> with intent or reason to believe that it is to be used to the injury of the United States
There are two versions of the United States.
1. The People of. The ones that benefit from whistleblowers. They are not injured when classified information is distributed - they get valuable insight they don't normally get into the doings of their employees (government officials that take their salary from taxes). The ones upon whose whims the government has power, and allegedly upon whose whims that power can be revoked.
2. The Government of. This is the actual entity of power in the USA, and probably has been forever (though the way the Executive branch reacted to union riots makes me wonder - it was genuinely concerned it was about to be deposed, I wonder if that was a valid fear?) This is injured when word gets out about it breaking its own laws - it makes the USA look bad, it destroys trust and thus the ability for the government to maintain control of the people, etc. This is a living creature and that's what many 2nd amendmenters don't seem to realize, that the government of the USA isn't The People of, it's an organism that will maintain its form by any means necessary. Legal ones are the safest, illegal and immoral ones if needs must. Anybody challenging this power is an enemy of #2, even if they aren't an enemy of #1. Great examples are some of our industry's favorite persons of interest, namely Snowden, Manning. Back in the day it was Civil Rights activists (note I'm not drawing a comparison between current leaks and that era, just saying it's another example of enemies of #2 but not #1).
As per the article, the line "be used to the injury of the USA" is obviously being interpreted by the current administration to mean "to the injury of #2" above.
There is a dichotomy in the government between elected representatives and unelected bureaucrats. The "deep state" exists but it is not nearly as malicious as popularly portrayed. At worst, those who make their careers as unelected bureaucrats and federal officers may occasionally be self-protecting and rationalize their decisions in terms of the trolley problem as for the greater national good, and are overly confident in their ability to discern what that is.
Most unelected bureaucrats only have a job at the whims of elected representatives. Your vote for the bureaucrats, via proxy of your representative.
I'm not sure why people have a hard time grasping this concept, when they grasp the concept of representative democracy (Where you vote for new legislature, or for supreme court appointments, or for executive actions, via proxy of voting for a representative of congress, or a president.)
I can only assume that it's a defense mechanism, where you can blame the boogieman of the deep state when the candidate you voted for does not deliver us to a land of milk and honey, and turns out to be an all-around shitty human being.
This has been on a trend of less and less true as Congress continues to abdicate its responsibilities to bureaucrats in the Executive office.
It doesn't matter which party they vote for as much of the day to day lives of citizens is determined by people who never stood for election, and barely answer to someone who did.
Congress is 535 people and is filled with relatively little expertise[1]. The United States has a population of 330M and is the largest and most advanced economy in the world. Of course Congress has to delegate to executive agencies. This is not abdication.
Abdication is letting lobbyists and "model legislation" outfits author the laws which legislators have been known to almost literally just rubber stamp.
[1] Just to pick on one representative, because I'm familiar with him, this guy has no college degree past an AA, and his career experience is running a restaurant and real estate development. I would hope he'd delegate running the country to someone more experienced than himself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Meadows_(North_Carolina_p...
As the guy who said "we are going to send Mr. Obama home to Kenya" I doubt Meadows has a very broad-minded approach to delegating responsibility to those with more experience and expertise.
I wouldn't automatically discount the value that a restauranteur or real estate developer could bring to office. At least it would bring a bit of diversity of opinion compared to the roomful of lawyers. Though in this case, we're experiencing the opposite problem: people who have absolutely no idea how legislation is done or how the government functions, and who cannot be convinced that they're not experts in every domain they touch.
It would be nice if people came to DC with the intent of listening, discussing, and coming to conclusions together. But the system is adversarial by design, and grows more adversarial with each passing year.
> Congress is 535 people and is filled with relatively little expertise.
That's like calling the Executive Branch one person (currently filled by someone with extremely little expertise).
Congress includes bureaucratic organizations staffed by career experts like the Government Accountability Office. They used to have the Office of Technology Assessment until it was killed off by ideologues. They also enjoy ready access to experts from the various agencies.
> Of course Congress has to delegate to executive agencies. This is not abdication.
They've very clearly abdicated their responsibilities to the Executive in things like war powers and surveillance oversight. They are supposed to serve as a co-equal branch of government and as a check on Executive power.
Hogwash. The elected officials absolutely have control of the institutions that they are responsible for.
“Deep State” nonsense is a trope that is just plain dumb. Brought to you by the same people who cry and whine about judicial activism and appoint people specifically to change the law.
Those bureaucrats are appointed at the whim of the President, and occasionally through a senate confirmation, both of which are elected offices.
> and barely answer to someone who did.
Their hiring is done by elected officials. Their employment and power, aside from a few positions, which are fixed-term, is contingent on the whims of those elected officials.
Just because Congress has been very busy with abdicating all responsibility for governing the country to the executive (Works great when Obama's in charge, because you can blame him for the milk going sour, works great when Trump's in charge, because he can take all the bad PR), doesn't mean that the bureaucrats don't answer to anyone.
No, hiring is largely done by other civil service personnel. The Secretary of State isn't deciding who works in the cafeteria - there's a number of tiers of career employees between him and that decision.
There has been a trend of Congress delegating more and more powers of legislation and enforcement to the executive branch. FCC, NOAA, TSA, CIA, NSA, FBI, ATF, DIA, USCIS and others are children the executive branch and mostly operate without interacting with congress. Agencies like FCC and NOAA actually have the power to make "rules" which we can be punished for breaking, and the system for approving these rules contains minimal checks and balances.
> Most unelected bureaucrats only have a job at the whims of elected representatives. Your vote for the bureaucrats, via proxy of your representative.
This is true for political appointees - ambassadors, Cabinet secretaries, etc. - but much less so for the civil service, where folks like State Department diplomatic staff or FBI agents tend to serve multi-decade careers under many different administrations.
They only keep their jobs through the administrations when they do as they are told. If the president wants to change a department's policy, and the department pushes back, he can fire as many directors as he needs to.
> The reason he can’t is simple: Unlike his employees at the Trump Organization, about a third of federal workers belong to unions. And those unions have negotiated certain job protections for workers, which includes a process that gives workers a chance to improve their job performance before they are terminated.
There are two versions of people in the United States: statists who manipulate public opinion to empower centralized authority (#2, commonly using “failure in much debated framework will be end of nation!” These days its neoliberal economics, used to be religion) and those who want more freedom from such manipulations of our agency.
Not saying either is right or wrong, but I def align personally with the “more freedom from pls” camp.
The governments policing authority should be pointed at itself alone, and let the results of that trickle down.
But we prefer to conflate stable society needs with a goal of paramount importance (currently “free market trade”) that will implode indeed our mental model of reality if the literal world should have to change.
But it won’t implode humanity itself unless we do it to ourselves.
We need to have a sober debate about enabling more people to escape this daily grind. We’re actively instigating anxiety, mindless resource exhaustion (while pretending financial measures of efficiency alone are achieved literally), living some socialized Stockholm syndrome, sympathizing with the aristocratic captors who are plainly indifferent, because they’re subjected to the same struggle too (but not really)!
Not replying to all you said, but definitely agree - I don't see people as being excited about the limits of our abilities. It's more like people are excited about getting a new Mustang or whichever Ghettoblaster vehicle and annoying others because they are bored and have nothing existential to think about during the day. I don't know how often I just think about humanity or the mind's limits or exploring other times and places growing up - just utter fascination. Now it's just when is the next GTA coming out.
Isn’t it up to the people to decide how much daylight they think there is between #1 and #2? When the US topples foreign dictators, is that justified by saying we’re doing it for the good of their people, as distinguished from their government?
It’s notable that in weeks of democratic debates hitting all sorts of issues, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone get traction by talking about surveillance.
How are whistleblowers a threat? People like Donald Rumsfeld ought to be tried for war crimes. The "annexation" of Hawaii was both a war crime and a violation of the constitution (read: crime). All of these are common knowledge, well documented, yet there are very few people who are actually doing anything about it.
An event which laid the foundation for many of the economic issues facing Hawaii today. Resolving this issue would enrich the lives of many people currently living in Hawaii.
Are you suggesting we should just abandon the state? I'm sure there are a few people who feel that way in HI, but I don't think that's the prevailing desire. I suspect doing so would make things markedly worse for them.
I would like to ask some questions, just to make sure I am doing a good job of understanding what you want to say. Who is "we"? Who is "them"? What is meant by "abandon"?
Hawaii is one of the most unstable unsecure countries on earth and it has been made that way under U.S. occupation. It is so heavily dependent on outside resources that if the giant robots that unload cargo in Honolulu ever shut down, a massive humanitarian crisis will ensue in hours. Once upon a time, the land supported a population of 2 million people with no outside help.
Money is worthless in a place like Hawaii where proper land and marine management are the sole requirements for ensuring the well-being of the community. Food production is crippled as the land is destroyed to make way for suburbs and shopping malls. The "state" government routinely approves projects which divert water away from prime farmlands to fill swimming pools and irrigate massive golf courses covered in invasive grass. In Kihei they're teaching school kids that their land is a dry wasteland when everyone's grandparents remember that it was wetlands before the water was diverted.
Hosting the U.S. military has made many places in Hawaii incapable of sustaining life as they heavily pollute any area they occupy. They broke the water table on Kahoolawe and now no one can live there for thousands of years. They are currently allowing jet fuel to leak into the aquifer under red hill.
>This is a living creature and that's what many 2nd amendmenters don't seem to realize, that the government of the USA isn't The People of, it's an organism that will maintain its form by any means necessary. Legal ones are the safest, illegal and immoral ones if needs must.
Speaking from experience with them, they seem to think the 2nd amendment must necessarily be respected by the very government they think is allowing them the guns to threaten said government with in the first place. That's the cognitive hole I'm pointing to - if they stockpile weapons to eventually potentially overthrow the US government, they must do so knowing that it will be illegal to do so regardless - the 2nd amendment won't protect them in that case, and is thus practically useless for what they think it's useful for.
AKA, the life of a militiaman that intends to use weapons to overthrow the USA is, to the USA, the life of a terrorist/rebel/enemy of the state. It's not a constitutionally protected state of existence.
Technically, the government #2 doesn't "allow" us rights, they are given to us by the constitution of which government #2 is ultimately bound to. The same fight happened against our right to free speech with the Sedition Act, of which our right to criticize the government ultimately survived. Citizens are still fighting to keep our right of privacy, the rights of the press, and of course the right to bear arms, among others.
Having said that, the second amendment, as it stands with government #2, is ultimately another check and balance, as is freedom of press, and speech. As with nuclear armaments and M.A.D., arms don't have to be used to be a deterrent. There are many examples in history where armed civilians were effective against much stronger militaries.
The 2A doesn’t protect the use of arms against the government, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard a 2A advocate suggest that. The point is to prevent the government from disarming the populace before such action might be required.
Actually, no, the point is to prevent the government from deciding it needs to rely on professional police and military forces for day-to-day defense against domestic and international security threats, instead relying on ad hoc levies from the general population for those purposes, making it unthinkable both in terms of capacity and inclination that the “government security services” could suppress the general civilian population, since the former as a separate group by profession, class, etc.—but for very small standing cadres providing institutional knowledge and continuity—would not exist. But that ship has rather sailed, and the 2A failed in its purpose, but it still hangs around, and even it's defenders have forgotten what it was there for.
As I read through I didn't think there was too much to this - if we're going to have big classified databases then strong auditing is absolutely essential and I'm glad it's happening (people selling the data in them to corporations and governments is absolutely a valid concern).
I'm happy I kept reading though, because I thought this bit down near the bottom was insightful:
Authentication, which often involves sharing information about the contents of a forthcoming story with the government, is a common journalistic practice that allows the government to weigh in on any risks involved in publishing the material of which the journalist may not be aware. By turning that process into a trap for journalists and sources, the government is sacrificing an opportunity to safeguard its legitimate interests and tell its side of the story.
> On August 8, 2014, dozens of FBI agents raided Hale’s house with guns drawn and searched his computer and flash drives. This all happened during the Obama administration, which declined to file charges. Five years later, Trump’s Justice Department revived the case.
The article fails to point out that it was the Obama administration that really turned up the heat on whistleblowers:
Plus the expansion of power and side stepping of normal legal process by the executive branch became normalized under the George Bush administration which was well documented by one of his top White House lawyers, which he well documented in the book ‘The Terror Presidency’ and who later started the excellent Lawfare blog.
This included a big expansion of the black budget agencies and their power since it was the one thing the exec has strong control over and little public blowback because of the secret courts and classified nature.
> Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.
And so on, and so forth. Let's not pretend this didn't happen and rewrite history just to engage in partisan scapegoating. Let's not normalize revisionism, too.
(edit: I say that because your comment was greyed out when I started writing my reply, which is just intended to elaborate on what you said)
I don't think the surveillance systems can be put back in the bottle. The technology is always getting cheaper and the economic and political benefits are clear.
If you accept that premise, I think we have to develop systems that are humane and self-referential.
Humane constant surveillance is an oxymoron. Surveillance has a chilling effect on even just developing as thinking person, so, if you accept the premise (for which there is no actual hard reason), you can have a humane system, maybe, but no humans in it.
Even good thoughts sometimes require incubation in private. Mass surveillance restricts learning, communication, and down the road thinking, to such a degree, it's like outlawing books with more than 10 pages. Humans as we cherish them today -- ones with agency and spontaneity -- cannot exist in such conditions, meaningful social progress will stop.
Let me be clear that I am not advocating for constant ubiquitous surveillance. Only I don't see a way to avoid it happening. There may be a severe disruption in civilization what with the climate and all, but one day "there will be lemon-soaked paper napkins."
At best you can try to limit who has the surveillance tech, but to do that you have to have the surveillance tech, eh? The problem is circular.
So, since we cannot (I believe) do without the surveillance, can we remove the chilling effect?
For example, in Star Trek the computer always knew where everyone was (unless the script called for a mysterious disappearance) and no one felt stifled, eh?
We already have a warrant system in place that is more than adequate for protecting privacy and excessive dragnet fishing expeditions.
I don’t see why modern surveillance is allowed to bypass these laws in the name of security or w/e goal. When it’s clear investigators have more than enough to work with, just justify it first in court to a justice or judge.
Secret courts are extremely dangerous precedent too and basically defeats the whole purpose.
None of the things you linked to use the traditional warrant system. Particularly the whole FISA system and our terrorist laws here in Canada which sidestepped criminal courts entirely.
Civil society outnumbers spooks by how much, and who needs who, who is paying for who? Simply withdrawing support and tax money could end it rather quickly.
I can't tell you how to organize people to do that, but it could actually just happen anytime, just a fluke, everybody wakes up in the morning and thinks enough is enough. High-tech requires constant, expensive maintenance, It's not like, say, a giant stone structure you can leave unattended for a few years or even decades.
> everybody wakes up in the morning and thinks enough is enough.
And then? Do they tear down the machines and all the "spooks" are tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail? How do the farm animals know the pigs are not becoming humans? ("Animal Farm" reference, in case it's not clear.) How do you know bad guys aren't building and using spook-tech?
For example, do the drug cartels voluntarily give up their gear in this scenario?
Yeah, but not many persons in them would want it, and no person in the world would be exempt from it. It could very well be that even though everybody would be kinda unhappy, we wouldn't know why, or that it could be different, we might not have the words for our discomfort, etc.
But I completely agree that a world without human agency wouldn't mean it would be a dead world. It could be bustling with activity, but the individual agents could still be very repressed or outright empty, automatons if you will.
When I speculate about such extreme extrapolations, the one ray of hope I have is that we might colonize the galaxy, and something could gets away, by accident, be it people or just organic matter. But until then it could be a very long and very dark stretch.
Of course, that's assuming the universe isn't teeming with life anyway, in which case I don't think even the supermegaborg could conquer all of it. I'm just worried about our place in it, if we get to experience it or not, how and as who. FWIW I genuinely am, it's not just as a hyperbolic argument against mass surveillance (in combination with automation and military robotics, I would add).
Conservatism should be about maintaining checks and balances that keep the government honest. IMO this is something that even Trump's supporters should be concerned about, especially if they themselves lean a bit libertarian.
The most profitable central principle for a party of corporations is deregluation of _industry_. Scaling up of the military and authoritarianism is a profitable choice as well. Those are two main incentives of many conservative parties and groups. The unifying principle of conservatism is: survival of the fittest. The strongest, toughest country, business, and individual has the right to survive. Helping and trying to understand other countries, situations, people? Irrational, weak.
>The unifying principle of conservatism is: survival of the fittest
This isn't just a principle of a party but a natural law. This is displayed in liberal politics also. Life is a fight using powers as a utility, hard and soft powers. Liberals tend to bank on using the powers of certain ideologies, many as vague as conservative ideologies, in order for those ideologies to survive. Some use the soft power of love which may prove sometimes to be fittest when that power gathers enough political support, some use the hard powers of war and competition which may seem fittest in some occasions. And of course, love and warfare is seen and used in both/all parties even when they don't seem to realize it, sometimes hypocritically on the surface but often when you look deep enough, you see the forces of natural law shining through and it's not just love and war against each other, it's just organisms which may be ideological, biological, etc competing in what some would view as a thermodynamic machine racing towards entropic neutrality.
But to say only conservatives employ 'survival of the fittest' is such a vast simplification.
If everyday human life must echo the eons-long process of evolution, can we say the same for other natural laws? Gravity is a natural law; so people inevitably bow to their superiors? People bowing to each other is gravity shining through! But capillary action is another natural law, so it means people inevitably rise up to best their superiors...
When my cat cuddles up to me on the bed, this natural 'life is a fight' law falls to pieces. Beings are capable of generosity without a gaining idea, and most of us have encountered this as part of our lives. I have found that lovingkindness and compassion are boundless in every sentient being's heart.
I think self-identified 'liberals' generally don't have any concrete principles about power itself. As long as it is illegal to not treat all people equally, liberals seem to think government power should increase to the extent that it can relieve suffering and foster generosity. Parts of the left, with its civil libertarians and Proudhon anarchists, think about power in a deeper and more heterodox way...
> When my cat cuddles up to me on the bed, this natural 'life is a fight' law falls to pieces. Beings are capable of generosity without a gaining idea, and most of us have encountered this as part of our lives.
devil's advocate: your cat does this so that you continue to feed/protect/pay attention to it.
you may not like that negative point of view, but it seems like a reasonable strategy for survival in a really tough world pre-modern era (still is tough for many).
Research shows domestic animals build a bond with those that feed and shelter them. Sorry dude, but your cat doesnt love or care about you beyond its basic need fulfillment. And you care for it because it makes you feel needed and wanted. Altruism is not a real construct imho.
The only thing conservative about Trump are his judicial picks, which is because he agreed to allow the Federalist Society to give him screened/approved candidates.
I would not say Trump's a fascist, but there are some really bad elements of fascism Trump does embrace.
He does not believe in the checks and balances of government, preferring the executive branch to not have to answer to directives from other branches. This is at least the message he sends out to his base when he tweets that he'll ignore a Supreme Court ruling or a House subpoena.
He does not believe that the justice system should be independent of the executive branch, admitting that the Russia investigation was a factor in firing an FBI director and having instructed members of his staff to try to interfer in investigations, if the Mueller report is to be believed.
He places a very strong emphasis on national unity and uses language which excludes people from this national identity.
Now, there are plenty of things he does though that is incompatible with the strict definition of fascism. He clearly does not favor a mixed economy and instead prefers not to regulate it (but he does favor national self sufficiency, which was a big part of early 20th century fascism, but not even close to degree of "if the nation needs something we don't have, let's expand"), he has not tried to use the education system to strengthen the national identity (in contrast to Russia or Turkey for example), has not engaged in "moral hygiene" preachings and ... I could go on, he does not embrace all the core tenets of fascism but he does incorporate several troubling elements of it.
One can argue that those representatives who claim to be fiscally conservative but vote for unfunded liabilities are not, in fact, fiscally conservative.
You can't say "you're not a scotsman because I don't like your actions or opinions". You can say "you're not a scotsman because you're neither from scotland, nor have any particular tie to it."
Similarly fiscal conservatism has an actual definition, and it's totally vaild to say "you don't adhere to the definition", as long as you're not applying spurious constraints.
It's a political party. If people that identify X vote for you, who identifies X and votes in a block with other people that identify X for matters that attract Identity X voters to said party... then you don't get to pull the No True Scotsman. You are the party of X, whether or not some arbitrary philosophy party X is supposed to uphold is consistent with the party's actions.
According to James Risen, one of the reporters that the Obama DOJ went after, "the [Obama] administration has prosecuted nine cases involving whistle-blowers and leakers, compared with only three by all previous administrations combined".[1]
Here's more context from Risen's article, which was written in December, 2016:
> Criticism of Mr. Obama’s stance on press freedom, government transparency and secrecy is hotly disputed by the White House, but many journalism groups say the record is clear. Over the past eight years, the administration has prosecuted nine cases involving whistle-blowers and leakers, compared with only three by all previous administrations combined. It has repeatedly used the Espionage Act, a relic of World War I-era red-baiting, not to prosecute spies but to go after government officials who talked to journalists.
> Under Mr. Obama, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. have spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to other reporters to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify in criminal cases.
> I experienced this pressure firsthand when the administration tried to compel me to testify to reveal my confidential sources in a criminal leak investigation. The Justice Department finally relented — even though it had already won a seven-year court battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court to force me to testify — most likely because they feared the negative publicity that would come from sending a New York Times reporter to jail.
one thing i've been thinking about is one issue political parties.
"our mission, once elected, is to..."
US example: thinking about medical care here: what if a political party came out and said, "we don't care about marijuana, gay marriage, federal debt, ...: only getting medical care for all.
you'll say, well that's impossible, people won't vote for them without knowing e.g. what their stance on abortion is.
but... i'm convinced those wedge issues are what keep the 2 party system intact. they'll just ruin you by pitting the other k % of people against you as mortal enemies, demonizing and alienating those voters. easy example is abortion, who probably have a lot of bright line voters.
anyway, it'd be really tough, as would any new political party in the US, would be attacked endlessly by the RepubliCrats. but, seems like an interesting thought nonetheless.
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the politics of Herbert Hoover if you'd call him (or any of the republicans like him) authoritarian.
Since I'm being downvoted (probably appropriately for a half-assed answer), some clarification: Mr. Hoover was demonstrably happy to (ab)use the powers of the state against both political and civilian domestic opponents.
I actually don't mean to single him out in particular, but more to point to the overall trend.
As an aside, the fact that the FBI building is still named after Hoover says something about the values of that organization (yes, I know they passed a law giving it that name which would make it tricky to rename).
This is based on the incorrect impression I was working on when making that argument, corrected elsewhere in this thread--Hoover the president and Hoover the first head of the FBI were different men.
I assumed you were talking about J. Edgar Hoover since the president and the guy who founded the vacuum company don't seem very relevant to a discussion about surveillance and censorship.
Bush ushered in the modern surveillance state. Since him, the differences of the 2 parties has blurred insomuch while the government may vary from administration from administration as to what services the federal government as a whole provides, but one thing is for sure: it will always be watching you no matter what. The alphabet agencies will never relinquish their newfound surveillance powers.
It's pretty likely that your and my (dis)taste for particular politicians and parties overlaps, but keep in mind that only one single senator voted against the passage of the Patriot Act as originally presented. My strong suspicion is that the association of W. with the modern surveillance state, while accurate, has far more to do with timing than with party.
My Constitutional Law professor was big on not just exploring the legal analysis of cases but on making sure we understood the social/historical context at the time decisions were made. He used to tell us fear is the biggest threat to freedom because nothing erodes the constitution as quickly as a public panic. At the time I honestly thought he was being a little dramatic but seeing all of the things we allow the government to do in the name of "fighting terrorism" I realize he had a pretty good point.
Of course it was timing. A Democrat in office during 9/11 would have made no difference. Nobody was seeing straight at that time. Everyone wanted the federal government to do something about those darn terrorists. With the PATRIOT Act passed, it was like that quote from the Stars Wars prequels: "So this is how liberty dies: with thunderous applause..."
They wouldn't willingly but they can be forced, the agencies aren't natural phenomena they exist because they're legally allowed to, it just takes a greater political will that isn't isolated to one political party, because from the TLA's POV these programs help them do their jobs and politically it's easier to be seen 'doing something' about threats than it is to say 'some threats are only counterable by fundamentally sacrificing freedoms that shouldn't be sacrificed.' This is partially because the sacrificed freedoms are less tangible and real than the threats, it's hard to quantify the trade-off of living in a surveillance state to most people vs the idea that people could just come in one day and blow up/shoot up a store/concert/festival you happen to be in.
There is a contradiction: "Although Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, doesn’t have access to the content of those backed-up messages, Google and Apple do." and
" 'iMessage communications are end-to-end encrypted and Apple has no way to decrypt iMessage data when it is in transit between devices,' the guidelines state."
I would say it is the other way around, FB and Google can access the content of messages, Apple can not.
They may be referring to messages which were sent as end to end encrypted, but were later backed up in Google drive or Dropbox etc. in plaintext. This is something I have done in the past.
There are two versions of the United States.
1. The People of. The ones that benefit from whistleblowers. They are not injured when classified information is distributed - they get valuable insight they don't normally get into the doings of their employees (government officials that take their salary from taxes). The ones upon whose whims the government has power, and allegedly upon whose whims that power can be revoked.
2. The Government of. This is the actual entity of power in the USA, and probably has been forever (though the way the Executive branch reacted to union riots makes me wonder - it was genuinely concerned it was about to be deposed, I wonder if that was a valid fear?) This is injured when word gets out about it breaking its own laws - it makes the USA look bad, it destroys trust and thus the ability for the government to maintain control of the people, etc. This is a living creature and that's what many 2nd amendmenters don't seem to realize, that the government of the USA isn't The People of, it's an organism that will maintain its form by any means necessary. Legal ones are the safest, illegal and immoral ones if needs must. Anybody challenging this power is an enemy of #2, even if they aren't an enemy of #1. Great examples are some of our industry's favorite persons of interest, namely Snowden, Manning. Back in the day it was Civil Rights activists (note I'm not drawing a comparison between current leaks and that era, just saying it's another example of enemies of #2 but not #1).
As per the article, the line "be used to the injury of the USA" is obviously being interpreted by the current administration to mean "to the injury of #2" above.