Probably a stupid question about the NSA

[KevinLancaster]

I want to start this off by saying that I'm not at all familiar with how the NSA is managed within the US government so this makes it all the more likely that what I am about to say makes no sense.

I was thinking about how you could reform the NSA to be more ethical(?) or responsible(?) by having it be controlled by the justice system instead of the military (does that make any sense?) but I couldn't think of any way for that to be done without it still holding on to a massive amount of power, which made me wonder if the NSA could be decentralized so that it is controlled at the state level instead of at the federal level along with judicial control to ensure that their actions are reasonably within American law.

To me this could help with their effectiveness as the state agencies would have to deal with smaller numbers and resources could be directed towards possible threats more specifically. In addition it doesn't seem like something either major party would find a great deal of offence with. The major problem I see with it is that it would lend itself to more bias.

I looked up "decentralize the NSA" on Google before this but only found one result which I feel confirms that I am either very stupid or crazy. I reckon (hope!) it's the former so could someone explain to me why it wouldn't make any sense?

Thanks.

 

[Cutlass]

The thing is, the NSA was not a problem 12 years ago. Because they were working both on a mandate to do no domestic spying, and the internal culture of the organization was on board with that mandate. What happened was that the mandate was, informally, changed, by the Bush administration, and the people who who believed in that mandate were pushed out of the organization.

What's needed is to fire anyone and everyone in the NSA who, for any reason, find domestic spying acceptable. Once there's nobody in the organization who will act that way, balance is restored.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

You were right. Questioning the NSA probably is stupid, and we are unlikely to ever hear from you again. I suggest going immediately into hiding as far from known civilization as possible.

More seriously, Cutlass is basically correct. The problem is that not only have the 'rank and file' of the NSA been indoctrinated into a mindset that anything goes in the name of national security, their overseers are firmly locked in the same mindset all the way to the top and beyond.

What is beyond the top? The public. While there may be a bit of outrage when some egregious abuse comes to light the public can invariably be pacified with a promise of 'a safer tomorrow' without consideration of just how safe tomorrow already really was in the first place.

 

[KevinLancaster]

Communications has changed a great deal in the past decade though, and the decade before that. However when I think about it I don't think anyone has ever organized a terrorist attack through the internet, and "it can be a possibility" is a bit of a weak argument. There are people who think domestic intelligence is necessary though, and for better or for worse they have to be acknowledged. To me it has always existed in some form, and the problem is that the form it is in at present is not ideal.

 

[Quintillus]

Building on Cutlass and Timsup2nothin's points, part of it is also a political culture in the past 12-13 years of it being politically toxic to question anything that was done in the name of national security. If someone said something was done "for national security" or "to prevent terrorist attacks", then you were being weak on the terrorists if you opposed it - regardless of whether the thing in question was actually effective, and regardless of its side effects. So, a whole national security apparatus was built up with virtually unlimited funds and virtually no opposition - and the NSA was part of that. It existed before, but not to the same level.

Before 9/11, it was more acceptable to question things being done in the name of security. As an example of the NSA attempting to significantly expand its spying power, and being shot down, in the '90s, read up on the Clipper Chip.

Thanks to Snowden's leaks, it's no longer politically toxic to challenge the national security complex, and can be politically beneficial. So it's significantly more plausible that the NSA's power may be curtailed than in early 2013. While there had been some whistleblowers before then (such as William Binney and Mark Klein), previously the scope of disclosures hadn't been big enough to outweigh national security argument - Snowden's revelations changed that. Nevertheless, I'm skeptical that major changes will occur while Obama is president, though the odds of that could change somewhat after the midterm elections this fall.