I want effective signals intelligence. But an unrestrained and undermonitored agency can't even be judged on whether it's doing a good job, let alone whether it's doing other damage.
Reshared post from +Andreas Schou
I don't think the NSA is full of terrible people. I think it's full of decent people* trying to do their jobs well. I don't think that matters.
The NSA's job is to protect Americans from foreign threats. Virtually everyone in the NSA is promoted based on their progress toward this goal, and virtually everyone who works there — including those in the inspector general's office and general counsel — comes form a background where they have only had adversarial exposure to people who are at all concerned with privacy.
Winning wars while minimizing the loss of life, saving lives, solving crimes, and advancing American diplomatic interests are all worthwhile goals. But those goals are monitored systemically, and privacy is monitored personally. Even in a system where every individual person cares deeply about a particular objective, that objective will be set aside whenever it conflicts with a systemic objective.
Insofar as governments have systems that work, they recognize those tensions: if police violate the rules for gathering evidence, then they cannot make their case; if corporations collude against their competitors or customers, they will face steep fines; if prosecutors cannot prove their case, then they cannot imprison the guilty. When I see objectives in tension, I expect to see some system that balances those objectives.
I do not see that here.
In this case, we have a secret agency which is never exposed to public scrutiny and which does not reward respect for privacy. At the judicial level, it's overseen by a secret court staffed by tractable judges lacking adversarial procedures. At the legislative level, it's overseen by secret Congressional panels filled with intelligence-friendly Congressmen. There are no independent audits of things like data retention.
It doesn't matter how good or competent the judges, intelligence officers, and Congressmen are individually: closed systems are vulnerable to overreach and corruption, and the opportunities for oversight are so narrow as to be meaningless. Communications can be kept for five years unless they are demonstrably useless for traffic analysis.* Encrypted communications can be kept forever.
I might be willing to consent to this system if it were demonstrated that it was necessary. But dragnet surveillance was invented by executive fiat, ratified by closed Congressional sessions, extended on the basis of secret interpretations of federal law, and overseen by a secret court whose decisions, even in their broad outlines, had to be leaked illegally. If this is the way the world has to be now, then it needs to be the subject of normal debate and oversight, and until that occurs — it has not occurred yet — there should be a strong presumption that the objections of those that were not consulted (viz., anyone outside the intelligence community) will not have their interests represented.
(1) That is: I believe that the average person, put in the position of an average intelligence officer, would do exactly what the average intelligence officer is now doing.
(2) I am not sure that "demonstrably useless for traffic analysis" is a category with any members.