What mechanisms do you recommend for reining in, say, the NSA or GHCQ? Were either reined in at all after the Snowden leaks, or was it business as usual after things calmed down a bit?

I think we have to accept that these intelligence agencies are effectively untouchable and here to stay. With that in mind I think it boils down to: who can do the most harm by spying on you:

- a country thousands of miles away which you probably have no connection to and don't visit

- the country you live in

I said in another comment but it bears repeating - I don't want anyone spying on me, but I am losing no sleep over Chinese intelligence, I am an extremely uninteresting target for them. If a Chinese agent is watching me die repeatedly in Elden Ring, looking at webcam footage of me gawping at my monitor while I scroll HN, or checking the stupid FB messages I send to my friends they'll realise pretty quickly I'm not worth the bandwidth or the storage space. A local agency might be interested in those FB messages, especially if I was politically active, vocally against the government and I was trying to organize protests or strike action.

> What mechanisms do you recommend for reining in, say, the NSA or GHCQ?

Democracy. Vote. Free expression. Tell the people what is happening and why privacy is important.

> Were either reined in at all after the Snowden leaks,

Yes.

> or was it business as usual after things calmed down a bit?

No.

> I think we have to accept that these intelligence agencies are effectively untouchable and here to stay.

We do not. They are not. Apathy is toxic. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good to do nothing.

> With that in mind I think it boils down to: who can do the most harm by spying on you: - a country thousands of miles away which you probably have no connection to and don't visit - the country you live in

China is our single greatest geopolitical adversary. Psyops are real. The ability to influence the public opinion of a geopolitical adversary supports the Chinese salami slicer strategy. It’s reinforced by understanding their adversaries electorate.

> I said in another comment but it bears repeating - I don't want anyone spying on me,

Same.

> but I am losing no sleep over Chinese intelligence,

You probably should be.

> I am an extremely uninteresting target for them.

We are all interesting targets. They may not assassinate, extort, or disappear you in the middle of the night but they can change your opinions without you even noticing.

> If a Chinese agent is watching me die repeatedly in Elden Ring, looking at webcam footage of me gawping at my monitor while I scroll HN, or checking the stupid FB messages I send to my friends they'll realise pretty quickly I'm not worth the bandwidth or the storage space.

Why would an individual agent need to look at anything? People aren’t interesting. We’re all basically the same. But if they know you play Elden Ring and browse HN they can tailor an effective message to you and everyone like you.

> A local agency might be interested in those FB messages, especially if I was politically active, vocally against the government and I was trying to organize protests or strike action.

Yes and that’s an illegal abuse of power. One that can be remedied in a court of law.

Hey I'm not saying "give up, hand over your passwords and keys to the NSA, don't ever vote or write to your representatives" but we're in a discussion over who you should be worried about spying on you more - non-specific "China" or some domestic intelligence services (or an alliance of a few "friendly" countries). I think your comment is rooted in a sort of common belief that America is, for all its faults, just plain more decent and just than those scary foreign places - along the lines of American Exceptionalism. You even mention they can "change your opinions without you even noticing" - this is basically the Korean War propaganda about communist "brainwashing" techniques. The sad reality is both USA and China are willing spy on people, if you're based in the USA you should really care more about the USA's attempts at surveillance than China's.

edit: you deleted your reply before I could post mine. It seemed like I pissed you off a bit so I was trying to clarify and apologise a bit. Here's what I wrote:

> You did though

Well I said that they're untouchable and was then trying to clarify that we should still be pretty pissed off about it. I wrote the original at half-past midnight, it was a little clumsily worded. But you do have to accept that they are currently nearly untouchable and effectively operate outside the law and that right now you can do very little at all about what data is being collected on you.

> I don’t think that is a favorable interpretation

I don't think it is unfavourable at all, the only thing you've really stated there about why you'd be worried about any Chinese intelligence is that they can manipulate your beliefs without your knowing. You have to admit that there's at least a bit of a similarity with the hysteria around communist brainwashing.

I'm sorry for causing any offence, I know it's not nice to feel like someone's accusing you of being a fervent nationalist (not my intent) but as an outsider your last couple of comments do have that air of "America is just ... better" and contained a slightly naive belief that you'd have any kind of hope taking on NSA or any other big TLA. I'll grant that what China would do with the data it collects on its citizens is likely far more severe than what the USA would (e.g. I don't think you're gonna be locked up for posting a an anti-Biden meme in USA, but sharing Xi Jinping as Winnie the Pooh in China will get you in a lot of hot water) so if that's what you meant then fair enough. I still don't think Chinese spying should be higher up on your list of worries than NSA spying - and in the grand scheme of things there are things you can worry about that you can actually change.

They are 'touchable', there is oversight, and their powers are very limited.

Give me an example of Americans who have been materially harmed by those agencies? And what was the damage?

Have Americans been oppressed, slandered for political gain, wrongly imprisoned, illegally targeted by police because of NSA activity?

I think it's doubtful for anything other than a few incidents; the proportionality of these tradeoffs does matter as these agencies do actually go after bad people. Like people selling sanctioned gear to Russia, money laundering, sex trafficking, etc. you know - 'bad things'.

I don't see professors disappearing because they said something on campus Biden didn't like.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

Naively, one might say "ah but that ended in 1971!" - but let me put it this way: if you spotted a cockroach in your house, you'd be a fool to think that was the only one.

Also: the oversight/limits you're protected by could disappear some day, they're imaginary and socially constructed. Sure, you trust our current government to handle these powers responsibly, (though you really shouldn't, see above), but why are you so confident you can trust _tomorrow's_ government?

"the oversight/limits you're protected by could disappear some day, they're imaginary and socially constructed."

This is the straw man of all straw mans.

You could have a Totalitarian Overlord someday, after all it's all 'socially constructed'. You'd have a million other, worse problems on your hands.

That your making that argument and can't provide examples of specific harm despite widespread powers of the state is problematic.

Creeping authoritarianism is a general problem, not an NSA problem.

Hey look I'm really trying to engage earnestly here. I did provide specific examples, but they were in the wiki article I linked and you didn't look at them (which is fair, no one likes being tossed a link like that). Let me summarize COINTELPRO:

# Covert & 'illegal' projects by FBI aimed at infiltrating, influencing, disrupting, and discrediting various political organizations

# Existence of the program was discovered after activists stole documents from an FBI office and leaked them to media

# Targets included: antiwar activists, feminist organizations, civil rights activists (ie MLK), environmentalists, animal rights activists, communist party, KKK, American Indian activists, far right groups

# Methods included:

* Breaking into homes, violent beatings, vandalism

* Assassination

* Smear campaigns

* Fabricating evidence, false testimony (leading to wrongful imprisonment and activist intimidation)

* Fabricating letters to discredit/humiliate people or erode their relationships, or cause conflict (leading to death in many cases)

I don't actually need to talk about hypotheticals, the US government has already abused these things to squish people or ideas it didn't like. The point about creeping authoritarianism is a secondary argument. My point is that sometimes it's better for certain tools/institutions not to exist at all.

I think we ought to treat surveillance technologies with the same type of reverence we treat nuclear tech (though maybe not to the same magnitude). Nuclear technology isn't intrinsically a bad thing: the problem is that, combined with human tendencies (tribalism, territorialism, etc), a conflict that previously would've resulted in a mere x deaths could now result in x^y deaths, or even total annihilation.

You agree that creeping authoritarianism is a general problem. Do you think it might just be in the nature of human societies? If so, wouldn't it be prudent to carefully consider what tools and institutions we leave lying around, in case the worst happens? We all accept this with nukes - there was some kind of effort at nuclear disarmament (though not enough). We should do the same for surveillance.

I'm only trying to convince you that we need to be very cautious, skeptical, and distrustful of things like the NSA, because the US govt cannot be trusted with it now, and it might get even worse in the future. What hypothetical evidence would someone have to show you, to change your mind?

While I might have been in some ways sympathetic, the Panthers were a violent, armed, (Marxist-Lenninist) Communist radical group that had ambitions to overthrow some parts of governance, they got into shootouts with and killed police officers, voter indimidation etc..

You do understand it'd be very appropriate for the FBI to infiltrate such groups, as they indicating they are currently doing now with 'far right' and other radical groups, especially those with wepaons.

Your characterization of 'assasination' is problematic. I wouldn't say Fred Hampton was so much assassinated. He and his buddies were involved in a shooting which killed police, very shortly thereafter the cops planned the raid to arrest them and two Panthers were killed. It seems that Fred was killed in cold blood. While this is obviously 'very illegal' - this is not the US Justice Department targetting someone, this is local Chicago/Oakland cops form of extra-judicial retribution for the gang killing of their colleagues. Again, not right, but something totally different what might be implied from 'assassination'. They killed cops, the cops got out of line and got revenge.

Very notably - these acts caused national attention and there was an enormous reaction. Information was made public, there was public and political furor, transparency etc..

All of this is some time ago, when central oversight was harder, when the violence was much higher, and where groups of various kinds (aka local cops, local Panther groups) would act independently from central control.

And in the grand scheme of 300 Million poeple, it's relatively small stuff.

Also, it's a good reason for not having a single power like J Edgar Hoover in charge of anything.

Finally, it should be noted that this was the start of the cold war, and the Soviets were absolutely funding totalitarian uprising around the world. Stalin direclty controlled 17% of the Bundestag during the Weimar. While obvoiusly not sufficient to cause 'The Big Bad Man' to rise, without it, 'The Big Bad Man' likely would have never existed. Afghanistan, Korea, Vietnam, Angola, Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua ... so much of the world ... was perturbed by very real, direct intervention from Soviet backed 'Marxist-Lenninist' groups. The 'Red Scare' was not a fantasty. It might have been overstated on some level, but it was a material 'existential' problem.

The same, continued tactics by Russians have landed us in an 'almost war' for the West in Ukraine today. Russian spies are all over Germany, Putin has corrupted so many people in Europe including literally former German Chancellors, Austrian, Hungarian leaders - the FBI exists so that this does not happen so brazenly in the the US and allied nations.

The FBI will step out of line again, just like all groups do, and there should be constant vigilance, but given the total independence of other branches, I'm not worried at all. There will always be whistleblowers, eventual transparency etc..

> You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you

~ Senator Chuck Schumer on why publicly criticizing the intelligence community is a poor choice for a politician

Something funny about the people who are less worried about US spying because there is “oversight” and they are ultimately “democratically controlled”: they seem to be the same people who have very high faith in them working correctly and not against them. So they are certainly not going to be the ones who keep them in check.

The 'problematic people' are those who do not have the capacity to realize the difference between authoritarian regimes and their internal apparatus, vs the need state security with oversight.

These people are usually naively driven by some kind of decontextualized political mindset, where the equate the arbitrary actions of some state far away, in same context as local governance, and a big dose of ultra liberal (classical) utopianism.

'The NSA is like Xi because they can spy on me'.

It's like saying 'Biden is as bad as Xi because ultimately the Police in the USA could arrest me and put me in prison for 70 years'.

It's barely theoretically true and it makes little sense to compare systems that have oversight and independent judiciary with those controlled by a Dictator.

It's good that the US has the ability to know which Russian stooges are giving money to would-be US presidents, or heading his presidential campaign. And good that the US can trace large sums of money floating out of FTX's Bahamian bank account into the hands of whoever, especially politicians.

If a student protester dissappears in the night because they made an online post critical of the governor - well, all of us will hear about it a few hours later.

You’re the one who brought up the strawman of good/bad and morality, buddy. People weren’t talking about which regime was better or worse. They were only talking about rational self-interest based on where they are located in the world.

(And also bringing up how no state actor only does bad things to bad people in order to dispute the typical “if you’ve got nothing to hide/have done no wrong then you have nothing to worry about”.)

ISIS is worse than a mall cop with a bully streak, but it makes more sense for me to worry about that mall cop while shopping at the mall than to worry about ISIS.

But there are very little chance that China cares about you, whereas your local intelligence agency may have a much more direct impact on you.

> but there's still better mechanisms for reigning them

If we learned anything from the last half-century, it's that this predicate is just comically wrong.