The NSA today certainly has great power, but what evidence do we have that they are abusing it a way comparable to McCarthyism or the CIA in the 60's [1]?
* Either you do follow the news, but you are trolling out the actual issues at hand that have been raised, making which is very unproductive
* OR you do follow the news, and you purposefully blind yourself to the stories about the NSA for whatever reason (maybe you think everybody's a conspiratard, or you think all this stuff is fine, or...).
* OR you are blatantly lying to me here and don't actually follow the news. I don't deal with liars.
In none of those worlds is it worth replying to the question you just asked.
I'll be happy to take a correction, though. So go ahead.
I'm saying that, as far as I know after watching the news, the NSA has done nothing that's comparable to the historic examples of "secret lists of enemies of the state that public sector employers agree to not hire" or "attempting to drive a political figure to suicide".
The most egregious offense I've heard of (and this is not the NSA) is the harassment of Applebaum and the like at US borders. Based on Laura Poitras' public statements, this has stopped for her. I hope it has for Jacob as well, as I think that's a really obvious move in the right direction.
The rest of the news I don't find to be especially egregious violations. Perhaps we differ in world view w.r.t. the NSA and the role that it serves in our society - what do you see that role as being?
Just because they may not do it today, doesn't mean they won't tomorrow.
And just because there is no reliable evidence of systematic wrong-doings to further political agendas yet (re: the new surveillance machinery, of course), it doesn't mean it hasn't been done already. E.g. if you successfully blackmail people with data you gained from your surveillance system, it is unlikely the blackmailed person will speak up immediately or even later.
There already is plenty of evidence that the surveillance system was abused, although maybe not by the state itself, or at least not for nefarious purposes.
US citizens are also affected, like the woman who researched pressure cookers online shortly before the Boston attack:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/01/new-york-police...
(Given the current MO of many LEA in the US, I wouldn't have been surprised if they showed up with a SWAT team instead, at least demolishing the door and shooting their dog, if any)
You don't even need to use it. The mere knowledge that it likely happens (not even evidence) is sufficient to substantially affect how people act.
I was involved with left wing groups in Norway in the early 90's, and pretty much everyone I knew who were a bit older than me either flat out knew, or had strong reasons to believe, they were under active, blatantly illegal, surveillance (the evidence finally came to the surface in the mid 90's after decades of insisting there was nothing going on). This included intimidation on open street (a former editor of the communist party newspaper told me how he regularly had intelligence officers walk up to him in public and recite portions of conversations he had had with his wife in their flat the previous day, in order to taunt him and make it clear to him he did not have any privacy; a trade union organiser I met whose commute had him walk past the Soviet embassy told me of how he had a too-obvious-not-to-be-intentional tail to and from work every day for years).
It pushed people away, and it made many of these groups act in ways that were detrimental to their ability to carry out their political works (e.g. keeping tight security around member lists; many member who would not talk about their involvement in public etc.). It had a massively negative effect on getting these small groups to cooperate, because cooperation involved meetings with untrusted people. Etc.
Overall, the mere perception of the existence of pervasive surveillance does massive damage to democracy.
Great points. If I hear of a US intelligence agent intimidating someone in the USA as you describe happening in 90's Norway, I will be shocked and consider my original question to have been answered. Are you aware of anything like this going on in the US now?
Let me restate a little more succinctly: I'm asking about what the NSA has done that's comparable to "secret lists of enemies of the state that public sector employers agree to not hire" or "attempting to drive a political figure to suicide". Implicit in my question is a "null hypothesis" that such things have not happened.
Spying for economic advantage is not new, nor unique to the USA, and not in the least comparable to the examples I listed. It's not even in the same category.
People spying on their girlfriends or love interests happens a lot more outside the NSA than from within, and is not comparable.
A woman was "affected" by being approached and asked about doing research on pressure cookers after a pressure cooker bomb killed people? What does this have to do with NSA activity, and how is that comparable?
Parallel Construction also exists to protect secret informants for quite some time, and the justification is obvious: not everything law enforcement knows needs to be shared with the defense and their friends during a trial.
This is off of the original topic, but yes, warrantless searches are sometimes unconstitutional, and while the framing fathers had a lot of foresight, I don't think they could have foreseen the state of the world as it is now. Falling back on "300 years ago some really smart guys wrote this into law" is not a good justification for something being a bad thing. Some things in the constitution have been reinterpreted by courts and others have been nullified by amendments since then. Redefining "search" to be different from "retention" is not the most surprising interpretation of the law I've seen.
Please list an example that is comparable to the misdeeds Assange compares those of the NSA to.
1. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensore...