I posted the following comment in another thread[0], but it is even more relevant here:
The other thing that is so worrying about the US having
the communications of people around the world
indiscriminately is that it basically means that the NSA
is in a position to blackmail any citizen of any country
that enters into a position of power in that country.
Forget installing a shah of Iran or propping some dictator
in a South American country. They can now do the same at
an arms length. Just collect dirt on all foreigners, wait
until they get into power, then use whatever dirt you
collected over many years to blackmail that person to do
things that are in the self interest of the people at the
NSA instead of the self interest of the people that duly
elected that representative.
This whole situation is a legitimate threat to democracy
in this country, but Congress may try to put checks and
balances in place to slow the rate at which it erodes
democracy at home. However, of more immediate importance
is how this is a legitimate threat to democracy everywhere
outside the US.
Many Americans may hear the NSA say things like "We don't
do anything illegal and coercive with this information at
home" and may believe them. But do most Americans think it
is reasonable to coerce elected officials or other
countries using any information gathered by the NSA?
Should we not be asking the NSA if they actually do that?
This is one of the questions I most want to see asked:
"General Keith B. Alexander, has the NSA ever wittingly
used collected information on any foreigner elected to
office by his or her citizens to coerce or blackmail that
duly elected official to pursue policies that may not be
in the interest of the citizens that elected them?"
IMHO any type of coercion or blackmail of any leader of any country is tantamout to an act of war against the citizens of that country. However these acts would often never be known by the citizens of those countries. Instead, if they are unhappy with coerced actions, they can only blame the politician being coerced instead of being able to blame the people pulling the strings.
While I happen to agree with you, I suspect that many Americans don't see anything wrong with using information like that.
Any time the foreigner angle comes up in some form, there are always several prolific HNers who point out that the US govt is not obligated to treat fairly or generously with other countries. Its sole goal is to ensure that whatever is in the best interest of America comes about.
(It is of course arguable whether the approach is in US's interest in the long run; but I dont think the above is an uncommon view)
I think the agreement or disagreement for many (not all) Americans would depend on how the question is phrased.
If you asked Americans a pretty balanced and transparent question such as:
"Do you support the USG and its intelligence agencies,
such as the NSA and CIA, using intimate personal
information gathered via surveillance programs to
coerce/blackmail democratically leaders of other countries
if it helps strengthen the US economically and
politically?"
... it would probably result in much less support for such programs.
If you ask a much more vague question such as:
"Do you support the USG and its intelligence agencies,
such as the NSA and CIA, using information gathered via
surveillance programs to help strengthen the US
economically and politically?"
... I'm certain that the degree of support would be much higher.
Most Americans support strengthening the position of the US, but I'm sure that if you get into the nitty gritty details of how that is accomplished, especially when it involves violating human rights, then I'm certain Americans will agree that there should be limits on how the USG and its intelligence agencies achieve their goals. You can see this clearly by just considering recent US transgressions on human rights such as Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition and waterboarding.
In the US we have a narrative that we are "the good guys." Foremost that means things like living up to our ideals regarding democracy and human rights.
I think polling questions which remind people of those ideals will get results that indicate the ideals are more important than the country's economic interests. I also tend to think that such wording is a more honest phrasing of such questions because they acknowledge the tension between the ideals and the "dirty" realities.
I support it. I don't see what is so abhorrent since intelligence agencies were universally established for manipulation like that. I also have a hard time believing this sort of activities are specific to US agencies.
HUMINT assets in the government of countries we are actively hostile with makes sense, but you agree with this sort of behavior even when it involves allies?
Wikileaks Stratfor release confirmed that Stratfor - one hop from, and associated directly by some with the CIA - was simply paying elected politicians within Australia. They of course claim this was for information gathering and had no effect, but since when - with 24 hours in a day - does a second income stream and work commitment not corrupt your capacity to represent your constituents in the most active and honest way possible? It's clear it was a breach of trust on the part of the official in question.
Then you have US manipulation of EU structure and policy...
That's an interesting question. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with it, but I'd hope it would be regulated either by mutual agreements between allied countries, or avoided due to potential adverse effects on the alliance.
How can there be "mutual agreements" on blackmail and coercion? That's just throwing feel good words out there.
> "I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with it"
This is in context about the Iraq war, but the point remains:
[..] But then we ought to just be honest and say, "Look, we're a bunch of Nazis." So fine, let's just drop all the discussion, we save a lot of trees, we can throw out the newspapers and most of the scholarly literature, and just come out, state it straight, and tell the truth: we'll do whatever we want because we think we're gonna gain by it. And incidently, it's not American citizens who'll gain. They don't gain by this. It's narrow sectors of domestic power that the administration is serving with quite unusual dedication. -- Noam Chomsky (Talk titled "Why Iraq?" at Harvard University, November 4, 2002)
Which kinda goes hand in hand with this, in response to the comments saying "oh well, everybody does it":
Of course it's extremely easy to say, the heck with it. I'm just going to adapt myself to the structures of power and authority and do the best I can within them. Sure, you can do that. But that's not acting like a decent person. You can walk down the street and be hungry. You see a kid eating an ice cream cone and you notice there's no cop around and you can take the ice cream cone from him because you're bigger and walk away. You can do that. Probably there are people who do. We call them "pathological." On the other hand, if they do it within existing social structures we call them "normal." But it's just as pathological. It's just the pathology of the general society. -- Noam Chomsky
Russ also says that all candidates to presidency, all judges, all people in power are followed close by the NSA, Obama included.
E.g There is something very strange about Obama birth certificate, or Obama studies, thesis that nobody remembers.
Imagine for a moment that Obama is not American, or have sex with other women, or whatever.... the people that have access to the evidence become very powerful.
Now add to it all the secrets of judges, congressmen, and soon you have absolute power in the shadow.
>IMHO any type of coercion or blackmail of any leader of any country is tantamout to an act of war against the citizens of that country.
That is quite a bold statement and I think greatly reduces what nearly every government would consider an act of war to the lowest bar possible - namely embarrassment. An act of war is broadly something that would have a direct, immediate and lasting impact on a large segment of civilian, non-affiliated, non-combatant, non-hostile persons. Your ideas don't meet that threshold and persons within their own governments would likely be held to those same "war" declarations.
If I and the other constituents of my district elect a representative to a government office and then it is later discovered that a foreign government previously collected coercive personal information on that representative and used it to benefit the country it represents at the detriment of the citizens that elected that representative, then that most certainly constitutes a unilateral action that has "a direct, immediate and lasting impact on a large segment of civilian, non-affiliated, non-combatant, non-hostile persons."
The only reason blackmail works is that the target wants to keep that information private. Anyone who discovered the information could release it, including press. I think we can agree that releasing the information is thus not an act of war, so the target acquiescing to blackmail means they themselves are choosing to elevate the situation, not the foreign blackmailer. Hence, blackmail is not an act of war.
It certainly can be argued, but I don't think it does by definition.
My problem is that your distinction is false between foreign power and native power. If the same coercive actions (soft blackmail like with Rep. Wiener or Chappaquiddick etc...) are taken by other politicians or croneys seeking power in the same nation, people don't raise nearly the fuss - that's just "politics." See: Every negative election everywhere.
I make no distinction - the end goal is that one group has more "power" or access over the others. Literally impossible to get rid of this quirk of politics with our biology. Making those things "Acts of war" is just untenable.
Normally I'm on the other side of these debates... but has the lack of Internet surveillance ever before prevented the U.S. (or other nations) from blackmailing, coercing, influencing elections or otherwise committing acts of war against a country?
The solution is to ensure good people are elected and that good oversight and accountability controls are in place... but that would also help with law enforcement and national security programs, if implemented.
No, governments have and will do whatever is possible to commit act of wars against any country to serve its own interest. But the issue is that in this digital era, the power that governments exercise is exponentially larger than in the past and the room for potential abuse has also grown substantially with it. History has show that even with little power (as compared to now), many great awful things have been done.
Things get progressively worse and people get used to them. Today it has been revealed that all our communication channels are tapped. People will make arguments that they have nothing to hide and even if not, they will soon forget and learn to live with it. Tomorrow, governments around will ask for your fingerprints and retina scans (this is already happening in India). People will meh and get over it. Then they will install cameras everywhere and try to track all your movements. Given the amount of electronics surrounding us, cameras would be just another in heap and people won't budge. We are technologists and we know that though hard, these things are possible to implement at a national level.
You said that the solution is to ensure that good people are elected. It is very much important to do that asap. The system is turning more opaque every second. As governments accrue more power over the lives of citizens, it will harder to take govt down if things go wrong. Snowden did what is defined as "illegal" but the law is wrong in the first place. People are moaning over the internet that what NSA is doing is unconstitutional but has it achieved much yet? Petitioning the White House isn't probably going to get any proper answer. NSA didn't ask people whether they were OK with such surveillance, it was all decided behind closed doors. Even in a system where you can openly ask representatives and govt about its actions and they are not answering, so just think of the future when questioning the government's motives will land you a red ticket.
>The solution is to ensure good people are elected and that good oversight and accountability controls are in place...
The issue is that you can't simultaneously have accountability and secrecy. If nobody knows bad things are happening then nobody can hold anyone accountable.
This is the theory behind the FISA court etc., to provide a body which is responsible for restraining bad actors. But then the court itself is secret and you fall into the same trap: The court hears from the government but not the target or the public or the EFF or anyone with an incentive to argue the contrary position, which encourages it to have a strong bias in favor of the government, and the outcomes are secret so the court itself has no accountability to anyone and becomes a rubber stamp.
> The issue is that you can't simultaneously have accountability and secrecy. If nobody knows bad things are happening then nobody can hold anyone accountable.
That's true. That's what needs to go into the design of accountable systems. In the end you have to trust people in a system that must have secret parts, but that doesn't mean there are not ways to design oversight systems to reduce the risk of regulatory capture and lone wolves, and still expand transparency to much higher levels than currently exist. I would even argue it's possible to do without appreciably compromising operational security.
Organizations like EFF or ACLU are actually a great idea in that regard, IMO.
>Organizations like EFF or ACLU are actually a great idea in that regard, IMO.
I might agree if it weren't for the fact that they're catastrophically under-funded. It would fall apart unless their funding somehow scaled sustainably with the number of cases they had to argue. That is very unlikely to come from public donations if they're doing something the public can't observe. And if the funding is to come from the government then I wonder what you would propose to prevent it from experiencing the same failures that have plagued existing public defenders (i.e. police+prosecutors get more resources and congressional sympathy).
> it basically means that the NSA
is in a position to blackmail any citizen of any country
that enters into a position of power in that country.
Tactical creeping barrages and strategic `ground-zero megaton' leaked bombshells: upon corporate competitive peers, to foreign and domestic press, other rivals, without attribution who leaked it, where false flag ops becomes trivial with no attribution. This is very dangerous allowing invisibly owning anyone of sufficient value or manipulative interest.
Imagine the chaos if rival states all had NSA's panopticon power and were determined to use it.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5959271