The question of what the NSA should do and should be able to do in foreign surveillance is an interesting one, and I’d love to discuss it. It’s a debate that is distinct from what they should be able to do to American citizens. The release of all these sensitive documents has the potential to lead to reforms that protect our privacy and make the Agency’s legitimate activities more efficient and sensible. But reading Scott Shane’s article in the New York Times, I can’t escape the feeling that I should not have most of this information.
There is so much detail on the NSA’s capabilities that, while it’s legitimately scary, it also enables people to evade surveillance or to learn how to feed us bad and misleading information.
I have very mixed emotions about the whole topic. I feel very clearly that the NSA has been overstepping its bounds and has been very wasteful with resources. I think they need to be reined in. There should be a top to bottom review of everything they’ve been doing and a lot of transparency. But, at the same time, I think a lot of damage is being done to our country that, while it may be necessary, I certainly am not enjoying.
I’m not quite sure how it fits into this discussion, but I can’t shake the suspicion that the vast majority of what the US government knows about its allies and enemies is known from sources outside the “secret world” of spies.
Are NSA snoops spies in your wording?
Yes. I keep remembering that the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence & Research was basically the only intelligence agency that was right about Iraq’s WMDs.
I just don’t understand your feeling. There may be things I don’t need to know but I don’t think there’s anything I shouldn’t know.
I am not utterly blind to the importance of spying. I’ve said before that civilization depends on spying. If we’re having a conference with say the Iranians, and we know more about what their goals are, the chance for a misunderstanding leading to war is lessened.
But. It will probably result in dismissing anything I say (if you don’t already) but when my country breaks the law (the treaty mentioned) I think my country deserves to be damaged.
Aside from being useless, costly and counterproductive the program is clearly unaccountable. Any unaccountable part of the government is utterly, utterly dangerous.
There is in all these reports and discussions about the information that NSA is gathering the assumption that the information is necessary for some purpose of the the US leadership. There is the assumption that somehow knowing Ban ki-Moon’s talking points on Syria will somehow allow US foreign policy makers to make better foreign policy and conduct more effective negotiations about US interests in the sessions that Ban ki-Moon is orchestrating…or something like that.
What really is being revealed with the Snowden information is that the the NSA is spying indiscriminately on everyone. It might be viewing the information that it has scooped up only when there is some vague need-to-know issued from some “customer” of NSA’s information. Those “customers” are privileged people in the current world. And they have arbitrary power to spy on anyone in reach of electronic communications. That is as close to a classic definition of a rogue operation as one can get. Especially since Rep. Mike Rogers and Sen. Dianne Feinstein have decided to be the protectors of the NSA instead of the folks leading the oversight of the agency.
What you see is an accountability strategy of slowly turning the screws on the NSA, seeking Congressional accountability or executive accountability. Which has not happened yet. If exposing the spying on Angela Merkel and Ban ki-Moon doesn’t get the US government to take a serious look at what the NSA is doing, one of two things are going on: (1) the NSA is operating under the Presidents instructions, in which case we have a serious problem with what the President thinks he needs to know; or (2) the NSA is broadly interpreting its tactic of “plausible deniability” to provide everything it can to the President on immediate notice, the Constitution and good practices of diplomacy be damned. Both of those situations are are very dangerous for democratic governance and good diplomatic relations with allies. Worst of all they likely do not contribute anything of value to American foreign policy or national security.
We need to have some discussion about what the purpose of espionage is relative to US national security interests. Trust and verify backfires if the “verify” part is conducted by espionage. The whole point of diplomacy is to establish and maintain good personal and institutional relationships with counterparts in other countries and international institutions. Espionage and manipulative maneuvering do not support good relationships. And speak to something other than finding mutual interests. Something that a lot of the world refers to derisively as “American exceptionalism.”
In a democratic government, the people should know exactly what their government is doing and why. And should have some means of collectively reining in abuses.
Do your feelings have to do with ambivalence about democratic governance itself?
“Spying” is the wrong verb. That’s been the problem with the coverage of this from Day One.
I have no doubt that my online and phone activities are part of a larger dataset that the NSA can scan for specific patterns of activity. That doesn’t mean I’m being spied upon by the NSA.
As for the actual spying on foreign leaders (allies or otherwise) goes, if you’re arguing that’s a problem then you’re arguing against the existence of spy agencies entirely. A spy agency that only worries about known hostiles isn’t doing its job.
No, they shouldn’t. That’s why they elect representatives they (in theory) trust to take of specific things for them.
We should know what our government is doing in general terms, but there are absolutely some specifics the public should not have access to. Or do you think you should know the launch codes for our nukes as well?
I can no longer trust my representatives to inform me accurately about critical matters that require my informed consent. That is a fundamental democratic issue.
The US uses a republican representative form of democracy. Right now it is not working. Now, more than ever people need to know what their government is doing.
If a republican representative form of democracy will not work, the people are within their legitimate rights to try a different system. That is the fundamental assertion of the Declaration of Independence that transcends the current Constitution of the United States.
If it comes to that, people must consider carefully the historical experience of other mechanisms of delivering the popular will. But government resting on the will of the people is a fundamental principle of American government, and that requires sufficient knowledge of what the government is doing to show that it is not departing from popular will.
OK, “spying” might be the wrong word, but what the NSA is doing would have been clearly proscribed by the drafters of the Fourth Amendment. They had knowledge of dragnet searches by the British government that collected all the papers of individuals without warrant or charges. And the Bill of Rights sought to restrain the government from that behavior.
Evidence-less invasion of privacy comes closer to the truth but makes what in bulk is a major violation of the Fourth Amendment just because the scope of the dragnet seem like a minor thing.
Then your issue is with Congress, not with your need to know.
The thing that drives me absolutely nuts about all the NSA talk is that, in terms of genuine threats to the civil liberties of Americans, they barely even rate. The Drug War does more damage to our rights in an hour than the NSA does in a year. A single state’s voter suppression law is a far scarier monster than a database of every single phone call made in the last five years.
Should the NSA have better oversight? Absolutely. Could their mission be better defined? Absolutely. Should this be a top priority for libertarians, liberaltarians, and anybody else concerned with their erosion of our civil liberties? Absolutely not. They are a sideshow and a distraction.
Oh, and as for the Fourth Amendment, the thing about it is that it addresses targeted government actions (“secure in their persons“), per the actual text.
NSA databases in and of themselves are not targeting anyone. Searches of those databases are targeted actions, of course, but despite what Greenwald wants people to believe warrants are required to perform those searches. If you want to criticize how easily FISC issues those warrants, great. As I said, the system definitely needs improvement. But the system as it is currently set up is absolutely constitutional.
That it’s legal is all the more reason why it needs radical overhaul. The fact that it’s legal means the system is broken.
That’s just great.
You’re right, there are things we should not know. Furthermore, we shouldn’t know why we shouldn’t know them. We must just trust the congressional intelligence committees and the professional spies to decide for us. We must not worry our pretty little heads.
In all the discussions on the NSA there seems to be acceptance, tacit or stated, that it’s all right for the U.S. to monitor the communications of non-Americans, that is, people outside the U.S., who account for about 95 per cent of the world’s population. Now where does the U.S. get the right to spy on everyone?, a disrespectful sense of moral superiortiy, embedded in the conceit of exceptionalness, is daily making more and more people suspicious and fearful of the Hegemon.