[nickpsecurity]

"As opposed to voting for who, exactly?"

Early candidates running for the pacifist party, I guess, given I can't recall reading about anyone platforming against existence of intelligence gathering agency. Anyone who could or was running for office that believed America should be only major power post-Ww2 that didn't have spies. Enough votes that direction might have resulted in the dissolution of our intelligence agencies that were forming. And probably the dissolution of or great damage to our country later given the leaders would be acting blind. But you'd have a chance.

"Of course, it's easy to make up a world where it would sort of kind of make sense. That's not the one we're talking about, though."

We are talking about that kind of world. Are you saying there's no allies spying on us with potential economic/political results? Or that there's nobody that might threaten us? Both are ludicrous but such issues are at root of my claim that we need a spy agency. So, which do you reject?

[Nullabillity]

> Early candidates running for the pacifist party, I guess, given I can't recall reading about anyone platforming against existence of intelligence gathering agency. Anyone who could or was running for office that believed America should be only major power post-Ww2 that didn't have spies. Enough votes that direction might have resulted in the dissolution of our intelligence agencies that were forming. And probably the dissolution of or great damage to our country later given the leaders would be acting blind. But you'd have a chance.

So you agree that such a spy agency was, in fact, not voted in.

[nickpsecurity]

The forerunners were created in secret for use against enemies during the World War's under Presidents voted in. The people's voted-in Congress representatives that made them official with more authority. Then people kept voting-in even more that kept them over time with no major push to vote out intelligence agencies. Just reform their bad behaviors on occasion.

So, yes, they were voted in and maintained through the elected representatives. That's how a representational democracy works. There was also no pushback strong enough to affect an election and dissolve an intelligence agency. They'd be diminished or gone had that happened.

So, voters wanted the situation and it's here. They can make it go away but it's still here. So much for your hypothesis.

[Nullabillity]

Representative "democracy" means that you can't say that the people wanted a specific policy, only that they considered some person (and their ELECTION platform, which has just about nothing to do with how they'd actually behave in office) the least awful of the given options.

As you said yourself, it was created in secret as a reactionary policy (because those always work out great!), so there was no possible oversight or popular approval.

[nickpsecurity]

People knew about spying. Mostly supported it. Never voted against a politician that did in significant scale. That's direct democracy reinforcing representational democracy. QED.

[MichaelBurge]

I think Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul wants to rein them in. I actually gave Rand Paul some money for this T-shirt:

https://store.randpaul.com/index.php/the-nsa-knows-contest-w...

Rand Paul had to drop out for lack of interest.

[nickpsecurity]

Apathetic democracy in action. I dropped much of my activism for the same reason. Even when in their perspective, getting Americans to act on protecting their rights is like slogging uphill through molasses.

Nice shirt, though. :)