> Whenever there is one of those types of articles there is always several people claiming that whatever NSA is doing is exactly what they should be doing, and at any point its what everyone else is doing too.
It's not that what intelligence agencies do is morally OK, it's that it's practically necessary for a country not to be at a terrible disadvantage economically.
> So is there something which would not be appropriate if NSA did? Assassinate leaders, murdering school children, causing nuclear meltdowns... where is the line so we in the future can point to that whenever this kind of news pops up?
NSA does signals intelligence, not assassinations. I don't know what rules are in place as to what's OK in spying/sabotage and what isn't, but I imagine it's something not super unreasonable...
* it's that it's practically necessary for a country not to be at a terrible disadvantage economically.*
Fair enough. That means we should never have to take any talk of "free market" or its merits seriously. The whole "magic of the free market" always irritated me anyway, since there's never any account of information asymmetry. Clearly, large, multi-national corporations have a better idea of supply and demand than an isolated consumer does, even without help from a government spy agency.
Well, there can be a free market within a state and enforced by the state. Not free in the anarchy "do anything you want" sense, but in the sense that people are free to enter into contracts and make decisions within a framework where the restrictions are well justified and often reviewed.
That's a legally free market, but if the NSA is pirating "intellectual property" and someone in the government is deciding to give that information to particular entities in the market, it's not economically free. It's exactly the same as a government propping up some corporation because that corporation is part of the "defense base", or fixes prices or something.
No, what I'm describing is a free market inside of a single state protected by a single an intelligence community. You'll have to be a little more specific about the IP scenario - where are they hypothetically getting the IP? Is it from another lawfully operating US company, or somewhere else? The former I see no justification for, the latter is a little more complicated...
>I don't know what rules are in place as to what's OK in spying/sabotage and what isn't, but I imagine it's something not super unreasonable
Yeah, but you see, when it comes to regular blood-and-flesh people, we (as a society, through courts) don't judge them based on whether their actions have been reasonable or not. We could, but the world would be very different. Having different standards for different people/organizations is plain hypocritical, undermines democracy and weakens civil society.
I think we very much judge people on whether their actions are reasonable, even at the extremes of when a person takes another's life.
Having different legal standards for what a CIA agent operating in Pakistan can do and a civilian working in the US has absolutely nothing to do with democracy and civil society.
Well, I guess it depends on the country, but I don't imagine a US president could order the NSA to spy on an German ex-lover just because he's curious what she's up to.
Yet they do scoop up the full take on what they can get on cables. And yes, a US president could order exactly that. NSA is mil and POTUS is the head of the military.
Yes, he could order the NSA to do it in the same sense that he could order her assassinated by the CIA. I don't think anyone would fulfill those orders, though.
Signed to order? I would be pretty surprised if there were organizational approval and justification for someone spying on an ex-lover.
If you're talking about people violating organizational rules and abusing the tools provided to them to do their jobs, that's an issue that absolutely needs to be addressed, but it doesn't mean we should remove all situations where we trust anyone with power. People with power they might abuse are literally everywhere - sysadmins at telecom and tech companies have even more power than NSA agents to go through your personal affairs unnoticed (and probably go through fewer background checks). On-the-street LE officers have even more power than that by some measure, because they can physically detain and harm you with the tools provided to them by the state. Of course abuse is an issue that needs to be addressed, but taking away power for anyone that might abuse it is simply not a feasible answer at this point.
