Discussing American politics as civil human beings

Hypothetical scenario: An NSA employee blackmails a "conservative" Republican politician, as he has tons of evidence that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that said politician cheats on his wife with male and female people of the night a few times per month. The kinky politician will be shamed from coast to coast AND lose millions of dollars per year unless he pays 1 million bucks to the opportunistic NSA employee. Does he allow it to become "an enormous riot of a story", or does he pay the cash? What if the ransom was to vote as directed x number of times?

 

He probably busts the story wide open, becomes a hero of the people for exposing glaring malfeasance in a disliked portion of the government, and shakes off the minor and all-too-common political hurdle. A coordinated media effort could use it as a wonderful opportunity to appear both penitent and righteous, a lovable combination.

 

https://www.aclu.org/news/fbi-audit-exposes-widespread-abuse-patriot-act-powers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_invocations_of_the_Patriot_Act
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/10/ten-years-later-look-three-scariest-provisions-usa-patriot-act
http://www.wired.com/2013/09/nsa-abusing-patriot-act/
There's also the whole controversy behind the Snowden link, which I would certainly classify as an abuse. Snowden talks about sending ***** pics in the John Oliver segment, but that's because Oliver is using ***** pics as a metaphor to explain what's actually happening to common people who probably wouldn't put in the time to understand otherwise.
Ed: Pox forums don't allow any variation of words for male genitalia, it seems.

 

if the ransom was to direct votes, i feel like that's a more serious offense.


as for the response, it'd have to depend on the person and specifics, obviously. otherwise i tend to agree with kal- even though we've made spies sexy, we still haven't jumped the hurdle of actually liking the agencies. it's very easy to point at one of the US's covert agencies and say "WELL WE ALL KNOW THEY'RE UP TO NO GOOD" and have the rest of the room nod sagely without much factual context- because of course they are, right? like half of all spy movies are about spies gone rogue anyhow.

but yeah. it would definitely be an interesting platform to run on, probably better than what many other candidates are provided

 

@kalasle Also, I should clear up that by "personal values," I meant values that put priority on personal preference rather than some other perspective such as those listed above.

 

Actually, if you go to 24:50, Oliver references a different interview in which Snowden claimed the NSA passed around naked photos. That's to what I was referring.

Could you elaborate on that? Which link?

Yeah, I gotcha. I think it's a process of personal preferences to assign any value to other things listed. Someone may have a preference for reliance on precedent in decision making, but that's still a value judgement by that person. For instance, I'd say I'm including each of these --

-- in my response to concerns about information security. I see what you're saying about those as distinct from "personal values," but we're probably placing that phrase on different mental level. There's an old post somewhere about fun versus competition in video games which has little to do with this in subject matter, but brought up a similar categorical issue.

As for my objection to a potential government infraction in this area -- it's like people smoking marijuana. It's illegal, so that should be discouraged, it's not so good, but most people won't bust everyone they ever see or suspect of lighting up. That's a heavily flawed parallel for a lot of reasons, but at least take it as an example of a mental reaction to the problem; it's similar in that respect.

 

Okay, I see. I don't agree that that's the "extent of it," though.

Meant the John Oliver video. It was just an introductory sentence to the rest of that paragraph.

Okay. I understand what you're saying, I think. It's not super important anyways.

Sure, and I respect your opinion. I just think it's a much bigger deal than you. I still don't see any reason for having a system in place that does what the NSA does, seeing as it has led to the discovery and conviction of almost zero terrorists, and the large number of problems and controversies that have extended from it are negative uses of time for many people.

 

You are a likeable chap, even though we don't agree on the 4th Amendment. Also, your reply was an entertaining read. +11

@Dagda The NSA digging into and reading all my personal correspondences because they are bored is and should be against the law. If I am doing something suspicious, then get a legal order and spy the heck out of me and all my associates. If not, please focus on the bad guys instead of wasting time on my Netflix preferences... and texts, and forum comments, and naughty stuff, and whatevs.

 

so if you're a bad guy then it's ok to spy on you AND your associates. But how do they know who your associates are? I guess they could look at all the people who called (or was called by) you. But then some of THOSE people might feel like they were being spied on without just cause. Oh well.

 

Yup, it does seem like a giant waste of resources doesn't it? Agreed. The most compelling point Oliver brings up in that segment is the programs' effectiveness: they stopped one dude, for about 8,500 dollars. I have few moral and legal compunctions about it, but that issue of effectiveness damns much of what the NSA currently does. In that respect, I'm certainly never voting for anything that supplies more funds to the NSA; send that money elsewhere, send those people elsewhere.

 

Now this I can highly agree with. Efficiency is very important.

 

Birds of a feather flock together. Some associates will be innocent. That should be noted, and then even more focus placed on the wormy types.

 

Yeah. As far as apprehending terrorists or international criminals, INTERPOL is actually several times more efficient and effective than any US agency, or national agency in other countries, for that matter. In a raw economic sense, that's the best place to put money if terrorism is someone's biggest concern.

 

Of course terrorism is not their biggest concern since terrorism kills almost noone and poses no credible danger.

We are defending against industrial espionage from the US over here, though, so I guess that is where the money is going ...

 

Long story short, no. Bern for the win #feelthebern #bernpyro #IhopeyoubroughtBernheal

 

Was hoping someone would bring up the economic impact of the various Intelligence Agencies as opposed to concentrating on the ethical and moral quandaries that intelligence gathering presents, which as I'm sure has been mentioned relies on the even more vague notions of communal sensibilities regarding "Justice".

Speaking from a history of studying and aiming towards a career in national security policy I'm happy to explain how IA's often discuss and promote certain policies regarding information gathering. Firstly as I noted above, due to ethical and moral dilemma's present within any such consideration the UK based IA's rely on both strict and loose restrictions regarding what information is available and by what means this information is retrievable. That is to say agencies like MI5, MI6 and DI won't have a large or vague set of parameters within which they can dictate how gathering takes party instead they will have relatively strict forms of legislation that legally bind the agency to following said guidelines.

Secondly the aforementioned agencies have a policy that could almost be seen as Weberish, that is to say following the teachings of Max Weber the agency holds that while bias is always apparent within a system of process and analysis this bias can be limited to the selection of the process, that is to say the agency may act upon a bias to concentrate their efforts upon Muslim individuals but in this process the information gathered must be approached in such a way as to prevent bias as much as can feasibly possible, for example by having several intelligence analysts from different departments concentrate upon the same group or individual but are instructed to conduct their analysis from differing angles. For example one analyst will be instructed to monitor a specific individual with the aim of ascertaining whether that individual is collaborating with specific groups or individuals that have or had ideologies that led them to be seen as a threat to national security, the notion of which itself went through the same process being described. Another analyst will examine this individual based on his/her personal online presence, through social media, internet searches (The results of which are usually fact-checked through a participating search engine) and personal representation within both. Finally, for this example, another analyst will examine an individual upon the basis of exploring whether or not this individual has had interactions with specific public or private bodies and will examine the result of these interactions.

When gathered this information is passed upwards and is judged on the merit of the combined intelligence gathering. Following this action is either taken to increase the amount of surveillance upon this individual or reduce it.

Not to say these are fool proof or comprehensive policies but, in case anyone was interested, there's the basic lay-out.

 

Wouldn't it be funny if the republican ticket was a black man and a woman while the democratic ticket was two old white guys. I think republicans would nominate those two just for the FU factor. But then trump is the personification of the capitalist devil. That's hard to resist too.

 

I am a liberal and love liberals who do liberal things.

 

Does a fish need to tell us it prefers water for us to know it's true?

 

Funny you should mention fish. I was baiting ragic but he hasnt come through. Oh well