> Why do you think he got hunted to the ends of the earth?
Because of what the guys at the top were doing.
If it had just been the LOVEINT stuff, I think the NSA would've said "oh, right, yes that's not meant to happen, few bad apples, nothing to see here".
But showing a large systemic attitude, lying to congress… and specifically that America works with foreign partners to circumvent constitutional rights everywhere, that will have upset the people in charge.
Plus getting most big tech to use E2E encryption for chat so wiretapping their servers stopped being useful.
That, and also because they can. Hell, extrajudicially destroying people for threatening the system is basically the entire reason for the national security apparatus.
Big corp doesn’t get to do that (generally), hence actually having to (eventually) stop it.
> extrajudicially destroying people for threatening the system is basically the entire reason for the national security apparatus.
This is a great take . . . if you're a liberal arts major in undergrad. It is literally sophomoric. Abuses in the intelligence community do not obviate the legitimate reasons why the government collects intelligence.
So you’re saying the folks responsible for ruining Snowden and others… saw consequences? COINTELPRO and MKULTRA resulted in… people getting prosecuted?
Obviating or not, when the abuses see no real consequences, at what point do you say the abuses are just… part of the story too?
Frankly, saying otherwise is the Sophomoric take, isn’t it?
Those would be excellent examples of "Abuses in the intelligence community"
Even though I strongly dislike the abuses I learn of in the intelligence community, I don't see how these abuses "obviate the legitimate reasons why the government collects intelligence", nor do I see how you could go from that to the much stronger claim "extrajudicially destroying people for threatening the system is basically the entire reason for the national security apparatus."
Do they extrajudicially destroy people for threatening the system? I have every reason to assume so. Is that the "entire reason" for them? No. Each agency in each nation also has the completely lawful purpose of protecting their own citizens from the agencies of other nations.
The FSB, if they are acting against the US, is certainly not acting lawfully in the US. Just like if the CIA is not operating lawfully against, say, the FSB in Russia.
Literally the entire point of a foreign intelligence service is to operate outside the rules, or they wouldn’t be secret agencies. The ‘secret’ part is there, so they can do what they want without getting in trouble. Otherwise they’d be like NASA and publish everything they do.
And people operating on behalf of those agencies are of course people - who will be targetted, and if found, destroyed by competing agencies. That is literally their job. And it’s done extrajudically, because they are targetting people outside of their home country in most cases, hence no applicable judiciary. The CIA isn’t going to take anyone to court, because there is nowhere they are allowed to operate legally (per US standards) which wouldn’t want to throw them in jail for existing (by foreign standards). Hence extra-judicial.
And if you think, once they become accustomed to operating outside the rules, and have extensive mechanisms for maintaining secrecy, and finding and then destroying ‘enemies’, they will be ‘scouts honor’ following the rules in their home country, then that just isn’t how this clearly all works. As shown by numerous examples, a few I linked to earlier. And when those examples are found, nothing bad happens to those agencies, near as I can tell.
And ‘a threat to the system’ is called a threat to National Security. What else do you think it means?
I never said the abuses of the system were the purpose of the system.
I said the abuses of the system fell within the types of actions that were the purpose of the system. Presumably there are also non-abusive ways to destroy people who are threats to national security, and those are included in their toolbox too.
The national security apparatus’s purpose is to destroy people (and organizations) which are a threat to ‘the nation’.
The national security apparatus itself is considered part of the nation, and somewhat plausibly important for national security, so a threat to it is a threat to national security eh?
Hence any threat to the national security apparatus is a threat to national security, and fair game to be destroyed by it.
Just because you or I consider that abusive doesn’t mean they do, and they’re the ones with the tools - and the apparent ability to- to get away with it.
Them using the same tools for stuff like LOVEINT is abusive to others of course, and outside their remit as those people were (usually) not plausibly threats to national security, but anyone who noticed they were doing it all the sudden became fair game because they were a threat to the system eh?
After all, taking away those tools would remove their ability to do the same thing to someone like a FSB agent who had dirt on someone at the Company, or who was trying to get close to someone at the NSA by dating them.
And the people acting on that have seen no consequences for doing so, eh?
Is it fucked up and corrupt? Yes. Is it self perpetuating? Yes. Is it inherent to the nature of the system and what they are doing? Yes.
Ethics aren't objective anyway, so it's not useful to rely on them. The US prides itself on being a melting pot full of diverse entrepreneurs. Diversity means different sets of ethics, sometimes varying greatly. I'm hopeful the US can get to a place where we expect everyone to agree on ethics and only reward those that operate with american ethics in mind. Which interestingly enough, I find the ethics that america loves to espouse with their words, more often reflects the enacted ethics of many immigrants when compared to the people who have many generations in this country.
