[HN Gopher] The FBI proves again it can't be trusted with Sectio...
___________________________________________________________________
The FBI proves again it can't be trusted with Section 702
Author : freedomben
Score : 270 points
Date : 2023-08-18 15:07 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.eff.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.eff.org)
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I'm reading the FISA disclosure and seeing: The
| Court concludes that the targeting, minimization, and querying
| procedures, as written, meet statutory requirements.
| In Part V, the Court finds those procedures, as written, to be
| consistent with Fourth Amendment requirements.
| Particular attention is paid to FBI querying practices, which
| have been of substantial concern in prior reviews under Section
| 702(j). 1 The Court finds that the agencies' likely
| implementation of their procedures is consistent with applicable
| statutory and Fourth Amendment requirements
|
| I'm not lawyer, but this doesn't sound like the headline.
| voxic11 wrote:
| _as written_ they meet the constitutional requirements. But
| what procedures are written down doesn 't matter if the FBI
| simply ignores them.
| Zircom wrote:
| What you've quoted is just saying they have found that the
| policies and procedures the FBI has on the books that it's
| agents are supposed to be following meet the requirements that
| have bee imposed on them. The problem is that FBI employees
| aren't adhering to those policies and procedures, and so far
| there has been little to no consequences is my understanding.
| cies wrote:
| [flagged]
| cies wrote:
| [flagged]
| busterarm wrote:
| [flagged]
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Are you really proposing an 80/20 rule where if you
| prosecute someone for a crime you have to dedicate X amount
| of energy to procedure whom 'besterarm' has designated as
| opposition to the person who broke the law? Now that sounds
| like a whacked out legal system. You think Biden broke the
| law? You think you have evidence? Report it. That is how
| the legal system works.
| vuln wrote:
| No standing.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If all of the effort spent to prosecute Trump was truly
| about "rule of law" then they'd spend at least 1/10th as
| much energy going after the in-your-face corruption of Joe
| Biden.
|
| People (many of them members of the US Congress) keep
| saying this and then failing to come up with actual
| evidence (which should be easy, if it is really "in-your-
| face"), of this corruption of Joe Biden, despite spending
| inordinate amount of time and (often taxpayer) money on the
| effort to sell the story.
| vuln wrote:
| How much was spent on Russia, Russia, Russia? The
| investigations, the lawyers, hell even the airtime
| devoted to it by the MSM. Probably the most expensive and
| massive investigation ever. Still somehow no charges.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > How much was spent on Russia, Russia, Russia?
|
| A lot, and it produced a lot of results. Because there
| very much was a there there.
|
| > Still somehow no charges.
|
| In the criminal investigation (the only ones that can
| produce charges) there were numerous individuals and
| entities charged in (or in at least one case, in a
| handoff from) the Mueller investigations, including 25
| Russian nationals and 3 Russian companies.
|
| Of course, many acts involved in foreign interference are
| not within the scope of criminal law, and much of the
| investigatory energy outside of the criminal
| investigation (e.g., the Senate investigation producing
| the bipartisan report on Russian interference) was not
| directed at criminal law particularly.
| busterarm wrote:
| https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-the-bidens-
| have-pu....
|
| If Comer's claims can be substantiated there is no
| reasonable legal defense for these actions.
|
| It's hard to imagine that Comer has completely fabricated
| all of this as well. It would have to be a lot of really
| huge misunderstandings.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If Comer's claims can be substantiated
|
| They can't, though. That's the point.
|
| > It's hard to imagine that Comer has completely
| fabricated all of this as well.
|
| It's not hard to imagine. At all. In fact, given the
| violation of norms in his Comer has been conducting the
| investigation (if it is actually occurring at all, and
| the information through different channels raises real
| questions about that) makes it hard to imagine anything
| else.
|
| > It would have to be a lot of really huge
| misunderstandings.
|
| Your devotion to the assumption of good faith when people
| repeatedly show their bad faith is... well, something.
| busterarm wrote:
| But you also have Archer's testimony of Joe being on a
| number of their business conference calls. Do you invite
| your dad to your business meetings?
|
| Whether he talked business or not is completely
| immaterial because _his mere presence_ is influence
| peddling.
| HardlyCurious wrote:
| The corruption is just as obvious as the denials.
|
| He bragged about leveraging foreign aid to get the lead
| investigator fired as part of an effort to fight
| corruption in the Ukraine. Think about. If your trying to
| fight corruption, and you have evidence this lead
| investigator is corrupt, couldn't you just present that
| evidence to get them fired? Unless of course the
| corruption goes higher. In which case, the futility of
| the action is obvious.
|
| The defense doesn't make sense on the merits. The
| investigator who got fired claims it was because of who
| he was going after. I don't know if he is honest or
| corrupt, but I do know that Ukraine claims he wasn't
| fired or pressured to resign but rather resigned on his
| own. So someone can't get their story straight.
|
| Media outlets who went out of their way to say there was
| nothing wrong here all pretty much acknowledged that it
| at least 'looks bad'
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If your trying to fight corruption, and you have
| evidence this lead investigator is corrupt, couldn't you
| just present that evidence to get them fired?
|
| Corrupt people (whether the corrupt official or the
| people corrupting them or both) often have political
| leverage to make that technique ineffective; that's
| rather the point of political corruption.
|
| Using aid as leverage to get other states to act in ways
| that local corruption would otherwise make politically
| unviable is neither novel nor evidence of corruption on
| the part of a US Administration.
|
| In fact, its long been a foundational element of US
| policy in a number of areas where corruption is viewed as
| a wide danger.
| HardlyCurious wrote:
| It's all just a coincidence that this investigator tried
| to investigate Burisma for corruption, and Burisma
| attempted to buy access to Joe Biden through Hunter
| Biden, who was only selling the 'appearance' of access.
| Which means Burisma was obviously corrupt for attempting
| to buy said access even if it was in fact an illusion and
| they were being conned.
|
| And it's just a coincidence that Biden claimed he didn't
| know his son was on the board of Burisma when it was
| later proved he did know that. He just, forgot, I guess.
| dale_glass wrote:
| No, I'm downvoting you because you're bringing up US
| political drama to a tech website.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The people who vote (and this is weighted toward downvotes)
| based on tribal disagreement (on all sides of issues) tend to
| be quick.
|
| Its probably not bots, just kneejerk humans.
| freedomben wrote:
| exactly. I suspect this is why the "vouch" was added
| because I've seen some comments (on all sides of issues)
| get quickly buried and killed undeservedly by the kneejerk
| tribal downvotes. It's an impulse that all humans have so
| they come by it honestly, but one of the things I love
| about HN is that for the most part this community values
| rationality and debate.
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| > _Please don 't comment about the voting on comments. It
| never does any good, and it makes boring reading._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| ROTMetro wrote:
| [flagged]
| vuln wrote:
| A crack head. Right.
|
| Just a crack head that sold access to the second person in
| charge of the free world for 8 years. Just a crack head
| sitting on boards making millions. Just a crack head with
| tens of shell companies with millions flowing through them.
| Nothing to see here folks just a crackhead.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Your claims are no different from allegations about the
| Trump kids, except unlike the latter, there is no evidence
| that associates of the crack head actually had any access
| to the VP.
| bradley13 wrote:
| Jail time. Violating the law should result in criminal
| prosecution.
|
| Back in the dark ages, I did a small amount of consulting work
| for the feds (not the FBI, but a similar agency). Total disregard
| for rules of evidence, or for legal processes. Shocking
| arrogance, including flashing badges at women in bars, to - I
| suppose - impress them.
|
| I never sought to work with them again...
| jstarfish wrote:
| > Total disregard for rules of evidence, or for legal
| processes. Shocking arrogance
|
| > Jail time. Violating the law should result in criminal
| prosecution.
|
| Addressing the failures of one corrupt institution by having
| them reviewed by...another one? The DoJ's track record is even
| more hilarious than the FBI's.
|
| Nobody's ever been wrongfully convicted, and those that might
| have been were immediately released and made whole once
| exonerating DNA evidence surfaced. Especially if the convicted
| has run out of appeals-- the DoJ is all about adherence to
| rules of evidence and legal process. /s
| adrr wrote:
| What laws did they violate? And if they violated laws or the
| constitution, wouldn't people get out of criminal prosecution.
| Here's an example of US citizen who got their emails sweeped up
| by the PRISM because he was emailing addresses that were being
| 702ed. Court system found this was lawful.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/in-a-first-...
| Amezarak wrote:
| "conspiracy against rights" is a recently popular charge that
| would seem to apply
| adrr wrote:
| Judges ruled the government was lawful. That was an appeals
| court. Constitutionality is determined by the courts.
| [deleted]
| vuln wrote:
| Just a bunch of unelected egotistical assholes with no regard
| for anything but themselves and their next promotion. Laws and
| Rights be damned.
| [deleted]
| thfuran wrote:
| >Regardless of the rules, or consistent FISC disapprovals, the
| FBI continues to act in a way that shows no regard for privacy
| and civil liberties
|
| The FBI cannot act. Only it's members can act. And there's no
| reason to suppose that their malfeasance will stop if it isn't
| punished.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| They, not it.
| freedomben wrote:
| I think "it" in GP was referring to the malfeasance, not the
| person/people.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Well, it is not the action that needs to be punished but
| instead the actors.
|
| It is kind of interesting to trouble that a pronoun can
| bring, isn't it?
| dghf wrote:
| This is perfectly standard English usage. You can punish
| (inflict a penalty _on_ ) a person, and you can punish
| (inflict a penalty _for_ ) a behaviour.
|
| "To reward" is similar.
| mjan22640 wrote:
| is this an https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anacoluthon ?
| stronglikedan wrote:
| In the English language, it's understood that punishing a
| behavior is the same thing as punishing the actors, since
| behaviors cannot directly be punished. So when OP said,
| "malfeasance will stop if it isn't punished", it's a
| common and correct usage. It's all about the context.
| ritwikgupta wrote:
| Better oversight for FISA Part 702 is needed, not the removal of
| the authority entirely. FISA 702 is key in the ability of the FBI
| to collect intelligence on those who seek to harm the United
| States.
| coolhand2120 wrote:
| You are part of the problem if you truly believe that.
| freedomben wrote:
| How would you propose to achieve better oversight?
| ritwikgupta wrote:
| The FBI needs to do a better job of communicating to the
| public the existing oversight mechanisms it has, as well as
| reporting in aggregate types of issues it has prevented
| through the use of the authority. Additionally, more frequent
| (quarterly) testimonies to Congress (closed and open
| sessions) would be extremely beneficial.
| dannyobrien wrote:
| Why do you think this has not happened yet? Who do you
| think is in the best position to require this, and why have
| they not done so?
| drewcoo wrote:
| So everything's great, but the FBI should tell us how great
| it is more often?
|
| Somehow, that doesn't sit well with me.
| wnoise wrote:
| > FISA 702 is key in the ability of the FBI to collect
| intelligence on those who seek to harm the United States.
|
| [citation needed]
| ritwikgupta wrote:
| I am a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley in AI and currently serve
| as an external advisor to the FBI on AI and AI Policy. I've
| worked very closely with the teams that utilize FISA Part 702
| and have seen the types of issues they are actively
| preventing with the use of the authority.
| wnoise wrote:
| "Just trust me bro" is not a convincing argument. What are
| those issues, and why is 702 needed, rather than other
| approaches?
| livueta wrote:
| Frankly, I don't believe you at all because this pattern
| has happened before: insiders claim that surveillance is
| responsible for preventing tons of harm, but when those
| claims are closely examined (even by other aspects of
| government) a whole lot of nothing is found.
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/whats-the-evidence-
| mass-s...
|
| > In 2013, the President's Review Group on Intelligence and
| Communications Technologies analyzed terrorism cases from
| 2001 on, and determined that the NSA's bulk collection of
| phone records "was not essential to preventing attacks."
|
| > The NSA has publicly discussed four cases, and just one
| in which surveillance made a significant difference. That
| case involved a San Diego taxi driver named Basaaly Moalin,
| who sent $8,500 to the Somali terrorist group al-Shabab.
| But even the details of that case are murky. From the
| Washington Post:
|
| > In 2009, an FBI field intelligence group assessed that
| Moalin's support for al-Shabab was not ideological. Rather,
| according to an FBI document provided to his defense team,
| Moalin probably sent money to an al-Shabab leader out of
| "tribal affiliation" and to "promote his own status" with
| tribal elders.
|
| It's been long enough that if this shit actually worked,
| there'd be plenty of success stories that could be
| disclosed without harming confidential interests. They'd be
| trumpeting them to the heavens to attempt to justify
| reauthorization. Instead, we get taxi driver man and a
| whole lot of "just trust us".
|
| I do acknowledge that ProPublica article is dated, but
| AFAIK no counterexamples have emerged since - which is kind
| of the whole problem.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Who was convicted because FISA 702 was "key?" How was that
| evidence used?
| ritwikgupta wrote:
| FISA 702 is not a criminal authority. It's used in cases
| of foreign surveillance, cyber attacks, terrorism, and
| espionage. "Convictions" and "evidence" are not the right
| words, "intelligence" is.
| Zigurd wrote:
| The FBI is a law enforcement agency. Cyber attacks are
| crimes. Terrorism is a crime. Spying is a crime. Where
| are the indictments and convictions that depend on FISA
| 702?
| jstarfish wrote:
| Careful, that logic cuts both ways-- you're inadvertently
| arguing that 702 isn't really doing much of anything. So
| there's no harm in continuing it, right?
|
| It's about Intelligence, not Evidence. Intelligence (like
| anonymous tips) is what you use to _find_ the Evidence,
| which is what you reference in the affidavit. Much
| Intelligence is speculative and /or bullshit and wastes
| everybody's time. Publishing Intelligence tips off
| associates of the adversary and betrays what you know and
| what your capabilities are, and possibly who you learned
| it from.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The FBI is a law enforcement agency. Cyber attacks are
| crimes. Terrorism is a crime. Spying is a crime. Where
| are the indictments and convictions that depend on FISA
| 702?
|
| The FBI is principally a national security and
| counterintelligence agency and secondarily a law
| enforcement agency.
|
| 702 is expressly for the counterintelligence and national
| security function, limited to foreign targets (non-US
| persons believed to be outside of the US), and if used
| properly will only incidentally and occasionally result
| in information related to persons practically able to be
| subjected to US law enforcement jurisdiction, whether or
| not they might in theory be committing US crimes.
|
| Lots of indictments or other criminal process tied to 702
| surveillance would actually be a sign of something
| unusual happening (of which "abuse of 702 for purposes at
| odds with its express terms" would be high on the list.)
| ritwikgupta wrote:
| No, this is a misconception. The FBI is not just a law
| enforcement agency. It is also an intelligence agency.
| Quillbert182 wrote:
| It shouldn't be.
| bavell wrote:
| Do you think they're showing you the full picture?
| ritwikgupta wrote:
| Absolutely. I was given full access to all of their SLs,
| EADs, and staff members. I was able to brief Director
| Wray on my findings and continue to engage with their
| leadership on strategies for the betterment of the
| Bureau's stance on key issues.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| I mean, the FBI are cops.
|
| We have seen overwhelming evidence in the US for years that our
| police forces are not worthy of broad trust, and that they need
| aggressive oversight and much clearer and surer accountability.
|
| This is just one more example.
| EGreg wrote:
| I see this as part of a global war by governments on crypto and
| end-to-end encryption
|
| https://community.qbix.com/t/the-coming-war-on-end-to-end-en...
| zlg_codes wrote:
| They are scared shitless about what will happen if we get
| popular and durable communication networks that they can't
| reverse engineer or strongarm the data out of.
|
| They are scared shitless that their currency will lose value
| and they lose favor on the world stage.
|
| It would be easy to keep this position by just being a good
| country that respects the human lives of its citizens. But for
| some, with lacking morality, that's a bridge too far.
|
| E2EE will never be totally broken. They'll attack it at weak
| points where data is unencrypted. You can't beat math, boys!
| ucarion wrote:
| > According to the declassified FISC ruling, despite paper
| reforms which the FBI has touted that it put into place to
| respond to the last time it was caught violating U.S. law, the
| Bureau conducted four queries for the communications of a state
| senator and a U.S. senator.
|
| Ironically, it seems that a significant chunk of the progress FBI
| has made in terms of 702 compliance comes from a pretty trivial
| "paper reform": changing the default in their search portal to
| have 702 be defaulted to "off".
|
| > In June 2021, the FBI changed the default settings in the
| systems where it stores unminimized Section 702 information so
| that FBI personnel with access to unminimized FISA Section 702
| information need to affirmatively "opt-in" to querying such
| information. This system change was designed to address the large
| number of inadvertent queries of unminimized Section 702
| information DOJ had identified in its reviews, in which FBI
| personnel did not realize their queries would run against such
| collection. Historically, users were automatically opted-in to
| querying unminimized Section 702 information in these databases
| if they had been authorized to access unminimized Section 702
| information.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/d9/pages/attachments/2023/03/03/rece...
|
| Josh Geltzer (a deputy DHS advisor) said on Lawfare that this
| probably alone dramatically reduces the number of noncompliant
| FBI 702 searches:
|
| https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-lawfare-podcast-jos...
| ned_at_codomain wrote:
| good point
| busterarm wrote:
| Glad to see the EFF back on mission instead of dumb shit like
| spreading FUD to help keep their lawyer friends in the Library of
| Congress unaccountable to the rest of government.
| lost_tourist wrote:
| 702 needs to sunset so we can get back a little bit more of our
| freedom they took away after 9/11
| celtoid wrote:
| I don't know why people are surprised by this. The FBI are a pack
| of small fry when it comes to spying on Americans. The NSA has
| all the three letter entities beat and has been doing it for
| decades.
|
| "At home, however, the favored weapon employed is ignorance
| rather than fear. Like NSA headquarters itself, the United States
| is surrounded by barriers -- barriers of ignorance that keep its
| citizens prisoners of the cold war. The first obstacle is formed
| by the myths propagated about communism and about its aggressive
| designs on America. The second, and dependent for its rationale
| on the first, is the incredible barrier of governmental secrecy
| that keeps most of the questionable U.S. aggressive activities
| hidden nor from our "enemies," who are the knowledgeable victims,
| but from the American people themselves. The final barrier is
| perhaps the highest and is barbed with the sharpest obstacles of
| all. It is nothing less than our reluctance as Americans to
| confront what we are doing to the peoples of the world, ourselves
| included, by organizations like the National Security Agency."
| [0]
|
| [0] U.S. Electronic Espionage: A Memoir, Ramparts, Vol. 11, No.
| 2, August, 1972, pp. 35-50 https://cryptome.org/jya/nsa-elint.htm
| anonymousiam wrote:
| NSA is just a service organization to the CIA. The CIA budget
| is orders of magnitude larger.
| celtoid wrote:
| We don't know what the NSA's actual budget is.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _This recent disclosure proves, in a Groundhog Day-like
| fashion, that the FBI is not going to suddenly become good at
| self-control when it comes to access to our data. If the privacy
| of our communications--including communications with people
| abroad--is going to actually matter, Section 702 must be
| irrevocably changed or jettisoned entirely._
|
| Section 702 looks to be expiring at the end of this year,
| although the Biden admin has expressed intention to renew
| it[1][2].
|
| [1]:
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/03/section-702s-unconstit...
|
| [2]: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/23/1164724089/in-fight-over-
| key-...
| fallingknife wrote:
| > Biden admin has expressed intention to renew it
|
| It will be renewed.
|
| "You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways
| from Sunday at getting back at you"
|
| - Chuck Schumer
| newZWhoDis wrote:
| I just wish we had an IC that loved America more than its own
| power.
|
| Yet time and time again we see these orgs are full of
| corrupt, evil people.
| bradley13 wrote:
| Pournelle's Iron Law
| freedomben wrote:
| > Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any
| bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of
| people":
|
| > First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals
| of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom
| teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the
| engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA,
| even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the
| former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
|
| > Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the
| organization itself. Examples are many of the
| administrators in the education system, many professors
| of education, many teachers union officials, much of the
| NASA headquarters staff, etc.
|
| > The Iron Law states that in every case the second group
| will gain and keep control of the organization. It will
| write the rules, and control promotions within the
| organization.[1]
|
| Definitely. I think this very well explains how we got to
| this position.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
| nickff wrote:
| > _" I just wish we had an IC that loved America more than
| its own power."_
|
| They probably think that they do love their country more
| than their power, while believing they need the power to
| protect their country. This may be a sort of 'moral
| corruption', though not the conventional sort. It doesn't
| seem 'evil' to me.
| freedomben wrote:
| Exactly. IC people are humans too, just like the rest of
| us. It's convenient to assume they are sinister evil
| bastards (some of them are to be clear, but clearly not
| all of them), but it's an unhelpful and counterproductive
| stereotype.
|
| I've known a few people involved in intelligence, and
| they absolutely believe they were serving and loving
| their country. It reminds me a bit of being an
| infrastructure person where when you mess up, _everybody_
| knows, but when you 're doing your job well, nobody knows
| you exist. They see a constant and non-stop stream of
| threats that outsiders don't see, and when a threat is
| stopped nobody knows about it. I would bet it's not too
| hard to justify the intrusive capabilities and any
| "mistakes" made with them when you have that visibility
| into the successes. Humans are wonderful at justifying
| what they want to believe is true, and intel is no
| exception.
|
| The individual intel person is not the problem here. It's
| a systemic problem enabled by legislation that needs to
| be addressed at the legislative level.
| landemva wrote:
| While they are humans, the gatekeeping in the system
| ensures only sinister humans will get those jobs.
|
| CIA director admitted to interferring in elections.
| https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-
| room/news/374372-ex-...
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| How do you know that they love this country? Pure
| conjecture. Evidence, however, indicates the contrary;
| they break the laws to suppress people for power. That's
| pretty much the definition of evil.
| freedomben wrote:
| It's also pure conjecture to say that they break the laws
| to suppress people for power.
|
| Have you ever seen how the bottom-level of people in a
| huge bureaucratic organization behave? They're not evil,
| they're just being human. Unless you're prepared to say
| that at least 65% to 95% of humans are evil[1].
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| There's plenty of evidence that shows how deeply
| currupted the 3 letter agencies are in this country. The
| FBI, a Hoover organization, appears to me to be an
| organization that exists solely to persecute, blackmail
| and bait populists and small government types, aka the
| very people bureaucrats hate.
|
| I'm not sure what kind of freedom you advocate for Ben,
| it certainly doesn't seem to jive with the notion of We
| the People.
| prmoustache wrote:
| > There's plenty of evidence that shows how deeply
| currupted the 3 letter agencies are in this country.
|
| So is the large majority of the population.
| fallingknife wrote:
| It's conjecture, but the fact that a powerful senator
| like Chuck Schumer fears going against them is enough to
| convince me that they need to be severely reigned in.
| paulddraper wrote:
| "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the
| good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would
| be better to live under robber barons than under
| omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty
| may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be
| satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will
| torment us without end for they do so with the approval
| of their own conscience."
|
| - C.S. Lewis
| Terr_ wrote:
| > The keys of the castle and keep glinted from the belt
| at his stout waist. [...] Keys to lock out all danger...
| and, if necessary, Ista in.
|
| > _It's only habit, you know. I'm not mad anymore,
| really._
|
| > It wasn't as though she wanted her mother's keys, nor
| her mother's life that went with them. She scarcely knew
| what she wanted. She knew what she feared--to be locked
| up in some dark, narrow place by people who loved her. An
| enemy might drop his guard, weary of his task, turn his
| back; love would never falter. Her fingers rubbed
| restlessly on the stone.
|
| -- _Paladin of Souls_ by Lois McMaster Bujold
| atlantic wrote:
| Both the Soviet apparatchiks running the gulags sincerely
| believed they were acting for the greater good. The same
| goes for the torturers at Guantanamo. Idealism doesn't
| preclude evil.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Idealism doesn't preclude evil.
|
| Unchallenged idealism is the root of many evils. If you
| are convinced of your own righteousness, its very easy to
| "ends justify the means" almost anything. Its the danger
| of even a well-motivated person ending up with a
| cultivation or otherwise in an ideological echo chamber.
| opportune wrote:
| I agree. I think it's just laziness or being asked to
| square a circle. During the post-9/11 period there was
| immense political will and pressure to stop terrorism,
| and it's really fucking hard to stop that while abiding
| by the constitution, so they chose to break the
| constitution to stop terrorism.
|
| Is it theoretically possible to stop terrorism/catch and
| guys to the same extent without breaking the
| constitution? I think so, but it would probably require a
| lot more boots on the ground, and a lot of creativity and
| smart thinking from individuals to be able to get as good
| outcomes as you'd get from just looking at data when you
| aren't supposed to.
| lost_tourist wrote:
| I think that's why there is so many checks and balances
| betweent the different branches of government. The FF knew
| that politicians (humans?) are bound to be corrupt and try
| to centralize ever more power (and money) to themselves.
| gottorf wrote:
| This is why America was conceived to be a country where the
| central government can only exercise enumerated powers;
| because the framers knew that every organization eventually
| becomes run (at one point or all subsequent points) by
| corrupt, evil people.
|
| Any system of governance that depends on an unbroken chain
| of good people is bound to fail, and fail much sooner
| rather than later. The only sustainable safeguard against
| it is to make sure that said system of governance is
| limited in what it can do.
| vkou wrote:
| > This is why America was conceived to be a country where
| the central government can only exercise enumerated
| powers;
|
| > because the framers knew that every organization
| eventually becomes run (at one point or all subsequent
| points) by corrupt, evil people.
|
| That doesn't logically follow, given that the state
| governments can exercise more than just enumerated
| powers. And at the moment, quite a few of them are
| really, really fucking evil, with a few more being highly
| corrupt.
|
| It makes a lot more sense when you view that separation
| of power as a compromise made to deal with the problem
| <one 'evil, corrupt'[1] federal organization in conflict
| with another 'evil, corrupt'[1] state organization>[2] as
| opposed to some weird conflict between <'evil, corrupt'
| federal government versus the people (but the 'evil,
| corrupt' state governments get a free pass or
| something..?)>.
|
| The question of 'who gets residual powers' isn't some 250
| IQ bit of brilliant statesmanship and foresight, it's a
| just a decision that quite honestly, has gone either way
| in plenty of different countries, and none of them are in
| any quantifiable way worse off for it.
|
| [1] Your words, not mine. I think it's a pretty childish
| moniker devoid of all nuance, but when in Rome...
|
| [2] Which is _actually_ the lens through which the
| founders viewed things. [3]
|
| [3] And they have been proven so, so wrong by history. As
| it turns out, in a high-speed communication society,
| party unity tends to override these kind of extra-
| organizational struggles. It's why the party of states
| rights complaints incessantly about federal tyranny, but
| only when it doesn't control the presidency.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This is why America was conceived to be a country where
| the central government can only exercise enumerated
| powers; because the framers knew that every organization
| eventually becomes run (at one point or all subsequent
| points) by corrupt, evil people.
|
| This is false.
|
| America was _reconceived_ as a country where the federal
| government had enumerated powers because it started as
| one where the federal government had no powers and could
| only act by _ad hoc_ unanimity of the constituent states,
| and that failed hard, and the particular idea of, and
| particular set of, enumerated powers chosen was a
| compromise among the Framers who were called to fix the
| failing system, and whose preferences ranged from a much
| more powerful central government (the Hamilton and, less
| extremely, Pinkney plans) to a vastly less powerful one
| (the New Jersey plan), and did not represent a shared
| common vision, contrary to the later-constructed
| mythology.
|
| Taking this mythological common vision, and then
| constructiong a rationalization for it, and then
| presenting it as the original plan of government for
| America falsely projects into a hotly debated contentious
| compromise created to deal with particular exigencies
| arising under the earlier plan into a kind of perfect
| divine revelation of government, which it very much was
| not and was not viewed as by participants in the process.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Quote context:
|
| _New Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said
| Tuesday that President-elect Donald Trump is "being really
| dumb" by taking on the intelligence community and its
| assessments on Russia's cyber activities._
|
| _"Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community,
| they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,"
| Schumer told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow._
|
| <https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/312605-schumer-t
| ...>
| fallingknife wrote:
| Not sure what this context adds, but ok.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| What the context adds is that the quote comes from a
| political attack against the intelligence services,
| rather than attempts to legislate restrictions (the
| context in which the quote was submitted in this thread),
| requirements, regulations, of regulatory actions through
| the executive, or court decisions through the judiciary.
| Of which there is ample history of each.
| bhk wrote:
| Oh, so disagreeing with their conclusions might trigger
| vengeful retaliation, but actually threatening their
| power will not?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| _In Comments_
|
| _Be kind. Don 't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't
| cross-examine. Edit out swipes._
|
| _Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive,
| not less, as a topic gets more divisive._
|
| _When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead
| of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3"
| can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."_
|
| _Please don 't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including
| at the rest of the community._
|
| _Please respond to the strongest plausible
| interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one
| that 's easier to criticize. Assume good faith._
|
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>
|
| I was curious about the quote: was it in fact legitimate,
| and when and in what context did it originate. And shared
| what I found.
|
| Otherwise my comment stands for itself.
|
| But thanks.
| b59831 wrote:
| [dead]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-08-18 23:01 UTC)