That press release is very odd. It negatively impacts the standing arguments in the pending litigation, and it's also just flat strange for the government to release information about classified surveillance programs.
It almost reads as a personal message to Snowden, which fits with the generally ham-fisted manner in which the affair thus far has been handled.
There was a legitimate chance to get him to come back and stand trial in Hawaii, but the government instead went into full bore attack mode.
Threatening powerful nations like China and Russia, grounding the plane of a sitting head of state, and having an NGO deliver a personal message that said essentially "we consider you a traitor, so expect to be treated as such..." The list goes on.
The most frustrating part is that these tactics had the exact opposite of the intended effect. When other countries ignored our threats, it made us look impotent. When Snowden was not on Morales's plane, it made us look inept. When we delivered a threat to Snowden, it underscored exactly how beyond our reach he really is.
That press release is very odd. It negatively impacts the standing arguments in the pending litigation, and it's also just flat strange for the government to release information about classified surveillance programs.
I don't mean this as a criticism of you, as I know everyone has different opinions, but it frustrates me because criticizing the United States for being more transparent about their surveillance programs while also previously criticizing the US for lack of transparency seems unfairly hypocritical.
I think a lot of commenters have made the United States into a villain; it doesn't matter what they do now, it'll be construed as the wrong move.
The transparency argument rings hollow to me. Either you believe it's permissible for them to conduct this surveillance, or you don't. If you don't, then the solution is to stop the programs. If you do, then it helps that the programs remain secret.
How does it help anyone if the government tells me they're spying on me?
As an aside, look through my comment history. I doubt you'll feel that I'm making the US into a villain in this scenario.
> Either you believe it's permissible for them to conduct this surveillance, or you don't. If you don't, then the solution is to stop the programs. If you do, then it helps that the programs remain secret.
This is a very good point.
As much as I fiercely despise these programs and the men that designed and enacted them, if one thinks that they're permissible, then keeping them as secret as possible makes logical sense.
I wouldn't read this as criticizing the United States Gov't for being transparent (or not). The author may have been trying to be subtle, but I won't be. The press-release comes off ham-handed because it sounds like it came out of ineffectual petty vengeance. s_q_b is simply pointing out what others have said: that the U.S. has overplayed its hand at every turn, and found itself appearing more and more foolish.
NSA is not inerently evil, these programs are - they are the cancer, because they have external funded interest. Private contractors that trade their directors to lead NSA and then get them back. Kind of incestious cycle don't you think? how is that someone who has hired your comany, suddenly runs your company ... maybe conflict of interest?
> I think a lot of commenters have made the United States into a villain
The combined actions of many interests involved with the US government have made them into villains all by themselves. Transparency is meaningless unless it actually helps to stop the outrages committed by the government. As the government is still exercising powers that fewer citizens think they should have, the perception of villainy will only increase.
Gutting the founding principles of the country, both literally and figuratively, in response to the deaths of 3000 people is bad tradecraft, too.
It feels like the US is consciously making the most suboptimal decisions possible in response to terrorist attacks, terrorist threats, terrorists themselves, leaks uncovering the US's poor judgement, or those reporting on such leaks. But, of course, never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, right?
Everything from throwing people in Gitmo indefinitely with no trial, to surveilling the whole country, to throwing the US internet industry under a bus (with the whole "we only surveil foreign entities" nonsense), threatening individual journalists with prosecution, torturing people prior to trial for speaking up about war crimes, irradiating and sexually assaulting air passengers, assassinating citizens... all the way down to plastic silverware in airport restaurants.
We've executed, by the textbook, exactly the most destructive, demoralizing, wasteful, and ineffective responses to these threats that can possibly be conceived under the model. We've done exactly what hurts us most, inflicted MANY orders of magnitude more damage on the US voluntarily than any decade of sustained successfully executed terror attacks ever could or would.
Far more disheartening than the general public's apathy or the transgressions of our leadership is the gradual and stunning realization that This Is The Best America Can Do.
Historically we tend to react badly in the initial phases of response to a new issue, then self-correct. What troubles me is that those mechanisms don't seem to be working this time around.
But I don't believe this is the best America can do. We lost our cool temporarily. It's time to get back on track.
We're not nearly at that point. Don't forget, we've had what were essentially emergency fiat governments, often with pervasive surveillance, indefinite detention, suspension of freedom of speech, etc. at least twice in our history: the Civil War, and the Great Depression/World War II. Hell, for most of our history half the population of the South lived in a de facto police state.
This isn't as bad as it looks on first blush. The courts still function. Civil rights are largely intact. There aren't breadlines, riots, or gas rationing. Traffic lights still run, electricity still flows, and water still comes out of the tap. We're not in bug out territory yet.
It's starting to happen. This is it. Right here. Right now.
I think if there isn't a successful legal challenge before 2016, or a successful political challenge in 2014 or 2016, the course is irrevocable. The direction has been negative for a long time, but the pace is accelerating. If it's not improving (or just getting worse much more slowly, but with a good second or third derivative) by midway through 2017, it's pretty much not going to be fixed, and the right choice would be long-term disinvestment and disengagement from the US, to the extent possible. The US started from a great position in 1912, so it's got a long way to fall, but...
The difference between the Civil War and WW2/FDR was that those had fairly clear end states, and the end of the war/change of leadership was sufficient to fix. Obama was about as distinct from GWB as a politician can be, on the way in, and has essentially been the third and fourth terms in every meaningful way.
> I think if there isn't a successful legal challenge before 2016, or a successful political challenge in 2014 or 2016, the course is irrevocable.
Can you cite any time in history where, in any location, a military power grab as far-reaching as this NSA surveillance thing has been successfully rolled back?
> and the right choice would be long-term disinvestment and disengagement from the US, to the extent possible
Preliminary testing suggests that that's a huge screaming bitch. :(
1) There have been countries which had military coups (even more overt than what has happened to the US since Civil War, Prohibition, WW2/Cold War, fall of the USSR, and 9/11) which rolled back. In fact, the US actually rolled back pretty well after the Civil War. We probably never really recovered from the nexus of progressives/suffrage/temperance/federal reserve/income tax/ww1/prohibition/nfa/gangsters/newdeal/ww2 though.
The biggest real changes we've had since the Cold War were probably black civil rights/ending Jim Crow (which was a huge thing for black people, but not as huge a thing for me personally), the fall of Nixon, the Reagan Revolution, and probably 1994 (and, on the purely-bad side, 9/11 and the response to it).
Rolling back NSA to spy on foreign governments/military/terrorist mercilessly, foreign commercial and civilians to a very minimal level, and US persons with no terrorist involvement at a law enforcement standard, is probably a change on par with ending Jim Crow, but nationwide, and for all people. Maybe less than the progressive changes at the beginning of the century. More than Reagan/80 or Gingrich/94 or Johnson's Great Society.
2) I agree, fleeing from the US is hard. Germany, Switzerland, somewhere in Eastern Europe, Hong Kong, and New Zealand seem like the most viable general solutions; for specific reasons I think Chile, China, Thailand, and Japan might be viable too, at least for some time period. I don't have much hope for seasteading or anything. Probably the best approach would be to have a US company which sets up a foreign office in one of those places, has a lot of experience working with people there, relocate there yourself, and then eventually either do a new business or relocate the company entirely.
Tiny marginal states really don't interest me anymore.
There's some bitcoin related guy (Idnan) doing a new free trade zone, location to be announced in November 2013, which might be interesting. I think it's on the border of 2 central american countries.
It almost reads as a personal message to Snowden, which fits with the generally ham-fisted manner in which the affair thus far has been handled.
There was a legitimate chance to get him to come back and stand trial in Hawaii, but the government instead went into full bore attack mode.
Threatening powerful nations like China and Russia, grounding the plane of a sitting head of state, and having an NGO deliver a personal message that said essentially "we consider you a traitor, so expect to be treated as such..." The list goes on.
The most frustrating part is that these tactics had the exact opposite of the intended effect. When other countries ignored our threats, it made us look impotent. When Snowden was not on Morales's plane, it made us look inept. When we delivered a threat to Snowden, it underscored exactly how beyond our reach he really is.
Morality aside, this is just bad tradecraft.