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In reply to the discussion: The Latest Snowden Leak Is Devastating to NSA Defenders [View all]ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)This "scandal" is that once the NSA has sucked down someone's personal data to see if they're engaged in terrorism (like their buddy who just went off to Syria, etc.), and then found that they're not, they don't have a specific program to erase that data off their hard drives. They just let it sit, unlooked at.
Wow. Big scandal.
Except that that same sort of stuff is lying around absolutely everywhere. On privately owned servers which often have very little protections compared to the NSA's protections (and an economic incentive to "forget" what they promised in terms of privacy before - ala Facebook). In fact, the only people who care about this are the people who scream the word "Unconstitutional" as a substitute for "I'm not even remotely versed in the law, but I figure it's a big word I (like teabaggers who are my analogues) can use to yell about legal things I don't like."
Now it may surprise you to know that that when Bush pushed his "Unitary Executive" theory in the mid-2000s, I was firmly against him. I was also against the abuses that the NSA engaged in at the time. However, one of the things that Speaker Pelosi did in 2008 was to reform the NSA. Obama reformed it further, setting it back to the way it was before Bush came into office. And that's all fine. But the idea that the U.S. should somehow get rid of its signal intelligence program is, flat out, a nonstarter. Ain't gonna happen. Because we need one.
So you can scream all you want, but the grownups will always be in charge.
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community