NSA Director speaks at hacker conference to 'lay out the facts'

[blehblehbleh]

Also, notice that whenever light is shed on something the government is doing without our knowledge, it's never a positive thing. Just a pattern I've caught on to with things relating to powerful entities who are kept on a leash only by themselves.

[[Seed Eater]]

[QUOTE=Disotrtion;41676582]The reason terrorism doesn't kill that many Americans is because we have lots of people working to prevent this. It's not because of a lack of effort on the terrorists part. The west is safe in large part due to programs like this.

And it is a slippery slope fallacy that you are spouting. Our response to the threat of terror has been pretty measured. People like you screaming foul want to deny our national security services the tools they need to catch people who wish us harm because you wish to have complete privacy, maybe you should know they don't intercept text or voice messages. They have access to the same info your telephone company does. And I'm all for a free Internet, but we have to be proactive and keep a look out for people who are using the Internet as a tool for their next attack. With 100% audibility there is 0% chance of abuse. The program has intense oversight, and is both constitutional and legal.

And its not warrantless, to access your information they have to get a warrant from a judge.[/QUOTE]

Except no?

Not only has the American effort to prevent terrorist attacks on its citizens been mostly a failure (the TSA, for instance, is a money sinkhole that has prevented- wait for it- one. Potentially. Maybe one. It's unclear if it was even intended to be an attack. But hey, it's something), but it's expensive and limiting of our liberties.

We could argue that "Well, it's the things we don't see" but that's equally BS. There's no evidence that that is the case. The CIA has failed to do anything, and the NSA has failed to prevent anything, in 12 fucking years. Remember the brothers Tsarnaev? They caught them, eh? Remember the shoe bomber? Caught him too, huh? As of yet, there is no evidence that any counter-terrorism organization based in the US looking into the US has had any success in preventing a terrorist attack.

Now let me make this clear- it is completely unconstitutional. I'm a political science student and my focus is constitutional law (and also political theory but that's irrelevant). I've learned that the majority of the interpretation of the constitution by the state is either based off of BS, personal interest, or political motives and by all means just because the government says "it is constitutional" only makes it such because they have the force to make it so. Much of the protections in the constitution for privacy were created* due to very similar circumstances as this- specifically, the right to privacy was contrived out of 4 other rights in order to prevent eavesdropping and excess police investigation. Historically speaking, the police would listen through your window from your roof or from the street, and overhear what you are saying and use it to gain warrants under probable cause. By all means what was heard was from a legal perspective, since the police were on property they had right to be on, but it was still collection of information without warrant or justification. As such, it's similar to say the same about what the NSA is doing in that they are collecting information from a safe place, off of private property they have been given permission to access (by the property owner at threat of force, no less), and are collecting this information to find suspicious activity so they have an excuse to move in. By all means, this is equivalent to the [I]very reason that the right to privacy was originally pushed for[/I].

The old quote goes: "those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither", and in honesty you will get neither, as your security is compromised by invasive acts on privacy, and by its very act so is your liberty. Protection from a vague and invisible threat is no protection at all. You want to prevent terrorism? How about doing things that actually work, like [I]leaving the pissed off culture we've been fucking for 60 years alone[/I], and respecting the sovereignty and dignity of people? Take the proactive, for god's sake. This situation you're arguing for is as if you go and kick the neighbor's dog so he comes back after years of you kicking his dog and lights your house on fire. So you continue to kick his dog and then you make your entire family wear flame retardant suits every day and search their rooms for lighters and gas, just in case. Whose fucking fault is that? There's a simple way to do this, but apparently you're okay with taking it in the ass from the TSA and NSA and DHS every day instead of fixing the fucking problem.

*there is no real right to privacy, it was invented at the will of the SCOTUS and does not actually exist as a defined thing. They've basically said "there's a right to privacy, it can be found if we look at the shadows cast by these other rights", but because it's not on paper they can do whatever they want to it. I'm a proponent of the idea that this was the SCOTUS making shit up, abusing their power, and ignoring the democratic process, but for once to promote something worth while. I think there should be a right to privacy, but there isn't most of the time.