How the NSA's Spying Keeps You Safe

[Guest]

Call the NSA's surveillance unethical or unconstitutional or dangerous, but it has a responsibility use every tool at its disposal.

How the NSA's Spying Keeps You Safe : Read more

 

[jhansonxi]

The NSA is the only part of government that truly listens to the people.

 

[dwilmot]

Whoa. My Fourth Amendment is not fort bargaining. This is a RIGHT not a privilege. We in the USA are born with this right. It is in our Bill-of-Rights not our Bill-of-Privileges. You traitors should get individual warrants "particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." The FISA warrants flunk this test and are therefore illegal. A warrant cannot name Verizon as a place to be searched for every call for millions of loyal Americans.

The NSA officers should all be court martialed for betraying their oaths of office and because they are required by the UCMJ to disobey all illegal orders (like go spy on those loyal Americans without a warrant). They, especially Gen. Hayden, should all be court martialed and jailed. They have betrayed their oaths of office and did not refuse illegal oerders. May they rot in Ft. Leavenworth.

 

[darkfall13]

@dwilmot, thankfully someone here has their head on straight here. The government is not here to protect you, and in particular police aren't here to protect you as has been ruled by the Supreme Court. You and ONLY YOU are responsible and CAPABLE of keeping *yourself* safe.

 

[darkfall13]

@dwilmot, thankfully someone here has their head on straight here. The government is not here to protect you, and in particular police aren't here to protect you as has been ruled by the Supreme Court. You and ONLY YOU are responsible and CAPABLE of keeping *yourself* safe.

 

[darkfall13]

@dwilmot, thankfully someone here has their head on straight here. The government is not here to protect you, and in particular police aren't here to protect you as has been ruled by the Supreme Court. You and ONLY YOU are responsible and CAPABLE of keeping *yourself* safe.

 

[HEXiT]

what a load of crap... theres no evidence that the government is spying on the people... who are you kidding. there building server farms all over the u.s.a to collect and store every1s communications. if they have actionable intelligence that some 1 is gonna commit a crime they should get a court order to intercept there communications specifically. not gather every1s on the off chance if they sift it, something will pop up...

its all well and good saying, oh! look we foiled 50 plots. but to do it they would have sifted billions of emails and whos to say that they didnt gather some other little gems like government officials private emails to his mistress. all of a sudden the NSA has a bargaining chip that allows them to blackmail that public official into working for them in some 1... well you say if he did nothing wrong they wouldnt have the emails... no, thats not the point between him his gf and his wife. not a tool to be used and abuse... and sooner or later it will be abused because people cant be trusted with power. its why we elect new presidents and prim-ministers every 4 years.

 

[antiglobal]

You must sacrifice your liberty for freedom.

 

[WyomingKnott]

"Comfortable" is a very strong word, but if the choice is between invasive surveillance and the very real threats of terrorism and espionage, it's not so easy to write the NSA off entirely." - Marshall Honorof

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

My money's with Franklin.

 

[Estanislao Deloserrata]

We had to destroy the village in order to save it.

 

[Estanislao Deloserrata]

"... protect the United States with every tool at its disposal." Every tool? This would seem to be a justification for the first-use of chemical and biological weapons. And it would suggest that the writer of the article might not be thinking clearly.

 

[nafhan]

This article is kind of BS... the issue isn't total privacy vs. total security or anything close to that (i.e. "writing off the NSA"). The issue is that the NSA is purposefully engaging in activities that are illegal under US law. They're likely crippling security software and standards. They're giving info on US citizens for non-terror related crimes to the FBI and DEA. They're hurting US businesses ability to provide services outside the US. I could go on.

Regardless, they're also not giving us total security or anything close to it. We (the public) don't even have enough info to say how much more secure we are thanks to this illegal domestic spying. Stopping 51 terror threats doesn't actually mean anything when we don't know what those threats were or how credible they were.

There's no excuse for a government agency secretly breaking the law in a consistent and purposeful manner. End of story.

 

[dlfoster]

Your perspective on this situation is either naive or misinformed; and likely both!

The Bush administration established a very secretive program called STELLAR WIND that was patently illegal in almost every respect. The program cast an extremely wide net to capture almost every aspect of american's communications without cause or court authorization. The data collected by these warrantless surveillance operations under President George W. Bush are currently (se we are told) segregated in specially restricted databases and are not supposed to be mixed with intelligence collected after Congress and courts placed the programs under lawful authority.

Statements by Snowden indicate the situation is even worse than this. Documentation released over the last several months closely collaborate his statements and none have really been refuted by the government (at least credibly). Previous NSA whistleblowers that tried to disclose and correct unwarranted and unconstitutional domestic spying operations at great personal cost likewise say that current disclosures only scratch the surface of what the NSA has put in place to nearly guarantee our slide down the slippery slope to a police state.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren’s observation in the 1967 case United States v. Robel applies I think very well to your comments: “It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties—the freedom of association—which make the defense of our nation worthwhile.

And of course, please excuse me because I must close with it, old Ben Franklin said it even more succinctly: "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

 

[Simon MacArthur]

Marshall Honorof is a gutless quivering idiot. If you're so afraid of life just go and live in a gated community with armed guards and stay under your bed. If this is all it takes for you to give up you privacy and your freedoms then by all means go and imprison yourself. How cowardly this generation has become.

 

[nafhan]

This article is kind of BS... the issue isn't total privacy vs. total security or anything close to that (i.e. "writing off the NSA"). The issue is that the NSA is purposefully engaging in activities that are illegal under US law. They're likely crippling security software and standards. They're giving info on US citizens for non-terror related crimes to the FBI and DEA. They're hurting US businesses ability to provide services outside the US. I could go on.

Regardless, they're also not giving us total security or anything close to it. We (the public) don't even have enough info to say how much more secure we are thanks to this illegal domestic spying. Stopping 51 terror threats doesn't actually mean anything when we don't know what those threats were or how credible they were.

There's no excuse for a government agency secretly breaking the law in a consistent and purposeful manner. End of story.

 

[Lusik]

Most of this article is a Joke....Who you trying to kid?

 

[Lusik]

In case most of you don't know , "Keep us scared" and we the people will allow the government/corporations to profit from "We the People" all they want. After all aren't we cow to be milked?

 

[lanir]

This article is not being entirely honest, or at least it extensively quotes people who are being dishonest without questioning them on the facts. It starts with a game of "let's pretend" that essentially says the NSA are great guys, they're doing everything right, and anything we don't know or can't explain means the NSA did the perfectly right and good thing in that instance.

The idea that they haven't done anything illegal is difficult to imagine. I guess this could stem from a lack of court cases prior to the current leaks. So go look again. Once the ACLU, the EFF and similar organizations were no longer able to be brushed off by the simple expedient of being told they didn't know enough to say they were being harmed by secret programs, they gained a lot more traction.

Let me guess. This is the "snooping on phone records helped stop dozens of attacks" thing that was false last time they brought it up (look up info on Senators Udall & Wydeon on the phone data collection program). So how does that information get used? The war on drugs, a largely descredited waste of resources. And even there, they falsify the trail so it looks like an anonymous tip led to the arrest because what they're doing is obviously wrong.

The NSA is protecting me against foreign spies? By what, taking that niche so no other predators can fill it? Don't be ridiculous. "Everybody is doing it"? Tell me that's not really our reasoned, adult response to an out of control problem. To go from that to implying the right rules and laws will protect us from the issue is just bad form. We already have rules and laws to protect us from this. They're being ignored, which is why there's a problem to begin with.

My favorite, the Panama thing... I could say I know for a fact that a race of super intelligent squirrels found out about the North Korean ship via astrology and signaled to have the ship stopped and searched. I wouldn't say it because it's not true, but I've got as much evidence for that as we do for randomly chalking it up to the NSA.

And last but not least, ending the article with a question doesn't negate all the very specific and one-sided cheerleading going on up to that point. But kudos for being honest in the title and not making that a question as well. If only the question were relevant (see the snooping on phone records bit above), that might be cause for an honest debate. If we could have one about secret programs we weren't meant to know about in the first place.

 

[Lusik]

In case most of you don't know , "Keep us scared" and we the people will allow the government/corporations to profit from "We the People" all they want. After all aren't we cow's to be milked? Keep us scared and we gladly go to war and sacrifice our young people and with our tax dollars build aircraft carriers, jets and billions of dollars worth of other so called anti terrorist weapons. Wake up people!!! The world is not as scary a place as they would like you to believe, I know I have traveled the world.

 

[nevernow]

This propaganda is ridiculous! Marshall Honor-of is also ridiculous. What a ridiculous goof-ball label to pen by. There is no honor in whipping up lies to cover crimes and the criminals who have (and are, still!) committed those crimes.
We are not being "kept safe". The same kinds of individuals who spy on us to "keep us safe" are the same kinds who will COMMIT MURDER FOR THE SAKE OF "JUSTICE"!