Dskhanna

There are a bunch of problems with this argument.

1. First is massive overcriminalization: each of us has likely committed felonies this year. One new book title is "Three Felonies a Day" on the topic of overcriminalization. Did you use Google under the age of 18? Until recently that was a violation of their terms of service, which under some jurisdictions is a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) [Hacking statute]. Have you jailbroken/unlocked your iPhone - unlocking is now illegal, jailbreaking an iPhone is legal but an iPad is not (yes no sense). One of the critical checks upon government power is that it has to expend energy and resources to investigate criminal activity - it's one check that protects us even with overcriminalization.

In a world where we have all violated the law, and the federal government has information on all of us - it's a system ripe for abuse. And that abuse could be a prosecutor looking for a win (US v. Drew), it could be to go after partisan rivals (Nixon IRS/Tea Party IRS), or it could be used to go after "troublesome" people trying to change society and policy (Martin Luther King Jr. comes to mind who the FBI was trying to go after).

1. Even if you didn't commit a crime, people have personal details they may not want exposed. With the Verizon data, even who you call can be used to learn more. Big data can be applied in interesting ways, a new book talks about how Target knows when a woman is pregnant - in one case before her own family knew. Information about calling an HIV clinic, or an abortion facility could be cross-compared with other data and lead to conclusions about very personal details of people's lives. Details that we have a right to keep private.

2. This data is being shared with other countries, at least the UK, so if you trust the good folks at the NSA, do you trust every other country's intel services?

3. The NSA doesn't seem to be very good at internal security - trusting all our records with them seems like a big target.

4. Given how data costs continue to plummet every year on path similar to Moore's Law, retaining all this data is now possible. . . and technology people (you all) know that once someone is in data form it generally never goes away (unless there are serious space constraints which are disappearing).

Read Julian Sanchez's awesome piece here: http://mashable.com/2013/06/13/julian-sanchez-nsa/

And I briefly touched on this in my article with National Review: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/350798/nsa-scandal-derek-satya-khanna

I'd be interested in Reddit'ers response to DNI Clapper's statement's to Sen. Wyden where he appeared to lie to Wyden about the NSA's programs:

March 12, 2013, Senate Intelligence Hearing:

Wyden: And this is for you, Director Clapper, again on the surveillance front. And I hope we can do this in just a yes or no answer because I know Senator Feinstein wants to move on. Last summer the NSA director was at a conference and he was asked a question about the NSA surveillance of Americans. He replied, and I quote here, '...the story that we have millions or hundreds of millions of dossiers on people is completely false.' The reason I'm asking the question is, having served on the committee now for a dozen years, I don't really know what a dossier is in this context. So what I wanted to see is if you could give me a yes or no answer to the question: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"

Clapper: "No, sir."

Wyden: "It does not."

Clapper: "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly."

Wyden: "All right. Thank you. I'll have additional questions to give you in writing on that point, but I thank you for the answer." (video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QwiUVUJmGjs)

Clapper's statement appears to have misled the relevant Congressional Committee, and more importantly, misled Members of Congress who don't receive the information that the Intelligence Committee receives. Ultimately these statements misled the general public. This obfuscation of the truth inhibited the Intelligence Committee from performing proper oversight, which is the primary role of the Intelligence Committee. There is little point in having an oversight committee for intelligence if members of the intelligence community can simply lie when asked questions before a hearing.

Misspeaking at a hearing may be a mistake. Misspeaking before the Intelligence Committee is an extremely grievous mistake. But even more egregious here is the Clapper had ample time to correct the record and apparently failed to do so. Statements made at hearings are not coffee shop like discussions; rather, they are carefully prepared in advance. [We now know that Wyden send him the question in advance and gave him a chance to correct the record after the fact but Clapper failed to do so].

If Clapper did not have a prepared answer for this question, it's extremely likely that the NSA counsel would have reviewed his statement after the hearing - putting him on notice that if his statement was incorrect he had the obligation to correct it. In fact, if the NSA's counsel knew that Clapper was lying or misspeaking, he may have had a legal obligation to tell Clapper to inform the Committee of his misstatement. And, under a similar procedure for lying at court, if Clapper refused to correct the record then the Counsel may have had an obligation to tell the Committee anyway. This gives some perspective on the legal severity of lying to a congressional committee.

President Obama has claimed that Congress was aware of all ongoing programs of this nature. The Administration can't have it both ways. It can't claim that Congress was in the loop and signed off when the Director of National Intelligence appears to have at best misled and at worst lied to the relevant oversight branch.

You can read the rest of my argument on the implications of Clapper's testimony here: goo.gl/Bjy6q

Also the phone unlocking issue demonstrates how corporations can use agency regulation and the law for their own purposes rather than the general good. Therefore you may be violating laws written by corporations without even knowing it and placing yourself in liability. For our phone unlocking campaign, my Congressional testimony was on the sheer ridiculousness of making this illegal. Most people are unaware of it being illegal because it's a good technology = makes no sense. But it's a clear example of crony-capitalism, which combined with a police state where the NSA knows everything - is a very scary thing. There were 23 million jailbroken phones, until January when that was illegal, determining all those phones and arresting all of them for a felony would have been possible if the govt was so inclined.

Having worked on the Hill for three years, I was surprised at the impact that a number of constituents calling their office could have upon a Congressional Member. Now if a 1000 people called their Congressman in February and said the NSA is monitoring us, make them stop, that would have probably been disregarded -- but now we have the data to back up the assertion that the NSA is obtaining this data.

So the petition is a great start, but a campaign towards individual Members is important. Particularly campaigns with specific asks. For example, I wrote an article recently on whether DNI Clapper lied before the Senate Intelligence Committee and whether that may be a serious potentially impeachable offense: goo.gl/Bjy6q

Also, a petition allows you to find out who your allies are. And there are a number of Tea Party, Libertarian and conservative groups that are very engaged on this issue. Campaign for Liberty, R Street and Freedomworks have signed the letter to Congress so far. So this is really a non-partisan effort, and because it's not on traditional party lines (like other tech issues) it may be more achievable.