I find it odd how many people automatically assume that whatever the NSA is up to must be undesirable and therefore should be opposed.
I mean, where do you think analysis of plans by terrorists and nation state adversaries to attack our nation and its allies comes from? The raw intelligence data these are based on can only be gathered by surveillance of communications, both targeted and in bulk.
You should all be supporting this, as you benefit from it every day.
Well, the question at hand was, and is: what should we be supporting? I don't, in fact, assume that what the NSA is doing is bad, but in order for the public and the oversight systems the legislature put in place, someone has to know what's going on. The program Mark Klein revealed surprised legislators, including John Sensenbrenner, the author of the legislation that was used as a justification for the program: https://www.rstreet.org/commentary/patriot-act-author-introd...
Many people worried that the PATRIOT Act was overreach for surveillance, but the bill did pass. What happened with Mark's whistleblowing is that policymakers and the public found out that there were other programs, potentially illegal under even the PATRIOT Act (and, indeed the US Constitution), that had been hidden or obfuscated to their oversight bodies.
(Incidentally, the government's strategy in the cases against the NSA program was to say that even asking about legal authorisation and grounding of the program was in itself, a violation of national security. Many years after Mark's act, Ed Snowden's first published leak was this authorisation document, confirming that Mark was right, and that, had those cases been able to proceed, there would have been grounds for investigation.)
The point is that mass domestic surveillance of American nationals violates common understanding of the law. It makes no sense for the requirements to get a wiretap to be so stringent but the requirements to monitor someone's internet traffic to be nonexistent, just because it's laundered through "intelligence gathering" and you argue it's therefore not "law enforcement."
> The point is that mass domestic surveillance of American nationals violates common understanding of the law.
It also violates the courts' understanding of the law. That's probably why one such program was shut down prior to the Snowden leaks and definitely why the other was shut down after.
The point of bulk data collection is to be able to, in effect, take a wiretap in the past before you knew what you'd need to be wiretapping in the present, by querying the bulk datasets for communications between specific endpoints within specific points in time.
As time travel doesn't exist, this is the next best technology available.
Sadly, governments end up becoming corrupt. In one formerly free nation (or at least it was one that obnoxiously bragged about being one), data about women's periods became weaponized in a witchhunt against abortions.
You don't agree with monitoring the communications of adversaries at all, or you don't agree with doing the equivalent for communications made in the recent past?
When the country's own citizens are the "adversaries", that's a highly fucked up government and government agency. If the people are the enemy the country is dead.
Think of how safe we'd all be if we were on camera 24/7/365!
Let me put it this way: I don't do anything illegal in my bathroom, but damned if I want someone watching me in there. Everyone has their line they don't want crossed. Klein's - and the EFF's, and mine - is somewhere past the NSA monitoring every single communication in the entire country without a warrant. I have no objection with them monitoring specific suspects with a court order, but I don't want them listening to people who aren't being actively, personally investigated.
Just because your communications data or metadata exists in some bulk dataset somewhere doesn't mean that it's being actively and personally investigated by anyone.
As with the issuance of a warrant for wiretapping, there would need to be a proportionate and legitmate reason for your communications within a such a dataset to be looked at.
the problem is that this data exists somewhere where i have no control over it and was collected without my consent, in clear violation of my constitutional rights. perhaps you have perfect trust in the current and future good faith of the US federal government, but perhaps you can understand why others do not. i would not want the local police keeping copies of all of my emails "just in case", why would it be any better for unaccountable strangers to keep secret dossiers on me?
Why would an analyst at the NSA be looking at your communications data?
It's a bit like the police getting a search warrant to look around your home. If there's no legitimate reason to do it, like having reasonable suspicion of a crime that requires investigation, then they're not going to.
This is just a rewording of the "nothing to hide" argument.
And your edit seems to ignore that the analysts are humans. Police get caught abusing their access to data resources for personal gain frequently, why are NSA analysts different?
(Not even touching on the fact that mistakes happen, leaks happen, breaches happen, laws change, political winds change direction)
> It's a bit like the police getting a search warrant to look around your home. If there's no legitimate reason to do it, like having reasonable suspicion of a crime that requires investigation, then they're not going to.
Yes, it is a bit like this. Except in this case the police don't need a warrant, they can enter your home for any reason at their discretion. You're putting a lot of trust in a bunch of people you've (I'm assuming) never met working for an agency that has demonstrated a complete lack of regard for the constitution. Either that or you're a really terrible glowie: "How do you do, fellow tech enthusiasts??"
Setting aside the legality/morality/whatever of the data collection itself, you seem to place a lot of faith in the NSA’s ability to keep that data private.
Maybe they want to look at the naked pics being sent between you and your sexual partners, as has happened many times. Maybe they want to spy on their own sexual partners or prospective partners, which has also happened many times. Maybe they want to blackmail people for their own gain, which has, once again, happened many times. There are innumerable reasons with plenty of precedent for each and every one.
This is at best a strawman, and at worst blatant astroturfing. The benefit of the doubt is given to these organizations a priori. The idea that the average person should not be able to know about government intelligence programs is common sense - if the average person knows, so do our adversaries, defeating the purpose of the program.
But there have to be limits on this power, or you enable, and even empower, an Orwellian regime.
NSA has been caught, multiple times, flagrantly disregarding the law, violating privacy rights afforded to every citizen by the Constitution, and gathering an amount of data that could easily enable a hostile regime to enact vengeance on dissenters.
So imagine this hostile regime comes to power. Now everyone is forced to either support the regime, or face harsh consequences without recourse. Any plan you construct, or group of supporters you amass, will inevitably be compromised by this machine and eradicated, one way or another.
You have totalitarianism, and no means to resist it. ou've given up your immune system. You no longer have a democracy, even if you do on paper. And before you make the argument that "the ends justify the means" consider that this hostile regime might not share your ends. You may get wrapped up in "the means".
Is that a desirable outcome for you? If not, you should rethink your position. If that outcome seems desirable to you, there are a very limited number of reasons why that could be the case, and none of them are charitable.
To not be scrutinized for any and everything is vital. When all is accessible, actors playing the part of the good citizen are the prime. I would rather have pain than the pretense of good.
I mean, where do you think analysis of plans by terrorists and nation state adversaries to attack our nation and its allies comes from? The raw intelligence data these are based on can only be gathered by surveillance of communications, both targeted and in bulk.
You should all be supporting this, as you benefit from it every day.