
Obama Administration Set to Expand Sharing of Data That N.S.A. Intercepts - doener
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/us/politics/obama-administration-set-to-expand-sharing-of-data-that-nsa-intercepts.html?_r=0
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moonshinefe
And they can just pass all these laws with no public debate and can bypass an
open judicial process and congress.

Why bother having separation of government branches with checks and balances
if this can be done apparently now? The usual law making process / judicial
review process has been circumvented. The US feds seem out of control and to
be pushing this through unilaterally, and the elections right now seem to
indicate most people are ignorant of it and/or don't care.

Interesting times. I feel bad for the American public.

~~~
azernik
Technically, the executive branch isn't passing laws - it's _always_ been
legal for them to do this (Congress did not forbid it in FISA & Co.). They
just never exercised that right up until now.

~~~
privong
> Technically, the executive branch isn't passing laws - it's always been
> legal for them to do this (Congress did not forbid it in FISA & Co.). They
> just never exercised that right up until now.

True. But to look deeper, for an underlying cause, I think this is due in
large part to Congress handing over their responsibility of law-making to
bureaucrats in the Executive Branch. This has been evidence in multiple areas,
including envrionmental law, healthcare, and likely financial law. Laws are
passed to (de-)regulate, but the actual implementation is left up to the
relevant departments in the Executive Branch.

~~~
bradleyjg
There used to be a legal principle called the nondelegation doctrine which
essentially said that the Constitution allocated the legislative power to
Congress and that Congress couldn't abdicate that responsibility by delegating
it to the executive branch. Like a lot of other such things it all but died in
the confrontation between FDR and the Court over the New Deal.

As a practical matter I'm not sure Congress could do all the rule making that
the executive branch does. At least not as it is currently organized. It just
doesn't have the institutional capacity. But one could imagine a government
with legislative agencies paralleling the executive agencies responsible for
rulemaking with oversight / ratification done by congress.

~~~
privong
> As a practical matter I'm not sure Congress could do all the rule making
> that the executive branch does. At least not as it is currently organized.
> It just doesn't have the institutional capacity. But one could imagine a
> government with legislative agencies paralleling the executive agencies
> responsible for rulemaking with oversight / ratification done by congress.

I agree with you that Congress doesn't have the capacity to make all the rules
as needed by the current laws. My general lean is towards smaller government,
so my knee-jerk reaction is that it means the government is trying to do too
much, or to do things too quickly. We have some poorly thought-out legislation
(PATRIOT act, for example) and it's fairly often that laws are passed without
a good understanding of how they will actually work (e.g., the "we need to
pass it so we can see what's in it" comments about the Healthcare reform). Not
trying to do as much and/or taking a slower, more thoughtful approach would be
good.

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fweespee_ch
> In 2002, for example, it won permission, then secret, from the intelligence
> court permitting the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the N.S.A. to share raw FISA
> wiretap information. The government did not disclose that change, which was
> first reported in a 2014 New York Times article based on documents disclosed
> by Mr. Snowden.

They are going to increase the number of human-related attack vectors with
this and that pot of gold is going to end up getting exposed and/or sold.

The fact Snowden was able to do what he did is proof they aren't competent
enough to be trusted to handle the human side of things competently.

[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/there-might-still-be-
crooke...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/there-might-still-be-crooked-cops-
from-the-silk-road-investigation)

It isn't like the FBI is competent to screen their people either. They have
enough agents willing to prostitute their integrity for money that their
access is a problem as well.

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cryoshon
From this, I'd expect parallel construction cases (circumvention of legal
protections) to trickle down to the municipal level and become the new
standard for policework, which is to say the new standard of policework would
be extralegal. This change would happen via NSA sharing data with FBI, DEA, or
DOJ, which typically have municipal or regional intelligence nexus centers
where the federal and state governments collaborate.

So, what does this change look like in practice? For one, we'll move much
closer to having the capacity for 100% enforcement, which would be even more
disastrous than the over-enforcement that the USA has already suffered for the
drug war years. Having the capacity for more enforcement doesn't mean that it
will be exercised directly. Instead, I'd expect a lot of dossier-sharing in
order to apprise local authorities about the intimate details of the people in
their area.

From the dossiers and social networks, local authorities will have a very
detailed view of the population they occupy, and will likely be able to
directly infiltrate nearly any social group where strangers connect. This
means that any kind of civil disobedience or political protests will be
(further, more exhaustively) defused well before mattering. Additionally,
it'll make harassment of police-accountability activists even easier once the
federal level dossiers are handed down to the local police and paired with
realtime facial recognition identification from the squad car.

TBH we suffered under a level of surveillance worse than Stasi or 1984 well
before this change, so I guess it's not much worse to throw out the legal
system's paltry protections known as due process. The bigger problem is the
open acknowledgement from the federal government that the citizens have no
agency and need to be controlled.

~~~
sitkack
With my limited experience of talking with federal prosecutor interns in a bar
in DC, they would be very excited at these prospects. The general feeling, was
that anyone interacting with a federal prosecutor was guilty and that rules
were part of a game to be manipulated for one thing, winning.

Both Trump and Clinton will support and expand these data sharing programs.

~~~
Grishnakh
Aren't you forgetting to add Rubio and Cruz to that list?

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turex
What about security? Anyone can walk out wit top secret information.

------
redwood
Trump. Does anything more be to be said?

~~~
gnodar
Well, yes actually. What about Trump?

~~~
denom
What will happen when the national security apparatus falls into the hands of
someone like Donald Trump?

~~~
MrZongle2
Probably the same thing that happened when the national security apparatus
fell into the hands of Clinton, then Bush, then Obama: there was much wailing,
gnashing of teeth and fear-mongering amongst those who didn't like them...and
ultimately nothing really changed.

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dilemma
I've been referring to Obama as George Bush III for years.

~~~
icebraining
Yeah? … Didn't help. He got re-elected anyway. Apparently, the simple act of
you calling him "George Bush III" was not enough to prevent it.

