
Before Prosecuting, Investigate the Government - Libertatea
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/06/11/in-nsa-leak-case-a-whistle-blower-or-a-criminal/before-prosecuting-snowden-investigate-the-government
======
Shivetya
What annoys me is that just watching the various government agencies, IRS,
NSA, FBI, and others, is that there is a pattern of not telling the public the
truth, they lie to Congress as well.

How is it that our own government agencies can lie to Congress with near
impunity? It is like disrespect has become second nature to government. They
do not respect us nor do they respect other agencies within the same.

Too big to fail, too big to jail, applies to government now.

~~~
mtgx
I think you should be even more outraged about the fact that Congress doesn't
really seem to care that they lied to them. Because if that continues, then we
have a pretty big problem here.

Where are all the impeachments and swift punishments from Congress? By not
punishing them, it just makes it ok for the next guy to do it.

~~~
trebor
I know a retired NSA analyst. When I asked him what he thought of the NSA
wiretaps, etc, he was silent for a bit. Then he said one of the most important
things I've heard politically (paraphrased, I wish I wrote it down):

> The organization is only as good as its administrative head, and the NSA I
> served in was widely different from the one that exists today.

The problem is that the administration, the Congress, the Senate, the Judicial
System, and the intelligence agencies (with some of the law enforcement
agencies) have lost their integrity. The ends do not justify the means. Lying
to the American public which put them in power is the ultimate breach of
faith. Not only are these things usually secret, but when revealed they are
outright lied about.

Why would we punish intelligence agencies for something we don't hold either
the administration or our elected officials to? They're all dishonest.

~~~
bmelton
The obvious counterpoint to your last question is "Why shouldn't we punish our
intelligence agencies just because we don't hold our elected officials
accountable."

Two rights don't make a wrong, and that argument is just as specious as those
who argue that "Well there are already infringements on the second amendment,
why shouldn't there be infringements on the fourth?" Logical fallacies
notwithstanding, the real question is why don't we hold more elected officials
and their appointees accountable? Because it is they who we entrust to police
themselves.

The problem is that there are too few punishments meted out, and if we
continue to allow our elected officials and their appointees to do what they
like without fear of reprisal, it can only get worse.

~~~
trebor
I agree. I asked that last question because I doubt the American public these
days. The politicians that enabled these fiascos deserve every bit the same
punishment as the organization(s) that overstepped their proper bounds. I hope
both are punished. But at the end of the day, I doubt that either will get
what they deserve.

------
JumpCrisscross
We may have a decent time looking at NSA employees' trading histories for
suspicious activity. They are a large, secretive organisation populated by
smart people who have access to privileged information and who operate on the
assumption of immunity. If you could channel public fury over Libor, TBTF,
etc. at the NSA it would give the Obama administration even less of a platform
to stand on.

~~~
malandrew
This is interesting. I wonder if we could audit the entire holdings of any NSA
agents, investigating any portfolios with unusual gains.

------
hanifvirani
When this issue came out, I was really hoping that the people will rise and
big changes will finally happen. But now I realize that it was just wishful
thinking. For any real big positive changes to occur, there first needs to be
a change at the root level, and by that I mean the way people think. The
government doing this is a big problem, sure. But the majority of people don't
even care, and that I think is a much bigger problem.

~~~
l33tbro
I wish the "nothing to hide" people would just actually stop and think outside
their myopic b.s.

Look, from what I've been seeing in the last few days (mostly from talking to
friends), the "nothing to hide" people are usually white, middle-upper class,
and citizens of the USA.

But let's try this: get out of your privileged world for a moment and pretend,
just for a second, that you are a Middle-Eastern American. This is where shit
gets pretty real.

Why? Because the reality is that with every email, telephone conversation, and
internet search you ever commit to - you will pretty much always be censoring
yourself in the back of your mind if the government may misinterpret what you
are doing. One search term, one "trigger word" on a phone call, and you could
be finding yourself having to defend yourself against some very serious
allegations.

This is why PRISM is a completely INSANE breach of freedoms. Given that so
much of human communication is now conveyed electronically, this is such a
huge loss of freedom for those who are being racially and religiously
profiled.

FYI, I'm a white dude. But if I had to seriously self-censor every every
email, phone call, and text I wrote for fear of persecution - the US would
feel to me like Syria with MTV.

~~~
bmelton
"When human beings are scared and feel everything is exposed to the
government, we will censor ourselves from free thinking", Ai Weiwei

------
joshuak
As Bruce Schneier points out in his book Beyond Fear humans are very bad at
assessing risk accurately. Ask yourself how scared are you of terrorist
attacks vs. heart disease.

Notice how the government is putting much more money into the terrorist attack
threat then the heart disease threat?

Here are some of the reasons why people are so bad and assessing risk:
[http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/08/five_neglects_...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/08/five_neglects_i.html)

(note finding the actual risk of death by heart disease vs terrorist attack is
left to the reader...you might be surprised)

~~~
icebraining
By the way, he was Econtalk this monday:
[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/06/schneier_on_pow.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/06/schneier_on_pow.html)

My favorite part: _" We don't say that pigs kill more people than terrorists
every year."_

------
junto
In my honest opinion, I truly believe that this ship has sailed. It is too
late to turn back now. Too much money and too much value has been had from
these systems for these black projects to be switched off.

They will not budge and those systems will never be switched off. I would bet
my last dollar on that premise.

Our only choice is to accept this and live in the knowledge that we are always
being watched, or go as dark as the modern world currently permits without
hindering day to day life.

At a minimum, we now know that we are being watched and listened to on a
massive scale. Previously we only suspected the worst. Sadly, the worst was
not anywhere near how bad it actually is.

~~~
monsterix
No it hasn't. And they'll have to budge, or go out. Too much money has been
put (It's the tax-payers money) and value gained (doesn't it sound like
finding terrorists this way is as bad as finding the next superstar for
Hollywood?) is near-negligible in contrast to the value eroded: trust that's
been destroyed - particularly in Internet companies - both inside and outside
of US. Think again.

> Our only choice is to accept this and live in the knowledge that we are
> always being watched, or go as dark as the modern world currently permits
> without hindering day to day life.

You sound low here, but if the above were true then it'd mean that people are
willing to live under a dictator too. That's simply untrue.

~~~
Ygg2
>You sound low here, but if the above were true then it'd mean that people are
willing to live under a dictator too. That's simply untrue.

It's true now. But it might be true in future. Hate to sound pessimistic but
there are benefits (however perverse they are) to dictatorship.

You aren't pestered every year to vote (unless it's a democratic dictator that
rigs the elections). You aren't asked about lot of things. You don't have to
worry about saving the environment or your impact, just what he does. Things
most people dislike like gays or immigrants is taken care of by a dictator. As
long as he doesn't piss off too many people or too influential people, he's
golden (and even then). Also dictators are more predictable then a nation to
deal with.

Dictatorship are great if your nation is compromised of lazy, mostly
irresponsible people.

------
olalonde
"In a democracy, the people get the government they deserve." \- Alexis de
Tocqueville

In a sense, Americans deserve what they got. They chose to re-elect the same
party (Democratic/Republican party, is there a difference really?) over and
over again when there is an alternative in the libertarian party which by the
way, would most certainly not authorize or encourage what the NSA has been up
to. Regardless of your political inclinations, I would strongly suggest you
consider voting for them if only for the sake of shaking up the establishment.

~~~
oleganza
Those who do not vote have the right to complain. And those who do, also have
the right because everyone is brainwashed. Government is not some magical
entity, it is a group of armed bandits who claim to represent the whole
society for the "common good" at each individual's expense. It's just
religious excuse. People do not deserve to be threatened to surrender
property, secrets and liberties that they arrange freely between each other
for some "common good" invented by priests and presidents.

Saying "you deserve your government" is like saying "you deserve to be raped
because you didn't try to avoid it hard enough".

I don't care about losing money because of taxes. But if government kills
people and I cannot withdraw financial support for it, then it bothers me.
Then, its real mafia face is exposed. "Go vote for change, but still pay for
our activity."

~~~
olalonde
> Saying "you deserve your government" is like saying "you deserve to be raped
> because you didn't try to avoid it hard enough".

I meant Americans as a group, not the individuals. Also, while I mostly agree
with you, I certainly hope you do not get into politics. This kind of
discourse is fine amongst people who are already like minded but will
assuredly fail to convince anyone who does not already share your ideas. I
hope you realize that and tone it down a little according to your audience
even if you are right.

~~~
oleganza
I'm not going into politics. People cannot be convinced. Only practical
solutions can make certain moral claims irrelevant. E.g. internet makes it
irrelevant to discuss "is it good for people to read these heretical books".
People will read them anyway. With Bitcoin it will become irrelevant to
discuss if money should or should not be inflated. It simply won't be. (If
Bitcoin succeeds, of course.) If it's impossible to collect certain taxes, it
would be irrelevant to discuss if it's good or bad. People will pay them
voluntarily if they like, not under threat as of today.

------
grappler
Event: A bunch of schoolchildren are brutally murdered by a guy with a gun.

Conversation in the media: Maybe citizens shouldn't have guns. At least not
guns that can easily fire lots of rounds in a short period of time.

Massive well-funded response: Don't even think about it. This is a violation
of a constitutional right (2nd amendment) which is a vital protection against
a tyrannical government.

Result: Attempt to pass a bill in congress fails.

Event: Guy with access to highly classified information concerning massive
surveillance programs leaks some of this information to the press, which makes
some of that information public.

Conversation in the media: This sounds like George Orwell's “1984”. The
government is monitoring everyone and lying to congress and to the people
about it. The laws, interpretations and court rulings are all secret,
preventing accountability. People should know what their government is doing.

Pitiful response from lots of people with no clout: Stop tracking all our
calls, movements and internet traffic. This is a violation of our
constitutional rights (1st and 4th amendments) which are a vital protection
against a tyrannical government.

Counter-response from establishment people with lots of clout: This is
necessary to protect you from terrorists.

Result: TBD...

~~~
sneak
I think you are oversimplifying a very complex system.

Silly gun control (which is ineffective at addressing the threat to which it
responds) isn't simply difficult to get passed because the NRA has a lot of
money.

Conversely, in the second example, the clout/well-funded comparison argument
is similarly ineffective.

It's not really that parallel, and there are a lot more factors involved.

------
btipling
Anyone have a pulse of Congress to know if "PRISM" has become politically
toxic enough to warrant change? I'm guessing that if PRISM has SOPA level
public distain that real change can happen. If the majority of Americans are
shrugging at this, any announced changes may be superficial.

~~~
contingencies
_Change!_ There's a masterful political campaign centerpiece if I ever saw
one. Obama's recent comments re: PRISM: "I'm not against change". How vacuous.

~~~
crimsonzagar
Feels like Obama Bin Laden ... hope they don't kill me for the perfection :-)

------
ilaksh
I see the state as basically being a _really_ official Mafia. They are the
government because they have a virtual monopoly on deadly force.

If more people understood what the wars were actually about then they would
have much more realistic expectations (none) in regards to the ethicality or
legality of state actions.

~~~
joonix
Given that the vast majority of American support this type of surveillance in
the name of fighting "terrorism," democracy appears to be working. You should
blame the electorate.

------
grappler
I'm curious why I haven't seen any talk about porn.

Wait, seriously. Come back for a second. Porn.

We all know a significant fraction of internet traffic is porn. Most men
probably watch it. Perhaps also a large fraction of women.

How much you want to bet the NSA knows lots and lots about people's porn
habits. Maybe they know exactly what percentage of men and women watch it,
browse it, and/or read it.

After all, if you want to threaten, embarrass or otherwise manipulate
somebody, knowing their porn habits would probably be a good start.

------
slacka
If you want to show the media and government that we care, you can join your
local protest on the 4th of July. Here's more info:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/rtforganizers](http://www.reddit.com/r/rtforganizers)

------
egsec
I don't know if anyone read the onsite comments, but I don't know if this is
funny or true:

"Simple question, why wasn’t Snowden’s girlfriend a Spook? Back in the 1990s,
if any nerd/geek/brain had access to Top Secret data then one of 17 U.S.
agencies would have paired such a person with a beautiful girlfriend with
similar level of clearance with whom he could talk just so he wouldn’t run
away or leak, and said girlfriend would go on to become wife and pop out a kid
or two, preventing said nerd/geek/brain from ever leaking (even if he ran
away) just to avoid starving his kid/s because their mommy would lose her
security clearance. What happened to America after 9-11? Fear got rid of all
the common sense? lol.

Let me guess, the Carlyles went Boozing with Allen and Hamilton and they
supplied the intelligence community with so many thousands of geeks and nerds
that America’s 17 intelligence services ran out of beautiful women with whom
to keep them in line. Ofcourse Snowden would leave his pole dancing, nature
loving girlfriend of 8 years (with whom he couldn’t talk about anything and
who couldn’t share the burden to his conscience because she had no security
clearance) to blow the whistle and expose the alarming surveillance of
innocent Americans who have no way to prove their innocence if their innocent
words and second or third degree online associations mistakenly put them under
suspicion and surveillance just because some computer algorithm got triggered.
Just how many Americans are under suspicion right now? What are the numbers
exactly? Thousands? Millions? lol."

------
frankblizzard
The same could be said for people in general... Don't just complain about the
issue on the internet, but actually go out to the streets and demonstrate.
It's a long way from the internet to the street...

------
trotsky
In a state where even corporate malfesance is rarely pursued and even more
rarely punished beyond fines that can be considered a cost of doing business,
exactly which of our agencies, representatives or judicial systems are we
expecting to perform such an investigation?

At least from my memory, It's varey rare to see a go-get-em special prosecutor
attached to anything that didn't have a partisan political origin. And neither
of the parties are anti-surveillance - the last thing they want to do is ruin
their next chance at bat with it.

------
pfortuny
Well, at least this sets some balance against Brooks and (have just read it,
what a shame...), Friedman! [1]

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/opinion/friedman-
blowing-a...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/opinion/friedman-blowing-a-
whistle.html?hp)

~~~
icebraining
It's amazing how he refers to the Boston Marathon bombing, when that happened
_despite_ having NSA monitoring and _despite_ the FBI having warnings from
Russia and from informants of the Joint Terrorism Task Force about one of the
brothers.

"We can't find the needle. I know, let's stack more hay on top, that'll help!"

------
yoster
We are slowly losing freedoms that were once thought to be a given.

------
robomartin
One way I think about this is the parallel with unions.

The fundamental concept of unions and collective bargaining are good and, if
you will, wholesome. There are working environments where it would be
difficult to have a voice without such a facility in place.

However, it is my opinion that, unions have degenerated into virtual viruses
that kill their hosts. Unions have optimized their side of the equation to
such an extent that they are now absolutely deadly for both industry and
government. The simplest example of this are the ridiculous benefit and
pension packages they have obtained. These packages are mathematically
impossible to sustain without hurting both their host and people outside the
union. Imagine hiring an employee, paying them above industry average and then
having to continue paying them 90% of that salary for life once they retire.

How does that happen? Are these organizations evil? Are the people evil?

Well, no, the people in the unions, the average union member is not evil at
all. Tese are generally good folks just like anyone else in the country, union
or not.

Where is the evil?

At some level it is in the union's management. Perhaps not explicitly. Again,
most of the people running unions are probably just as nice as anyone else.

The evil really resides in the system and its interaction with other systems.
Union leadership and me bership seek to optimize the deals they make looking
mostly only at their criteria: more money, more benefits, protections, etc.
taken to an extreme this leads to evolving a "virus" genetically coded to kill
the host.

Part of this is facilitated by incompetent negotiators on the other side of
the table, particularly in government.

That was a long setup to draw a parallel between unions and government
agencies entrusted with national security.

The vast majority of the people who work for these agencies are good people.
The failure is in the system of rules that they operate under and, perhaps, a
failure to, just like unions, look way beyond self needs and consider a sphere
beyond theirs and a timeline far into the future.

In the end it is a failure in the leadership of these organizations. They all
work for the executive branch, which means the buck stops with the President.

------
joering2
I believe the worst is still to come up to light: that Obama used his
friendship with Schmitt and others that sit on the table during his dinner
with CEOs of the biggest IT companies to get pinpointed data on all americans
that were not sure how to vote in the second therm. That list was priceless
and in the presidency race of 2012 would give Obama huge and unfair
competitive edge against Romney. Criminal edge I should say.

------
conroe64
There probably won't be any prosecution because Snowden most likely defected
to the Chinese government. It may have been his plan all along. I'm sure there
are a lot of people out there who would love to leave their families, and be
considered a hero by the general public, and live their life comfortably in
another country. Given all the secrets he probably has that he hasn't
released, he would be a very valuable resource to China.

This is something someone in his position would know how to do, safely, and
with a great reward to himself, given that he's probably read the outcomes of
hundreds of informants defecting to other countries.

And given his CIA background, he knew enough about propaganda to know how to
sell it to keep his family from being shamed by being related to a defector.

The idea that a guy that's smart enough to make 6 figures after not graduating
high school can't plan far enough ahead to explain why he went to China is
ludicrous. He's simply not telling the truth about his motives.

~~~
beeneto
> Snowden most likely defected to the Chinese government

I keep reading this hypothesis

Am I right in thinking that it still has no evidence to support it whatsoever,
excluding the fact that he announced his identity while in a Hong Kong hotel?

