Congrescritter Call: Abolish the NSA

[cos]

Every couple of weeks, why not make a call to your US Senators and Representative and ask the to abolish the NSA?

It's unlikely to happen, I know, though it would be a good thing to do. But if legislators took the idea of abolishing the NSA as under discussion - even if they don't expect it to happen - it would shift public perception to make other, less drastic but still reasonable changes more likely.

You can find your Senators' and Representative's phone numbers at whoismyrepresentative.com, by putting in your ZIP code. Call their DC numbers, the ones with 202 area codes.

P.S. Why do I think asking to abolish it as not just a way to move the politics, but also a good idea? Having such a secretive organization that routinely disobeys laws and lies about it as long as they can get away with lying, because they expect not to get caught because of their secrecy, makes them nearly entirely outside of democratic government. As they grow bigger and more powerful, more and more our government is no longer under the authority of democracy. Other agencies, such as the FBI and CIA and military, show they're perfectly capable of investigating crimes, undercover work, collecting intelligence, and so on, while still working under democratic authority; something like the NSA is clearly not needed. While the NSA does some useful work, that work would be much more useful if moved to more appropriate agencies. For example, we'd get much greater public benefit from their cryptography work if it was moved to NIST and/or the NSF. Some of their functions - and people - could be moved into the CIA and FBI.

Comments

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

I used to be very anti-NSA until the post-9/11 West Wing special episode. Allison Janney (CJ) says that the right wing is wrong for wanting to go to war and smart left wing thing is to invest in surveillance and spying so that we stop it at the root. Maybe it was because 9/11 was just a few days/weeks old, but it impressed me very much. If I'm anti-war I should be in favor of things that prevent it. Diplomacy isn't the only thing that prevents war.

By coincidence I soon read The Art of War and was impressed by the point made that it is unethical to send warriors into battle unprepared; and preparation includes recon and other spy activity so that you know what the troops are going to face.

Of course, absolute power corrupts absolutely which is the problem with the NSA. They're out of control. Of course, what CJ said on The West Wing was about spying on others, not on our own citizens. Ironically a right wing fascist would also want a powerful NSA.

So, I'm perplexed.

[cos]

Your points are, I think, orthogonal to what I'm saying.

I agree that intelligence and undercover work are important, partly for the reasons you mention. One thing you missed, though, is that perhaps the biggest weakness of US intelligence currently is its fetishization of technology as a substitute for actual human work. This is one thing the FBI seems to get right but most of the rest of the agencies get wrong, and the NSA is probably the extreme in getting it wrong (though the CIA has apparently sucked pretty badly for a while now). So building up other agencies and taking down the NSA would probably improve our intelligence and undercover capability and effectiveness.

But the key point is *not* that we don't need any of the things that the NSA is supposed to do, it's that we should not do them in an agency like the NSA. You can see I suggested moving most of its people and functions to other agencies, ones which are compatible with democracy. We need intelligence and undercover work, yes, but that's no excuse for doing it outside of democratic authority.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

[morfizm.livejournal.com]

Until recently I was not a believer in conspiracy stories saying that 9/11 events were government backed, but now I am allowing this possibility.

It is a common sense (and quite common in U.S. justice at various levels) to suspect those who benefit the most. NSA have been constantly citing 9/11 events to back strengthened surveillance and more funding. So unless proven otherwise there is a reason to suspect such conspiracy. I have not seen neither good analysis of what were the finances required for the 9/11 preparation work, nor proofs as of where did the funding come from.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Any conspiracy ideas I had were zapped after reading Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror. I saw that tons of people were trying to do the right thing but George Bush's ego got in the way. Dealing with Bin Laden was seen as a Clinton-era thing and he wanted to "make his own agenda" not continue any programs continued by that dirty democrat. "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity." is the occom's razor that beats conspiracy theories every time.