Comment

WaPo: "When He Said He Had Access to Every CIA Station Around the World, He's Lying"

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Targetpractice6/10/2013 11:50:52 pm PDT

re: #86 gunnison

We do know that the government lies to us. It’s too well documented to be debatable outside of asylums.
So does the UK government lie to the Brits. And so on.
Some lie more that others, obviously, as can be demonstrated by trying to look up Tianamen Square on a Chinese ISP.
But the principle is nothing new and has ever been thus.

Am I suggesting dismantling the intel services. No. In this loony world we need them. I don’t see that as debatable either.

But I don’t think we have to sit around a just suck it up when (not if, when, for the reasons of “gravity” I talked about upthread) those services overstep their legal traces.
The question of how you force honest on the government is a problem that’s bedeviled the world since forever, and was the major concern of the Founding Fathers.
Their best shot was the Constitution and it’s almost immediate amendments in the Bill of Rights. They also, many of them, spoke at length about sacrificing freedom in the name of security. They worried about it because they were politicians and men of the world and so they too knew what a lying bunch of snakes various government functionaries can be when it’s in their interests to do so.
So I’m kinda partial to that approach. I’m not a mindless literalist, or original intent, but I’m happy with the idea that I, and you, should be secure in our effects and in our privacy unless a warrant is obtained via probable cause from a judge who is beholden to nobody but blind justice herself.

I don’t think that’s where we are right now, do you?

Personally, I believe you an idealist, one who thinks there must be some way to have your cake and eat it too. That if we just put the right safeguards in place, the government can’t violate them in the course of their work. But Frank’s right, there’s those who are going to find ways to game the system, that’s also something that has existed as long as government’s have. For every layer of protection we put in place, there will be ways around it, whether it be finding a sympathetic judge, fudging the paperwork, or just “forgetting” to mention something until the intrusion has already happened. The only real safety you have is in putting place ways to punish those that do fuck with the rules. It’s beyond gullible to believe that, if you just make the next law more “secure,” they won’t get around it.