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Rethinking NSA Data Collection
It’s probably too early to say anything definitive following the revelations of Rep. Nunes yesterday, but I would like to revisit some statements made repeatedly by Prof. @richardepstein on various Ricochet podcasts.
One of his main defenses of the current data collection regime of the NSA and other law enforcement groups was that there seems to be a real security need and that there are enough checks in place to prevent the misuse of that data.
While I certainly agree with the former point it is quite clear that the latter is no longer operative. So, is anyone who supported the broad spectrum data gathering rethinking their positions now that there is some serious intimation of wrongdoing?
Published in Politics
A thousand points of light was the opposite of socialism – he was talking about the private sector and civil society. It was almost pure undistilled de Tocqueville.
from his convention speech:
Nah. That was the sucker’s pitch.
The info that somehow made its way to certain people in Washington should never have done so. It was highly classified and especially names should have been scrubbed, layers of security were breached.
– Not only is the data being used for political purposes
– Not only was it gathered before the ex-president was leaving and continued for a couple months after
– Not only did the last president change rules a couple weeks before exiting so that major agencies could share data, looking for Russian links and found none
but there are people that are playing fast and loose with our liberties and this is the biggest story that should be a major concern for every US citizen and it should be the top headline on every news outlet. Tom Brady’s jersey got more coverage.
Therein lies the problem!
And by that I mean that he intended to get the government to use these useful idiots and then control them. He federalized public schools. He federalized cable television using the FCC which was formed to allocate scarce radio frequencies. Socialism requires control. GHW then was behind charter schools which undermines private schools by giving his federalized agency the power to control them.
All of this is an effort to undermine freedom and make us more dependent on government permission for everything. This is why Bush cronies don’t really want to end Obamacare. They just want to change whom we are beholden to.
And I fear I have wandered too far off topic.
Exactly. Human intelligence is useful but we’re not good at it so we do this scooping up stuff, which is rarely useful but always dangerous. There is an infinite amount of information out there growing at ridiculous speeds and we have to go after all of it then try to go through it with super computers. I’m sure some of it is useful sometimes, but in 34 years I never saw anything particularly useful. I use to feel for the Soviets who scooped up everything, backed up trucks to government printing office and listened to everything always everywhere but they were supposed to be totalitarians and didn’t have much else useful to do. The thing that matters in the information age is asking the right question. Then figure out how to get the answer using human intelligence and other atrophied skills.
<Backing away slowly while nodding and smiling…>
In an age where commercial companies can draw a perfect profile of a citizen through legal means using widely available data, it would be downright criminal for the governments- charged with security of its citizens- to be the only organizations in society who are prohibited from intelligence gathering.
The problem is not law or technology, it is the character of those we hire to do the work. GW Bush didn’t target his political opponents, Obama did. The fault lies not in our intel but in ourselves that we hire people of zilch moral character to run things.
Any government can abuse its citizens one way or another. Most do not. Our job is to keep people like Obama away from the levers of power.
Is have to ask, is this data gathering actuallykeeping us safe? There have been prosecutions for conspiracy to commit terroristic acts; I think I read, like 300 since 9/11.
Are the charges the result of this surveillance, or are they the result of tips by neighbors and undercover work by agents?
If the former, you’d think Omega’s admin woulda bragged about it more. (Although maybe it didn’t because it scooped it jhadis when they were hoping for nothing but Timothy McVeighs).
But unless the govt can link a fair number of those prosecutions to this intrusive data gathering, then I’d have to conclude its real purpose is just what we’ve recently seen exposed in Trump’s case: securing the means to disable any private citizen or public officeholder who comes to be an impediment to the deep state’s goals.
And if it is exposed as such and repealed: one more thing for which to thank President Trump!
If we rely on the integrity of our leaders, that’s a recipe for defeat.
We have constitutional protections precisely because we can’t rely on that.
Good, let the government build a facebook or a twitter that people choose to use to collect such data. Don’t spy on our own citizens surreptitiously.
This is the fallacy that lies at the heart of all big government thinking. The problem isn’t government, we just don’t have the right technocrats in there to do it yet. It’s the argument for communists and big government “conservatives” a like – just make sure we’re in charge and everything will run smoothly.
It is not possible to eliminate acts of terror. They will always be able to commit acts of violent mayhem no matter how much surveillance or how many of our freedoms are infringed.
Terrorism only works if the people lose faith in their law and order. What we’re seeing is our government responding to terrorism by surveilling us and infringing on our rights, making us trust our government less.
The only effective way to deter terrorism is to kill the movement that drives the terrorism. We don’t seem to have the stomach for that, but we need to put the big boy pants on and kill them. They will not be dissuaded or convinced. The only way to end their idea is to extinguish the minds that harbor the idea.
Now we knock off a “leader” here and there, not recognizing that it is a movement not based on cult of personality. “Leaders” are not the drivers of their movement.
Instead, of killing them, we allow them to be harbored in nations and allow the people there to be more afraid of the terrorists than they are of us. And we spend billions for their thousands. It’s a recipe for failure and continued attacks against us.
Real abuse? Look up “parallel construction,” where the DEA uses illegally-gathered NSA information which it gives to prosecutors to build cases; where the prosecutors hide the illegal search from the defense and the courts. Naturally, since it is “fighting crime,” who cares if the Fourth Amendment goes out the window. In a country where anybody can be prosecuted for something (if you merely come to the attention of the authorities and they decide they don’t like you), we should all care. This abuse completely guts the protection the Fourth Amendment was supposed to provide.
Regardless of whether one has something to hide, from good or from bad people is, and always was, utterly beside the point.
And the point is?
Exactly. All of this.
It’s a good thing to realize, as you did, that there are some cases where you would have something to hide. My point was that the question is more fundamental than that: the information passing between people is either owned by those people or by the private concerns who own the physical paths the information takes. It is never the government’s. With the exception of cases allowed by the Fourth Amendment, only the owners of the information should have a say in its use.
Thanks for the response, @owenfindy I can agree with that!