<story><title>Obama Can’t Confirm If Courts Ever Rejected Spying Requests</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/17/in-first-nsa-interview-obama-cant-confirm-if-courts-ever-rejected-spying-requests/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>weland</author><text>Dear God, it&amp;#x27;s like I&amp;#x27;m a kid again.&lt;p&gt;I didn&amp;#x27;t grow up in the US; when I was a kid, we didn&amp;#x27;t have this kind of interviews on TV. For one thing, most of the TV shows they aired was propaganda, and it was so utterly boring most of us didn&amp;#x27;t bother. The newspapers, on the other hand, carried propaganda along with the news, so you kindda had to read it, too, if you were to know what&amp;#x27;s happening. The smarter folks could even read between the lines.&lt;p&gt;This one struck the most sensible chord:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; And what that does is that does not apply to any U.S. person. Has to be a foreign entity.&lt;p&gt;Entities. Not individuals, not groups, but entities. If you&amp;#x27;re an American citizen, you&amp;#x27;re cool. If you&amp;#x27;re a foreign entity, you&amp;#x27;re preeeetty much either a ladybug or a human, either way, it&amp;#x27;s pretty much the same thing.&lt;p&gt;This was Communist speak for non-Communist (to be fair, it was the twisted kind of Soviet-inspired Communism). We had communist workers and teachers and housewives, but foreign elements. Our country had communist friends but the democratic entities weren&amp;#x27;t that friendly.&lt;p&gt;This defensive depersonalization makes it very easy to strip away ethics. Butchering unarmed civilians sounds a lot more horrifying than annihilating non-combatant, but dangerous entities.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The — because — the — first of all, Charlie, the number of requests are surprisingly small… number one. Number two, folks don’t go with a query unless they’ve got a pretty good suspicion.&lt;p&gt;This sounds very much like the kind of conversation that, at some point, was taking place between Soviet representatives and representatives of various other subordinated, but somewhat nasty countries of the Soviet block.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s the kind of stuff that was handed out to us during the talks about the Warszaw pact. Is it true that the Soviet Union has supreme command of all troops and can invade any territory, even that of its allies? Well, no, I mean, it wouldn&amp;#x27;t be an invasion. It&amp;#x27;s a trade-off we have do for our freedom: should the Revolution be abandoned in any of the member countries, the allied countries should intervene to restore the right values. That is why the Soviet Union has to have representatives at all levels, must be informed of every decision. It&amp;#x27;s one of those things we must concede for democracy -- we need to entrust our freedom to people who can protect it. Words like freedom, democracy, values and way of life were freely thrown in -- ours was the land of the brave and free, unlike that of the oppressed working-class friends living in imperialist, totalitarian states.&lt;p&gt;I shivered a bit when I read this.&lt;p&gt;Edit: BTW, just to practice my reading-between-the-lines muscle, my guess is that a) FISA hasn&amp;#x27;t turned down any request yet and b) the requests were summarily &amp;quot;reviewed&amp;quot; and approved, through a short process that should give legal backing. In other words, FISA isn&amp;#x27;t there to actually review the requests, it&amp;#x27;s there simply in order to fill in the paperwork that&amp;#x27;s needed in order to make the whole thing seem legitimate.&lt;p&gt;In the early days of the regime, we had something similar to this, too. The curious dudes submitted a request to a committee of representatives of the people -- the request was basically a form which said that the following people have highly suspicious activities that can be a threat to the security of our people, to the Revolution and the communist way of life we have so hardly fought for (actual fucking words!) and was recommended to be placed under surveillance. These were signed pretty much in bulk -- the representatives of the people usually signed a big list at the bottom. Later on, this was eventually dropped: complaining about paperwork was useless, and after a few years it became obvious complaining about paperwork was so dangerous that when it was no longer required, no one dared do anything about it.</text></comment>
<story><title>Obama Can’t Confirm If Courts Ever Rejected Spying Requests</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/17/in-first-nsa-interview-obama-cant-confirm-if-courts-ever-rejected-spying-requests/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>malandrew</author><text>The question I want to see asked is:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Obama, in the course of your day, you and your staff probably interact with many foreign diplomats and other persons which this system is likely to classify as 51% likely to be foreign. On top of that, the content of those conversation, depending on the topic at hand, is likely to include words that would trigger an alert. With this in mind, do you think it is acceptable that those in the NSA, many of whom may have a differing political affiliation than you, can read any correspondence flagged for review? Furthermore, how can any member of congress operate from a position of equality if they cannot have confidence that their communications could fall into the hands of their compatriots across the aisle that may have a different agenda?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;If the answer to those questions included a filter that excluded all members of the executive, legislative and judicial, the obvious follow up question would be, &amp;quot;Why are members of congress allowed this right, but not the citizens of this country?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I would also take comments he made on the Wikileaks Manning trove and present them as counterpoints to any rebuttal he has. I don&amp;#x27;t remember anything verbatim, but I remember him specifically addressing the importance of American diplomats being able to be secure in their communications to be able to carry out the roles for which they were appointed. This exact same argument can be applied to every single elected representative of the people and every official appointed by a duly elected representative.</text></comment>