don't give a **** about me. And they have more information about me than my closest friends or most beloved family members. And they obtained it illegally. That's insane.

Though I'm curious about your stance on torture and imprisonment without the right of habeas corpus and all that. I'm not intimating that because you believe in data gathering that you believe in torture. But you do seem to be saying that the pragmatic realities of protecting people requires governments to do things that are morally questionable and technically illegal. At what point do you draw the line? I'm sincerely curious.

As to the efficacy of the method, sure, I don't mind you asserting that it works. I mean, it's not like torture in that regard; we know that torture doesn't actually work. But this data gathering method probably does work. But just because something works that doesn't mean it's the right way to do it. There are many things that work to achieve their desired end but are also morally wrong or just not the best way of doing something. If the neighbor dog is pooping in your yard and you want it to stop, it would "work" for you to go crack its skull with a tire iron; but maybe if you thought about it a little longer, you'd come up with a less morally troublesome way of solving the problem.

EDIT: And I didn't really want to have this debate again either, Ender. I got sucked into it. I was doing so good just doing pithy little one-liners and now I'm back to multi-paragraph posts. It appears I am once again asking you to reiterate things you've said numerous times after you specifically said you didn't want to. I'm an idiot.

 

Rogue, if you want to know what your file looks like then just google your name.

 

As far as I can tell, US intelligence is a bit of an oxymoron so I'm only speaking for my own country.

It's not just thwarting individual attacks, although I'd argue that preventing beheadings on our streets is money well spent compared to much of what our tax money is squandered on.

It's all the connections that can be recognised and interrupted. It's the funding streams that have been identified and cut off; the rogue clerics who have been recruiting impressionable youngsters; the supply and dissemination of propaganda; the identification of training camps and those who have been through them.

It's the boring day-to-day work of identifying and taking apart all the funding, recruitment, logistics etc that has the biggest effect in terms of containing the problem both here and in Iraq/Syria. It's the preachers, accountants, webmasters, merchants, leaflet distributors, fundraisers that underpin the AK47-wielding beheady types.

Now I don't know what the ramifications would be if all this boring work stopped. If we did nothing to impede funding, training, supply lines, propaganda, recruitment etc. but I wouldn't want to find out. I suspect that the death toll would exceed that of road traffic accidents within a few years, however.

I do agree that US and UK actions overseas are largely to blame for the problem in the first place but we are where we are and we need to deal with that reality.

Here in Europe we were aware of torture taking place in Abu Graib and other camps from about a decade ago. The Germans also complained pretty vociferously about their air space being used for extraordinary rendition flights in 2006, about the same time as Tony Blair denied that such flights were landing here in transit, despite some pretty clear evidence that they were.

In other words we, the rest of the world, barely raised an eyebrow at Snowden's 'revelations' because there was nothing there that we hadn't already known. You chaps live in a bubble, which is part of the reason we all find you so hilarious. And terrifying.

 

I suspect that the death toll would exceed that of road traffic accidents within a few years, however.

You believe that we would annually lose tens of thousands of people to terrorist attacks in the United States?

In other words we, the rest of the world, barely raised an eyebrow at Snowden's 'revelations' because there was nothing there that we hadn't already known.

I too found little noteworthy about the "revelations," because they all fit in the categories of either actively known or easily presumed. Anyone who paid attention over the years didn't see much new. The fight over John Ashcroft's approval in 2004 made a lot clear, particularly with congressional hearings on the matter in 2007.