[rayiner]

> Every national government in the civilized world needs an intelligence-gathering agency that can operate with some degree of operational secrecy.

> I think Congress is unsure about how to proceed on this issue because not all members of Congress are of one mind about what is best for the country in administration of NSA.

> The other reason I don't believe this HN hivemind theory of politics is that I by no means assume that everyone in politics lacks personal integrity.

None of these points should be controversial, but oh well.

[belorn]

Let me add a few others:

1) Every nation should protect their citizens against intelligence gathering from outsiders. 2) Intelligence-gathering must be subject of the rule of law. 3) Military forces must be under democratic control.

Surely, neither of those are controversial either?

[mpyne]

No, not even in the U.S. where all 3 conditions are in effect (unless you mean to quibble about oligarchy vs. democracy, in which case that's a whole 'nother level of argument).

[belorn]

I guess you could argue the definition of "protect", but sabotaging security standards and hording security vulnerabilities is not it.

And if the rule of law require says every citizen is protected against warrant-less searches, you can not "steal" personal information about those citizens when it rest in care of a service provider.

But I take it that what is controversial is not that every national government in the civilized world needs an intelligence-gathering agency that can operate with some degree of operational secrecy. The controversy how an intelligence-gathering agency may behave.

[jjoonathan]

They aren't. They wouldn't even be controversial at the EFF.

The controversy stems from cost/benefit judgements on individual spy programs AND from the fact that Clapper perjured himself in front of congress and the american people. The latter is a far more clearcut issue than the former, and it's what we were talking about before the lawyer came in and changed the subject.

[bediger4000]

Has there been any cost/benefit analysis on any of the spy programs that Snowden's leaks have revealed? It doesn't look like it to me. For instance, it should also be uncontroversial that universal surveillance only ends up with an intimidated, fearful citizenry, and a total lack of innovation, but oh well. For those reasons alone, we should probably start out against universal or dragnet surveillance.

[tptacek]

Wait, I don't understand how you can simultaneously believe that the NSA has actually built an apparatus of universal surveillance and that universal surveillance leads to an intimidated citizenry and total lack of innovation.

Which is it? Is the NSA restrained in their surveillance, or does surveillance not actually ruin innovation?

[mikeash]

I agree on the first two, but I have a hard time believing that anyone in national office possesses any personal integrity. Perhaps maybe one or two, but that's it.