> Isn't this what they're supposed to be doing? I don't really have a problem with intelligence gathering against non-allied nation state actors.
Shouldn't you have a problem with them getting caught then?
I don't understand this defense of the NSA, no, its not what they are supposed to be doing. At least not anymore.
If you are in favor of the US bullying and spying everyone they don't consider an ally then you should be outraged they can't do it efectively. They got outed by a lone contractor and your "potential enemies", or however you get to call every single other country in the world to justify the spying, now have most of the technical details they need to thwart the NSA's efforts and hence make it spend lots of your taxpayer dollars in coming up with other forms of spying.
> I don't understand this defense of the NSA, no, its not what they are supposed to be doing. At least not anymore.
What are they supposed to be doing, then? Should the US just not have any spy agencies? Should it shift away from signals intelligence and focus on human intelligence like Israel does?
Absolutely. The US should interact with foreign governments via the diplomatic process, pull up all its foreign bases, and stop playing "world policeman."
Not sure why this is so hard to understand. The justifications for actions like these either fall into "but we can't be world's policeman without these intel programs" or "the other guy does it" which are both morally bankrupt.
Being a citizen of a nation state does not require me to approve of that nation's foreign policy or military actions. In fact, I'm compelled to be extra critical of these things as they are often abused and cause not only domestic issues (large tax load, dead soldiers, blowback, etc) but worldwide issues as well.
We have yet to see any evidence that these dangerous and provocative technical programs have actually resulted in anything used to thwart attacks or other justifications from the usual defenders of the status quo. If anything, from a dollars per result perspective its a major tax dollar waste and a massive opportunity cost. If we had a Russian-like military budget my tax load would be lower and arguably allow me and others to invest and do things that can actually help domestic life, instead of watching my dollars get burned up in spy games and the slaughtering of completely innocent Iraqi and Afghani civilians over the last 10 years.
So the US should be the only major nation with no spy agency?
> We have yet to see any evidence that these dangerous and provocative technical programs have actually resulted in anything used to thwart attacks or other justifications from the usual defenders of the status quo.
It may have accomplished nothing. It also may have accomplish something that is still undisclosed.
I'm partially playing devil's advocate here. I do agree with the sentiment that the US should stop behaving like the World Police. However, the idea that the US should have no spy agency in 2014 is ridiculous. All the major nations are spying on each other..
Because diplomats demonstrably don't always cut it when you are dealing with bad-faith actors, and the world is not so full of love and sunshine as to have eliminated all the bad-faith nation-states.
I can only guess your parent believes the NSA should be in defensive-only mode because we are not at war. That's the only half-rational position that fits with his statement that I can think of.
Also, that if they wan't to go offensive, they should try methods and techniques that have not been detailed in the headlines of every mayor newspaper in the world for six months.
I'm sure they don't focus solely on human intelligence, but the stereotype (perhaps outdated) is that the US is great at signals intelligence, and crappy at human intelligence, and that the inverse is true of Israel.
> For its spying efforts, Israel relies in part on an Iranian exile group that is labeled a terrorist organization by the United States, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or M.E.K., which is based in Iraq. The Israelis have also developed close ties in the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq, and they are believed to use Kurdish agents who can move back and forth across the border into Iran.
vs.
> While the National Security Agency eavesdrops on telephone conversations of Iranian officials and conducts other forms of electronic surveillance, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency analyzes radar imagery and digital images of nuclear sites. Outside analysts believe high-tech drones prowl overhead; one came down late last year deep inside Iranian territory, though American officials said they lost control of it in Afghanistan.
> Meanwhile, clandestine ground sensors, which can detect electromagnetic signals or radioactive emissions that could be linked to covert nuclear activity, are placed near suspect Iranian facilities. The United States also relies heavily on information gathered by inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency who visit some of Iran’s nuclear-related facilities.
> But collecting independent human intelligence — recruiting spies — has been by far the most difficult task for American intelligence. Some operational lapses — and the lack of an embassy as a base of operations ever since the hostage crisis three decades ago — have frequently left the C.I.A. virtually blind on the ground in Iran, according to former intelligence officials.
Shouldn't you have a problem with them getting caught then?
I don't understand this defense of the NSA, no, its not what they are supposed to be doing. At least not anymore.
If you are in favor of the US bullying and spying everyone they don't consider an ally then you should be outraged they can't do it efectively. They got outed by a lone contractor and your "potential enemies", or however you get to call every single other country in the world to justify the spying, now have most of the technical details they need to thwart the NSA's efforts and hence make it spend lots of your taxpayer dollars in coming up with other forms of spying.