
Nation Will Gain by Discussing Surveillance, Expert Tells Privacy Board - antr
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/us/nation-will-gain-by-discussing-surveillance-expert-tells-privacy-board.html?_r=0&gwh=C1115C6748940FD3A1A581765F7FAE70
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btilly
I have a modest proposal.

All FISA court decisions are published, with identifiers (names, IP addresses,
country names, etc) redacted, after 10 years. After 30 years, unredacted
copies are published.

This lets us know the scope of the spying. This allows for public feedback to
let the FISA court know what people do. This lets everyone - including our
intelligence services - understand that there are real consequences to spying
on allies, and we shouldn't do it when they don't want it.

For those who complain that this limits what we can do because revealing our
programs will upset allies, I would point out that history shows that programs
tend to get revealed anyways. Therefore we should assume that people will
eventually find out what we are doing, and not do things that are
objectionable. Having an explicit timetable keeps our secret agencies from
continuing to repeat this elementary mistake.

~~~
mpyne
I like the idea (though I might limit disclosures of spying on a country $FOO
to countries with a bilateral agreement not to spy back or to be similarly
transparent).

I don't think it addresses the concern of capturing haystacks before we know
which needles to look for but it would certainly help with transparency. Even
more importantly, it ingrains in the mind of the analysts actually using these
systems within the intelligence agencies, and the FISC itself, that there is
that concern for eventual public disclosure. Therefore, they should be
inherently suspicious of anyone trying to avoid adding a given FISA warrant to
the public disclosure list, or otherwise trying to interfere with public
disclosure (such as by going around FISA).

And as I've mentioned before it would be even better if this kind of thing
were _built-in_ to the systems themselves so that an analyst or their
supervisor couldn't choose to 'forget' to do it.

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D9u
I agree that this discussion needs to remain at the forefront of our
collective thoughts and discussions.

We have an awful tendency to forget these things, and as the old saying goes:

 _He who forgets the past is doomed to repeat it._

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mtgx
Is their issue with spying only about how much oversight there is, and not
with the US government having full and complete access to the underwater
Internet cables like some kind of totalitarian government?

As long as they can still do that, you still can't trust anything they say or
any of their "policies". Also what will happen with the Utah data center now?
Will it be turned into a dairy? Or will the NSA be free to use it just as
originally intended?

I believe governments need to go back to what they were always supposed to do
- investigate _specific_ targets, without having access to everyone's data in
order to do that.

Also there should be _no_ ties between the NSA and FBI. None whatsoever. If
there's an urgent national threat, the NSA should report to the president, and
then the president can contact the FBI about it, allow them to collaborate in
some way. But that's it. The policy/law should be very clear about the
circumstances in which they are allowed to do that.

Otherwise, I fear in many cases the info NSA is getting is later used by the
FBI as "probable cause", to later get (constitutionally legal) warrants to
investigate someone - when it was just a fishing expedition all along.

~~~
ChrisAntaki
Agreed. Considering the NSA stores the contents of all our electronic
communications (including phone calls), they have a massive pool to fish in.
What will they fish for next?

Edit: You know who's in that pool, alongside us? Senators. Congressmen.
Police. Other spy agencies.

~~~
LoganCale
And journalists and political activists.

~~~
zxcdw
And millions of us foreigners with absolutely no vote on anything.

