| Please provide references for these claims: operate without enough oversight This is your opinion. FISA Court exists for a reason, and is there to protect the rights of Americans. frequently flaunt the law (and ignore the constitution) No idea how you're getting to this assumption, unless you're taking clickbait at face value. There have been contested judgements regarding the legal justification for metadata collection. That hardly constitutes "ignoring the constitution." I'm also curious as to your claim of frequency. eroding the rights of the people they're supposedly serving NSA cannot collect information about American citizens, only FBI can. I believe NSA can only be involved with a specific warrant issued in response to an imminent or direct threat, but even then, I think it has to be FBI. The military is completely different This is the point I'm trying to make to you: NSA is the military. One more time. NSA is the military. Excuse the gross oversimplification, but NSA provides intelligence to other branches of the military so that they can function in the most informed way possible. If you "can't possibly fault the soldiers" who are "on the ground" and "generally following orders," I'm going to assume that you are someone that supports keeping US soldiers as safe as possible. Yet, you seem to delight in the notion that the NSA would be shut down for a week, which would directly endanger those lives. How would you rectify this? |
Your assertion that the NSA can't collect data about American Citizens would be great if it were true. There are pretty convincing arguments that they aren't abiding by at least the spirit of the law and that their lawyers are actively engaged in weasel-wording away the restrictions. I'm sorry but collecting the meta-data of American citizens is still collecting data (meta is a sub-class).
You've got a pretty strong opinion of the agency ... I'm guessing that you work for the PsyOps division. Or perhaps you're just a youngin' who hasn't been around the block quite enough times. And don't get me wrong - I've had a great life as a U.S. citizen. I gained my political awareness during the Reagan presidency and was at that point very proud of everything my country did - I didn't know how much was happening outside the view of the TV screen that I wouldn't be proud of - or how many other parts of our history could be questioned.
I'm certainly not advocating anything beyond having exactly this kind of discussion. It's not my fault that the NSA, CIA and U.S Government are viewed so negatively - they have the reputation that they deserve. I can understand why the rest of the world hates us but I hope we can decide to change our behavior.