> he mentions in his book that although he wanted to reform mass surveillance, it looked a little different once he was actually responsible for people’s safety.
This is a cowardly excuse. It's another way of saying that if you reform mass surveillance you'll be blamed for anything bad that subsequently happens, regardless of whether the mass surveillance would have prevented it. And bad things happen on a regular basis with or without mass surveillance, so then the politically risk-averse move is to not solve the problem you promised to solve and not expose yourself.
Which is cowardly specifically because the candidate's original position was correct. You can solve crimes without mass surveillance, or prevent them by reducing poverty etc. If you do those things then the chances of something bad happening go down instead of up.
And it will still not be zero -- it won't be zero no matter what you do -- but in that case you're only worried about adversarial pundits blaming you for things that weren't your fault, and adversarial pundits are going to do that regardless.
This is a cowardly excuse. It's another way of saying that if you reform mass surveillance you'll be blamed for anything bad that subsequently happens, regardless of whether the mass surveillance would have prevented it. And bad things happen on a regular basis with or without mass surveillance, so then the politically risk-averse move is to not solve the problem you promised to solve and not expose yourself.
Which is cowardly specifically because the candidate's original position was correct. You can solve crimes without mass surveillance, or prevent them by reducing poverty etc. If you do those things then the chances of something bad happening go down instead of up.
And it will still not be zero -- it won't be zero no matter what you do -- but in that case you're only worried about adversarial pundits blaming you for things that weren't your fault, and adversarial pundits are going to do that regardless.