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[GlyphGryph]

Congrats on spotting it then.

[palsch]

It doesn't help what happens to protestors in the US - government plants are pretty much a staple figure, as we've discovered time and again. They often get in quite deep (there have been cases of them marrying and having children with important people in movement to better keep a tab on protest events)...

Do you have some citations for this?

I know of two confirmed cases in the UK along with a bunch of other accusations. One of them was the infamous Bob Lambert who is today an active 'Islamist' academic. Needless to say, trusted by neither side in that particular debate.

But I can't remember seeing anything confirmed about American undercover operatives having children as part of their cover. I can believe it happened, just no clear examples off the top of my head.



Anyway, I think all the talk about why this stuff doesn't cause outcry misses the central problem; people don't have a problem with it.

Even with the current outcry over often gross exaggerations of what is going on... well, look at the numbers;

That is, even with people believing the government has insufficient oversight, is using the information for broad purposes and is gathering more than just metadata, 50% approve, 46% disapprove and 4% don't know.

Now that split is going to be unevenly distributed, so you will get some congress members who see increased pressure (along with a few pushed by their conscience) to oppose the programs. But it's not going to be enough to push the entire government and those numbers are likely to relax as the initial sensationalism fades.



EDIT: Crap. Meant to come here to post this and this and got distracted.

The second link breaks down the claims yesterday that the NSA is accessing content of emails. Assuming Charlie Savage is accurate it seems they are intercepting qualifying emails (those with one party being a non-citizen outside the USA - or reasonably believed to be so) that are about targeted individuals. The whole thing is unclear, although such intercepts would very likely be entirely legal.

The first is more interesting speculation about how and what Snowden gained access to related to the NSA's own safeguards. This has been a fun discussion about how well the NSA can be doing its job of ensuring information is protected from abuse when Snowden stole so much. That is used as a jumping off point for an extended discussion of the NSA, oversight and transparency in other areas of government. The end paragraph;

Two important lessons of the last dozen years are (1) the government will increase its powers to meet the national security threat fully (because the People demand it), and (2) the enhanced powers will be accompanied by novel systems of review and transparency that seem to those in the Executive branch to be intrusive and antagonistic to the traditional national security mission, but that in the end are key legitimating factors for the expanded authorities.  This was true, I argued in Power and Constraint, about habeas review of GTMO detentions, enhanced congressional and judicial oversight of military commissions, the 2008 amendments to FISA, and greater public transparency and congressional oversight of targeted killing by UAV (a process still in flux).  And it will be true of expanded NSA authorities as the NSA’s vital capabilities become even more important to our security.  In this sense, the Snowden revelations – to the extent that they force NSA to open up, and to get used to greater public scrutiny, and to avoid excesses, and to recalibrate its understanding of the tradeoffs between openness and security – might one day be seen to have paved the way to broader NSA powers.

[GlyphGryph]

But I can't remember seeing anything confirmed about American undercover operatives having children as part of their cover. I can believe it happened, just no clear examples off the top of my head.

Admittedly no hard evidence for this one like the other less-fucked-up-but-still-pretty-fucked-up infiltrations. Hard to get in-depth data for this for obvious reasons. The few sources I've seen could have just been false claims, or situations where the person became a police informant AFTER getting involved - I don't think there was any hard evidence.

So I'll withdraw that particular claim. The general information-gathering infiltration and acting as agent provocateurs I can cite, so I'll stand by that, but you probably don't need me to do so since that stuff in general has evidence in piles everywhere.

[palsch]

So Obama gave a speech. Transcript here.

WaPo and NYT coverage, plus the white paper on section 215 telephone metadata collection.

The white paper is a 22 page exploration and legal justification of the metadata collection program, about as much transparency as you could expect any such program to have.

Obama announced 4 major steps to be taken;

First, I will work with Congress to pursue appropriate reforms to Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the program that collects telephone records. As I've said, this program is an important tool in our effort to disrupt terrorist plots, and it does not allow the government to listen to any phone calls without a warrant. But given the scale of this program, I understand the concerns of those who would worry that it could be subject to abuse.

So after having a dialogue with members of Congress and civil libertarians, I believe that there are steps we can take to give the American people additional confidence that there are additional safeguards against abuse. For instance, we can take steps to put in place greater oversight, greater transparency and constraints on the use of this authority.

So I look forward to working with Congress to meet those objectives.

Very vague. The white paper appears to be a significant step towards transparency here, at least putting the program on a clear public footing legally and technically, allowing the debate to be open and accurate.

Second, I'll work with Congress to improve the public's confidence in the oversight conducted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISC. The FISC was created by Congress to provide judicial review of certain intelligence activities so that a federal judge must find that our actions are consistent with the Constitution.

However, to build greater confidence, I think we should consider some additional changes to the FISC. One of the concerns that people raise is that a judge reviewing a request from the government to conduct programmatic surveillance only hears one side of the story, may tilt it too far in favor of security, may not pay enough attention to liberty.

And while I've got confidence in the court and I think they've done a fine job, I think we can provide greater assurances that the court is looking at these issues from both perspectives -- security and privacy. So specifically, we can take steps to make sure civil liberties concerns have an independent voice, in appropriate cases, by ensuring that the government's position is challenged by an adversary.

Where have I heard this...

Number three, we can and must be more transparent. So I've directed the intelligence community to make public as much information about these programs as possible. We've already declassified unprecedented information about the NSA, but we can go further. So at my direction, the Department of Justice will make public the legal rationale for the government's collection activities under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

The NSA is taking steps to put in place a full-time civil liberties and privacy officer and release information that details its mission, authorities and oversight. And finally, the intelligence community is creating a website that will serve as a hub for further transparency. And this will give Americans and the world the ability to learn more about what our intelligence community does and what it doesn't do, how it carries out its mission and why it does so.

This is the white paper plus a planned (not seen it yet) document from the NSA. I'm guessing the full-time civil liberties and privacy officer is a senior, public facing position, otherwise this is just a description of anyone in charge of their internal facing privacy and minimisation procedures. If no-one there was in such a role full time then there are more serious questions to be answered.

Fourth, we're forming a high level group of outside experts to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies. We need new thinking for a new era. We now have to unravel terrorist plots by finding a needle in a haystack of global telecommunications, and meanwhile technology has given governments, including our own, unprecedented capability to monitor communications.

So I'm tasking this independent group to step back and review our capabilities, particularly our surveillance technologies, and they'll consider how we can maintain the trust of the people, how we can make sure that there absolutely is no abuse in terms of how these surveillance technologies are used, ask how surveillance impacts our foreign policy, particularly in an age when more and more information is becoming public. And they will provide an interim report in 60 days and a final report by the end of this year, so that we can move forward with a better understanding of how these programs impact our security, our privacy and our foreign policy.

I'm guessing the next fight is over who ends up on this panel. Nominations?

[Myroc]

Now we shouldn't forget the difference between the ability of our government to collect information online under strict guidelines and for narrow purposes, and the willingness of some other governments to throw their own citizens in prison for what they say online.

Yeah, about that. You're already doing exactly that.

[palsch]

Yeah, about that. You're already doing exactly that.

To be fair, that is a state case under the Texas penal code. Obama doesn't much control over what the Texas legislature and prosecutors do. That said, there can and have been federal prosecutions for actionable threats online.

And I just linked a League of Legends site on legal matters twice. I need to lie down for a minute.


EDIT: Back to the speech and early Lawfare analysis. In particular the two quotes they highlight at the end;

...if you look at the reports, even the disclosures that Mr. Snowden’s put forward, all the stories that have been written, what you’re not reading about is the government actually abusing these programs and, you know, listening in on people’s phone calls or inappropriately reading people’s emails. What you’re hearing about is the prospect that these could be abused. Now part of the reason they’re not abused is because they’re — these checks are in place, and those abuses would be against the law and would be against the orders of the FISC. Having said that, though, if you are outside of the intelligence community, if you are the ordinary person and you start seeing a bunch of headlines saying, U.S., Big Brother, looking down on you, collecting telephone records, et cetera, well, understandably people would be concerned. I would be too if I wasn’t inside the government. And so in light of the changed environment where a whole set of questions have been raised — some in the most sensationalized manner possible, where these leaks are released drip by drip, you know, one a week to kind of maximize attention and see if, you know, they can catch us at some imprecision on something — in light of that, it makes for us to go ahead, lay out what exactly we’re doing, have a discussion with Congress, have a discussion with industry, which is also impacted by this, have a discussion with the civil libertarians and see, can we do this better?

...as technology develops further, technology itself may provide us some additional safeguards. So for example, if people don’t have confidence that the law, the checks and balances of the court and Congress, are sufficient to give us confidence that government’s not snooping, well, maybe we can embed technologies in there that prevent the snooping regardless of what government wants to do. I mean, there may be some technological fixes that provide another layer of assurance.

[SalmonGod]

Unfortunately, rather than an orderly and lawful process to debate these issues and come up with appropriate reforms, repeated leaks of classified information have initiated the debate in a very passionate but not always fully informed way.

How in the fuck what the fuck how is this supposed to make any sense asodigjsphigjp'hijdp'hijdp'hij

There would be zero discussion taking place without those leaks.  Especially not from you.  Fuck.

[Scoops Novel]

Without bitterness and grumbling about the unwashed masses, how much do you think this will reassure people? Will there be any noticeable impact, now the damage has been carefully pointed out to us?

[misko27]

Unfortunately, rather than an orderly and lawful process to debate these issues and come up with appropriate reforms, repeated leaks of classified information have initiated the debate in a very passionate but not always fully informed way.

How in the fuck what the fuck how is this supposed to make any sense asodigjsphigjp'hijdp'hijdp'hij

There would be zero discussion taking place without those leaks.  Especially not from you.  Fuck.

Well, it isn't the best of all possible worlds. Yes, we wouldn't be having this conversation, you are right. But also yes, The debate is in many ways exceedingly passionate and blind to certain facts from each side.* You know, it IS possible for you to BOTH be right. In fact, you are both saying the same thing, but with you excluding the detail of the blind rage in the current debate and he excluding the necessity of the leaks in their being any debate. The whole picture is this is an unpleasant scenario with no real winner.

He taking a definite stand on the issue means the issue will likely become as polarized as every other issue, and republicans sneak back onto the opposing side of his opinion while democrats do the opposite. I'm sure, Rand Paul will find a way for Obama to be wrong. The people who were angry before will still be angry, and the people who are angry now will mostly get over it. The issue will trudge along slowly.

*This is the exact same as all US policy debates, so the argument may go that it is all according to plan in that regard.

[Scoops Novel]

Unfortunately, rather than an orderly and lawful process to debate these issues and come up with appropriate reforms, repeated leaks of classified information have initiated the debate in a very passionate but not always fully informed way.

How in the fuck what the fuck how is this supposed to make any sense asodigjsphigjp'hijdp'hijdp'hij

There would be zero discussion taking place without those leaks.  Especially not from you.  Fuck.

He taking a definite stand on the issue means the issue will likely become as polarized as every other issue, and republicans sneak back onto the opposing side of his opinion while democrats do the opposite. I'm sure, Rand Paul will find a way for Obama to be wrong. The people who were angry before will still be angry, and the people who are angry now will mostly get over it. The issue will trudge along slowly.

*This is the exact same as all US policy debates, so the argument may go that it is all according to plan in that regard.

There does not seem, from the pond, to be an enormous amount of party politics involved. It's very difficult to justify to it's current extent, and when you have it as a reference base for anything that goes wrong from now on, hard to forget. I'll admit, the argument that many if not most would be impossible to satisfy through reform has merit. Hence, i think the argument will rest in changing the technology's and thier capacity for abuse rather then policy.

[misko27]

There does not seem, from the pond, to be an enormous amount of party politics involved. It's very difficult to justify to it's current extent, and when you have it as a reference base for anything that goes wrong from now on, hard to forget. I'll admit, the argument that many if not most would be impossible to satisfy through reform has merit. Hence, i think the argument will rest in changing the technology's and thier capacity for abuse rather then policy.

You are misunderestimating American Politics. The National Security wing of the republican party was backing him, if uneasily, and they can now retreat to safer ground, Libertarians can pull "Too little, too late. you can't be trusted", the Democrats supporting him were doing it out of lack of real preference+Support Obama, and the ones against will be pressured to go with the party line, especially given it actually is what they are supporting. Plus, and I think it can't easily be overstated, Conservatives really don't like Obama. Supporting him is bad for business.

Anyway, has anyone noticed the race for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's seat? It's heating up a lot, with the democrat holding a really early lead (and in Kentucky too!), and a threat from the Tea-party in the primary, plus a gaffe where his campaign manager said he was "holding his nose around (McConnell]".

[GlyphGryph]

There may be plenty of stuff the Republicans would love to turn on Obama for but I doubt this is it. - party leadership has stated their total support for Obama here. Some might turn which would be nice since the opposition only needs a few votes to get majority but I doubt enough will turn to overcome an Obama veto. The dems opposing are already defying the leadership and whips and Obama - I doubt that will suddenly change.

[misko27]

There may be plenty of stuff the Republicans would love to turn on Obama for but I doubt this is it. - party leadership has stated their total support for Obama here. Some might turn which would be nice since the opposition only needs a few votes to get majority but I doubt enough will turn to overcome an Obama veto. The dems opposing are already defying the leadership and whips and Obama - I doubt that will suddenly change.

But the thing is now Obama is in favor. It is a lot harder to go against your leader for votes on small differences. When the contrast was greater they felt the need to do so, but now would be creating unneeded enmity to the party leadership.

And John Boehner has already said the reason people don't like these programs is the President didn't explain well enough. The National security wing of the Reps is already turning on Obama.
I quote

Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Speaker John Boehner, said the reason for Americans’ concerns could mostly be attributed to the lack of explanation from the administration.

“Transparency is important, but we expect the White House to insist that no reform will compromise the operational integrity of the program. That must be the president’s red line, and he must enforce it,” Buck said. “Our priority should continue to be saving American lives, not saving face.”

while Peter King does this:

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), a former chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, called Obama’s moves “a monumental failure in presidential wartime leadership and responsibility.”

Simply put, the people opposing the programs will still do so, but will do so in their own, partisan way. There are a lot of people disappointed with Obama for lack of progress on various issues, but as long as he's on their side, they'll support him. Remember, all things being equal, Democrats will largely support the president, Republicans will largely oppose him.

[Scoops Novel]

I doubt this is considered to be impacted overly by which party is president. Neither have done well for us on the issue.

[lemon10]

I think it would be pretty different if a republican was president. Then the democrats would muster a (token) resistance to it, and would probably use it to try to score politcal points. Not that they would really resist enough to actually stop any of this, but there would be a little bit more outrage about his.