Agreed on all points, but I was thinking out loudish about the eyes looking outward, rather than inward, like the CIA and such, although I have to think there’s some blurring of the lines lately.
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The government is untrustworthy either way. They didn’t change their actions. All that changed is Snowden made us aware of how our rights were being violated. You’d rather be violated and not know? Is ignorance bliss?
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Cripes, collecting any external calls made by American citizens blurs it big time, and then there’s that they can count on their good friends at CSE and GCHQ to fill in the gaps.
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If only there was a person who was ultimately in charge of the NSA and the military; someone who could most easily step in, and at least stop the most abusive actions, while simultaneously changing the policies that brought them about.
I don’t know, like some kind of…Commander-in-Chief.
Crazy, right?
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Uh, no. Lay off with the personal attacks and leading questions.
In lengthy reply to your leading question, I’d rather have a trustworthy government, as I stated up-thread, or at least make steps towards that goal. While your point that Snowden forcibly pushed for transparency is accurate, the fact that you take it as a given that the government is automatically untrustworthy basically amounts to both a license to the corrupt ones (“they’re so jaded that it doesn’t matter what we do, they’ll write it off as business as usual”) and a deterrent to the reformers (“no matter what we do, we’ll never gain the public trust, so why bother?”) Basically, you just demonstrated exactly what I meant by the attitude of the denialist in that post.
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There is no personal attack. Please quote the personal attack, emphasis on the “personal,” if you would.
I was following your statement to its obvious conclusion.
I’d like to have a pony. We’re both unlikely to get what we want, I think.
I simply recognize reality as it is, not as I aspirationally want it to be. Governments are rarely trustworthy and ours has made it clear for decades that it can’t be trusted. I guess white, middle class folks are just noticing.
Who is making personal attacks now?
You’re attacking me for being jaded by 40+ years of watching our corrupt government and expecting no different in the future from Ellsberg (and Nixon) through to Snowden today (with being duped into multiple wars along the way).
Fixed that for you.
I’m sure Clinton or Trump will get right on that…
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Not really. My original post was predicated on just that kind of pervasive surveillance (which is what actually exists). The supposedly “legal” surveillance is supposed to be on outgoing calls, and then the Five Eyes give coverage in depth if they are held to that standard. The lines are very blurred indeed.
The NSA motto is “Collect it all, sniff it all; know it all, exploit it all.” There may be some paper fig leaves of pretense and legality but they are hoovering it all up.
I know. It’s just that we are equally fucked if they do play by the rules - they have a kind of “defence in depth.”
We could always change the rules with our duly elected governmental representatives, right?
There is no way to tell how long the process of regaining trust will take, but we can probably all agree on some of the milestones that must appear along the way:
- The US must state in no uncertain terms that we have made mistakes. The mistakes must be publicly admitted and enumerated. The existence of the mistakes must be admitted by the powers-that-be.
- The reform process must stop looking for scapegoats, shortcuts and distractions. Reform must be real, widespread, and significant.
- The US intelligence community must publicly demonstrate their whole-hearted subservience to civil authority. If they do not willingly demonstrate their compliance, they must be broken and stripped of resources. Again.
- The Espionage Act must be revoked. The public interest must be foremost in any formal evaluation of whistle blowing or National Security.
- The US Intelligence community be forced to stop to stop mass surveillance of the US population. They must also block other countries from committing mass surveillance of the US population.
An distrusted, unsubservient intelligence community creates a rot that spreads throughout the government. Without the trust and support of the American public, we do not have the Consent of the Governed. An untrusted government does not have legitimate power. It only has various forms of coercion and manipulation.
There are lots of ways that we can destroy ourselves. Failing to bring the intelligence community to heal looks like one of our more depressing and painful futures.
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Okay:
You’re making these two loaded questions, which are a form of personal attack, in that they come with the implicit assumption that I prefer to be ignorant and/or am an apologist for government corruption, which is in direct contrast to what I’ve stated up-thread
Not me. I wasn’t commenting on you personally, but on the context of your posts as being an example of the attitude issue that I pointed out before. I wasn’t accusing you of being a corruption apologist or willfully ignorant, like you heavily-implied that I was. I was commenting on the text of your post, nothing more, nothing less, as being a solid example of what I had posited up-thread, re: attitudes towards governmental corruption/trustworthiness. Could I have phrased it better, especially in the use of pronouns? Probably, and for phrasing it poorly, I apologize.
As for the rest of your post, I’m not going to bother addressing it. I find “nothing can be done, so don’t bother” cynicism to be both boring and pointless to engage with.
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“The sky has been and always will be falling because I’m so jaded”. Super helpful.
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Herp derp, argle blargle, something something rape joke. As a drive by troll, you are somewhat sub-par, Ricky. You get a F for that one.
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I didn’t say nothing can be done. You were asking how we can regain trust in our government. I’m saying that it is pretty impossible at this point. There is a whole world of other things to be done if you just take it as a given that our government is corrupt, especially the Intelligence community and the military. They just don’t involve ever trusting them. In fact, they’re predicated on the fact that you can’t ever trust them to follow their own laws or do the right thing.
You may think that pointlessly cynical. I think it is just reality.
The instinct to CYA is a natural one, but that doesn’t make it acceptable when those in the public trust do it.
This applies to spies, cops, doctors, engineers, everybody.
If you’ve been screwing up, ask forgiveness.
Hiding the evidence and throwing others under the bus should mean jail time.
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