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NSA Defenders Insist Their Lawbreaking Should Be Ignored Because They 'Didn't Mean It'
from the let's-try-that-anywhere-else dept
We got a hint of what NSA defenders would say to try to respond to the latest revelations of thousands of abuses per year by NSA agents, but late Friday (the best place to try to hide from the news cycle) we saw the official response plan roll out and, my goodness, is it ridiculous. The NSA held a conference call, in which it said, sure, sure, agents had abused the system thousands of times, but it shouldn't count, because they didn't mean to:
Meanwhile, Senator Feinstein is trying a similar "but they didn't mean it" argument with her statement:
Second, the next time someone is accused of a crime, can they just say they didn't intend to violate the law and get away with it? Because that seems to be what the NSA and Feinstein are saying here. Good news for Ed Snowden and Bradley Manning, right? Both of them have made it abundantly clear that they didn't "intend" any harm at all. In fact, they "intended" to help America. So, based on Feinstein and the NSA's reasoning, they should be in the clear, right?
The other talking point, which we'd briefly discussed last week is this idea that because these abuses are such a small part of the NSA's overall surveillance, this isn't a problem. The NSA's DeLong tried this line of reasoning as well:
Again, going back to the Snowden and Manning examples, for the vast, vast majority of their lives, neither of them leaked a damn thing. It was really just one day in their life that they leaked something. So, according to the reasoning of the NSA and Frum, they couldn't have broken the law, since it was such a tiny, tiny part of their lives, right?
Does anyone actually think these arguments make sense? Systematic abuses of the system are not okay just because they're not "intentional," and they're not okay just because they're a small percentage of all the spying the NSA does. This is still about the NSA breaking the law, and then failing to have any real oversight concerning its activities (not to mention lying about these abuses repeatedly).
"These are not willful violations, they are not malicious, these are not people trying to break the law," John DeLong, NSA director of compliance, told reporters.Except... the NSA also admitted separately:
Mr. DeLong reported, however, "a couple" of willful violations in the past decade. He didn't provide details.Wait, hadn't Keith Alexander just told us that there had never been a willful violation?
Meanwhile, Senator Feinstein is trying a similar "but they didn't mean it" argument with her statement:
The majority of these ‘compliance incidents’ are, therefore, unintentional and do not involve any inappropriate surveillance of Americans.Two points in response to this. First, John DeLong admitted during the call that there have been willful violations. Feinstein -- the person in charge of oversight -- is claiming that she's never heard of an instance of intentional abuse. Either she's really, really, really bad at her job and should be removed from the Intelligence Committee, or she's lying (and should be removed from the Intelligence Committee).
As I have said previously, the committee has never identified an instance in which the NSA has intentionally abused its authority to conduct surveillance for inappropriate purposes.
Second, the next time someone is accused of a crime, can they just say they didn't intend to violate the law and get away with it? Because that seems to be what the NSA and Feinstein are saying here. Good news for Ed Snowden and Bradley Manning, right? Both of them have made it abundantly clear that they didn't "intend" any harm at all. In fact, they "intended" to help America. So, based on Feinstein and the NSA's reasoning, they should be in the clear, right?
The other talking point, which we'd briefly discussed last week is this idea that because these abuses are such a small part of the NSA's overall surveillance, this isn't a problem. The NSA's DeLong tried this line of reasoning as well:
The official, John DeLong, the N.S.A. director of compliance, said that the number of mistakes by the agency was extremely low compared with its overall activities. The report showed about 100 errors by analysts in making queries of databases of already-collected communications data; by comparison, he said, the agency performs about 20 million such queries each month.Other defenders of stamping out the 4th Amendment, like commentator David Frum, bizarrely argued that as long as the NSA does more spying, that's actually better because the ratio of abuse to spying is so low. Uh, that's not how it works.
Again, going back to the Snowden and Manning examples, for the vast, vast majority of their lives, neither of them leaked a damn thing. It was really just one day in their life that they leaked something. So, according to the reasoning of the NSA and Frum, they couldn't have broken the law, since it was such a tiny, tiny part of their lives, right?
Does anyone actually think these arguments make sense? Systematic abuses of the system are not okay just because they're not "intentional," and they're not okay just because they're a small percentage of all the spying the NSA does. This is still about the NSA breaking the law, and then failing to have any real oversight concerning its activities (not to mention lying about these abuses repeatedly).
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what?
20... million... Wait. What?
Somehow this is supposed to make me feel better? This database is full of communication information of which >99% of is from perfectly innocent American citizens and foreigners who are absolutely no threat to the US. And yet that database is being queried 20 million times a month?
In what reality does this make even the tiniest bit of sense?
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Re: what?
Mathematically, even if you have thousands of analysts performing queries nonstop, this number is unlikely.
So, either there's tens or hundreds of thousands of analysts who have access to this data, or most of those queries are automated.
If that many people have access to it, then the low number of abuses is completely absurd and doesn't pass the laugh test. If those queries are automated, then they are extremely inefficient, repetitive, and bloated that the output has got to be utterly useless and full of false positives and probably letting all those important needles slip through.
I suppose it's also possible that the NSA has also redefined "query" to mean something that it doesn't in the normal use of the word among people who work with databases. I don't claim to be a DBA, but I did get stuck with maintaining a database with 150k records for a few months, and even I was only doing a dozen queries a day on it.
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Please stop picking holes in our arguments!
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As long as the ratio of oversight to activities remains what it is, the number of 'mistakes' caught can only be extremely low.
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The NSA Defence
You weren't trying to hit the other car in the parking garage. That's OK, use the NSA Defence.
You didn't mean to start a forest fire by not putting out your campfire. That's OK, use the NSA Defence.
If the government can use it, why can't everyone else?
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Ignorance of the law -- and lack of intent -- is no excuse
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Re:
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I didn't mean to buy those drugs.
I didn't mean to steal that car.
Our "safety" depends on people unable to come up with answers better than a 7 yr old. We are so fucked.
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Re: Re: what?
And when you consider that a lot of the NSA's workers might be compartmentalized into small individual groups, it could be a massive case of everyone "on the ground" not knowing that someone else has queried the same thing they are, and the guys who are supposed to be in charge of oversight are the only ones who actually know how much of a mess this actually is.
But still, "we didn't mean it"? Are you kidding me? That doesn't fly with the kid who accidentally breaks the window with a baseball, and it sure doesn't fly with a government organization full of supposedly competent adults.
Fucking hell NSA. You're worse at damage control than Microsoft.
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Your Honour,
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Zero, that's Zero Tolerance
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The NSA had a chance to make this work and proved unequal to the task. It shouldn't get a do-over because its sins have been brought to light.
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It's time for a special investigator to go through and straighten out stuff. Nothing short of that will work. And the special investigator needs have no connections at all to those presently working for the NSA.
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Re: Ignorance of the law -- and lack of intent -- is no excuse
Plus, its even worse when you "have to pass the law to find out whats in it".
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Even assuming that they only look at ONE record per query, that's an awful lot of records they actually put eyes on. Do terrorists communicate electronically 20 million times per month?
"The report showed about 100 errors by analysts in making queries of databases of already-collected communications data"
But with 20 million queries per month, exactly how closely do they look at individual ones to determine that they are NOT abusive? You'd practically need a separate supervisor for every employee.
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Never told ???
Not arguing that Feinstein isn't bad at her job but...
Or option three, she was never told. Do you honestly believe that people who spy for a living are going to out one of their own to Congress?! Even cops aren't that stupid.
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Re: Re:
On the other hand, if they ARE that incompetent... and they're spying on everything, including this...
a'); DROP DATABASE; --
There, spying neutralized.
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the let's-try-that-anywhere-else dept
Uh, so... casual pirates should be ignored because they often aren't aware the copying is illegal... & they aren't causing any real harm, on their own, to the rights holders anyway.
ALL accidents that lead to death or serious injury can be ignored. They're all unintentional (definition of accident), after all.
Involuntary manslaughter, for which there is a specific law, apparently should also slide.
Most murderers can be ignored because they kill so rarely.
Insider Trading probably would count too, since doing too many trades gets you caught. Mathematically, they do a statistically small number. Oh, wait, they already ignore this.
Really, wouldn't the first few thousand offenses of any Law fall into this thinking.
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Sorry officer - I didn't mean to
Why didn't my car know the speed limit and make sure I didn't exceed it? It was the one going that fast not me, I was just behind the steering wheel. I'm a race-car driver by trade, so I was just doing my job.
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Re: what?
Feinstein said, "The majority of these ‘compliance incidents’ are, therefore, unintentional and do not involve any inappropriate surveillance of Americans."
Oh really? Harvesting data en masse on all Americans' *private* communications is considered "appropriate surveillance" but those "compliance incidents" isn't? Could she explain, if looking through our data is unintentional then why bother collecting it in the first place?
One big fat lie after another.
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The magnitude of ridiculousness is proportional to the amount of times people defend it.
As a side note: Mike M., I appreciate your time and diligence looking into and reporting these topics in a way that an ignoramus like myself can understand and get involved in. I basically browse Techdirt at least 3 times a day now.
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Aaron Swartz Defenders Insist His Lawbreaking Should Be Ignored Because He 'Didn't Mean It'
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Re:
So it really is just like the NSA.
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Re: Your Honour,
And besides, considering the hundreds of thousands of times you DIDN'T bump into your ex-wife's car, this one instance is totally insignificant.
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Abuses
The program itself -- its very existence -- is an abuse.
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Re:
-- said by no one ever.
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Low oversight equals low number of violations
So a small percentage of queries turns up thousands of violations, not sure how that would automatically mean this was a 'good indication' of oversight.
if they audit say 1% of the queries every month (that's 20,000 queries) and they find a reported 7 or 8 violations per day, then one must assume they only find 1% of the violations .. so there should be logically 700 or 800 violations per day, should there not?
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Re: the let's-try-that-anywhere-else dept
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Same kind of thing, and that would get me 10-15 years.
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Maybe the terrorists didn't mean it either?
Maybe the "Didn't mean it" defense works both ways? Maybe it works for the terrorists too?
Oh, and Snowden and Manning didn't mean it either.
"Didn't mean it" could be an affirmative shield against the DMCA. Also as an affirmative defense against any claims of copyright infringement.
Oh, wait. Nevermind. I didn't mean it. Or maybe I did. Depending on whether I meant it or not.
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Makes sense
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Next
"We Meant Well" absolves them of responsibility and blame because nobody ever asks, "ok, how do we FIX it" and checks to see if it ever happens.
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Re:
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First it was, "We don't keep any info on Americans." Then proof of that lie surfaces. Then it's "We don't intentionally keep any info on Americans." More proof that they're lying comes out, so then it's "But we don't abuse the info we keep on Americans." Now evidence of abuse shows up, so now it's, "It's 'inadvertant' and 'accidental' abuse, not malicious."
So how are we supposed to believe anything they say? And who want's to bet that there's no evidence of intentional and malicious abuse about to surface? I wouldn't take that bet no matter what odds I'm offered.
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Re: Ignorance of the law -- and lack of intent -- is no excuse
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Didn't mean it
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Re: Re: the let's-try-that-anywhere-else dept
Also, I considered mentioning Obama's violations of the Constitution, but he appears to have committed too many to qualify.
Granted, I could've made a similar joke like I did w/ insider trading, but couldn't think of anything.
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Re: Re: Re:
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Re:
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Isn't this what Barret Brown was doing before the feds jailed his mother and then jailed him for threatening the FBI agent that jailed his mother (among other dubious charges)? Digging through the Stratfor email leaks and cataloging them to put together a story of private intelligence companies, corporations, and government agencies spying and running counter intelligence operations against protestors and activists running campaigns against their interests? Isn't that what Michael Hastings was looking into when his vehicle blew up? How the hell did Diane Feinstein amass a wealth of $100 million(not including her investment banker husband's assets)?
In 1980, Feinstein married Richard C. Blum, an investment banker. In 2003, Feinstein was ranked the fifth-wealthiest senator, with an estimated net worth of $26 million.[10] By 2005 her net worth had increased to between $43 million and $99 million.[11] Her 347-page financial-disclosure statement[12] – characterized by the San Francisco Chronicle as "nearly the size of a phone book" – draws clear lines between her assets and those of her husband, with many of her assets in blind trusts.[13]
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Re: Re: Ignorance of the law -- and lack of intent -- is no excuse
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Re: The NSA Defence
Yes your honor, I understand that firing a 30,000 rounds from a minigun in the air in the suburbs is a bad thing. I only killed 238 people it was unintentional ...
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Re: Re: The NSA Defence
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So just because it wasn't intentional that somehow stops it from being inappropriate? That makes zero sense.
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NSA needs to be shutdown.
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I think "1984" is coming 30 years later.
The government says: We didn't mean to break the law, so it's okay. But if you didn't mean to break the law, you still go to jail.
The government says: If you don't have anything to hide, then you won't mind if we search your e-mail and phone and stop & frisk you on the street. But you can't search our files because "Terrorism. National security. That's why".
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