[dragonwriter]

> As the recently declassified FISC opinion shows, most of the NSA program is broadly within well-established law.

The recently declassified FISC opinion shows that the NSA had a pattern of lying to the FISC about what the NSA program actually did to get it approved as within the law by the FISC, but that most of the parts the FISC had managed to find out about at the time of the opinion were still within (in the FISC's view) existing law.

Of course, if the NSA was repeatedly caught misrepresenting material facts in non-adversarial proceedings where there is no opposing party to independently seek evidence, challenge evidence, etc., how much of what remains is also misrepresentation? We don't know, and even the FISC can't know, because they can't know what they haven't yet caught the NSA lying about, but they certainly know that the NSA is willing to lie -- including to FISC -- as long as they can get away with it.

And because of that, neither we nor FISC have any idea -- from the opinion or after it -- how much of the actual NSA program is even remotely justifiable under the law.

[rayiner]

Even if you assume the NSA was lying to the FISC, what does the solution look like? A program much like the existing one, with a stronger external check on ensuring domestic communications aren't collected? You appoint a Special Counsel in the DOJ to prosecute perjury by NSA analysts? You think that'll make Hacker News happy?

The technology crowd objects to electronic surveillance conceptually. I think a large portion don't even like the idea that Google and Facebook could be forced to hand over data pursuant to a real warrant or subpoena, and that's so well established I couldn't tell you what century it was when that power didn't exist.

[dragonwriter]

> Even if you assume the NSA was lying to the FISC

"Assume"? They were caught repeatedly lying to the FISC.

> what does the solution look like?

That's a hard question, but getting enough people even starting to think about it first requires getting recognition of the problem.

[rayiner]

It's a hard question, but the threshold issue is: how far is that solution from the status quo? If you start reasoning from the set of principles you can reasonably impute onto Obama just based on his politics, the answer is: not that far. And if you want to know why he doesn't seem that concerned about the whole situation, there's your answer.