@amerika @quasifly the five eyes just take it in turns to spy on each others citizens

you seem to have a pretty concrete model in your head on how to reform bureaucratic institutions, which I can respect, but it seems to be miles away from the reality on the ground in modern surveillance states

this stuff is perfectly *legal* so there's no need for bureaucrats to run for cover. only radical political reform or asymmetric cypherpunk tactics are likely to change the situation

@skells @quasifly

The question is one of domestic versus international spying.

To spy on US citizens, they still need probable cause.

If that is being abuse, accountability comes into play.

@amerika @quasifly

@skells @quasifly

You either have rule of law, or you do not.

In the meantime, we regularly see agencies getting disciplined.

Snowden behaved like a Russian asset. I'd say Taleb is most likely correct.

@amerika @quasifly if that's the case then I'm glad the Russians have our interests at heart

@skells @quasifly

I am certain that they do not. They simply want to weaken us, same reason why Obama polled high with Europeans.

@amerika @quasifly does domestic spying strengthen or weaken america and its western allies?

@skells @quasifly

Mixed bag. I think part of it is how they have kept homegrown and foreign terrorism from being able to stage major events.

I am certain that it is abused however.

@amerika @quasifly FBI spends more time concocting these events than stopping them, from what I can see and the NSA doesn't appear to be too conerned

@skells @quasifly

Apathy breeds until someone writes a well-worded memo.

@skells @quasifly

Snowden was just reprising The Pentagon Papers, basically a way of damaging the government and with it, American self-esteem.

@amerika @quasifly which do you value more, self esteem or freedom from tyranny?

@skells @quasifly

I do not think this is the cause of tyranny.

@amerika @quasifly it probably helps though doesn't it

@skells @quasifly

If you do not get to the root of the problem, you're shouting into the wind.

@amerika @quasifly so who's gonna write that memo

It's been a while since I read Snowden's book, but if I remember correctly, the way he alleged the CIA was spying on people was that they would go collect a bunch of public and private information on someone and store it in a database. But they did this in such a way so that no one at the CIA actually saw the data, and thus it was considered legal. It's sort of like if a cop busted down your door and took pictures of everything without a warrant, but the courts said it was legal because he had his eyes closed the whole time.

The issue here is that if someone were to hack into this database and leak all of this private info, it's unlikely the CIA could be held accountable.

Also the CIA is a pretty opaque organization. If someone were to illegally file a warrant based on information from that database, it would be difficult to prove that that was actually the case in court.

@postemples @quasifly @skells

Yet another reason to go embarrass the higherups.

Once you put something on paper, they no longer have plausible deniability, and most of government when abused operates behind that shield.