
Democratic establishment unmasked: prime defenders of NSA bulk spying - Libertatea
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/25/democratic-establishment-nsa
======
DanielBMarkham
I almost didn't vote this up. I hate calling out political leaders or parties
in HN articles.

However, the title was a bit of linkbait. The real point is that no, it's not
true that the parties in Washington do not agree on anything. The hardcore
partisans all are very happy to work with each other to secure and increase
the security state. For that reason, for pointing out the traditional wisdom
is wrong in this area and that the problem here is not political but systemic,
it was worth a vote.

I called my Representative, a Republican, to support the Amash amendment. Like
a jackass, he didn't do it. I imagine Repbulican leadership did a lot of
leaning on members to vote the amendment down. Looking at the Democrats (the
other major US political party), I imagine Democratic leadership did a lot of
leaning on members to vote the amendment down. While the consitutional system
seems broken in the US - the state is conducting blanket surveillance and then
deciding later what to review -- the _political_ system, whereby parties gain
and maintain power, seems to be working very well.

The good news is that the wheels almost came off the wagon: the amendment was
almost passed. That means next time we'll all need just to lobby twice as hard
to get our rep's attention. The other good news is that members of both
parties came out to support the amendment, which means that the issue of the
security state cuts both ways. Both parties could easily flip on this given
enough pressure. It's just our job to make sure the pressure is there (while
acknowledging that there is a vital need for national security and SIGINT)

~~~
griffordson
66% of the Judiciary Committee who voted, voted for the Amash amendment. I
find that very encouraging.

And Sensenbrenner, a principal author of the Patriot Act, is outraged by the
secret interpretation being used to justify these programs:

[http://sensenbrenner.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?Docu...](http://sensenbrenner.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=343546)

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Logic is on our side here. Of course, that never counts for much in politics
:)

The key problem is that there is no system of checks and balances, no matter
what your personal congress-critter might say. Terms that are interpreted one
way when the law is created get interpreted another way in secret. Going after
certain people becomes checking up on everybody. Checking up on everybody
becomes store-now, search-later. The government's natural oversight and
regulatory authority over commercial businesses is being used as leverage to
collect data on the population against our will. It's just out of control.

I'm concerned that a Constitutional Amendment is really what it's going to
take to put this genie back in the bottle. Sure, you stop NSA, but does that
stop the FBI from picking up the keys? Stop any of a dozen other agencies from
creating similar systems? I'm optimistic about this particular fight, but the
overall war is looking like whack-a-mole out there to me.

------
joshuaellinger
The clearest evidence: Pelosi voted against it.

Lots of HN readers are in SF.

If you want to make a difference on the NSA spying, find a credible candidate
to run in the primary against her and put a little money behind it.

~~~
3825
I admire your enthusiasm but just want to remind people that it is not a done
deal. People across the country tried to come together to get a replacement
for Lamar Smith[1] but he still won with 63% of all votes. Change is not easy.

[1]: Smith faced five challengers in the 2012 general election on November 6,
2012: Candace Duval (Dem), John-Henry Liberty (Lib), Fidel Castillo (Grn),
Bill Stout (Grn), and Carlos Pena (Ind).[14] He won the race with 63% of the
vote.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Represe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections_in_Texas,_2012)

[http://www.ksat.com/news/politics/Joaquin-Castro-Lamar-
Smith...](http://www.ksat.com/news/politics/Joaquin-Castro-Lamar-Smith-Lloyd-
Doggett-win-U-S-Rep-races/-/2567674/17294152/-/owkg0w/-/index.html)

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
In Texas the Democrats are working with pretty heavily gerrymandered
districts. It's not really a fair fight.

Also the challenge to Smith was obviously not well organized. You don't have
to be Karl Rove to understand that flinging five candidates against Lamar
Smith isn't a great tactic for anyone but Lamar Smith.

------
perlpimp
I think this is a good fodder for some really inquisitive investigative
journalism as I doubt very much that defenders do not receive perks and
kickbacks from establishment that disperses 550BILLION dollars to private
contractors from taxpayers coffers to break laws, destroy constitution and
make to orwellian state.

Being more paranoid than less I have a inkling that this system is being
installed and police is being armed because it is known that if economy
collapses, these will be instruments to quell dissent and literally destroy
(imprison and/or execute) opposition - of those who might well lead the
revolution.

Economy is doing good, but the external debt is mindboggling those who are in
the place of power might know what we don't.

~~~
rayiner
Yes, because you can't have anything but a staunchly civil-libertarian point
of view without being a sell-out who is receiving kickbacks from private
contractors...

Has it maybe occurred to you that e.g. Pelosi and Hoyer, whose lives were
defined by the Cold War, have maybe a different view on life than the HN
readership, who were mostly children when the Soviet Union collapsed?

~~~
Zigurd
My family arrived here as refugees after the war, and I grew up acutely aware
of the threat of the Soviet Union. Maybe that's why I am also aware that no
threat that's within three orders of magnitude of that exists today.

~~~
crusso
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

The folks looking to increase their power at the expense of the citizenry are
relentless. They spend their nights and weekends thinking up new ways to be
more dominant. As citizens, we can't expect to combat their never-ending
efforts with luke-warm responses or apologetics for our favorite political
leaders.

When it comes to privacy/liberty/freedom, the only reasonable response to
government incursion is a strong and unequivocal one.

------
brown9-2
The fact that someone is using an argument that was also used at one point in
time by someone who has a loose relationship with the truth (like Cheney)
doesn't make that person today into an automatic liar.

If the argument was wrong when used 7-8 years ago in a somewhat different
context, it's not automatically also wrong in today's context.

Peter King and Michelle Bachmann might be bozos, but on the rare occasions
where they agree with you it doesn't mean you are also a bozo by some sort of
associative property. This seems like the most illogical of smears, to say
that because person A and B have the same opinion on a single topic they are
similar in all natures (reminding me of the billboards touting the fact that
the Unabomber believed in global warming).

~~~
_delirium
I agree it's not a logically consistent argument, but I read it as slightly
different from the Unabomber-believed-in-global-warming arguments, which try
to tarnish a position with a universally unpopular figure (the smoking-bans-
were-first-proposed-by-Hitler argument is similar). This argument is more
along the lines of alleging that "our" side sold us out by taking up the other
side's positions. Among Republicans, "the GOP establishment has sold us out by
taking up traditionally liberal positions" is an argument that comes up now
and then, and among Democrats, you see its opposite, "the Democratic
establishment has sold us out by taking up traditionally conservative
positions". Greenwald is basically taking the 2nd view, writing an op-ed for
Democrats arguing that their leadership is in cahoots with tough-on-national-
security conservatives, rather than fighting for liberal values.

~~~
rayiner
What liberal values? The democrats strongly supported the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, supported the passing and continuation of the Patriot Act, etc.
They embraced their status as the "party of the guy that killed Osama" in the
2012 election.

And this isn't a new phenomenon. The Democrats moved hard to the right with
Clinton, and have ever since become a solidly center-right party with a
social-liberal streak. As a practical matter, that was the only thing that
could win elections with a voting population that was solidly center-right.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
> What liberal values? The democrats strongly supported...

Democrats are moderate conservatives, not liberals. There are no liberal
parties - and certainly no left-wing parties - anywhere in the American
mainstream.

~~~
adventured
I happen to agree with this, and I have a question about it if you wouldn't
mind answering.

Can you elaborate on some policies that a truly liberal party would promote
(that we don't see in the US)? Numerous countries in Europe have what are
often defined as highly liberal parties by American standards. What do they
do, what policies do they champion, that the liberal wing of the Democrat
Party in the US doesn't? And so on.

(and by liberal here, I'm speaking of what's considered a modern left wing
party by European standards (or "socialist" in some circles); versus classic
liberalism that would have defined the near laissez-faire capitalism of the
19th century)

~~~
rayiner
You don't even need to look to Europe. Just look to American politics in the
1970's. I'll give a very concrete example of an issue I happen to care about:
environmentalism. In the 1960's and 1970's, the environmental movement was
about protecting nature for the value of nature itself. The Wilderness Act of
1964 uses the language:

"A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works
dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and
community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who
does not remain."

Today, the intellectual mainstream of the movement has shifted to neoclassical
economic justifications: the value of environmental services provided by e.g.
wetlands and mountain ranges, the potential economic costs of climate change,
market failures resulting from the externalities of pollution. The
progressivism and idealism is gone, replaced with detailed analysis of how
pro-environment policies fit into our existing economic and value structure.

~~~
crusso
_The progressivism and idealism is gone_

Well yeah, because like most political movements they're subverted as vehicles
for power and the original motivation for their existence is just a loose
excuse to gain more power. The result ends up being enormous amounts of money
going in to feed thousands of regulations and government employees that really
only pay lip service to the original intent of the movement or organization.

It's the reason why my default position with any government proposal is: scale
it back, refactor what you already have, make due with less money, less laws,
and less bureaucrats.

~~~
rayiner
> ell yeah, because like most political movements they're subverted as
> vehicles for power and the original motivation for their existence is just a
> loose excuse to gain more power.

Ah yes, the environmental movement is just an excuse to increase government
power, not to protect innocent people from vicious, ruthless, remorseless
businessmen who have no compunction about dumping dangerous waste into lakes
that people drink out of and swim in, as long as doing so saves them a buck.

~~~
crusso
Meh, your emotional rants are just silly.

It's not about the environmentalists who care and actually make the world a
better place by stopping toxic dumping. It's the people who come along later
and take over positions of power who torment ordinary citizens for filling a
ditch on their own property, claiming that the ditch was "wetlands". It's the
California coastal douchebags who aren't protecting jack shit on the coast but
won't let you replace LITERALLY rotten boards in your own house because of a
morass of idiotic rules, regulations, and and endless stream of power-happy
"environmentalists".

------
ihsw
Can we label these defenders of spying "Statists"? Surely all of their
political beliefs fall flat when you consider that they will happily sacrifice
any and all values for the advancement of the State.

Fascists would also be appropriate.

~~~
camus
USA is already a fascist state by Mussolini's definition. In the future ,
there will be no need for conspiracy, corporation will run the show directly ,
when all states are bankrupts.

That's the only likely future for mankind.

~~~
mseebach
> USA is already a fascist state by Mussolini's definition.

Orwell (1944): "the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless ... almost
any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'"

The fascist state was very much totalitarian, and the relationship with
corporations wasn't conspirational, they were co-opted into the state for the
benefit of the state's goals. Individuals were enabled and allowed to attain
wealth through this scheme, but that doesn't mean they ran the show, at all.

~~~
PavlovsCat
Chomsky: "The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic.
Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies."

The corporate state is very much totalitarian, and the relationship with
politicians isn't conspirational, they are co-opted into the "holistic system
of systems" for the benefit of corporate goals. Individuals are enabled and
allowed to attain wealth and fame through this scheme, and are allowed to
choose drape colors, but that doesn't mean they run the show, at all.

~~~
mseebach
What nonsense. The United States, for all it's faults, is not a totalitarian
state. Read a book, FFS.

Edit: Terms like "Totalitarian", "Fascist" and "Communism" have real,
historical backgrounds. When they are casually applied where they don't
belong, they derail the discussion (much like "Nazism", hence Godwin's Law)
and prevent a real debate about real issues.

~~~
PavlovsCat
_The United States, for all it 's faults, is not a totalitarian state. Read a
book, FFS._

How about we start small, and read the posts we're replying to, hmm?

 _" Totalitarian", "Fascist" and "Communism" have real, historical
backgrounds._

Yes, and? Where did I mention any of these? Books may be too heavy to me, but
I can parse single sentences from Wikipedia, such as this one from the page
about totalitarianism:

 _The term 'an authoritarian regime' denotes a state in which the single power
holder - an individual 'dictator', a committee or a junta or an otherwise
small group of political elite - monopolizes political power. However, a
totalitarian regime attempts to control virtually all aspects of the social
life including economy, education, art, science, private life and morals of
citizens_

You see, the difference is basically that you put down slave uprisings, but
don't care what color their underpants are, or wether they like you, or what
they think - only in so far as that affects performance. Not sure where
"making people wear flair", nodding to buzzwords or Japan fit in there, but at
any rate totalitarianism, in comparison with simply controling the jugulars
and assholes of golden gooses, is a silly and ineffective thing. It even sucks
as strawman.

------
SkyMarshal
Key point:

 _" To say that there is a major sea change underway - not just in terms of
surveillance policy but broader issues of secrecy, trust in national security
institutions, and civil liberties - is to state the obvious. But perhaps the
most significant and enduring change will be the erosion of the trite, tired
prism of partisan simplicity through which American politics has been
understood over the last decade. What one sees in this debate is not Democrat
v. Republican or left v. right. One sees authoritarianism v. individualism,
fealty to The National Security State v. a belief in the need to constrain and
check it, insider Washington loyalty v. outsider independence.

That's why the only defenders of the NSA at this point are the decaying
establishment leadership of both political parties whose allegiance is to the
sprawling permanent power faction in Washington and the private industry that
owns and controls it. They're aligned against long-time liberals, the new
breed of small government conservatives, the ACLU and other civil liberties
groups, many of their own members, and increasingly the American people, who
have grown tired of, and immune to, the relentless fear-mongering."_

------
rayiner
Old people (Nancy Pelosi is 73, Stenny Hoyer is 74) don't see the big deal
about internet privacy. News at 11.

------
joshuaellinger
I hope Snowden/Greenwald has evidence of the NSA spying on Congress.

That would change the tone of the debate overnight.

Remember how pissy the mainstream journalist got over the DOJ monitoring its
phone lines.

It's easy to justify spying when it is on those terrorists. Not so easy when
the lens is pointed at you.

------
colin_jack
Interesting as always but I do wish Greenwald would write shorter more
targeted articles.

~~~
1337biz
He probably leaves this job to the Business Insider, Medium and Quartz
"journalists".

------
amerika_blog
Even the leftist Guardian is noticing this? Wow.

I just don't know if truth and politics are compatible. We may need a solution
outside of politics.

