

Obama: 'We Don’t Have a Domestic Spying Program' - timothy89
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-we-don-t-have-domestic-spying-program_745680.html

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ferdo
Can...not...resist....

"It's not denial. I'm just selective about the reality I accept."

-Calvin and Hobbes

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mpyne
Well, think of it this way, just because you _can_ do something doesn't mean
you _are_ doing something.

If we say that just because the NSA has access to data that by definition
domestic surveillance is going on, that would also mean that every ISP is
engaging in domestic surveillance (of what little domestic part they service
_or peer_ ), that all SaaS providers are engaged in industrial espionage, or
that the U.S. is engaged in "domestic nuclear bombing" simply because they
possess dangerous weapons.

To the extent that NSA analysts actually engage in spying on people
domestically, at the direction of the Administration, then you'd definitely be
right. But as far as I know even Snowden hasn't argued that, merely that we're
one "turnkey tyranny" away from exactly that starting up.

Perhaps the story about the DEA's SOD engaging in parallel construction is an
example though?

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mpyne
Hey, he finally learned not to give a strong opinion on the guilt or innocence
of pending legal cases!

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RandomSpamMan
Sadly, no denial of a spying program on the rest of the world, then again that
would be flat out lies on top of what probably already is.

Modern politics. Democracy and privacy no longer exist.

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mpyne
Well the German BND just the other day was shown to be spying on the rest of
the world and giving "non-German" data over to the NSA. The idea that the
world's foremost proponents of data security and data privacy still spy on the
rest of the world (and fully legally) is illustrative IMHO.

