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In reply to the discussion: What is it you want to see happen with the NSA? [View all]DirkGently
(12,151 posts)8. Secret domestic surveillance is not analogous to healthcare.
We don't have a Bill of Rights to protect us from unwarranted healthcare.
This is supposed to be the difference between rightwingers and Democrats and progressives.
Conservatives don't "trust government" to limit the power of private business entities to exploit people for profit. They don't want environmental regulations or limits on how financial institutions can gamble with depositor money, or the possibility of large jury verdicts when someone is injured by a defective product.
In short, conservatives seek more power for the already-empowered, and distrust government interference in that.
Progressives / liberals / Democrats typically favor regulation aimed at preserving the common good and protecting people without the leverage provided by money or class, or race or gender.
Domestic surveillance programs have not just a history, but a nearly exclusive history, of being abused -- to the precise extent they operate without accountability to the public -- to attack political dissidents, which typically includes progressives.
The FBI has a disgusting criminal history here, trying to threaten and torment MLK into suicide after learning of his affairs, and pursuing all manner of civil rights proponents, supposed "communists," and even longhaired musicians like John Lennon.
The NSA has not a leg to stand on in terms of benefit of the doubt. It's supposed to be surveilling FOREIGN signals, not domestic, in the first place, And when the Bush administration decided to interpret the law *IN SECRET* to permit it warrantless wiretapping, what was the NSA's response?
Well, of course, they immediately set about warrantless wiretapping without an eye batted. Then they went a little further and started passing around "sex calls" for their own amusement. Not a thousand years ago -- during the Bush administration.
And it's not like the view that lefties are possible "enemies of the state" has changed. Homeland Security apparently spent so much time checking out what OWS was doing on Facebook and writing reports estimating its possible "damage to the financial industry," that no one paid much attention to the conversations they were having with Russia about the Boston bomber.
This is what government does when it can spy on people in secret. It worries a lot about embarrassment to itself and damage to the powerful, and then maybe looks for "terrorists."
The issue now continues to be secrecy. A FISA court ruled as recently as 2011 that the law used to justify the PRISM program had been ... wait for it ... applied in an unconstitutional manner. We think, anyway, because the Obama administration has fought tooth and nail to make sure no one ever reads that ruling.
This is the problem. The conceit invented by Bush, with obvious bad faith, was that Executive Branch can claim state secrets privilege and hide behind supposed "national security interest" as to not only what it's DOING, but whatever it may be doing WRONG. No investigation, no courtroom discovery, nothing. Zip.
And the Obama administration, which came into office riding a wave of, at the very least, very sweet-sounding talk about "transparency," has, at the very most, done not one single thing to change that conceit. It still takes the position that we not only can't know who's being spied on, but we can't even know what legal interpretations it's using to define how and to whom it's doing that.
That's not a situation that can be cured by "trust." There's only one cure for government secrecy regarding what it thinks its own powers are, and that is DAYLIGHT. Transparency. Accountability. Examination.
The argument that it would somehow destroy our ability to watch "the bad guys" by simply coming clean about what the rules are is specious and unworkable.
So it's not a matter of "trust," which is why it isn't cured by however much anyone likes Obama or any other President.
This is the way government power works, and it's the reason we have safeguards like the Fourth Amendment. Safeguards that mean nothing if they are applied "in secret," because that means that as far as anyone knows, they're not being applied at all.
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How? Would you make a database to see who might be exploiting our resources unfairly?
Liberal Veteran
Jun 2013
#2
If you've been in contact with a terrorist, I think they should be able to get a warrant to look
dkf
Jun 2013
#10
As I recall, on this very board, most of us were arguing in favor of FISA when Bush...
Liberal Veteran
Jun 2013
#6
Actually Bush did not want to wait for FISA Court time frame for an answer, he wanted to make the
Thinkingabout
Jun 2013
#26
Exactly my point. And the majority here at least was against bypassing FISA.
Liberal Veteran
Jun 2013
#30
I want their activities scaled back to off-shore and direct military support only.
1-Old-Man
Jun 2013
#7
The depth and breadth of the topic warrants transparency on behalf of the NSA first...
Earth_First
Jun 2013
#16
Well, there is that. Perhaps a dismantle and complete rebuild is order.
Liberal Veteran
Jun 2013
#28
Contractors removed from the system entirely. Data held for only 5 years by telecom co's.
KittyWampus
Jun 2013
#17