I think the news is out and all know the facts and fabricated facts too.
I think its time for the govt., and the president to come out and say "Yes", We Spy on you for your safety and we assure and ensure you don't get penalised for wrong reasons and systemic errors.
More than privacy people are scared of the ramifications of the surveillance by organisations that lost the trust.
He's not going to do that. He knows it's unconstitutional.
What you're saying is kind of like saying: "Look, torture works, and we're doing it anyway - therefore let's just do it with medical oversight to ensure the torture doesn't go as far as organ failure. They will do it for our safety against the enemy, and with good oversight - so it's all good. It's for our safety!".
They shouldn't be doing it at all. The "oversight" gets corrupted over time, too, and then what?
Trouble is that data from NSA leaks to other organizations and then used in number of nefarious of ways to sustain illegal and unconstitutional practices. As it happened wit DEA doing "parallel construction". Whatever the heck that means - means perjury and obstruction of justice to me.
Precisely. If we ignore the 4th for a moment, the NSA doing this kind of surveillance wouldn't be an issue if it was only ever used to catch bad guys within the constraints of the law. But, as the DEA story shows, once this power is in the hands of corruptible people, they will take shortcuts, subvert the rules, and bypass procedure to get what they want. In their minds, the end justifies the means, and our legal system is specifically set up to thwart that temptation specifically because people are imperfect and corruptible, and will misuse the power they're given.
There is nothing so laughable as the people in government saying "We won't abuse this power, trust us" as if to excuse the fact that they got caught abusing their power, and demonstrating that they absolutely cannot be trusted.
I think its time for the govt., and the president to come out and say "Yes", We Spy on you for your safety and we assure and ensure you don't get penalised for wrong reasons and systemic errors.
More than privacy people are scared of the ramifications of the surveillance by organisations that lost the trust.