
New CIA Chief to Gladly Spy on Americans, Even If Using Info Hacked by Russians - type0
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170123/10335936551/proposed-cia-chief-seems-happy-to-spy-americans-even-if-using-info-hacked-russians.shtml
======
jkelsey
If you live in California and you are at all concerned about this, you must
call Sen. Feinstein's offices and tell her staff that you oppose the Senator's
vote to confirm Pompeo and will work to support her opposition in the 2018
midterms (she is up for re-election).

[http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/washington-...](http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/washington-
dc)?

~~~
wang_li
It's already over, he's confirmed.

[http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/senate-confirms-mike-
pompe...](http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/senate-confirms-mike-pompeo-as-
cia-director/article/2612755)

~~~
jkelsey
I'm aware. That why I said "oppose the Senator's vote to confirm Pompeo." She
needs to be held accountable. Stop spending time responding to comments on the
Internet if you haven't called yet. It takes 5 minutes.

------
reverend_gonzo
The days of legally-enforced privacy are at best numbered, if not gone
completely.

Even if we win one fight, it's going to be a constant battle against powers
who do want more and better surveillance, and the capability to do so is just
getting easier and cheaper.

The only real solution is to have technologically enforced privacy, in ways
that can not be blocked legally.

While we shouldn't stop the first fight, we really should be focusing on the
second one.

~~~
baybal2
>The days of legally-enforced privacy are at best numbered, if not gone
completely.

Well, if not other legal means left, you have other options. You happy
Americans can buy guns legally, and "right to revolution" is pretty much
written in your constitution.

~~~
awinder
It honestly shocks me when people think that the individual still has this
much power. The power of government has changed a bit since the 1700s, unless
people plan of acquiring a large fleet of planes and tanks, this is just
farsical.

~~~
mooseburger
I recall Vietnam managing to survive the US Army despite lacking planes and
tanks. Holding land ultimately requires boots on the ground, so unless the
government plans to engage in total war against an insurrection (mass bomb
American cities), guerrilla will be possible.

It's also highly likely a portion of the army would defect if things get that
far, making it less a revolution and more a civil war.

~~~
throwaway46983
In my experience Americans get (rightfully) nervous just by the presence of
police officers, the thought of protesting or even talking about politics. A
US conflict involving guns is more likely to resemble Cambodia than Vietnam.

~~~
mooseburger
That's true. The situation needs to get very dire before random Americans are
willing to take up arms.

Personally, I think a civil war is likelier than a revolution, due to the army
dividing. Though to be clear, both seem rather unlikely.

------
em3rgent0rdr
Sad thing is a lot of Democrats are collaborators...I worry that democrats
can't put up a serious resistance necessary to protect civil liberties:
[https://theintercept.com/2017/01/23/14-senate-democrats-
fall...](https://theintercept.com/2017/01/23/14-senate-democrats-fall-in-line-
behind-trump-cia-pick-who-left-door-open-to-torture/)

also the following statement is false, because he was confirmed as of today:
"However, the Senate blocked Mike Pompeo, Trump's nominee for CIA."

~~~
TallGuyShort
A lot of Democrats were the primary perpetrators no more than a week ago. I've
gotten sick of this 8 year cycle in which everyone flips their stance on
whether or not a President who is for the most part doing the same things as
the one before him is a bad guy or not.

It's nice to have the anti-war left back, but I'll miss the small-government
conservatives. My guess is the Patriot Act will stick around again but
Democrats will be back to hating it.

~~~
jbooth
I think one could say that this isn't just another typical 8 year cycle.

As far as "primary perpetrators a week ago", I mean I'd have preferred that
Obama do more to protect civil liberties but he is the guy who pardoned
Chelsea Manning, tried to close Gitmo, and god knows what else he pushed back
against. Running the executive branch means that by default you're the primary
perpetrator, but there are degrees of perpetrating here.

~~~
TallGuyShort
Yes, I also would have rather he pushed back instead of literally signing an
executive order this month allowing freer information sharing between
agencies, some of which were granted all sorts of "emergency" powers in laws
he renewed.

* commuted sentence - still in jail, was in jail this whole time, still no accountability that I see for things leaked by Manning and Snowden, and alarmingly high collateral damage rates in drone killings.

Yeah, yeah, so different from Bush. Definitely not another typical 8 year
cycle. Everyone's acting like Trump suddenly has unlimited power to be a
tyrant while Obama couldn't do things like this just because those mean old
white men got in his way. He expanded executive power plenty and didn't use it
to keep very many campaign promises.

------
croon
It's impossible to have a conversation about these appointees without it
sounding like hyperbole, because it's on its face too ridiculous. But I guess
appointing foxes to govern henhouses at least has the upside of being honest
regarding its purpose.

~~~
chillingeffect
Yes, it's honest for them to say, "we're scared of terrorists," but they're
not also self-aware enough of the ramifications of mass surveillance, so they
_can 't_ be honest about that. And motivated reasoning explains why they're
not likely to become aware of it; They're not incentivized to.

Of the many problems mass surveillance brings, the least hyperbolic one I see
pending is corporate leverage to wrest private resources like farmland, home
ownership, water, vehicle and computer ownership away from individuals. With
their complete economic models of the citizenship, banks and businesses can
ensure through operating costs, fees, interest rates, etc. that we never gain
complete control of our own resources, that we'll always have to be working
for the system _in the way it wants_.

If we're run as a completely data-driven entity with greedy power holders
choosing the parameters, the only lucky ones who can opt out are the clever
who are able to expand the surveillance economy. This violates the will of the
Constitutional pursuit of happiness. We should be free to live independently,
happily and simply from a modest amount of hard work without getting drawn
into the black hole of the surveillance economy.

~~~
drinkjuice
As horrid as that is, I think it could go way beyond it even. In some form or
other, we need privacy not "just because", but because it's vitally important
to become and be a person. Not (just) to do evil things without others
knowing, but because a mass is not a group of persons, it's just a mass.
Everybody needs to be alone sometimes, everybody needs to be _able_ to be
alone, at least I think so; and consciously or subconsciously, known or not,
the fact of everything being recorded and look at and/or datamined to hell and
back, forever, to be twisted into new narratives completely out of the reach
of the person living their life, might have very drastic effects, in the long
run.

We "killed God" and Nietzsche asked if we have even the faintest idea of what
that implies, and I feel regardless of that, killing man is already well
underway, with a similar sleepwalking quality to it. It might start with
garden variety rush tyranny and mass murder, but maybe it goes way deeper than
that, deeper than even AI or automation, wiping personhood (for lack of a
better way to put it) out at the root with nobody even feeling it. We get used
to everything, why not get used to regressing to individual mindlessness for
the sake of some ill-defined greater good of some ill-defined greater entity?
Crazier things have happened.

~~~
chillingeffect
oh yes, I agree. it may be much, much worse. the above was an exercise for me
in presenting the most probable and relatable, yet least fearful, scenario as
a persuasive effort.

I like the way you place privacy in the same place as Nietzsche's dead god...
a gift that may disappear if we don't keep it alive.

------
SEJeff
Reminder folks, this is where the Electronic Frontier Foundation has your
back. Look at their Surveillance Self Defense kit for ways to defend against
overzealous wiretapping.

[https://ssd.eff.org](https://ssd.eff.org)

------
jbattle
I've started to think there are only two ways to impact government policy:

\- Have hundreds of millions or billions to spend on lobbying and otherwise
playing the regulatory capture game

\- Create a reasonable sized public following of single-issue voters

As others have said, this is a battle that comes up over and over and over.
Unless there are voters willing to go nuclear (cross party lines, support
insurgent challenges to incumbents) these rights are precarious.

~~~
throwaway91111
It doesn't help to cross party lines if both are trying to seize the power.

------
willvarfar
Playing devils advocate, but if Russia warns the US about another Boston
bomber Tsarnaev -alike, should the citizenship of the suspect or the source of
the intelligence affect the investigation?

I would imagine that if Pompeo had used such a hypothetical scenario in
answering it would have been harder for a senator to vote against him.

~~~
eis
I'm not an american citizen but I was under the impression that the CIA was
foreign intelligence and local threats are the responsibility of other
departments like the FBI which can legally spy on american citizens (following
the appropriate procedures like obtaining warrants).

It's not like the russians would tell the US government about a threat and the
US government would throw the arms in the air and say "Well, shit. He's a US
citizen, can't do anything then!"

~~~
Cuuugi
Semi-Relevant, but they aren't supposed to kill American citizens either.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-
Awlaki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki)

~~~
JohnStrange
However, killing non-American citizens with drone strikes is apparently
A-Okay.

------
tps5
The CIA is, very specifically, not allowed to spy on American citizens.

------
wopwopwop
Like Germany condemning Snowden, but having no problem using his leaks in
their investigation of the NSA Bundestag hacking.

It's not a post-truth world, it's a post-hypocrisy world.

------
gojiberry
They are giving Count Trump leskin everything that he needs to fail fast.

