Key opposition/public figures (for example) getting blackmailed is going to impact society as a whole, however.
Another terrorist attack in London
- Thread starter Groff
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Sure, but there's not really a big history of that happening in the US intelligence community. The ban on collection against US persons didn't become a thing until either the 1960s or 1970s (can't remember which). Prior to that, the intelligence community in the US has no significant history of using information to blackmail public figures. And the ones that tried weren't successful. So the idea that allowing our intelligence community to start collecting on US persons again would lead to widespread corruption and abuse in the intelligence community is really quite unfounded.
And the only reason that ban came into effect in the first place is because the Democrats got antsy when they discovered US military intelligence personnel posing as journalists to infiltrate the 1968 DNC. Their reasons for doing so weren't political though, they were acting on suspicion that militant groups were going to attempt to disrupt the convention and were there to provide intelligence support for the police and National Guard forces assigned to provide security for the convention. What got the Democrats so upset though, was no one informed them that the military was sending intelligence personnel to their convention, so it looked like the military was trying to spy on the DNC.
Two points:
1) I didn't say it never happened, just that there isn't a big history of it. I also said when it does happen, it gets caught and dealt with, which is exactly what your link shows.
2) That wasn't the intelligence community that was involved with that, it was Senator McCarthy and his Subcommittee on Investigations. That is not a part of the United States intelligence community. The US intelligence community consists of the DIA, CIA, NSA, and the military intelligence personnel of each branch of the military. None of those were involved in the incident linked above.
So no, that was not the intelligence community blackmailing the Army, it was a rogue senator and his goons.
This is precisely where your argument is unconvincing. London, or the UK in general, is in no way approach a full blown insurgency, requiring counter-insurgency tactics. To suggest otherwise is pure, unsupported hysteria.
Timsup2nothin
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"It hasn't happened since we imposed this limit, which we imposed because it happened. So that means we don't need this limit."
J Edgar Hoover would approve this message.
J Edgar Hoover would approve this message.
Lexicus
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...you assume. By the nature of things successful blackmail isn't going to be something that is widely known.
innonimatu
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Except that's not what I said at all.
Hoover wasn't a member of the intelligence community. He was the director of the FBI which is a law enforcement agency. They are not and have never been a part of the US intelligence community. The FBI does have an Intelligence Branch that is considered part of the intelligence community, but that wasn't created until 2005, long after Hoover.
I'm starting to realize that a lot of you don't seem to understand that the term "US intelligence community" isn't just some vague undefined term under which any organization that collects information can be lumped. It is a term that has real meaning and a very explicit list of organizations that are considered part of it. The main ones being the organizations I already listed.
And I don't think you realize just how much oversight the intelligence community has. Every action an intelligence collector takes is monitored and if it looks suspicious they get investigated. I was investigated a few times in Iraq, one time because one of my sources and his family got killed on account of him being a blabbermouth, and another time because I paid a source $25,000 for a very large weapons cache he led us to.
The point being that US intelligence personnel are probably the most surveilled and monitored people in the US, specifically because they don't want us to be like, just as an example, Pakistani ISI.
Timsup2nothin
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Cool. If we keep working at it you'll maybe come to realize that we don't care that there's a difference between 'law enforcement' and 'intelligence,' since we don't really trust either one to be spying on us for the US government.
EnglishEdward
Deity
Amd many of us outside the USA regard US corporates such as Facebook, Google,
Liberty Global and Microsoft who data mine us as part of the US intelligence community.
Liberty Global and Microsoft who data mine us as part of the US intelligence community.
r16
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so , it appears every single attacker in the last 3 terrorist attacks in the UK were known to the authorities (in the UK , of course) and good old American "Intelligence" is never shy enough to let it known that they told so ; to so and so . And in the good old days ı had already suggested as Americans were free to spy on any Joe Public , as long as he wasn't American , all the good American "Intelligence" is to do allow fellow UK "Intelligence" to spy on American Joe Public ? This works not ?
Press is only amplifying differences into polarising.
Little background, little two sides of the coin,...
I consider some of them as worse as terrorists, because they are far more effective in diminishing our values
r16
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theresa May Goverment would have ignored it , even if they had . Though this last seems to be a rush job ; they apparently failed to get anyone with relatives in Cyprus .
Not to sound rude, but what you consider to be part of the US intelligence community doesn't really matter. The US intelligence community is not just some nebulous concept, it is an actual umbrella term that has organizations that are officially part of it. If you are going to stretch the meaning of the term to include private organizations that collect information for their own use, then just about any individual or organization that engages in any type of information collection for any purpose can be considered part of the intelligence community. And that's just ridiculous.
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