
Trump’s CIA Director Wants to Return to a Pre-Snowden World - matt4077
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/11/trumps-cia-director-wants-to-return-to-a-pre-snowden-world/508136/?single_page=true
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xnull2guest
The headline makes it seem like there was radical change after Snowden. That's
fake news. The major movements after Snowden were to quiet public dissent
about the disclosures, make legal the former collections policies, and move
the authorities under which the programs were authorized, and to restart the
programs as soon as there was reduced public attention.

Rather, proposed CIA Director Pompeo wanting increased mass surveillance
capability is part and parcel for all intelligence directors, who have
consistently (pre- and post- Snowden) called for increased budgets,
capabilities and use of mass surveillance to inform propaganda and other
intelligence activities.

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tn13
Pompeo demanded death sentence to Snowden.

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xnull2guest
Yup! Washington absolutely hates Snowden, and especially the fact that he
appeals to the majority of people - that in large part some even consider him
a hero.

Pompeo is not unusual (perhaps unfortunately) in that regard.

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jjirsa
> fact that he appeals to the majority of people

citation needed.

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rurban
Snowden was leading the public polls for Times Magazin man of the year 2013.
They had to put the new pope before him.

And now Assange is leading the public polls for 2016. They will put Trump
before him.

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dmix
It would be newsworthy if he didn't support expanding intelligence community
powers...

Considering it was Hillary's core national security position, listed on her
website, to do an "intelligence surge" and expanding the collection of data
this is exactly what we could have expected from that administration as well.

It'd do the world a service if this was the narrative/reality that was being
disseminated by the media rather than pretending it was possible the change
would come from within the existing IC community or national security
establishment. And as much as Trump has promoted 'draining the swamp' and
talked of being anti-establishment, this never seemed at all about to include
curtailing the current defense community.

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mars4rp
everybody should listen to this podcast of Malcolm Gladwell

[http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/02-saigon-1965](http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/02-saigon-1965)

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mars4rp
all this data collection is useless and doesn't change anything. billions of
dollars wasted.

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convolvatron
as a former employee of the military industrial complex, i've always wondered
how much of the funding went into these categories

    
    
       - simple graft
       - strategic investment in technology so that it might be available later if needed
       - strategic investment in people and industries so that they will be on tap later if needed
       - pointless waste
       - things of actual tactical value
    

seems like it might be a combination?

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gloverkcn
I would guess that pointless waste makes up the majority. Getting sufficiently
competent people in the right positions and the right authority and removing
organizational politics is really difficult.

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koga-ninja
So much legal thinking that my brain is bursting. Government has one legal and
one illegal avenue. They can use plausible denial and say that post-Snowden
Everything is better.

The legal argument would be that everyone in the world Is spying on us, so we
have to keep up with what foreign powers know about the U.S.To be sarcastic,
the CIA does not want to buy its intelligence from Great Britain and Russia.

