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[Mrhappyface]

Well shoots. I just know more than the average person because much of my family worked in intelligence, whether as a military advisory or directly for the agencies.

[werty892]

Well shoots. I just know more than the average person because much of my family worked in intelligence, whether as a military advisory or directly for the agencies.

Start leaking

[Frumple]

There's no proof that what they did was unethical. There was no blackmail or kidnappings or other 1984-esque spook stories.

I'd... kinda' say that stuff like flat out lying to congress counts as unethical. Doubly so considering the whole republic thing. Pretty much all variations of democracy lives and dies -- especially the latter -- based on how reliable the information getting to those making decisions is. Be they the people or elected representatives. There's not really much that's less ethical in our governmental system than feeding our decision makers false information. _{Which, tangentially, yeah, says some nasty shit about a lot of our politicians.}

It doesn't take stuff as blatant as blackmail or kidnappings to be committing unethical acts.

As for the patriot act, well. There's a good chunk of folks who question and have questioned the general ethical nature of that thing, too. Legal =/= ethical, et al.

[Mrhappyface]

Well shoots. I just know more than the average person because much of my family worked in intelligence, whether as a military advisory or directly for the agencies.

Start leaking

Nah. I know it goes into "muh feelings" territory, but my mother was nearly killed during the Aum Shinrinkyo nerve gas attack. The fact that I also grew up in a community where random searches and stops by the police were common makes me not really care that much about increased security that much.

[Eagleon]

Nah. I know it goes into "muh feelings" territory, but my mother was nearly killed during the Aum Shinrinkyo nerve gas attack. The fact that I also grew up in a community where random searches and stops by the police were common makes me not really care that much about increased security that much.

Instead of caring about your own stuff being searched, think about the multitude of situations of abuse that other people being searched could entail. I'm not talking about a slippery slope argument here - in the past, present, and future, if a group (any group, government, military, corporation, doesn't matter) is trusted without oversight with people's information/well-being, it has, is, and will be abused on both an individual and institutional level. It's pretty much how we are able to fight wars and commit atrocity - you distance yourself from an 'enemy' enough, it becomes acceptable to do pretty much anything to them. A huge part of national security is protection from this kind of internal threat.

[Mrhappyface]

But it also goes the other way. Most people in the United States aren't worthy of attention from such organizations and are simply ignored. There is no fervent drive to purge all wrongdoers from the country, but only for certain people who are connected to certain overseas terrorist or espionage organizations.

[SalmonGod]

Yeah... all this expansion of security has been pretty blatantly used against people who aren't really criminals or any sort of threat, but are outspokenly against the status quo.  I've already referenced Occupy plenty so for another example off the top of my head, take a look at all the shit Jacob Applebaum has had to put up with.  If you want a first-hand account, he talks about it on Episode 8 of World Tomorrow.  And he's not unique.  I've been hearing about activists being treated like this for the last 7-8 years.  Even people who have done nothing but be present at a protest.

[Eagleon]

But it also goes the other way. Most people in the United States aren't worthy of attention from such organizations and are simply ignored. There is no fervent drive to purge all wrongdoers from the country, but only for certain people who are connected to certain overseas terrorist or espionage organizations.

Instead of caring about your own stuff being searched,

kind of applies to your "most people". The fact that most people are not in a position to be blackmailed, manipulated, and outright stolen from if not killed because someone in the NSA has slotted him into a slightly higher threat level due to internal procedures without internal or external oversight does not mean that there aren't going to be people that are. We are not and have never been invulnerable to tyranny.

[Mrhappyface]

Well of course. It's all natural with the advance of technology and communication. Security monitoring and such would only increase inevitably. And it's no secret after all, what local police and homesec are capable of.

[Mrhappyface]

But it also goes the other way. Most people in the United States aren't worthy of attention from such organizations and are simply ignored. There is no fervent drive to purge all wrongdoers from the country, but only for certain people who are connected to certain overseas terrorist or espionage organizations.

Instead of caring about your own stuff being searched,

kind of applies to your "most people". The fact that most people are not in a position to be blackmailed, manipulated, and outright stolen from if not killed because someone in the NSA has slotted him into a slightly higher threat level due to internal procedures without internal or external oversight does not mean that there aren't going to be people that are. We are not and have never been invulnerable to tyranny.

There are federal courts in such positions to act as oversight. They are secret though, but that's sort of the point when dealing with such procedures.

[SalmonGod]

And it's no secret after all, what local police and homesec are capable of.

Yeah, people say this a lot... so why are people who try to warn the public about it hunted like terrorists?

[Bauglir]

Well of course. It's all natural with the advance of technology and communication. Security monitoring and such would only increase inevitably. And it's no secret after all, what local police and homesec are capable of.

Yes, but that's not got anything to do with whether it's a bad thing or not.

[Mrhappyface]

I'm not sure. Considering all the misconception about the roles of surveillance and government intelligence, I really really would wish that such agencies would talk more about the knowledge that's out there, but very few of the public know about.

[Eagleon]

There are federal courts in such positions to act as oversight. They are secret though, but that's sort of the point when dealing with such procedures.

Not really. You can't trust a court that you can't examine the decisions of to oversee a program you don't know about and expect them to be perfectly benign. I don't understand the cultural armor you've put over the US intelligence community, but it certainly doesn't reflect the reality of how incredibly important management oversight is in any other agency.

[Bauglir]

I'm not sure. Considering all the misconception about the roles of surveillance and government intelligence, I really really would wish that such agencies would talk more about the knowledge that's out there, but very few of the public know about.

I agree with that, actually. Given that the technology exists, transparency becomes a key element in handling it. If you give people a way to check on who's being monitored and how, and you give the public* a way to hold these agencies accountable when abuse occurs, then things can work as intended. I know that this needs to be reconciled with the need to keep the programs functional, but right now we're at a point where we definitely need to work toward more transparency, not less.

*Representatives are absolutely not an acceptable stand-in for the public. Direct control over funding, public votes on appointments (all of which must expire after some amount of time), etc are better strategies.