

No Morsel Too Minuscule for All-Consuming N.S.A. - 001sky
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/world/no-morsel-too-minuscule-for-all-consuming-nsa.html

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spodek
If our elected officials don't reign in the NSA and its peers while they can,
they will find themselves the ones being governed.

The NSA is supposed to spy only on foreigners, not on domestic targets. It
seems to have transformed foreign and domestic to mean outside and inside _the
NSA_. Without accountability elected officials, why would they stop?

Our would-be leaders aren't leading. They are being led by their agencies, who
are developing more and more power. It would seem the task falls on us to lead
our elected officials if we hope to avoid a point of no return of NSA usurping
power if we haven't already.

Americans have led its leaders to desired outcomes before -- civil rights, for
example -- but results took generations and many jobs remain unfinished. Let's
hope we have the fortitude on this one.

~~~
nonchalance
The difference between this circumstance and the civil rights circumstance is
that there is no party that is strictly better off with the NSA limited.

African americans are strictly better off when having the right to vote as
opposed to not having the right to vote. Same argument applies for women.

The terrorist threat argument cannot be ignored, and it's plausible to believe
that many threats against american assets are hatched in the US and
communicated in the US. Likewise, the privacy argument cannot be ignored. So
in this case, we have a classic tradeoff.

To put it differently: are you better off dead or with the NSA?

~~~
giardini
" it's plausible to believe that many threats against american assets are
hatched in the US and communicated in the US."

Where's the beef? There is none. If the NSA does not justify it's existence in
an open forum then we must dismantle it.

And it is not enough to prove that the NSA intercepted an operation; it must
be proven that, in the absence of the NSA, the same interception would not
have occurred and that consequently something significantly evil would have
occurred. There are plenty of other federal, state and local agencies that
collect information in a legal and constitutionally-mandated manner and they
have proven very effective.

"To put it differently: are you better off dead or with the NSA?"

Nonsensical scare-mongering.

~~~
saraid216
> If the NSA does not justify it's existence in an open forum then we must
> dismantle it.

Wow. Please justify your existence or face dismantlement.

~~~
DanTheManPR
If a government agency cannot justify it's existence, then why NOT dismantle
it?

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a3n
> “Sigint professionals must hold the moral high ground, even as terrorists or
> dictators seek to exploit our freedoms,” the plan declares. “Some of our
> adversaries will say or do anything to advance their cause; we will not.”

Torture-cough-cough. Accept women and children as collateral killings in drone
strikes-cough-cough. Violate our own Constitution-cough-cough.

Anything? Maybe not. Enough to be close enough.

It's easy to do anything when God is on your side.

~~~
conover
True believers are scary -- on any side.

------
revelation
The Guardian should not have given that data to the NYT.

Can you count the number of important revelations they just casually released
here? Just because it fit into their writing style of "making no definite
statements, ever"?

It's essentially a raw data dump transmogrified into the annoying, inefficient
writing of last centuries journalism. Give us the facts, give us the
information, not your pointless hunches about "suspected terrorists".

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csandreasen
Bravo to the New York Times for putting out an article on the NSA that doesn't
fall into the hype trap that Glenn Greenwald/The Guardian/Washington Post/etc.
have all fallen into. All we've had up until now are documents showing how the
NSA is collecting information and theorizing that the same technology is being
used to collect on everyone. The only thing that does is stir up hype, fear
and distrust of the government.

This is the kind of information that the public needs to ask informed
questions on the NSA's activities, like: Is the collection actually valuable
to national security? Is it of diplomatic value? Does that value outweigh the
diplomatic costs when the collection is revealed? What are the financial costs
of the collection? Are those costs worth it? What about all of the collection
that is never analyzed? What aspects of the NSA's
collection/funding/bureaucratic processes need to be changed to best fit the
public interest?

~~~
csandreasen
I'll try to clarify since I'm being downmodded...

I've argued for some time that _how_ the NSA is collecting is not nearly as
important as _who_ and _why_. The initial disclosure about the cell phone
metadata was a legitimate call for concern - I agree with everyone on that.
The cause for concern there wasn't _how_ they were gathering the data, it was
that they were collecting on US citizens and we didn't know _why_. They left
those questions to be answered by the administration, who has published a good
deal of detail on the Section 215 collection program[1]. If their explanation
is innacurate, then the ball is back in the media's court to pull evidence
showing so from that collection of 50,000 documents that Snowden gave them.
Meanwhile, Congress is continuing to debate this collection now.

My issue is with most of the other reporting. Most of the other leaks so far
have revealed _how_ \- PRISM, XKeyScore, the Google/Yahoo collection, etc.
What the media outlets have failed to do is show evidence linking this back to
collection against ordinary citizens. Articles that would be more accurately
titled something like "The NSA collects vast amounts of data using X" instead
are presented as "The NSA collects vast amounts of Americans' data using X".
They conflate collection authorities and present it as fact to the audience.
For example, the NSA is permitted by law (under certain interpretations - the
EFF is looking to challenge this in court) to collect American cell phone
metadata under Section 215, but is expressly forbidden from collecting
American data under FAA 702 authorities. Leaked slides show that the PRISM
program is their mechanism for collecting FAA 702 data. Any article claiming
that the NSA is collecting such-and-such data against Americans but then goes
on to cite PRISM as evidence is conflating the evidence.

The _how_ matters to the people being targeted. The _who_ and _why_ matters to
everyone regardless of targeting. If there is evidence linking these other
programs back to collection against ordinary citizens, we need to know. If we
are being targeted, we need to know the how to protect ourselves. What we've
been getting, though, is descriptions of collection programs with "they're
probably using this to collect on everyone!" sprinkled into the description.
If these programs are only used to target legitimate foreign intelligence
targets, then what have we ordinary citizens gained by knowing how? In
revealing this, what have those being targeted learned and how does that
affect national security, diplomacy, etc.?

If you read through the whole 7 pages of this article, they talk a good deal
about who is being targeted and why; discuss the successes and failures, hint
at what intelligence has had valuable impact and what hasn't; talk about the
immense funding and bureaucratic stumbling blocks that has led to an excess of
collection that has never been and may never be analyzed; etc., and do so in a
manner that the administration says will not affect ongoing operations. I
stand by my statement that this is important information that the public needs
in order to ask informed questions to their elected representatives. I would
ask why it took this many months to surface, and why it didn't come from The
Guardian or the Washington Post, who have had this information for much
longer.

If you disagree with me, I invite you to state your reasons why and continue
with the conversation rather than downvote.

[1] [https://www.eff.org/document/administration-white-paper-
sect...](https://www.eff.org/document/administration-white-paper-
section-215-patriot-act)

------
ihatehandles
Brings us back again to: "Were we foolish for expecting any privacy at all
online?"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6668273](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6668273)

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asparagui
quote: “There’s no question that from a capability standpoint we probably
dwarf everybody on the planet, just about, with perhaps the exception of
Russia and China,”

Russia and China are the usual bugbears for the DoD. Over there, they spend
roughly ~140 billion combined to the the DoD's ~750. What are the odds the
ratio is similar with spying as well?

~~~
philwelch
Russia and China have political systems that can bear orders of magnitude more
casualties than ours. China could probably lose 10,000 soldiers in a war and
face less political upheaval than the US would face losing 1,000 soldiers.

