If massive surveillance is so necessary for our safety, why isn’t there any reporting on all the threats to society they’ve been averting, or criminals caught? I get that they can’t reveal everything, but as it stands now it’s all hush hush, and many naive people will think they’re catching terrorists every day. Generally, if someone refuses to tell you how they protect you “for your own good”, it is because they would look malicious, incompetent or both.
> In 2009, for example, Section 702 helped foil an active plot to bomb the New York City subway.
> (U) Section 702 has been used to identify ransomware attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure, and multiple attacks have been identified and defended against because of Section 702 collection
> (U) Section 702–acquired information related to sanctioned foreign adversaries was used in U.S. government efforts to stop components for weapons of mass destruction from reaching foreign actors.
> (U) Section 702 information has identified key economic security risks, including strategic malign investment by foreign actors in certain U.S. companies.
> (U) Section 702 collection has helped identify when hostile foreign intelligence services are trying to send their operatives into the United States to recruit spies here in the United States.
Those were claims made by intelligence agency officials. The Director of National Intelligence lied to Congress to avoid oversight.[1] The CIA incorrectly attributed victories to torture.[2] The people who made those claims should not be trusted to evaluate correctly and report honestly.
And in the case of so-called "tech" companies who are not required to obtain warrants, let alone even informed consent, the use of the data collected is even more secretive. The companies will try to claim their usage of collected data is commercially-sensitive information and/or trade secrets to prevent the public (not their competitors) from understanding what the surveillance is used for.
I agree with the meaning and the premise of your question, but, pedantically, it is not always a good idea to go out and admit how effective a secret program is. Think about it in the context of national security and foreign policy - e.g. "we have broken 86% of other governments' encryption" - is not a stat you'd share. Maybe more pointed to the discussion here, by sharing how the program is successful, it would be a powerful indicator about what kinds of crimes criminals should focus on with the lowest risks.
> "we have broken 86% of other governments' encryption" - is not a stat you'd share...by sharing how the program is successful, it would be a powerful indicator about what kinds of crimes criminals should focus on with the lowest risks.
They can not tell us that they are reading the encrypted communications of other governments but still tell us "We caught Joe Criminal on Wednesday who tried to blow up the moon, and Bill Evilguy on Friday who tried to poison the waterhole, and Amanda Terrorist on Sunday who tried to murder 10,000 kittens". Then they could hold public trials for those terrorists where even if we can't see all of the evidence we still know exactly who they are imprisoning/killing, when and how often.
If criminals come to realize that terrorist attacks are likely to get them killed or sent to rot in gitmo because of how successful our spy agencies are, and they decide to hold up liqueur stores instead how is that a bad thing?
well, its been a while, but I remember seeing a study that states with the death penalty actually had higher incidence of violent crime. From that, it was posited that the existence of harsher punishments don't seem to offer much deterrent value because criminals do not expect to be caught. Further, there was discussion that state-sponsored demonstrations of power/punishment play a role in normalizing that behavior in the first place.
Personally, I think both categories are likely true, but I couldn't comment on the effect size. One thing that law enforcement stats generally indicate is that a great deal of property crime is uninvestigated and unsolved. Maybe that is fine, but detailing, "we tried our literal best surveillance methods and have not managed to reduce convenience store robberies" gives an edge to those who would like to premeditate. Of course, if they think they won't get caught in the first place, it doesn't matter.
>why isn’t there any reporting on all the threats to society
I think this framing is a bit naive. It also implies—without evidence—some malice on the part of LE. The suggestion is that this activity is known to be ineffective for the stated purpose, so continues to be conducted for some other purpose, which by definition would be nefarious.
But, there is no proof of this, except that some would like to see more perp walks that reveal sources and methods.
And, as much as people sound the alarm, we've seen relatively little-to-no abuse of these epanded powers. Americans are not being prosecuted at-scale, if at all, over information that may have been incidentally captured.
The truth is that powers had to be expanded to keep pace with changes in technology, and a changing world in general. Without this our LE wouldn't stand a chance. Now one might argue about degree and balance, but that's not what I generally hear. Instead, it's mostly vague alarmism and mistrust about the very idea of any expanded powers.
Surveillance is there to consolidate power, safety is a smokescreen. We have ample evidence that mass surveillance not only has massive issues but also that it doesn't deliver on the parroted benefits, at all. http://newamerica.org/future-security/policy-papers/do-nsas-...
>Surveillance is there to consolidate power, safety is a smokescreen.
This is another vague allusion. Consolidate power for whom? How exactly does it do so? What, specifically, is this "power" and how is it used against American citizens?
>it doesn't deliver on the parroted benefits
The article referenced here is from 2014, so not exactly up-to-date. And, in multiple instances, the authors acknowledge that they don't even know whether the programs were used.
In still other cases, they acknowledge the programs' use in prosecuting terrorists, but casually cast them aside as a low percentage. OK. But, who wants to sign up for "just a few terror incidents"?
>Want a grim reality check
Another report from 2014, and additionally has nothing to do with the subject. "Someone in the government did something wrong in this completely unrelated way 10 years ago" is not a valid argument.
Even if the reporting was not public, people in Congress that are suppose to oversee this should see the reports. I have not seen them mention anything.
It's because it's not for your safety, it's for the safety of the established bureaucracy of government.
Just look at the number of terrorists that were already on the FBI's watchlist, and whose plots were foiled by random citizens stepping in rather than the FBI. (Hint: it's literally every one.)
Even more incendiary, look at the number of school shooters that have been on LEO watchlists, and also failed to do anything to prevent tragedy.
The brain dead rebuttal to this is something like civil rights getting in the way. But if civil rights are holding them back, why invade privacy at all if nothing actionable is going to be done.
>it's for the safety of the established bureaucracy of government.
Seems vague. What exactly does this assertion mean? Are you saying that they are collecting this information to blackmail people or something similar?
Because I don't see people being defenestrated or otherwise prosecuted for threatening the "bureaucracy". On the contrary, there seems to be an all-out public assault on our government from some quarters.
And who, exactly, is the "established bureaucracy" anyway?
The most heartbreaking thing about having broken the enigma code during world war II, is that they had to let people die, knowing they could have saved them, because saving them would have tipped the enemy off that they had broken the code.
I don't quite understand the relation of this comment to the GP's comment, but the world currently is not under world war 3. Any justification for things happening in ww2 is hard to use for current situation
There's no "world war" exactly, but the US is still overseas killing people and has been doing that every single year for decades. Basically my entire life. I doubt there's been very many years since WWII that the US hasn't been engaged in wars and armed conflicts somewhere on the Earth. We rarely hear about any of it, and if you asked a random person on the street they probably couldn't name any of the countries where people are/have been being killed.
to spell it out, the FBI can't tell the general public many of the stories where they did good, because that would exposure the methods they used to do good, which would result in them not being able to use those methods anymore, so those stories have to go untold.
also I disagree that we're not in world War III. we are, it just hasn't been officially declared yet.
Obviously the Intelligence community doesn't say exactly how they learned such things, making it difficult to say if they used SIGINT, HUMINT, or something else, but there have been some big displays of their overall effectiveness recently.
1) Clearly the US Intelligence community telegraphed Russia's plans to invade Ukraine well in advance.
2) Recently the US warned of an impending terror attack on a concert in Moscow just before one happened.
Most intelligence they collect won't be made public, so only those in the higher echelons of government will know what they regularly learn. But I do think they have demonstrated the ability to predict the future more than a few times with their public statements.
Nation states or terrorists planning attacks on the US mainland (either physically or in cyberspace) are external threats that are investigated by the FBI and have been charged by the DOJ.
This is terrible reporting. I don’t support the warrantless monitoring of citizens via Section 702, but the email displayed shows zero nefariousness as far as I can tell. It is just the FBI deputy director encouraging FBI agents to lawfully (at least according to FISA) use the tools at their disposal to demonstrate their use to the FBI.
Would you object if the FBI deputy director encouraged FBI agents to lawfully use their service firearms in the field to demonstrate their use to the FBI? There are real harms involved with increasing surveillance of the public and reducing judicial oversight. Placing the use of warrantless wiretapping as an end in itself rather than a possible means whose use needs to be carefully weighed necessarily means that the weighing will be less careful.
Ultimately Congress should have written the law more carefully. It's their job to balance the various concerns of the government; effectiveness of their law enforcement vs. civil liberties. The FBI's job is only to investigate to the maximum extent of the law, and the email was just reminding people of that.
Every branch of the government has a duty to uphold the constitution including its protections. Further the constitution is the law suggesting it’s only their responsibility to uphold some laws is the root of a great number of issues.
> Ultimately Congress should have written the law more carefully.
That's not how the clandestine agencies like Congress to write laws though. They love to live in the spaces and gray areas created by vaguely written laws.
Whenever these laws are debated and people point out various ways in which they could be abused, Congress says that those are obviously far-fetched and the powers that are being given will be used in reasonable ways.
This email just goes to show what this actually means in practice.
I would have to disagree, the main issue with FISA is not only that allows the US Government to do warrantless wiretapping, it forces citizens who are business owners to facilitate that wire-tapping (which is already legal but only for a small subsection of types of businesses like telephone and internet companies) and FISA expands on the definition of these kinds of businesses without openly defining what that expansion is, the FBI can just make that determination without any due process, foresight, or reasoning. This is hugely detrimental to all Americans. They could go to any business and force them to wiretap their wifi or turn over ALL user records. The fact that there is no transparency at any level and that they are quietly pushing this through is damning. If they want to expand the definition of what FISA allows, they should do so in the open.
The Majority Report had an expert on to talk about it, you can google it, its the first link under "majority report FISA"
One could argue this is just like how the ATF arbitrary can interpret the law and changes what's consider legal or not. Their is not method the truly balances any position where you can constantly change the definition of words and ths interpretation of the law.
In court the ATF is learning that they cannot arbitrarily change their interpretations and may have less authority than when they started due to how arbitrary they’ve decided to be recently.
That doesn’t help the poor folks who followed the old rules and are now ensured in the executive branch illegally pulling the rug out from under them, but it seems like the ATF is routinely losing when brought to trial.
While the current admin seems to love changing the meaning of words to suit their whims, I think, in general, the courts have pretty consistently sided with the intended meaning at the time of legislation (text and tradition) rather than the politically motivated meaning that’s been conjured up in the last 36-months (novel legal theory garbage).
The new trick they are using is to simply drop the case whenever they feel that the ruling is not going to be in their favor. Which lets them keep the rule on the books and continue using it in the future. Basically the onus becomes on the person prosecuted & their lawyer to bring it up every time.
And the problem with that is that by the time you get to the point where case is dismissed, it is already a major disruption to one's life. The legal fees alone can be effectively punitive for many people to begin with, and then if you actually get arrested and detained, it's straight up financial ruin. Not to mention reputational damage stemming from stuff like this even if the case is eventually dropped.
I don’t like the government forcing business owners to assist in controlling the populace either, but this is hardly a unique situation. The best example I can think of is requiring employers to pay deduct employees’ income tax.
Should we stop requiring employers to deduct income tax? For the record, I think the answer to both is yes, but I’m in the minority.
Deducting taxes is not an opaque issue though. It is known to everyone at time of employment with the filling out of the W-2. When the TLAs come knocking on a business' door to provide information, the employee(s) in question are not asked to fill out another form.
Equating the two is just a sad attempt at white washing
People are constantly bombarded with notices, to the point that most of us actually read very few of them. I'm not sure the notice makes a big difference here; what proportion of taxpayers do you think actually know their total tax liability and/or effective tax rate at the federal, state, and/or local levels? We have notice of all of them, but it's so hard to keep track of income, investment, sales, and property taxes, that very few of us actually know this stuff.
I bet that if you put a notice of FISA data collection on someone's pay stub, it's unlikely they would even notice.
It would be interesting to stop all employer collected things (including/especially health insurance) and have folks pay directly for them. Unless you read your paystubs, you don't realize how much this stuff costs you.
Not at all. Remember what FISA stands for: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This law was originally written to allow spying on Foreign citizens. They stoked enough fear to get Congress to amend and expand the law to allow targeting of U.S. citizens, implying we were all in danger of we didn't allow it and promising to use that power responsibly.
Now the FBI Deputy Director says: "I urge everyone to continue to look for ways to appropriately use US person queries to advance the mission" - that is, literally think about ways to use this power to spy on U.S. citizens. This absolutely is and should be big news.
A congressperson said this email directly contradicts what the FBI told them during the bid to get the program renewed.
Even if you're fine with them spreading their net to the legally allowed limit rather than what's necessary, lying to Congress seems like nefariousness.
> “To continue to demonstrate why tools like this are essential to our mission, we need to use them, while also holding ourselves accountable for doing so properly and in compliance with legal requirements,”
You cannot use a “fisa warrant” legally, they’re objectively unconstitutional.
Conforming to the “legal requirements” means also conforming to the constitution, it doesn’t matter if someone writes a law that says you don’t need to obey the constitution, that just means the law itself is illegal.
It’s amazing how government officials interpret the 2nd amendment (giving the right to bare arms in the absence of a formal militia to mean everyone can have guns in of all kinds in all cases, but then turn around and say the 4th amendment does not grant any rights at all)
> giving the right to bare arms in the absence of a formal militia
That's not what the 2nd amendment says. It says "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed". That doesn't mean that if the government decides to organize a formal militia, people's individual right to keep and bear arms goes away; that would defeat the whole purpose of the amendment, which is to enable the people to resist a tyrannical government, just as the Americans resisted British tyranny using their own individual arms. In other words, the "well-regulated militia" is the entire body of armed citizens. The "well-regulated" part means that the citizens themselves are supposed to regulate their own and each other's use of arms so that they are not used to promote tyranny instead of resist it.
Yes, it does, because the militia has more than one purpose. It's not only for resisting a tyrannical government. That's one of its purposes, but not the only one. Indeed, once the Declaration of Independence had been signed and published, one could argue that the United States were in fact organizing and using the militia to "repel invasion" by the British. But the militia was used before that happened, when the only grounds for its use was to resist tyrannical government by the British.
The only people claiming they want to fight a "tyrannical government" as their justification for dick extensions are the people who routinely try to remove the rights of others, and are the same people who have repeatedly tried to use force to overthrow the elected government when their candidate lost.
Parroting that nonsense, when everyone knows that the reason they want unrestricted access to guns is just that they're idiots that made having guns their personality.
The 2nd amendment says "A well regulated Militia", but the "I need guns to compensate for personal issues" people say you can't have any regulations or rules that would in anyway require the to actually be mentally or physically capable of supporting a free State. Again, the group of people arguing for the definition of the 2nd amendment that gives unrestricted access to guns are the people who routinely and consistently opposed the "free State" the 2nd amendment is ostensibly for, hell they generally oppose the 1st, 5th, 8th, 15th, 24th, and 28th amendments, so any proclaimed absolutism about their support for the constitution is dubious at best. I'd make a claim based on current commentary that these groups don't support any of the the constitution at all given their repeated and explicit disdain for articles 1 through 3 that define the core of the us government.
> The "well-regulated" part means that the citizens themselves are supposed to regulate their own and each other's use of arms so that they are not used to promote tyranny instead of resist it.
This trips up a certain segment of the populace, though, if we take your explanation at face value.
In many states and locales, the citizens have regulated their own and each other's use of arms (I disagree with your limitation of 'not used to promote tyranny' - that is not a limitation present in the wording). They've delegated that regulation to their state or locale, by means of voting and legislation.
> I disagree with your limitation of 'not used to promote tyranny' - that is not a limitation present in the wording
I didn't mean to imply that that is the only regulation citizens should exercise over each other's use of arms. Obviously citizens should also be regulating each other's use of arms to prevent private crime, since that is also a threat to the security of a free state.
> They've delegated that regulation to their state or locale, by means of voting and legislation.
First, no such delegation can violate the 2nd Amendment, since the Constitution, as amended, is the supreme law of the land. It limits how much citizens can delegate.
Second, what happens if the government they have delegated to becomes tyrannical, and stays that way despite changes in voting and legislation? What is the citizens' last resort? To resist the tyrannical government using their own individually borne arms.
In other words, any such delegation can always be revoked, and the citizens have to have some last resort way of making the revocation good if the government refuses to accept it.
Literally they did exactly. People voted for and passed laws that regulated arms.
Idiots want to play with toys and got those regulations removed, because nothing says "well regulated militia" like alcoholics and racists with automatic weapons.
It's amazing the same people arguing "the government has no right to take away my unregulated and unnecessary guns" also argue the same government does get to regulate bodily autonomy, religion, etc
The Constitution, afaik, is silent on the matter of shirt sleeves.
However, a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
The crime is that the States have given up on forming those well-regulated militias and that we have a continuous standing army in a Military-Industrial-Congressional complex whose corruption boggles the mind.
> the States have given up on forming those well-regulated militias
The States claim that state-run National Guard units are the "well-regulated militias". Their claim is wrong, but not for the reason you imply. The reason their claim is wrong is that the 2nd Amendment is about the right of the people to keep and bear arms to resist a tyrannical government--any tyrannical government: not just the Federal government, but the State governments as well. If the States can organize a militia and then say individual citizens no longer have the right to keep and bear arms outside that organized militia, that defeats the purpose of the 2nd Amendment just as much as the Federal government having a standing army and claiming it's an organized militia.
The second amendment is entirely about state militias, and anyone claiming it's related to resisting a tyrannical government hasn't actually read the documents they claim to have read.
Article 1, Section 8 of the constitution outlines militias as a duty of congress, and the function of the militias (note: resisting a tyrannical government is not listed!)
Article II, Section 2 defines the President as the commander in chief of the military and militias.
The above is what the second amendment is making reference to.
There are following acts of congress that clarify who gets to be in a militia: the militia acts of 1792, 1795, 1862 and 1903. These allow for people of different races and genders to join militias.
The militia act of 1903 clarifies that there are different types of state militias: formal and informal. Formal is things like the National Guard, Texas Rangers, etc. Informal is - in times of emergency, the state can basically just round up a posse for the outlined purposes in Article 1, Section 8. The second amendment does guarantee personal firearm ownership under this possibility, connected to possible service in an informal militia.
The problem with this perspective is that many states have some equivalent of the Second Amendment in their state constitution, including some of the original states - and in many cases those explicitly spell out RKBA as an individual right. I think it's reasonable to at least wonder why the same people who wrote those state constitutions would, when discussing the federal one, not have the same thing in mind when authoring 2A.
That's not a problem of this perspective, that's an entirely separate issue: The still evolving debate between what takes precedence: Federal powers or State powers?
Sometimes state, sometimes federal. This is why all parties are trying to pack the courts with ideologues of various leanings.
You misunderstand my point. It's not about which constitution takes priority (the answer here is actually very simple: for federal laws, only federal constitution applies; for state laws, the state constitution additionally applies).
The point is that the original US Constitution, as well as the Bill of Rights, was worked on and ratified by the same people who worked on their states' constitutions at that time, and you can, in general, see very clear parallels between state and federal constitutions when it comes to rights. So, given that at least some state constitutions from that same period explicitly spell out individual right to keep and bear arms, I find it dubious that it was not one of the considerations when they adopted the same right on the federal level. The fact that the verbiage of 2A cites militia as a justification implies that this is the one they thought most important, but not that there weren't any others; and, of course, the verbiage doesn't actually condition RKBA on militia membership in plain reading.
There are also letters and other discussions from that time that, on the whole, make it fairly clear that militia was understood as including everyone (and not just those states might choose to designate as such), and that the right was thus really meant to be universal.
Letters and discussions we can dismiss outright. This is always a selective argument based on your leanings, and these are inevitably used to twist what are otherwise fairly clear wordings even in the language of the day. A lot of people said a lot of things, but what matters is what is enshrined in law.
What state constitutions of the day say something different than what is written in the federal constitution? I am interested in looking into it at least.
ETA: I looked into it. Your argument only seems to have Pennsylvania as a leg to stand on, through the participation of Ben Franklin, and even that is flawed according to historians:
> The second amendment is entirely about state militias
I disagree, and I'm certainly not the only one; there has been a lot of literature on this. Obviously we're not going to resolve that here. However, I will offer a few comments, since you have presumed to imply that I have not actually read the documents in question.
First, it seems odd for you to say that the second amendment is entirely about state militias, and then refer to the Constitution, which is a Federal document, and which, as we will see below, contains provisions for Federal actions regarding the Militia, not just state actions.
Next, Article I, Section 8 says that Congress shall have the power:
"To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;"
Note that it does not say "create" the Militia. It assumes that "the Militia" is an already existing thing, and then says that Congress may provide for "calling forth" this already existing thing for certain purposes. It also says Congress may provide for other things regarding the Militia, but it does not say that the Militia may only do the things that Congress has provided for, or that the Militia only consists of those people Congress organizes by legislation. In fact, it says explicitly that Congress may provide for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States. That means there can be other Parts which are not so employed.
Article II, Section 2 says:
"The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States"
In other words, the President is not the Commander in Chief of the Militia all the time or of all the Militia; he is only Commander in Chief of the Militia who are in the actual Service of the United States, while they are so serving. That means there can be Militia who are not in such service, and whom the President is not the Commander in Chief of.
In short, the powers the Constitution grants Congress and the President over the Militia are qualified and limited, not absolute.
The courts claim lots of things are constitutional when any reasonable person can see that the claim is nonsense. To give just a few examples from Supreme Court cases:
Seizing property to turn it over to a private developer instead of for public use is a valid use of the government's eminent domain power (Kelo v. New London).
Congress regulating farmers growing wheat on their own property for their own and their animals' consumption on the grounds is a valid regulation of interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause (Wickard v. Filburn).
Allowing Congress to delegate legislative power to the executive branch, in clear violation of Article I of the Constitution, as long as Congress gives an "intelligible principle" (Hampton Co. v. United States).
Ruling that exercising your Fifth Amendment right not to be a witness against yourself can be taken as evidence of guilt (Salinas v. Texas).
Yes, in an alternate universe it would be gratifying to see a high court that wasn't captured by far right ideologues that was willing to take another look at precedent establishing decisions of the past that rolled back freedoms and privacy and say, "You know what, the facts that supported FISA, the Patriot Act, etc., were falsely manufactured for political reasons, and actually now that those falsehoods have come to light we think it's time to admit that those decisions were unsupported and should be reversed." But I expect the opposite for this universe.
It's not a right/left thing, at least not in the colloquial sense those words are used in US. Laws like these have broad support on both sides of the political spectrum. The fundamental problem is authoritarianism, which is a disease infesting both left and right.
They are in effect accomplishing the same goal with a billion dollar satellite that picks up cell phone calls in a denied country vs. a lawful intercept request from the phone company here in the U.S.
The reason NSA has to get data from NRO satellites or its own clandestine taps (or Navy submarines, or what have you) is because North Korea's telco won't honor their intercept requests. Why spend the money when you can effectively just send an email to a friendly party? When we're talking the United States, FBI can exercise their legal privileges and avoid all that technical cost.
The FBI is domestic law enforcement. They need admissable evidence. FISA grants warrants. NSA is operating on a different level with different objectives.
But that's what's confusing to me I come from a country where a dictator might kill a few thousand just on a whim and shut off the internet so it's confusing why the NSA which in my head is still governed by democratic principles and is not at the whim of a single psychopath can collect data on everyone but it can't be used in court?
Like hypothetically if they had social graphs and cell phone records showing a US citizen was kidnapped and murdered they can't act on it or pass it to the local police? Doesn't that seem illogical?
By statue, the NSA can't actually do that. The mass unwarranted surveillance of phone conversations was a short-term program that was ultimately shut down as soon it's existence became known outside the Oval Office. Even Bush's Attorney General said he couldn't do it. The bulk collection of telephone metadata lasted for maybe 15 years but was ultimately allowed to expire due to both ethical concerns and because it didn't yield a lot of value.
The NSA is primarily tasked with overseas collection. IE tapping Osama bin Laden's satellite phone. And they report up the chain to the DoD. Meaning they aren't even looking for domestic criminals and may not notice if they surveilled one. If they're doing anything beyond their legal parameters or beyond their remit, they wouldn't broadcast it or expose themselves by using it to arrest someone.
I like to point to the Gestapo as a counterexample. They are the archetype for police state surveillance. And they did it in a country where most people didn't have even a rotary phone let alone the internet. The distinction between a police state and a free society is entirely up to will and not technology.
hmm idk a part of me doesn't believe the program went away just rebranded and renamed itself esp. with things like Executive Order 13587 & the recent NSS but that could be because I come from a place that has shown me the worst of humanity maybe with enough time in the free world I'll learn to be Mr. Optimist :)
but the morality/legality of something like that is cool to think about as a thought exercise :- if they're doing anything beyond their legal parameters or beyond their remit, they wouldn't broadcast it or expose themselves by using it to arrest someone even in a hypothetical scenario where the data points to a person being kidnapped from an apartment, driven across state lines, and murdered which in my head seems worse than the collection but idk the laws feel not mallable enough for the age we live in
Sure, you can assume they're doing some things off the books, bending rules, abusing authority. Surely it happens everywhere. But they couldn't easily hide a massive program or fund it without a trace for very long. If you want to take heart about something, the worst mass surveillance program was uncovered by the NY Times. They published it and suffered no consequences. The same guy who exposed that program, exposed the US involvement in sabotaging the Iranian nuclear program. They dragged him to court a few times, but he walked away without any charge sticking. So, for one, it's really, really hard to keep something like secret for very long and our press is still free enough to do something about it.
