A wise man indeed and an apropos comment.
Isn't this all just about power. J Edgar Hoover comes readily to mind.
Snowden OMG Moment During Interview
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A wise man indeed and an apropos comment.
Isn't this all just about power. J Edgar Hoover comes readily to mind.
I thought that he came across as very polished also. He did state in the interview that he did report his concerns internally and they were basically dismissed. He brought up the fact that he was living pretty well, being paid well and living a comfortable life. He knew that once he did this, there would be no turning back. Why would one do this, unless he felt passionately about it. He did force the discussion.
I have been shocked lately about how much of our lives can be watched. Just saw on the news recently, that computers can be turned on and people watch you via your camera, if they buy a $40 program.
My feeling is that the government is doing everything that Snowden states and probably more. I hope that I am wrong. I thought that CaliforniaMan summed it up very nicely.
I have been shocked lately about how much of our lives can be watched. Just saw on the news recently, that computers can be turned on and people watch you via your camera, if they buy a $40 program.
My feeling is that the government is doing everything that Snowden states and probably more. I hope that I am wrong. I thought that CaliforniaMan summed it up very nicely.
CaliforniaMan
Full time employment: Posting here.
The freedoms you mention are not freedoms that we inherently possess. We do not have the freedom to harm others or to infringe upon their rights. The freedom I am referring to (and I think Franklin meant) was the freedom from government interference and intimidation. This was the purpose of the first 10 amendments.
Even for out "safety" the government cannot abridge our speech or the press. And the government cannot take away our right to be secure in our person, houses, papers and effects, or unreasonable searches or seizures.
These were the rules we established because the government is all powerful, and as individuals we have no power.
But I agree with you, of course we give up some freedom for safety, but to what degree? Everything in life is optimization, there is no absolute. However...
Does what the government is doing now match the spirit and demands of the Fourth Amendment. That is the real question. And it does matter. Do we gain ourselves a very little bit of safety now and give up now and for all future generations of Americans the rights of the Fourth Amendment?
I think it is important that we keep the Fourth as sacred as we do the Second, so no future generation finds they really need to use the Second.
Program 1 also included interviews with supporters of "the program"--supporters who obviously did not discuss details of the program. Those might be very persuasive, but we only have the anecdotes from one side. And it, deliberately or not, continued to blur the line between "collection" and "analysis." As far as "legal basis", the show made clear that "the program" was approved by the Bush White House, by the Obama White House, by Congress, and by the judicial branch. I think their portrayal of the method of how that approval was achieved was far from evenhanded, but there it was. All three branches, bipartisan consensus--we don't see much of that.
Perhaps Program 2 will show us some real people who suffered harm from having their rights violated.
"Passion" is a long way from "justified" or "right". IMO he is a person who desired the type of notoriety that this has brought him. The decision to do what he did was not his. History is full of people who believe they are smarter than those around them, that they see with amazing clarity what the knaves around them ignore, and who want to go down in history. Well, he's done that. He's no hero and he's no martyr. He's a selfish, immature fool.
That's not how I recall it. The Judicial Branch did not sign the legislation, it was the White House Senior Counsel, Alberto Gonzales, who signed it into law, and he confirmed that fact in interview on the first program. Regardless of the legality, the fact is that the US government has given itself the rights to snoop into anyone's personal data without a judicial warrant.
The FISA Court (part of the judicial branch) approved the program. It was in the show (maybe around 45 minutes in?).
Cassie
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Thank you for posting this information!
FISA stands for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and was interpreted by many/most as being surveillance on foreigners, not inward looking, at all citizens. I think is good that these facts are now clearly in the public domain.
ERD50
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I went looking for context, and learned that Franklin apparently never said it in any context:
Benjamin Franklin - Wikiquote (and other sources):
Yes, it all gets a bit fuzzy, IMO. And people will have naturally different takes on it.
I guess I'm trying to be pragmatic about it, recalling that these technologies were not around when that was written. Yes, I would not want to be stopped in public and searched, or have police enter my house and search it without some carefully regulated due cause and oversight. Those searches would be very intrusive to my freedom to move about freely or relax and feel safe in my own home.
But having some robotic system monitor my internet activity and phone calls for patterns that could alert them to possible suspicious activity, designed to make me safer, doesn't really (as I see it) impose upon my day-to-day life and freedom. Again, controls must be in place, and that is a my concern. And, if something I wrote caused some sort of false positive trigger, we need to be sure that due process and oversight kicks in and protects me from any over-reaction. I think (but don't know) that those controls are in place now, I don't think they go into a deeper level w/o a court order, or some higher authority.
A non-technical parallel: Sometimes I think we allow the technology to get in the way of these discussions, though it does add a new wrinkle. But try this simple, everyday parallel:
Police notice increased crime on a certain area of the city. So they put additional officers on the beat. Now think about that - these cops are walking around, not because someone committed a crime, but because someone might commit a crime. So they are keeping a watchful eye over everyone, and suspicions run high.
Don't I now feel safer because the police are there, monitoring the situation? Yes, they might look me up and down, and try to analyze if I fit the profile of the recent criminals, or if my actions seem suspicious, even if I just look nervous. But they don't stop me from going about my business. And they don't stop and search me w/o due cause. So should I say "Don't look at me!"?
Is that really so different from monitoring email traffic, and being 'on the lookout' for 'suspicious activity'? Yes, it's different, but for me, it's a reasonable parallel to our situation with instantaneous communication, and maybe a reasonable response to the potential threat.
-ERD50
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zinger1457
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I have a hard time putting my faith in someone to do the right thing with all the information they have been collecting on me when they have been denying/lying about collecting it all along.
CaliforniaMan
Full time employment: Posting here.
IMO it is very different. In the example you present they can look at you because you are in a public place. They cannot look at you inside your own home. They can see that you are holding a package or a purse, but as you mention, without probable cause they cannot search it.
This is a public forum. Anyone can see what is posted here. Is it permissible for the "police" to look at what is posted here? Of course. But my private messages? I think the example you present is a good one. They can look at my public presentation, but my private things are just that, private. And they should need due process to look at them.
FWIW: Found it. Program 1, at 58:30. The FISA court issues a ruling approving "the program."The FISA Court (part of the judicial branch) approved the program. It was in the show (maybe around 45 minutes in?).Originally Posted by Alan
That's not how I recall it. The Judicial Branch did not sign the legislation . . .
Texas Proud
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I do not think he is a 'traitor' as some do.... especially people in the administration... I also do not think that he has caused any harm except to the politicians etc. who were running the show and now feel embarrassed when they have to talk to their foreign counterparts...
I also think that the gvmt should not be sucking up all this data... they had a clip in tonight's news from Snowden... he basically said that all they are doing is putting more hay on the hay pile making it harder to find what we need to find...
I also think that the gvmt should not be sucking up all this data... they had a clip in tonight's news from Snowden... he basically said that all they are doing is putting more hay on the hay pile making it harder to find what we need to find...
And we should believe he knows anything about analysis because ?? He was a computer system administrator. He was a clerk.
The political risks of running this program were very clear--and folks in the WH (both parties), Congress (both parties), and the judiciary approved it. There was a lot of political gain to be had by many of these people by publicly repudiating the program and using it to bash "the other side." Maybe their assessment of the value of the information gained, the effectiveness of the protections that are in existence, and the best way to do this particularly tough and legally delicate work, is of more significance than the opinion of a "smartest, purest guy in the room" SYSAD.
I am a strong defender of civil liberties. And I know we live in the real world where none of our rights is absolute. When I see claims of wholesale abuse of individual rights by the government, I expect it will be accompanied by some indication that a lot of real harm has occurred to real people. A theoretical risk is noteworthy, and nobody wants to trust an opaque system of procedures and courts. But if we cannot see that real harm is occurring (despite the claimed wholesale wanton collection of Gazigabytes of sensitive personal information), is it not possible--as politicians, jurists, and others with actual knowledge of the system claim, that the safeguards in place do protect the rights of Americans? Or, we can believe the TV show with ominous music and self-serving interviews with a traitorous liar.
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clifp
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The Frontline program (one of the best in years IMO) really shifted my attitude about Snowden significantly. The revelation that Ashcroft, and Mueller of all guys refused to sign the re-authorization of the program was a real eye opener to me.
I figure on the subject of law order vs individual rights both of these guys are going to come done hard on the side of law order. The acting Attn General was prepared to resign is really shocking.
Reading how the House bill "repealing" the collection of phone records was watered down makes also think that there very well connected folks who have a lot of juice and remain determined to retain this capability regardless of the constitutionality of it.
One of the problems it seems me is that FISA court, doesn't appear to be as much a court as glorified grand jury. The old saying is that with good prosecutor, a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich. I get the feeling that most of the time FISA just rubber stamps things. Sure they have real judges and so they probably push back some of the time. But I don't think you can get any type of justice in our system without both sides having advocates. In the case of the FISA, it would take nothing short of the the ACLU and the Cato Institute being allowed to have some their employees get top secret clearance and act as the advocate opposing the judge before I'd be satisfied.
I was also gratified to find out how many CIA, NSA, FBI, DOJ, and even Congressional staffers, risk career and even jail time to try and stop this program using proper channels. Their collective failure I think boost Snowden's claim that only way to get the info was to do what he did.
I was listening to a professor on the PBS Newshour point out that you have 35,000 times higher chance of dying of heart disease than terrorism. So I really think our priorities are screwed up.
I figure on the subject of law order vs individual rights both of these guys are going to come done hard on the side of law order. The acting Attn General was prepared to resign is really shocking.
Reading how the House bill "repealing" the collection of phone records was watered down makes also think that there very well connected folks who have a lot of juice and remain determined to retain this capability regardless of the constitutionality of it.
One of the problems it seems me is that FISA court, doesn't appear to be as much a court as glorified grand jury. The old saying is that with good prosecutor, a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich. I get the feeling that most of the time FISA just rubber stamps things. Sure they have real judges and so they probably push back some of the time. But I don't think you can get any type of justice in our system without both sides having advocates. In the case of the FISA, it would take nothing short of the the ACLU and the Cato Institute being allowed to have some their employees get top secret clearance and act as the advocate opposing the judge before I'd be satisfied.
I was also gratified to find out how many CIA, NSA, FBI, DOJ, and even Congressional staffers, risk career and even jail time to try and stop this program using proper channels. Their collective failure I think boost Snowden's claim that only way to get the info was to do what he did.
I was listening to a professor on the PBS Newshour point out that you have 35,000 times higher chance of dying of heart disease than terrorism. So I really think our priorities are screwed up.
Yes, that was well done. It has been widely reported that the culture within NSA is heavily biased to protecting the privacy of Americans, it is something these professionals have had drummed into them for their entire careers. Systemic, deliberate abuses decades ago (see COINTELPRO, etc) heavily damaged the reputation of the organization and posed a true threat to the civil liberties of Americans (unlike the presently alleged actions, IMO). That's what real abuse looks like: collection and analysis of information about US persons without court involvement with the intent to deny them their First Amendment rights and to influence the domestic US political environment. And these abuses were the reason for the Church Committee and all the ensuing reforms.
We do need effective structural safeguards to protect against mistakes and abuses even by the most well-meaning people. We should all recognize that the collection and analysis of information on Americans by the government is a very dangerous thing to our republic, so it is entirely right to regard it with the highest suspicion. But I object to the lionization of an individual who took it on himself to decide he "knew better" and throw away the good work of thousands of people and millions of taxpayer dollars, and to naively advance the cause of those individuals and groups who pose a >real< (not a theoretical) threat to the lives and liberties of Americans.
These TV shows and blockbuster newspaper articles give voice to a small minority of people who actually know about the programs and oppose them. I am given to understand that a far larger share of people who know the details of the program, with consciences equally as developed, find the safeguards to be adequate. They'll just keep toiling away in silence, protecting lives and liberties. Meanwhile, Mr Superior Conscience destroys their work, besmirches their reputations, diminishes the effectiveness of a proven, valuable tool that is saving lives, and exposes sensitive communications and capabilities to exploitation by that well-known protector of Human Rights and Liberty--Russia. He's no hero, he's traitorous, naive, arrogant idiot. His inability to see nuance and to think through the logical result of his actions has resulted in his present personal circumstances, I only wish he had not done such damage to others on his personal journey of self aggrandizement and destruction.
But, I don't have strong feelings on this.
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Leonidas
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Not having seen the interview, I believe Snowden is exactly what he says.
Before 9/11, the government exercised a lot of self-control on spying. The hardest part about getting the authority to spy on someone's communication was not judicial approval, but the internal controls set up in the individual agencies and then at main DOJ. Even though their role was supposed to be making sure that the government's petition was legally sufficient for judicial approval, too often I found myself battling local AUSAs and some deputy AJ in DC over political implications. Everyone was very aware of the appearances, and afraid of being seen to go too far out of fear of a legal or public backlash on the methods we used. "We don't want to abuse the tool out of fear of losing it."
My first wiretap taught me that the judges do not exercise their authority as they should. As I was handing the affidavit to the Federal Magistrate, he pushed it aside and said, "Agent, just show me where the Attorney General signed off on your intercept and that's all I need." Affidavits that represented thousands of hours of investigation were glanced at for a few moments. Not always, some judges did their jobs, but many did not.
And every telephone company and internet provider just asked for a warrant or court order for their files and then complied - always making sure to send me a bill for the 'cost'.
After 9/11, when the Patriot Act was in full effect, the government seemingly removed most of the internal controls. While drinking with a former co-worker in 2002 he said that the internal controls were non-existent. "Dude, I could get up on your phone if I wanted to."
If the government is not exercising self-restraint, the judges aren't being good watchdogs, and the companies are complying without question - who is left to complain except us?
Before 9/11, the government exercised a lot of self-control on spying. The hardest part about getting the authority to spy on someone's communication was not judicial approval, but the internal controls set up in the individual agencies and then at main DOJ. Even though their role was supposed to be making sure that the government's petition was legally sufficient for judicial approval, too often I found myself battling local AUSAs and some deputy AJ in DC over political implications. Everyone was very aware of the appearances, and afraid of being seen to go too far out of fear of a legal or public backlash on the methods we used. "We don't want to abuse the tool out of fear of losing it."
My first wiretap taught me that the judges do not exercise their authority as they should. As I was handing the affidavit to the Federal Magistrate, he pushed it aside and said, "Agent, just show me where the Attorney General signed off on your intercept and that's all I need." Affidavits that represented thousands of hours of investigation were glanced at for a few moments. Not always, some judges did their jobs, but many did not.
And every telephone company and internet provider just asked for a warrant or court order for their files and then complied - always making sure to send me a bill for the 'cost'.
After 9/11, when the Patriot Act was in full effect, the government seemingly removed most of the internal controls. While drinking with a former co-worker in 2002 he said that the internal controls were non-existent. "Dude, I could get up on your phone if I wanted to."
If the government is not exercising self-restraint, the judges aren't being good watchdogs, and the companies are complying without question - who is left to complain except us?
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ERD50
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Agreed, that's a concern. But then again, sometimes secrecy is needed to be effective.
RE - comparing to a 'beat cop' , watching and observing individuals:
Yes, it's different. I'm trying to draw a parallel between the old/new technologies, and analogies will usually differ in some ways. But the common point, in my mind, is that neither seems to actively interfere with my life. Let me try another, hypothetical parallel:
Imagine we had some kind of harmless scanning device that was near 100% accurate in detecting dangerous illegal materials (explosives, ricin, etc - oooops, did my checking the spelling of that get me on a list? !), even if they were wrapped up and hidden in a package (making it 'private', right?), and we set up these scanners at key points in a city. I'm an innocent guy, and I walk past these scanners. The scanner can 'see' inside my briefcase, can 'see' inside my shopping bag. But with no alarms from the system, I just go on my merry way. There really is no negative for me. But there are positives - I'm safer due to this surveillance. If an alarm does trigger, there should be a checks/balances, to assure that a false positive does not create problems for an innocent person.
That's a lot more hypothetical, but I think it's a good analogy to robots analyzing my email and calls. No real interference with my life, and some added safety.
I'll say it again, as it is so key - controls need to be in place to prevent abuse.
-ERD50
You can say it as many times as you like, but a checks/balances system with controls that truly work and doesn't get compromised (over a period of time) is not going to happen (IMO).
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kcowan
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I think we will all be glad (eventually) that Snowden did it. He is very articulate for a young man and impressive. I cannot believe he did this for personal gain. That is enough for me!
M Paquette
Moderator Emeritus
Yah. A close friend works on an IT team that manages a huge internal storage network that handles customer cloud support, including e-mail and customer storage. When the Snowden leaks started coming out, one of the items leaked was a slide that indicated PRISM had access to the company's storage network. Management and the IT team went ballistic, and spent several days doing a hardware audit and hand-over-hand inspection of the entire facility. They found a storage node that had what was designated as a 'dark' spare fiber optic line connected. The line was live, and the node had been hacked.
They're now doing detailed inspections much more often and requiring staff to work in pairs within the data center.
This raises the cost of doing business, of course.
M Paquette
Moderator Emeritus
Alas, the combination of a very low frequency event, like looking at a random person and finding that they are a terrorist, and a detection process that is 'almost' 100% accurate, means that there will be a fairly high false positive rate.
This is governed by Bayes' Theorem.
Let's take a 'terrorist detector' algorithm that is 99% accurate, that is, given an email and call data set, it spots the terrorist 99% of the time in spite of circumlocutions and other camouflage, and has a false positive rate of, oh, 1%. To make this easier, let's assume that there are 300 terrorists running about in a population of 300,000,000.
So, the probability of a random person being a Terrorist, P(T) is one in a million, or 0.000001. The probability that our Detector spots a Terrorist when shown one, P(D|T), is 0.99. The complementary event, the probability that our Detector reports a terrorist when given an Innocent, P(D|I), is 0.01.
Lets compute the probability that a Terrorist is Detected over the population, P(T|D).
P(T|D) = ( P(D|T) * P(T) ) / ( ( P(D|T) * P(T) ) + ( P(D|I) * (1 - P(T) ) )
P(T|D) = ( (0.99 * 0.000001 ) ) / ( ( 0.99 * 0.000001) + ( 0.01 * (1 - 0.000001) ) )
P(T|D) = .0000989902
Given the population of 300,000,000 then we will detect 29,697 of the 300 "terrorists". As 29,397 folks will attest, you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, eh? Sucks to be them.
The three uncaught terrorist will no doubt have something else to say.
ERD50
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
OK, but what is the alternative? And how much damage can they really do to me with this info that they can't already do with the info I provide to the IRS? First off, any 'bad eggs' in our own government have many, many ways to abuse my rights to their advantage. I'm actually more worried about the low-tech methods that can be deployed - I think they are far more likely to utilize those methods. I worry about notifying police to do a house watch if I'm away (how secure is that info?), or stopping the mail (how many people in the Post Office can share that info with a bad guy - it's certainly not 'secure').
Yes, but the detector only raises a flag. A well designed system with proper checks/balances will review these flags. So while the NSA might have detected the word 'risin' in my earlier post, that doesn't mean the next step is to send out a SWAT team to surround my house, complete with a swarm of black helicopters. If my post raised a flag somewhere, I do not think it will cause my life to 'suck'.
Umm, wait a minute, who's that at the door?
-ERD50
M Paquette
Moderator Emeritus
We only have 14,000 FBI field agents right now. Assuming the Terrorist Detector Program looks at every person in the USA annually, to try and pick up those pesky home-grown radicals and recruits that are created every year, we've just added over two more investigations every year to each field agent's workload, in addition to the real leads, oddball fertilizer purchases, and other items that they are already chasing.
That is, we've taken them away from doing the real, effective police work they now do and put them to work chasing World of Warcraft clans exchanging e-mails and Scout Troop phone trees. This may be a less than effective redeployment of resources.
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