The NSA very likely have secret information to blackmail President Obama and other important political figures. Daniel Ellsberg agrees with this sentiment (which he mentions in his recent reddit AMA), and Russell Tice confirmed this possibility when becoming an NSA whistleblower in 2006:
"On June 19, 2013, Tice claimed while being interviewed that the NSA had spied on Barack Obama while he was a senator, along with monitoring federal judges, ranking military officials, and other members of Congress, saying he himself had seen and held papers ordering such actions.[12][13] He went on to say, "This thing is incredible what NSA has done. They've basically turned themselves—in my opinion—into a rogue agency that has J. Edgar Hoover capabilities on a monstrous scale on steroids"."
Remember, this has already happened very recently in our nation's history, during J. Edgar Hoover's direction of the FBI:
"Hoover became a controversial figure, as evidence of his secretive actions became known. His critics have accused him of exceeding the jurisdiction of the FBI.[1] He used the FBI to harass political dissenters and activists, to amass secret files on political leaders,[2] and to collect evidence using illegal methods.[3] Hoover consequently amassed a great deal of power and was in a position to intimidate and threaten sitting Presidents.[4]"
This part of american history needs to be shouted from the mountain tops. "The Burglary" and COINTELPRO need to be mandatory teaching subjects in our schools. It's not a conspiracy theory to suspect NSA of controlling politics and activism through blackmail and coercion. This is exactly what has happened before with Hoover's FBI, and there's every reason to believe this is happening again with the NSA.
> there's every reason to believe this is happening again with the NSA
No, there isn't -- there is no such evidence that our elected officials are being coerced by the NSA.
Let me say it again, if such proof is revealed then it would be absolutely terrifying for everybody involved and all over the news (be it MSM or social or whatever). As it stands now there are only claims, and there is a distinct lack of evidence and facts surrounding such claims.
Now, with regards to blackmailing our elected officials, I think we can put it simply as such: the fear of just the possibility that we might be blackmailed is enough to cause self-censorship. This is a historical truth and accepted as self-evident.
That said, our elected officials are no less victims than we are. They are spied on as much as -- if not more than -- us.
Please acknowledge this one thing, if you will acknowledge anything in my post: our elected officials are no less victims than we are.
> Please acknowledge this one thing, if you will acknowledge anything in my post: our elected officials are no less victims than we are.
If I hire someone to walk around a room punching everyone in the face, my nose may be broken, but I'm not a victim in any real sense. These officials made their choice and it came back to bite them in the ass.
The OP knows there is no evidence, hence the use of the phrase "every reason to believe". It is believed to be true using reason, not evidence. Its a best deduction.
Your demand for evidence and facts is bogus, since there cant really be any. What we are talking about is what goes on in the mind of an individual. We cant prove that. But we do know that, for want of a better term, implied pressure to conform works. Its the same reason belief in a god works. God knows all and will punish us if we don't follow his rules. So, if we believe in the god/NSA, we do what is wanted because we don't want to be punished.
We know people act like this. We know it is possible that the NSA has information that might damage us, or ones we love. We know what the NSA wants. Therefor we have reason to believe someone who might want to control the NSA won't out of personal fear.
A reasonable deduction, based on what is known and history. No, sorry, no evidence. That one of the nice things about blackmail, there usually isn't because the victim obviously doesn't want to be outed.
Yes, of course the elected officials are victims in this, potentially. But as elected officials, with the power of democracy, they are, IMHO, duty bound to put that aside. Not doing so is selfish cowardice. Some one has to be as brave as Snowden, and I don't see that in our elected officials.
I find it amusing that you are being downvoted, because you are absolutely correct.
In light of what we do know about the NSA, it is completely reasonable to assume (and in fact believe) the worst when we speculate on what we don't know. If people ask, "what evidence do you have?" I just respond with, "I'm sorry, but have you actually been paying any attention to Snowden's revelations and have you done any critical thinking about what they actually mean?" That is enough to shut them up.
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And the NSA has as close to absolute power as one can reasonably reach today: in the Age of Information, they have access to almost all information. What makes them especially dangerous is that their deeds are powered by their misguided conscience. They strongly believe that what they are doing is the Right Thing because it protects America. People who have succumbed to such fundamentalist thinking will do anything with the power they have, including blackmailing politicians.
Just because someone or some organization is really really bad does not mean that all critical thinking ceases and every contrived scenario becomes true.
Right... just because an organization has been caught doing things in the past, and lying about them, doesn't mean they'll continue to do those things, and lie about them... especially now that those things have become too easy to do, and therefore probably too boring to bother with.
The NSA has likely already used its capabilities for blackmail, but it's impossible to confirm because they would never directly blackmail someone, as in "do this or else", because that would be easily traceable to them and cause a PR nightmare.
Instead, people who run afoul of their agenda will have damaging information leaked through seemingly unrelated channels, or be targeted by other law enforcement agencies after parallel construction tip-offs.
This instills more fear and creates stronger influence than the threat of direct blackmail. Rather than being faced with explicit demands, anyone in power with something to hide must continually assess whether anything they say or do could be construed as offensive to the intelligence community.
I'm not convinced that blackmail is even effective today. You're assuming that politicians have a sense of shame. Maybe they did in the 1950s, but it's clear they don't today.
Smoking marijuana, using cocaine a bit? Admitted in an autobiography, there are even pictures of the former.
There are the usual rumors he's homosexual, although his daughters would indicate he's at "worse" bisexual. After getting reelected, this would result in exactly what???
To paraphrase Edwin Edwards, he'd only be in danger if "caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy".
It's not just about shame, but political assassination and public ridicule. The right kind of narrative could destroy, not only Obama's personal prospects after his presidency, but everything else he worked on during his presidency, including healthcare reform. The political fallout of a large enough scandal could damage the perception of the entire political party, and the balance of power to shift. The political fallout from Clinton's scandals happened during his second term, affected leadership in the House of Representatives, and the outcome of the 2000 Presidential campaign.
"The right kind of narrative could destroy, not only Obama's personal prospects after his presidency, but everything else he worked on during his presidency"
Bullshit.
A guy who the MSM regularly photographs with a halo, or publishes such pictures as supplied by the White House (there's a bit of a tiff right now about all that). Who's described as "sort of a god" by Newsweek's Evan Thomas. Etc. etc. ad nauseam.
The scandals for which we have firm evidence, and actual bodies (dead boys, as it were, but a number of dead girls in Mexico too) are so numerous that we can be very sure the dominate culture that makes or ignores scandals will continue to do the latter.
As for future prospects, you really believe Obama could have done something that only the NSA knows that will keep him off the speech circuit, unlike Clinton??? He's set for life ... or perhaps only until the Federal government runs out of money, but that's a very different thing. The scandal of "trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see" is not in the least hidden.
Your Clinton example again fails to impress, plus moves the goalposts (considerably less damage; heck, Hillary! becoming Secretary of State did more damage to his opportunities and income than anything else, Obama's low cunning WRT to that was much remarked on at the time).
I'm not aware of any damage that did to what Clinton worked on during his presidency (although I could have forgotten), you're going to need to expand on "affected leadership in the House of Representatives" since as I remember the Republicans captured it in 1994, halfway through the 1st term (although, yes, scandals were a part of that, e.g. Waco), and I suppose the razor thin margin of 2000 means that any single thing like that could have flipped it to Gore. Joining a crime family does have its downsides....
Now a case can be made that all this will harm Hillary! ... but that's complicated by the palpable desire of a lot of Democrats to avoid having her on the ticket, e.g. she doesn't have a fraction of Bill's political skills.
But I think all this still falls substantially short of the impact you claim is possible, I still maintain he's in Edwin Edwards territory.
It's not about feeling shame. It's about political assassination and public ridicule.
Many important political figures have been involved with adulterated sex and illegal drugs. Mass surveillance can uncover these scandals and use them as leverage to coerce and blackmail. The FBI put MLK under mass surveillance, uncovered evidence of his sexual deviancy, and sent him threatening letters in an attempt to suppress his civil rights activism.
Your MLK example would be more convincing if it actually worked.
BTW, what is "adulterated sex"??? Adultery? Only seems to matter in the military, where it's still a crime and grounds for discharge, at least for officers. And for many Republican politicians, but certainly not all, Mark Sanford being only the latest infamous example I can recall.
It's one thing to blithely talk about the potential for blackmail; actual modern examples in today's "no shame" culture (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7070045) would be more useful. A failed attempt at blackmail or worse harms the case you're trying to make.
I could also add "look at the Abscam aftermath" if you think these potential targets are toothless.
And of course I know what adulterated means, I've just never seen that formulation with sex; Google comes up with 4,600 entries, perhaps I'm just behind the times. However I'd use "scandalous", which is in common use, and alliterates.
Wow. People just cannot let go of Obama. It's pathetic that people STILL are willing to forgive him, thinking he'll somehow change, that he's somehow better and will rise above this endlessly expanding government of ours and take a stand with reform. Let the fuck go of it.
And sharing memes on Facebook? What the fuck is that going to do?
Do you not see the extremely lofty wishlist that has no chance of being fulfilled at all? Maybe halfway on one or two of them, but that's it. When are people going to realize this president is more of the same? This is going to be a damage control press conference filled to the brim with buzzwords and weasel phrases.
You want real actual measurable change? Get your fucking congressman out of office.
It's a system of checks and balances. It is getting weighted towards the Executive branch and Federal government, but that started in the early 1900's and hasn't stopped.
I suspect that's the point. When the reforms score somewhere in the 0-2 range, as you know they will, it's another factor to use in the campaign against illegal spying.
It seems the point of the wishlist is explicitly to demonstrate how far short the actual announcement will fall. The reason it's so "lofty" is to set Obama up to fail - even if he announces some real reforms, it's completely unrealistic to demand all this at once.
So, another words, you have no realistically achievable plan either, but you're angrier and more pessimistic. How about this: if you want measurable change, start with a goal that has somewhere greater than a 0 percent chance of succeeding.
It also might help if you could point to why some particular congressperson was objectionable, like if you actually had metrics for what you were trying to achieve so we would all vote in bunch of people that were worse that the status quo. Like a scorecard.
So you're saying we should grade him on a curve? I think an objective list of necessities, leaving our experience with Obama (or any previous presidents) out of it, is the only way to look at this reasonably without getting all political about it.
Let's just see how it turns out by the end of all of this. Remember, people said the same thing with DADT: "why not just end this? why not issue an executive order?" Because he was playing the long game and ended up getting a permanent repeal.
he wasn't playing the long game, he is playing the same game now as then, politics. All his actions are weighed against the affect on the next election. There is no other concern with him or the others in power.
Promises made before elections are just phrases used to put the other side off balance or force the other side to react. They are never really meant to be acted upon if there is any political cost.
Playing the long game, nah just waiting out inevitability, as in it wasn't going to stand anyway and he had that luxury to rely on
I think your analysis is a bit too simple, it depends on where you are in the political spectrum. He routinely demonizes roughly half the nation (that's my half, which is why I so acutely notice that), and plenty of those goals are anything but "optimistic" for subsets of that half.
That's one reason he's such a polarizing figure. Yeah, he promised to bring us together, but to bring up one particularly relevant to Hacker News example, look at his "you didn't build that" speech. Coming from an entrepreneurial family and having working in a number of startups, I couldn't take that as anything but an attack on me and mine.
Why would you take an out-of-context quote as an attack on you and yours?
The actual text:
There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me –
because they want to give something back. They know they didn't –
look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own.
You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who
think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot
of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than
everybody else. Let me tell you something – there are a whole bunch
of hardworking people out there.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.
There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to
create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed
you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've
got a business – you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.
The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created
the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our
individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are
some things, just like fighting fires, we don't do on our own. I mean,
imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way
to organize fighting fires.
The 'You Didn't Build That' was just an awkward change of thoughts from the 'roads and bridges' in the previous sentence.
Were you equally insulted when Romney said:
You Olympians, however, know you didn't get here solely on your own power.
For most of you, loving parents, sisters or brothers, encouraged your
hopes, coaches guided, communities built venues in order to organize
competitions. All Olympians stand on the shoulders of those who lifted
them. We've already cheered the Olympians, let's also cheer the parents,
coaches, and communities. All right!
Both were a nod to the social contract which hasn't been terribly controversial since sometime in the 1600's.
Because I actually listened to him say it, with the verbal tones that made what he meant clear, and took it as such, especially since this interpretation is entirely consistent with how he's governed.
Look, it doesn't matter a wit how you interpret his words and actions, what matters is how hostile around half the nation finds them. Nothing in my politically aware lifetime, which starts with Nixon's first term (1969-1972), comes even close. I've read that FDR was this bad, don't really know enough about the ones in-between.
I mean, he said just before the 2008 election "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America." You don't think that included the social contract???
Well, yeah to both points. I'm just disagreeing with your claim that in general his stated goals are "optimistic" for roughly half the nation, and that's just perception....
After making all his Nobel prize winning promises, all Obama has done is systematically break nearly every one of them.
Tomorrow is just going to be one more in a long series of disappointments.
While I'm the first to admit that Obama is lacking in political courage (he generally just sticks his finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing, like he did with gay marriage), Gitmo isn't his fault. We can thank the cowardly Congress for that. "Rep. Dumbshit voted to close Gitmo!! Dumbshit loves the terrorists!!! This November, vote Jim Douchenozzle for Congress, because Douchenozzle hates the terrorists."
The ignorance and overall un-literacy (not illiterate, unliterate, meaning they're too fucking lazy to read) of the American public, and the high turnout ratio of elderly, and I'm sorry to say, gullible senior citizens doesn't help.
Personally I don't see the problem with a politician figuring out what their constituents want and doing just that. I hear criticisms of weak politicians just doing whatever seems favorable... isn't that what they're there for? To represent the will of the people?
I don't want to elect someone who will force their ideas into law. I want to elect someone who will force the people's ideas into law. What's wrong with a politician saying "I had this idea, but I changed my mind because the people told me I was wrong"?
Ideally, we elect them to do what we would want them to do if we were fully informed and had time to think about each issue. In practice, both sides of the question are easily used and just as easily alleged to be used as political cover for unsavoriness.
>I want to elect someone who will force the people's ideas into law.
What about when the people choose an ethnic group that they want to lynch en masse, or a particular type of music that they want to make it a crime to distribute, or to start a mass extermination of sharks in coastal waters, or to have the EPA offices torn down and replaced with a massive monument to the 10 commandments?
Yeah, but I don't think freehunter was invoking white line unConstitutional things, which cover your first two items.
The latter two are just reflections on shifting cultural trends. E.g. replace sharks with wolves for the first ... but the latter is cute. Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wetlands....
Sure, but you are failing to account for the part where by ways of mass media you can plant your ideas in the heads of the people which they will then request you enforce.
I'm so tired of this reply, because ultimately it boils down to "The President of the United States was unable to use the bully pulpit to convince Americans that torture is bad."
That's a reflection on the quality of the president, not checks and balances.
If true (all I noticed were "Don't move them into my district!", a legit issue), what does that say about Obama's foresight?
Such objections were predictable when he made that pledge, nothing's changed in your claimed reasons of "ignorance and overall un-literacy" and high turnout elderly. It says nothing good if all this was enough to stop him once he became President, whatever the exact reason(s), and it's remains another broken promise.
Going to disagree with you that it's a "legit issue". The people in guantanamo are not comic book supervillians. They do not have special powers. The whole NIMBY thing surrounding them is just as silly as saying that maximum security prisons shouldn't exist.
The normal occupants of maximum security prisons don't have world-wide networks of people with a demonstrated willingness and ability to kidnap or mass murder to apply pressure for their release. Guantanamo is wonderfully isolated, Cuban mine field on the land side (Clinton removed ours, replacing it with sensors), otherwise a Navy base only accessible only by air and sea, which we control.
There was also the wrinkle of trying them in normal civilian courts, which would have been a logistical nightmare.
Ah, yeah, don't forget the usual suspects would be out there protesting 24x7. Not saying that's not their right, but what Congresscritter wants that?
(And all rather silly, at least for the unlawful combatants, which per international war conventions can be killed out of hand.)
I'm not sure what the first thing has to do with anything. If a terrorist organization is going to kill or kidnap in order to play for someone's release, it doesn't particularly matter where they're located.
Logistical nightmare? We try more dangerous people than this every single year. It's hardly insurmountable.
A lot of these are either politically impossible or not within the President's power to implement to begin with:
2) Protect "privacy rights" of foreigners: Foreigners don't have privacy rights under our Constitution, and by and large Americans don't have a problem with the NSA spying on foreigners. Indeed, that's the purpose of the NSA.
5) Stop undermining internet security: what does this even mean? Should the NSA stop figuring out how to break encryption? Stop inserting backdoors into equipment sold to China? Again, that's the purpose of the NSA.
7) Reject the third party doctrine: the third party doctrine is a legal doctrine; the President cannot reject it, only the Supreme Court.
It's a mistake to believe that just because many Americans are upset with the NSA over recent revelations, that they embrace the leftist/globalist sentiments that are common in the tech community with regards to the NSA. To the extent the public opposes the NSA programs, they oppose mass-collection of call data from Americans. That's it.
There's a widely held belief that the way NSA stockpiles exploits harms Internet security. One plausible way that could be true is if NSA sources exploits from researchers who would otherwise sell them to places that would disclose them to vendors, which NSA won't do.
And, obviously, there's the widely held (and very plausible) belief that NSA backdoored random number generator standards. Those backdoors probably aren't currently doing much harm to the Internet, because they aren't in use on systems whose random numbers we (a) care much about and (b) are exposed 32 bytes at a time. But still, it's reasonable to expect NSA to stop doing that kind of thing.
I don't think those sorts of reforms are unreasonable, and go to the general issue of cabining the scope of the NSA to foreign instead of domestic surveillance. However, I think they're probably too esoteric for a political solution. I'd imagine this is just something the standards bodies will have to deal with.
The NSA's foreign activity is very much a part of the problem. American interests are damaged for the forseeable future because of revelations about their corruption of the internet, of hardware shipped overseas, of cable traffic, and on and on.
That kind of thinking is the product of availability bias: you think about NSA's foreign activity, because it's been leaked en masse. But it would be incredibly naive to think that major European countries --- not just the UK, but particularly France and Germany --- haven't been doing the exact same things for years. When we get to talking about "foreign intelligence", we are talking about pure SIGINT, of the sort that has been practiced since before the computer era --- in fact, the sort of SIGINT that presaged and motivated the computer era to begin with.
Really? Can anyone argue that what the NSA is doing resembles anything that ever went before? Using (subverting) the entire power of the internet and its major commercial inventors/backbone to capture petabytes of personal data on everyone everywhere?
Since our European friends have lesser resources, I cannot imagine they have done/would even conceive of doing anything so cold-blooded as our NSA has done. Which internet authorities are centered in Germany? Any?
In fact, I imagine a new Internet rule will have to be created, where invoking the NSA as hyperbole ends a thread in much the same way as NAZIs or Hitler do now.
One could argue that if one wanted to move the goalposts back to pretend that one was arguing with a point that nobody disagrees with. My understanding is that you were talking about foreign signals intelligence, and that was what I was commenting on.
Worse yet, the NSA creates exploits of their own. Its not comforting to think you machine was invaded through a backdoor that was meant for the NSA's own use - breached is breached.
Essentially the NSA has been working against the interests of all of the rest of us in a measurable, negative way for years. Weighing that against the admittedly negligible positive results achieved, the NSA becomes little better than a massively-funded exploit-creator who, by the way, we all pay our own money to fund.
Actually, NSA creating exploits of their own is much better for the security of the Internet, because it doesn't capture resources that could have been directed at improving software. I'm fine with an NSA that competes with the commercial software industry over software security.
NSA finding exploits is good. NSA keeping those exploits secret, for use as tools, is probably good; NSA disclosing those exploits to vendors and getting them fixed may or may not be better. NSA convincing vendors to insert bugs (or features) that can be exploited is bad. I don't know a whole lot about how much they do each of these.
I agree, but try to keep the terminology clear. The things you're saying are bad aren't "exploits"; they're "implants". There are modes of implanting code that I think are clearly bad, but even more modes where I think "well, that's SIGINT for you."
Sure, I'll readily accept a preference for the term "implants". I just wanted to state things (what I hope was) clearly lest people talk past each other.
I'd agree if we shared our knowledge with the NSA. But they keep it secret, in fact threaten to put a bag over your head and send you to Guantanamo if you tell anyone.
So what could be a healthy tension becomes a rigged game, with the NSA busting heads and breaking things all over the place.
Curious - what can it mean for the NSA not to be capturing resources? Surely they use competent engineers to do what they do - who could have been directed at improving software instead of subverting it?
Once again: it's fine if NSA is discovering exploits, as long as they aren't also paying off commercial researchers not to disclose flaws to vendors. A private NSA exploit development capability merely puts them in competition with commercial industry, and industry has the upper hand, because they can actually fix whole bug classes all at once, and NSA has to find them piecemeal.
I guess I didn't understand the previous then. The NSA isn't just discovering exploits, they are an exploit factory. They develop chips and hardware, coerce internet backbone corporations to create exploits, generally have broken the whole game. While we were arguing about cookies, they were recording the whole conversation, breaking the encryption, reducing privacy worldwide to a sham.
Competition implies some sort of level ground. But they gag the communications suppliers as they subvert the networks. If not for a whistle-blower this could have continued undetected for decades.
I wish I were some sort of conspiracy-theorist spouting hyperbole. I know this sounds like one.
I'm reading "exploit", "chips", "hardware", "backbone", "cookies", and "encryption", but not seeing a coherent argument or evidence that we mean the same things when we use these words. NSA is not getting "backbone corporations" to create "exploits".
I guess I'm not qualified to speak on this subject, I can't say anything without sounding like a newb. The NSA requires Google, wireless operators, everybody who has or transmits data, to hand it over assembly-line fashion and that's not an 'exploit'. But if I managed to do that, it would be.
So the NSA doesn't get labeled as a rogue hacker or exploit-creator because, well, because of semantics.
2) The constitution does not directly state that foreigners have rights. That does not mean the President cannot state that he views foreigners as having rights X, Y, and Z, and that he is directing the forces and agencies under his command to respect them.
5) It most especially means "stop pushing the use of compromised encryption standards". If there is a weakness for the good guys to exploit, the bad guys will find it as well - it is better that we strive to be secure. Attempting to break encryption standards the world has come to through legitimate processes is an entirely different thing, and totally compatible with that striving to be secure. Backdoors into equipment sold internationally are less of an issue - and the more targeted, the less of an issue - I'm not sure what the right call is there, once we're generally respecting point 2.
7) The president can state that he doesn't believe it is appropriate (bully pulpit...), and can instruct the Justice Department not to rely on it. He could also ask for legislation that closes the loophole explicitly - we already do that for HIPAA.
I'm not saying any of these are politically expedient (though I would prefer the political environment to be such that it is) or likely, but "the President can't do this" is wrong, and "it is not politically expedient" is reason not excuse.
I said: "either politically impossible or not within the President's power." Recognizing foreigners as having "rights" that constrain the security-related operations of the NSA would be a political non-starter.
Re: "stop pushing the use of compromised encryption standards" is a lot narrower than "stop undermining internet security." Politically, the former might be possible, but the latter certainly wouldn't be, at least to the extent they involve breaking encryption standards and the like.
Finally, while the President could theoretically instruct the Justice department not to rely on the doctrine, he can't "reject it" as the law of the land. He also can't, practically, tell the DOJ not to rely on it. U.S. v. Miller is the underpinning of a huge portion of white-collar and antitrust enforcement activity.
'I said: "either politically impossible or not within the President's power."'
Yes, and I'm not sure I disagree with that statement. My responses weren't directed to that statement, but to the more specific enumerated critiques. In any event, "X is seen as politically impossible" shouldn't become "never ask for X", or X will never be seen as politically possible because no one is asking for it.
'Recognizing foreigners as having "rights" that constrain the security-related operations of the NSA would be a political non-starter.'
I think that's something we should fix (and I think doing so would be in our long-term interest on several fronts, including security). We start by stating that it's something we want.
Re internet security: Breaking encryption standards, and then recommending that it's time to move to new standards when the breaks become sufficiently significant, is not undermining internet security - it is furthering internet security.
'Finally, while the President could theoretically instruct the Justice department not to rely on the doctrine, he can't "reject it" as the law of the land.'
"Rejecting" a law doesn't have a precise legal meaning that I'm aware of. The call is for him to 1) say that it's bad, and 2) to take steps to curtail it.
"He also can't, practically, tell the DOJ not to rely on it. U.S. v. Miller is the underpinning of a huge portion of white-collar and antitrust enforcement activity."
So call for legislation that restricts it without overly restricting it (granting that the costs of going all the way would exceed the benefit), or find some other means of enabling that enforcement.
The President with one executive order can tell the NSA / FBI that no American can have data or metadata gathered without a specific, individual warrant. That is well within his power under the US Constitution. Some would say it is his duty to do just that under the Constitution.
Installing backdoors in private equipment might be the first modern case for a 3rd Amendment challenge.
After all these years, I only value the legislation a politician introduces, official actions in office, and their votes. Everything else is too hard to figure out the intent or sincerity.
This might be from having politicians in the 90's lie to my face and then vote totally different.
E.g. the common Senate trick of voting for cloture, that is, the end of modern version of the filibuster which needs 60 votes (not that that is likely to survive very long now that the "nuclear option" has been launched) and then voting against the bill. That gives 9-10 Senators room for posturing, and underlines how you need to learn some of each house's procedures to know what's really going on.
Not all that much, that plus paying attention to a few bills you consider telling, and a little search fu on thomas.gov the day after a vote goes a long way.
ADDED: For the House, you need to learn, generally from other sources, the rules under which a bill was brought to the floor and the associated votes. Whatever you knew about the Senate is now subject to abrupt change: among other things, the nuclear option was launched with a majority vote of the Senators, and the sources I've been reading say a rules change by majority vote was either unprecedented or not done for more than a century.
Senate Majority Leader Reid has also de facto changed rules like the ability to offer amendments (the words of art are "filling the amendment tree"), and has recently? formally stated that right is over.
Lord knows what's going to happen when the Republicans regain control of the Senate someday; even the "why can't we all be friends?" Republican Senate old bulls are very unhappy about these changes.
Yep, or the voting against a bill you like in the Senate so you can bring it up again.
It saddens me that reporters don't explain the rules to people. The misreporting on what a vote means and why some voted Yeah to one vote and Nay to another really bugs me. Certain news outlets have actually lied about what was going on.
It is a bit hard to follow. Locally, one ND reporter followed the ND session on twitter and did a remarkably good job including explaining the reasons for the 1 vote in a 99-1 vote that looked correct but could have been horribly (and maliciously) misreported.
[edit] as to the "nuclear option" - very short-sited and makes one see that Pres. Clinton was a much better manager of the executive branch.
Any time the outcome of a vote is overdetermined there is room for manipulation of one's voting record. I'm not sure what to think about, in particular, the practice of voting for cloture and against the bill. In principle, one could consistently hold the position that denying cloture should be reserved for cases of strong rejection (or similar). I am not convinced "use every procedural opportunity to push your agenda, regardless of anything else" is what we want (though I'm not entirely convinced that it isn't, either).
I don't think we're going to here anything substantial from the President. Regardless, providing people with a list of the issues and an easy way to keep track of how we does (or more likely, doesn't) address them sounds like a good idea to me.
This guy makes me so angry. I will never believe anything he says. Also, he has a greater strategy, and doing occasional flirting is not gonna make me trust him.
The problems that led to this failure of the system are cultural not procedural. We already have the constitution and many laws and procedure that should have prevented what has been going on. What we have is a profound lack of understanding of how intelligence works and the limits of what can be done with it, intentionally or not.
You can't fix culture. You can only shut it down and start over. And that will not happen.
And now for the dog and pony show wherein politicians will compete to "always make use of a good crisis", jockeying for position to see who wins the most political capital by creating the harshest sounding reprimand of the NSA with the least actual consequences.
I fully expect the NSA reform to make even the financial reform look harsh in comparison.
> 4. National Security Letters need prior judicial review and should never be accompanied by a perpetual gag order.
See also 18 USC 2705(b):
> A governmental entity acting under [18 USC 2703(d)] [...] may apply to a court for an order commanding a provider of electronic communications service or remote computing service to whom a warrant, subpoena, or court order is directed, for such period as the court deems appropriate, not to notify any other person of the existence of the warrant, subpoena, or court order.
Note that 18 USC 2703 and 18 USC 2705 were part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986.
"On June 19, 2013, Tice claimed while being interviewed that the NSA had spied on Barack Obama while he was a senator, along with monitoring federal judges, ranking military officials, and other members of Congress, saying he himself had seen and held papers ordering such actions.[12][13] He went on to say, "This thing is incredible what NSA has done. They've basically turned themselves—in my opinion—into a rogue agency that has J. Edgar Hoover capabilities on a monstrous scale on steroids"."
Remember, this has already happened very recently in our nation's history, during J. Edgar Hoover's direction of the FBI:
"Hoover became a controversial figure, as evidence of his secretive actions became known. His critics have accused him of exceeding the jurisdiction of the FBI.[1] He used the FBI to harass political dissenters and activists, to amass secret files on political leaders,[2] and to collect evidence using illegal methods.[3] Hoover consequently amassed a great deal of power and was in a position to intimidate and threaten sitting Presidents.[4]"
This part of american history needs to be shouted from the mountain tops. "The Burglary" and COINTELPRO need to be mandatory teaching subjects in our schools. It's not a conspiracy theory to suspect NSA of controlling politics and activism through blackmail and coercion. This is exactly what has happened before with Hoover's FBI, and there's every reason to believe this is happening again with the NSA.