It lends credibility because if the culprits are known (and they are) and what they did was found to be illegal (and it seems we crossed that particular line long ago) then they should be in court as defendants rather than be promoted.

It's not that there isn't any motivation to provide oversight, it's the exact opposite, there is a strong motivation to look the other way. If it weren't then there surely should have been a lot more fall-out from the Snowden leaks but in fact it is mostly a re-arranging and re-naming of some programs and making sure the next Snowden has a much harder time of doing it (and probably an even harder time of getting out of the US before tshtf).

This has nothing to do with corruption per-se, it has simply got to do with that plenty of what goes on without our knowledge can not stand the light of day and the amount of complicity is such that no government official will want to look too hard at what other departments are up to because they're up to their necks in it themselves.

And that's not just limited to the USA either, I fully expect every western democracy to be doing roughly the same thing only limited by capability to execute and budget.

It's most likely due to my last paragraph and not the follow up question itself. :) Don't worry about it.

I think that's pretty much correct.

A lot of the problems here are simply about the inherent tensions with intelligence gathering. The default statements from such agencies pretty much has to be, "if you knew what I new, you'd be very afraid". And the default reply, now that "we" know they are not trustworthy, has to be, "bullshit".

Short of the NSA actually behaving as if civilian control over their operations was a thing, and doing so for a generation, I don't see how they regain the trust of folks they are ostensibly there to protect.

Which is a bit of a problem, assuming they care about such things.

2nd Ammendment probably existed for such cases but in modern times it is probably ineffective in its letter.

We can however keep the spirit of 2nd amendment and fight against NSA by actively creating incentives for those people who are willing to shut down NSA. For example a candidate like Rand Paul should get enough support. It is not even necessary that this candidate should win, but once politicians realize that there is vote issue to be exploited they will bite the bait.

It is remarkable that the government wants to spy teenagers sharing nudes but cant prosecute Hillary Clinton who seem to have actually put sensitive information at danger.

And there are the reddit style down votes as expected...

For the record I'm not saying clapper was in the right or that he shouldn't face charges, but in a country where sanctioned torture is the norm why should unpunished perjury by an official from a spy agency be shocking?

If you live on Planet Earth, American politics are relevant to you, as distasteful as that thought might be.

He doesn't want a serious attack to happen on his watch. There's a strong incentive to do "everything possible" to prevent one. Very few people would reward him for reigning in his own power, but nearly everyone will blame if an attack happens.

Has he flip-flopped?

Well... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BmdovYztH8

This is the biggest problem isn't it? The lack of true oversight and accountability. First you have the Oversight Committee act more like NSA's Public Relations Office, and then when we actually have proof of abuses, they get protected or even promoted. This is what allows the abuses to continue and grow.

These questions don't even sound like a conspiracy theory to me -- I feel like it was yesterday that people were talking about how the NSA doesn't do any work on American soil at all, now the fight is whether they can collect literally every bit of communication in the country. It makes me sad to think that, at the end of the day, I have no faith that the government will do the right thing, and almost no faith that they'd even do the legal thing.

Maybe it's naive of me to be surprised, but until all this Snowden stuff it never occurred to me that it was possible for entire government organizations to just flout the law because nobody was watching.

This "newspeak" with regard to government activity (and the intelligence apparatus especially) bothers me. It enables soundbites where government officials can say things like "no, we don't collect X", with essentially no real repurcussions by the other (legislative, judicial) branches of government that are supposed to keep them in check.

You can see some discomfort with this status quo in some of the questions that people like Senator Wyden pose to officials from the executive branch, but unless you already have the secret decoder ring (which CNN and their ilk at least pretend to not have) you miss the point entirely if you just follow the popular news. This makes it easy to gain popular support for agencies like the NSA since topics like this are of minor interest to most of the voting base, and most people won't dig deep enough to see what they really mean when they say things like that.

I really hope that we get something equivalent to the Church commision in the next decade or so to mitigate the potential damage that could result from our current intelligence apparatus, but I'm not too hopeful. I feel like the information that Snowden provided was our best chance for that, but I don't see enough popular support to convince our elected representitives that it's in their best interests.

I meant the former. It's truthful even if spelled correctly. ;)

it's futile

I agree. I've mostly (99.999%) given up on participating in American politics for the betterment of society.

People are HEAVILY biased towards the version of the "truth" that lets them do what they want.

I just have to point out that by taking the stance that you and I are taking, we're doing the same. I'm biased towards the version of truth that lets me live as we want. In other words, I could massively disrupt my life as Snowden did, and that actually might make a difference. However, I convince myself that it wouldn't, so I can just work, make money, and pursue my usual definition of happiness.

it's futile ... People are HEAVILY biased towards the version of the "truth" that lets them do what they want.

That's hardly futile - it's just the norm, the starting point for any social change. Our society gave civil rights to a small black minority (~12% of the population now; I don't know about then) after centuries of discrimination, gave equal rights to women after millenia of descrimination, grew an environmental movement, and much more. In all those situations, the people advocating change faced far greater obstacles than what you describe, yet they changed almost every person's perception, society's norms, and almost every industry's and business' practices.

I agree it seems daunting, but then I grasp the courage of people like MLK, Rachel Carson, and others even more. Think of what they felt as they looked at the culture of their day.

(And yes, all those movements still have much more to do.)

Damn it! I just read this 10 hours later. I totally know how to spell "hemorrhage". Don't judge me posterity.

The fact that a court overruled the original decision in a technicality really means they know the whole damned program is wrong and they were stalking whilst the program was being shutdown.

These coward judges don't want to make a precedent. At least there are brave judges still left!

If any law enforcement officer want to see what someone is up to, they can just ask one of the big metadata aggregators such as Google to see what they've been doing on the internet.

The move of this phone metadata from NSA to private telcos doesn't make these records less accessible, it makes them more so. It puts them in the same category as our other online metadata records held in private hands.

I don't get how people are all freaked out about NSA having these records but don't seem to worry that law enforcement will now have even better access.

Until they change the legal definition of "search and seizure" to include metadata held by third parties, I don't see any reason to celebrate.

"partly blocked the National Security Agency’s program that systematically collects Americans’ domestic phone records in bulk"

That's such a small, and arguably not the most important part, of NSA's wrongdoings -- collecting contacts, metadata, movement, all unencrypted Internet activity is much more potentially dangerous and damaging imho. Still, it's nice to see even a small step to the right direction.

Colour me a cynic, but I doubt this will curb their activities.