> Can't the NSA spy on foreign operations without any legal oversight
Yeah. It would be kind of bizarre to have a military signals intelligence service where spying on foreign electronic communications was some kind of exceptional activity.
The whole point of the NSA is spying on foreign operations. The legal restrictions involving a "secret court" (the two courts themselves aren't secret, though their proceedings tend to be) for oversight are to prevent the abuse of the "foreign intelligence" excuse as a backdoor for blanket domestic surveillance.
Or at least, that was the original purpose of FISA after exactly that kind of abuse. With various "War on Terror" era changes, its arguable that the purpose of the oversight has been reversed so that it now serves as a form of legal cover for the abuse of the "foreign intelligence" excuse as a backdoor for blanket domestic surveillance.
Yeah. It would be kind of bizarre to have a military signals intelligence service where spying on foreign electronic communications was some kind of exceptional activity.
And then international travel became a routine occurrence, and countries made "alliances", and international commerce became one of the most powerful forces driving the global economy, and the Internet arrived, and the kind of black and white world you're imagining went away. No country exists in such a vacuum in the twenty-first century, and a country that respects the basic rights of its own people but completely ignores the rights of others will pay a price for that hostility sooner or later. At least today that price is mostly measured in dollars and not blood as it might have been a few decades ago.
It's sad that a lot of the abuses we've seen and heard about in recent years have to be curtailed through financial pressure and not politicians doing the right thing, but that doesn't make people voting with their wallets any less effective.
Travel doesn't really change things. The issue is sovereignty; relations between nations remain stuck in a place very close to the Hobbesian state of nature. Insofar as this is a problem to solve, the solution is popularly accountable governments with broader geographic scope than existing nation-states.
Note, however, that, there's not much movement in this direction (EU expansion is pretty much it) anywhere in the world, and some movement in the other direction.
Travel doesn't really change things. The issue is sovereignty
I don't know how meaningful "sovereignty" is any more, though. We live in very literally a global community today. People visit each other's countries for work and pleasure, some for a short time, some making a relatively permanent move. Even without physical presence, in the age of the Internet and easy international shipping, everyone's economy depends deeply on those outside their own country.
The kind of "us and them" mentality we've seen in recent debates about privacy and security is an anachronism, a work of fiction based on romantic notions from a different time and place. The key difference between political vs. financial influences reigning in that mentality is that the established ruling class in each "us" group can still exert considerable control over the political landscape, but the financial landscape is shaped by reality and has therefore adapted faster to modern life. You can spin your surveys showing that 99.97% of $YOUR_COUNTRY's citizens have no problem with $ABUSE, but if the reality is that the abuse is unpleasant and people don't like it, the money is still going to show it. Ask anyone in the air travel industry who has the option of using various controversial security measures or not.
> The kind of "us and them" mentality we've seen in recent debates about privacy and security is an anachronism, a work of fiction based on romantic notions from a different time and place.
All notions of groups of people are equally works of fiction, whether its everybody-is-"us" or "us and them". As long as you don't have a single government of global scope, you are going to have the consequences of separate governments (and, no, "no governments" doesn't get you out of that problem, its just the limit case of lots of governments, where every government consists of one person.)
> The key difference between political vs. financial influences reigning in that mentality is that the established ruling class in each "us" group can still exert considerable control over the political landscape, but the financial landscape is shaped by reality and has therefore adapted faster to modern life.
That's an amusing story, but it is by no means true. Particularly, it relies on the absolutely ludicrous idea that "the financial landscape" and "the political landscape" are separate things. Particularly, it pretends that the "established ruing class" that has influence over the "political landscape" isn't the same set of wealthy people whose preferences are reflected in the "financial landscape", and that the "political landscape" isn't a product of how the "financial landscape" has "adapted to modern life".
> You can spin your surveys showing that 99.97% of $YOUR_COUNTRY's citizens have no problem with $ABUSE, but if the reality is that the abuse is unpleasant and people don't like it, the money is still going to show it. Ask anyone in the air travel industry who has the option of using various controversial security measures or not.
Do you realize how the nationalization of air travel security in the US (which relieved airlines of responsibility/liability), the adoption of many specific controversial security measures (that involved purchasing goods and services from security firms), and the programs which allow the "right kind" of people to pay and bypass certain security procedures illustrate the falsity of your political vs. financial dichotomy?
Particularly, it relies on the absolutely ludicrous idea that "the financial landscape" and "the political landscape" are separate things.
They can easily be so in the short term. In the longer term, they tend to get pushed back into sync.
Particularly, it pretends that the "established ruing class" that has influence over the "political landscape" isn't the same set of wealthy people whose preferences are reflected in the "financial landscape"
They aren't, because money locked up in someone's savings and investments isn't driving the economy in the same way that money someone spends in the store or going on holiday is. Unless those few rich people are suddenly going to start flying thousands of times a day, the airlines are going to care more about the numerous you-and-me people choosing whether to spend their money on a flight than they are about one guy who always flies first class but is still only buying one ticket, particularly when, as you point out yourself, they can often conveniently eat their cake and have it if they allow the rich guy to bypass unpleasantness that is imposed on the rest of us anyway.
Do you realize how the nationalization of air travel security in the US ... illustrate the falsity of your political vs. financial dichotomy?
It illustrates how in the short term the political powers always win, sure. But in the long term, significant numbers of people and businesses will favour travelling in more pleasant ways, or storing their data in ways that don't expose them to liability and/or industrial espionage, or otherwise avoiding unwelcome measures where it's possible to do so. The unpleasantness exposes its perpetrators to disruption by more agreeable alternatives, which is why those perpetrating it are always trying to force a lack of choice on consumers via legislation. But that in turn has a political price, and sooner or later it always breaks down too.
Yeah. It would be kind of bizarre to have a military signals intelligence service where spying on foreign electronic communications was some kind of exceptional activity.
The whole point of the NSA is spying on foreign operations. The legal restrictions involving a "secret court" (the two courts themselves aren't secret, though their proceedings tend to be) for oversight are to prevent the abuse of the "foreign intelligence" excuse as a backdoor for blanket domestic surveillance.
Or at least, that was the original purpose of FISA after exactly that kind of abuse. With various "War on Terror" era changes, its arguable that the purpose of the oversight has been reversed so that it now serves as a form of legal cover for the abuse of the "foreign intelligence" excuse as a backdoor for blanket domestic surveillance.