Revealing Surveillance Methods Just Result In More Complex Surveillance
June 10, 2013
Back in the 1980’s/90’s, the National Security Agency (NSA) was so top secret, the joke around Washington was that “NSA” stood for
It has been odd this past week listening to Progressives who feel upset & critical of President Obama (expressing everything from dismay to an outright feeling of betrayal), while many Republicans (like Bill Kristol) defend him. But there are also Republicans who… without a hint of shame or irony… are attacking Obama for doing the same thing as President Bush as just “one more example” of him using the government to trample our Civil Liberties (along with the IRS “scandal” and
I am decidedly torn on the surveillance program. Personally, I was more bothered by the Bush Administration eschewing the FISA Court and Congress for permission than by the surveillance itself:
Bush 2006: FISA was written in 1978 (explaining why they didn’t bother seeking a court order.)
Flash forward to yesterday (June 9, 2013):
Obama has added “incredible oversight mechanisms” to surveillance program:
So the idea that what Bush did and President Obama is doing are “the same thing” is horse-pucky. In fact, the more we learn about the surveillance program under Obama, the more the argument against it falls apart. Where the Bush Administration flat out lied about seeking permission to do something clearly illegal, the Obama Administration has gone out of its way to keep the program “above board”.
But can’t such monitoring also be a good thing? In England, “CCTV” (Closed Circuit Television) cameras are everywhere as a crime-fighting tool. The 7/7/2005 London Bombings suspects were
Others see such invasive surveillance as a “Big Brother” government invasion of privacy. ThinkProgress stated on Saturday that the tangible harm of these programs is that it “changes your behavior” so that even people who never do anything wrong feel they must act/behave a certain way for fear of reprisal.
Well, I’ve got news for you: You just defined RELIGION… the belief that an omnipotent being with the power to punish you is watching your every move to ensure that you’re being a good little
This also defines Santa Claus.
Americans are perfectly fine with the idea of “being constantly watched” as a means of “protection” and “behavior modification”. So anyone that whines about “Big Brother” on their way to church on Sunday… clearly you have no problem with the concept, so what’s your beef?
Conservative columnist Matt Dowd on ABC’s “ThisWeek” yesterday pointed out that “the same Conservatives supporting NSA snooping as an acceptable violation of their Civil Liberties in exchange for
But I digress.
As the presidents’ (whomever he may be) critics publicly reveal more & more about the types of information that is gathered, the MORE information they’ll have to collect as a result of our enemies now knowing what devices/words we are monitoring. If the president’s critics reveal we are checking Hotmail accounts for word like “bomb” and “embassy” in close proximity (the way I just did meaning this Op/Ed has been flagged as you have been too for reading it), they’ll just start using Yahoo mail instead and substituting words like “comb” or “qwoq” for what they really mean, making it tougher to catch them.
Some argue that there’s an upside to all this: Tell them that we’re monitoring cell phones and they’ll go back to using land lines. Tell them that we’re reading their emails and they’ll switch to
Problem is, our enemies are tech savvy now too. They’re not going to rely on “Smoke Signals” or “the Pony Express” (as suggested by Mary Matalin on ABC’s “ThisWeek” yesterday) to avoid having their communications intercepted, they’re going to get MORE sophisticated, not “less”. Hell, alQaeda publishes its own online magazine on its own website. Does anyone REALLY believe they’re going to get LESS sophisticated to avoid detection? Of course not. All these “revelations” do are push our enemies into using more complex methods to avoid detection, forcing US in turn to become ever more invasive. By that logic then, all we need to do is simply lie about how powerful we are and our enemies will just give up trying to attack us. (Hey, it worked for Saddam, right?)
We are sweeping up more data now because we’ve revealed the existence of these programs, putting our enemies on alert. We had all the information needed to prevent 9/11 before the attack without the extensive invasion of our privacy that we see today, we just didn’t analyze that data in time to prevent the attack. We didn’t have to collect the MASSIVE amount of data we do today from an infinite number of sources. Now we do because the existence and methods of these agencies have been revealed. These very revelations are driving the ever growing invasions of privacy the critics are screaming about. These leaks aren’t making us safer, and they DEFINITELY aren’t resulting in greater privacy.
Note: M.R.S. will be off next week for Father’s Day but will return to our regular schedule on June 24th.
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June 10, 2013
· Admin Mugsy · 4 Comments - Add
Posted in: Crime, fake scandals, Politics, Terrorism, Unconstitutional
4 Responses
Ebon - June 10, 2013
I’ve actually taken to including a greeting to the bored boys and girls at Quantico whenever I use certain words in email.
Grant in Texas - June 10, 2013
I guess as a child of the 1930’s growing up in WWII, often hearing
“loose lips sink ships”, I am less concerned about government security
methods than say Libertarians like Rand Paul (no surprise that Ted Cruz
just jumped into the fray, too, attacking Obama) have to say. Likewise,
Paul has sympathizers on the “professional left” (will see what Rachel
and other Young Turks on MSNBC). Thankfully, because secrets were kept
in my youth (biggest was Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge/Los Alamos), I
am not speaking German or Japanese today. Some are saying we should
notify in advance people that we are keeping their communications
records. That makes as much sense as local police calling a suspect in
to testify before a judge before a search warrant can be issued, thus
giving the suspected perp a chance to sanitize his/her property! If we
had had better intelligence from the Russians, such a program monitoring
the Tsarnaev brothers might have prevented the Boston Marathon
bombings. The program has already worked in the past like preventing a
bombing of the NYC subway system in 2009. Our NSA has had the
scrutiny of Congress, our federal judicial system, and the White House
so information has not been collected in a vacuum. In fact over the
past decade such methods have been approved by both Democratic and
Republican majority Congresses. I’ve long just accepted that what I say
on the phone or type into my computer is being read by others and act
accordingly. After all, if I am searching for a product, I start
getting emails, ads attached to sites I visit featuring that same
researched product offered at several different companies. As
far as Greenwald and Snowden, I see a book/movie deal in their future as
why would high-school drop-out Snowden quit a $200,000 a year job (has
only held for 3 months) to assuage his “conscience”. Was Snowden set up
to dig into records? I know that not all of 535 politicians on Capitol
Hill are privy to everything our government does, only those on select
committees (bad enough that Michelle Bachman is on the “intelligence”
committee!). IMO, too many have security clearance or are not
investigated thoroughly enough before getting such. I’ve only had
security clearance once in my life, to work on IDF military base
construction in Israel for an American contractor. I had to fill out a
very detailed 10 page questionnaire for MOSSAD and wait nearly 2 months
for approval for only mid-level security status.
Loretta Q. Cline - June 19, 2013
The document points the finger at CCTV and other security measures as privacy-invasive technologies (PITs): “Many technology applications gather data, collate data, apply data, or otherwise assist in the surveillance of people and their behaviour (the “PITs”). Among the host of examples are surveillance technologies (such as CCTV), data-trail generation (such as keystroke monitoring) and identification through the denial of anonymity (e.g., telephone caller ID, loyalty cards and intelligent transport systems), data warehousing and data mining, and the use of biometric information. In an internet context, there is considerable concern about the various types of malware, including viruses, worms, trojans, keystroke-loggers, ‘spyware’ and ‘phishing’.” Here the handbook suggests privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) such as computer firewalls, and advice against malware.
Oliver Z. Dunn - July 9, 2013
We’ll talk about privacy and liberty in the age of the Internet and big surveillance with big web thinker Jaron Lanier.
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