Certainly, they need to be reined in. Cracking crypto is their job. Sabotaging standards processes and forcing people to turn over data and gagging them with National Security Letters is very much no their job, and must be stopped.
Apologies; I deleted my comment because i realized it was not directly addressing your argument.
I will add that while I agree it will certainly be done- I was saying that Mother Jones is arguing the "how" shouldn't have been disclosed because all that we need to know is the "what"- because political avenues are the most suitable avenues for recourse, and do not need the "how".
No problem. Nothing wrong with tangents as long as they're understood as such.
Anyway, I still think the "how" is important. If the NSA was spying on everybody with sheer technical prowess, the political remedy would basically be, "Hey, you guys need to tone it down. Limit the spying to actual enemies." The techniques would be OK, they just need to be applied more carefully.
The way things are now, the techniques are unacceptable. The political remedy here needs to be, "Hey, you guys need to stop sabotaging crypto standards, forcing tech companies to hand over data, and threatening them with prison if they talk. Stick with the technical prowess stuff you're supposed to be doing."
>"Hey, you guys need to stop sabotaging crypto standards,
forcing tech companies to hand over data, and threatening
them with prison if they talk. Stick with the technical
prowess stuff you're supposed to be doing."
This is really a key point that can't be emphasized enough. Anyone who was paying attention in the 1990s knew that the NSA has a significant technological advantage over the U.S. private sector and the rest of the world, but even pretty serious civil libertarians were not concerned, because there was no possibility of dragnet spying on today's scale, and because most of us assumed -- rightly or wrongly -- that the NSA was for the most part keeping out of domestic affairs and politics (funding issues aside).
Now, it's abundantly clear that the NSA not only has inserted itself deeply into our political process, routinely cooperates with domestic law enforcement, bullies, coerces, and co-opts U.S. industry, and very likely spies on politicians and activist groups. For anyone who has studied modern history, this sets off major alarm bells.
I keep hearing "what's changed" from NSA stalwart defendants. My answer: everything.
Certainly, they need to be reined in. Cracking crypto is their job. Sabotaging standards processes and forcing people to turn over data and gagging them with National Security Letters is very much no their job, and must be stopped.