MY NSA DATA, LET ME SHARE YOU THEM
Mar. 21st, 2016 12:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogITEM: The Obama administration will let the NSA share more of the private communications it intercepts with other American intelligence agencies without first applying any privacy protections to them.
The rationale is so that more intelligence agencies gain direct access to unprocessed information, “increasing the chances that they will recognize any possible nuggets of value.”
But, says the NYT:
Put another way, all that data that the NSA has been hoovering up indiscriminately? The FBI and CIA and other intelligence agencies will have access to the same data.
Ars Technica has a good summation here.
The ACLU of Massachusetts adds (rather shrilly) that this basically means any law enforcement agency can look at this stuff without a warrant and find people to put in jail for any old crime, not just terrorism.
Radley Balko of Reason.com adds color commentary here.
The ACLU blog post goes rather overboard with the paranoia on how this new capability could (and will) be used, but here’s one point worth remembering:
When the Bush Admin and Congress started granting the US Govt awesome new surveillance powers (both publicly and secretly) after 9/11, part of the selling point was that the NSA, FBI, etc would ONLY use these powers to fight terrorism and nothing else. We have already seen countless examples of them being used in ways that either drastically expand the definition of what counts as terrorism-related, or have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.
So it’s a fair bet that the agencies who get access to the NSA’s data (much of which, let’s remember, is being obtained incidentally and without a warrant) will be tempted to use it for whatever purpose suits them. Or whatever purpose they're directed to fulfill. If you require a worst-case scenario, pick whoever you think is the worst possible person running for President right now, and imagine what they will do with this capability if they win.
The reality will likely not be that drastic – not to the point of rounding up Muslims and #BLM supporters and deporting them to Mexico or whatever. But the real takeaway is that when you give the govt more surveillance powers, you get mission-creep. And once you grant those powers, it is very difficult to take them away.
All of which most people might find acceptable as long as it works to stop terrorism (or at least stop it from happening in their city). The problem is that there’s no evidence that it does, and good reasons to believe it makes everyone less safe, not more.
Share and share alike,
This is dF
The rationale is so that more intelligence agencies gain direct access to unprocessed information, “increasing the chances that they will recognize any possible nuggets of value.”
But, says the NYT:
… that also means more officials will be looking at private messages — not only foreigners’ phone calls and emails that have not yet had irrelevant personal information screened out, but also communications to, from, or about Americans that the N.S.A.’s foreign intelligence programs swept in incidentally.
Put another way, all that data that the NSA has been hoovering up indiscriminately? The FBI and CIA and other intelligence agencies will have access to the same data.
Ars Technica has a good summation here.
The ACLU of Massachusetts adds (rather shrilly) that this basically means any law enforcement agency can look at this stuff without a warrant and find people to put in jail for any old crime, not just terrorism.
Radley Balko of Reason.com adds color commentary here.
The ACLU blog post goes rather overboard with the paranoia on how this new capability could (and will) be used, but here’s one point worth remembering:
When the Bush Admin and Congress started granting the US Govt awesome new surveillance powers (both publicly and secretly) after 9/11, part of the selling point was that the NSA, FBI, etc would ONLY use these powers to fight terrorism and nothing else. We have already seen countless examples of them being used in ways that either drastically expand the definition of what counts as terrorism-related, or have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.
So it’s a fair bet that the agencies who get access to the NSA’s data (much of which, let’s remember, is being obtained incidentally and without a warrant) will be tempted to use it for whatever purpose suits them. Or whatever purpose they're directed to fulfill. If you require a worst-case scenario, pick whoever you think is the worst possible person running for President right now, and imagine what they will do with this capability if they win.
The reality will likely not be that drastic – not to the point of rounding up Muslims and #BLM supporters and deporting them to Mexico or whatever. But the real takeaway is that when you give the govt more surveillance powers, you get mission-creep. And once you grant those powers, it is very difficult to take them away.
All of which most people might find acceptable as long as it works to stop terrorism (or at least stop it from happening in their city). The problem is that there’s no evidence that it does, and good reasons to believe it makes everyone less safe, not more.
Share and share alike,
This is dF
