It might well be that the current approach to domestic surveillance is out of balance and these agencies (and contractors!) need to be better controlled, but this pseudo-libertarian nihilism about government betrays an ignorance of realities that are much more fundamental than who is tracking phone call metadata.
"After the fall of the Roman Republic, the constitutional balance of power shifted from the Roman Senate to the Roman Emperor. Though retaining its legal position as under the Republic, in practice, however the actual authority of the Imperial Senate was negligible, as the Emperor held the true power in the state. As such, membership in the Senate became sought after by individuals seeking prestige and social standing, rather than actual authority."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_senate#Senate_of_the_Rom...]
Imagine for a moment, further expansion of executive autonomy and power. Then review recent elections with the definition of populism in mind. There are stark similarities.
"When Hitler was appointed in January 1933, Germany was a democracy. Germany had fair elections; nobody had their right to vote abused; there were numerous political parties you could vote for etc. To pass a law, the Reichstag had to agree to it after a bill went through the normal processes of discussion, arguments etc. Within the Reichstag of January 1933, over 50% of those who held seats were against the Nazi Party. Therefore it would have been very unlikely for Hitler to have got passed into law what he wanted. Many saw Hitler as a fall-guy politician who would have to shoulder to blame if things got worse under his leadership.
Hitler had promised a general election for March 1933. This would have been, in his mind, the perfect opportunity for him to show all politicians who opposed him where the true loyalties lay in the German people. In fact, 1932 had shown Hitler that there was a possibility that support for the Nazis had peaked as their showing in the November 1932 election had shown. Anything other than a huge endorsement of Hitler and the Nazi Party would have been a disaster and a gamble which it is possible that Hitler did not want to take.
One week before the election was due to take place, the Reichstag building burned down. Hitler immediately declared that it was the signal for a communist takeover of the nation. Hitler knew that if he was to convince President Hindenburg to give him emergency powers - as stated in the Weimar Constitution - he had to play on the old president's fear of communism. What better than to convince him that the communists were about to take over the nation by force?"
[http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/Nazi_Germany_dictatorsh...]
Even in a well formed government, there are possible scenarios that play out with catastrophic results. As politics become more polarized and government exerts more authority, it is more likely that individual opportunists can raise to dominant positions and wreak havoc on policy and settle vendettas against political opponents.
Understanding the dynamic nature of governments, especially ones as expansive as the US government, is necessary I think to appreciate how little democracy we actually have in the United States as it now stands. If we want to pin things to the definitions historians use to differentiate the Roman Republic from the Roman Empire, I think we passed that point with FDR to be honest.
FDR def.; probably Wilson
I suspect Martin-Niemöller had some insight into how this happened:
First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the socialists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.
The second part is fallacy; you obviously cannot remove the ability to point a gun (or knife) at someone and make demands, and any attempt to do so necessarily tramples other's rights. In reality there are two effective choices - the person being mugged can defend them-self and/or the government can attempt to find and punish the person after the fact. The second one does not do a bit of good for the current victim, of course.
Everything is a tradeoff, saying 'tramples other's rights' is misleading because it doesn't indicate which rights. Some rights are more valued than others to people (I'd gladly trade my right to kill myself for my right to free speech, if such a tradeoff existed).
When I say you cannot remove the ability of people to do it, I mean only that - you cannot remove the ability. And that is what all the gun-grabbing hoopla is about - physically removing the ability to do so by restricting access to guns. That, I contend, is impossible and absolutely infringes on individual rights.
The threat of retaliation, either by the victim immediately or after-the-fact by the government, is of course effective at prevention. The former is more effective, as evidenced by crime rates in areas where the government does not infringe on the right to self-defense.
Everything is a tradeoff, saying 'tramples other's rights' is misleading because it doesn't indicate which rights. Some rights are more valued than others to people (I'd gladly trade my right to kill myself for my right to free speech, if such a tradeoff existed).
It does not matter which rights - the government may not pick and choose which individual rights to value over others, it's their duty to protect them all equally - and for all people equally.
Of course it is your right to determine which rights you value the most, but it is not a power of the government. And it's a power of neither you or the government to determine which rights I value most.
Moreover, this is the moment when you can show whether you are really free.
Free men do not mind dying when their time comes.
When I say "freedom", I talk about choice. Options. Influence over one's light cone. All of which are drastically diminished whenever you're locked in a cell, or threatened by a madman with a gun.
I might be taken out. I might take my enemy out (shooting a person is not as trivial task as it seems). Or I might just cause enough trouble for the bad guys so their total cost goes up, hopefully beyond break even point.
It is no different attitude than the one US tries to project upon the world.
I only acknowledge that nobody will fight for me if I don't fight for myself.
Examples of peaceful countries like sweden or switzerland can be given, but what did they do to stop hitler? Poland started to crack the enigma code and later turing with his friends in secrecy completed it in England.
What we need is people that can be trusted to be in power. The voting system in America is just plain wrong. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw2z9lV3W1g
If you have zero physical security, that means that anyone can come up and just knock you down and take your things, your woman, whatever... Not my idea of "freedom".
I think that it follows that you do need some security in order to live a free life. Does that justify secret government spying programs? Probably not!
People here seem to have awfully black and white thoughts about some aspects of life.
> yet we are losing our liberties at an alarming speed.
Except for minorities (at least for some things, like, say, being able to vote in Alabama), gays, people who consume marijuana in Washington and Colorado, and various others who have gained rights recently. It's not black and white.
These are orthogonal issues. There are strong reasons to believe that the modern stability that we enjoy is maintained by networks of mutual self-interest, soft social norms and overall cultural sophistication. The idea that we are being protected by the state is just a fairy-tale and there is no scientific evidence of this whatsoever.
Saying that something is not "black and white" sounds clever, but can be used as a way to disguise unscientific, mushy ideas.
Uh, most things involving people are kind of mushy, because you can't experiment on them like you would with rats. And they tend to behave oddly at times. Also, there are a tremendous number of things that bear on their behavior - isolating them is not easy.
> modern stability that we enjoy is maintained
Could it be that the modern stability also exists because most of us feel relatively safe in our persons?
It's not as if the only thing preventing most of us from running amok is the presence of police, but some kind of security force does act as a backstop for those individuals who do not care about your self-interest, social norms, or whatever.
Once again: not trying to justify the NSA stuff, but I think the idea that no security at all is needed for one to live in freedom is handwavy bullshit.
You mean, stability is mantained by structures like the state?
But that happens now. All the examples that are being given on why we need security are examples of things that are happening now WITH security.
"I think that it follows that you do need some security in order to live a free life. Does that justify secret government spying programs? Probably not!"
My problem is that this security is just a false sense of security. With all of the restrictions and all of the money poured into the DHS and other counter-intelligence, we still get things like Boston. I wish people would realize that bad things happen, and giving your rights away isn't going to stop them from happening.
"Except for minorities (at least for some things, like, say, being able to vote in Alabama), gays, people who consume marijuana in Washington and Colorado, and various others who have gained rights recently. It's not black and white."
They haven't gained anything. Nothing is stopping the feds from swooping down and arresting these individuals. They are still breaking a federal law. Also, in reference to the gay marriage thing, I feel it is kind of low to say they are gaining rights as there was no real legal reason (that I could think of) to prevent them from being able to marry.
Obviously. It's impossible to eliminate bad things completely. They would happen more without anyone providing security.
> They haven't gained anything
Ok, fine, whatever, the world is moving only in one direction, with no nuance, no complexities, and in a very simple, easy to understand way. Nothing has gotten better for anyone.
To me, this argument is based on how one views human nature. Personally, I don't believe that the majority of people want to commit serious crimes but are only held back by the fact that if they did, they would be punished. Because of that belief, I don't believe that eliminating security would cause an increase of bad behavior.
"Ok, fine, whatever, the world is moving only in one direction, with no nuance, no complexities, and in a very simple, easy to understand way. Nothing has gotten better for anyone."
I probably should have phrased my response better but at the time was stuck in a better way to do so. Surely there are places that have improved in people's lives but it isn't like those same improvements couldn't or wouldn't have been made without a state providing security.
What is your definition of serious? Sure, most people don't want to kill others, but what about non-violent crimes. What about fraud? Not paying taxes? Although you might argue that taxes are usurping our freedom somehow, I like having infrastructure.
"What about fraud? Not paying taxes?"
Maybe I'm just naive but I don't think the average person walks around conspiring to commit fraud but is discouraged by the fact they could go to jail if caught.
As for the taxes issue, in this scenario, taxes would most likely decrease since there would be no big security machine (DoD, DHS, NSA, FBI, CIA) to feed, or at least budgets would be slashed. On top of that, there could be systems put into place that automate the taxes and make the current way of doing taxes a thing of the past. The lower taxes and the automated system could make it easy to pay taxes as well as harder to avoid paying taxes.
You don't need "majority", you need just a handful of really really bad ones.
The modern state we have is here not to build Heaven on Earth, but to avoid Hell. Eliminating all crime is impossible, but without state intervention you end up with Somalia, Afghanistan or post-Katrina New Orleans.
What you're describing is total freedom in a causal society - the only constraint on what people do is what they _can_ do. It may not be your definition of freedom, but from an unbiased observer, it is arguably the most free a society can be.
You (and a lot of other people, I think) are conflating freedom (being able to do whatever you can) with rights (a guarantee that certain conditions will exist in a governed society). Granting rights necessarily diminishes the total freedom of a society.
Hodor. Own woman. Hodor. Hodor. Hodor.
Perhaps (well, hopefully) I'm reading into your comment too much though.
the position you state was formed by Greek and Roman civilizations. Majority of people in these civilizations were slaves. And security was a precondition for the freedom of few at the top of these ancient societies.
The American revolution was a break in that order of things. It resulted in granting of unheard of freedoms while dismantling a lot of Imperial Britain security. And now we're sliding back to imperial level of security and freedom.
The American Revolution carried forward slavery.
The US once was the most free countries and indeed helped and inspired others, but that was more than a hundred years ago. The problem is while other countries emerged (possibly because of mistakes, losing wars, being split, reunited, etc.) the US has had a few problems that got them stuck.
I think and it's just my opinionated explanation. I might be completely wrong, but I think the biggest problem for the US where the two world wars and the cold wars. Basically it made the country/government learn that espionage, military, etc. is a good thing, because they only win. They win no just like the war itself, but they win control of people, they pretty much unite them, but even that is not all. The military system allows the US to do what other countries do with welfare. They reinvest tax money, the out it into families of veterans, have a huge military industry from weapons to mercenaries. It works. Just like it allows them to do heavy espionage in the name of national security.
On the other hand there is expensive education or bought education (VISA policies), not the best health care system, still a lot of weird stuff, like death penalty (an example of how the US is stuck), bad infrastructure (streets, internet, etc.) and a lot less liberties or equal treatment of sexes and "races" for example.
This is something that stabilizes the US. I don't know, in a way it is a valid thing. Stability is good and there is pretty much no country that does so well that it should judge the US for that.
Another problem is that they tend to do overpropaganda, so they can't really change. They had stuff like the cold war, so communists (Russians/Chinese) people are super evil. Also there were no other reforms. The two party system where both have pretty much opinion. That's no way of choosing. For example the death penalty thing I mentioned. Republicans are pro, Obama is pro. So no movement in sight.
The US is also stuck in nationalism. Like really, do you know any other developed country that is so much into flag waving and where everyone is like "Mall of America, Bank of America, X of America"?
Like I said. It's not bad. It brings stability, which is something people want, but it also means that progress simply stalls.
In this regard the US is actually quite the same as China or Russia. Big countries, which pretty much always the same government, lots of propaganda, lots of nationalism "the others are all bad (or envious)", death penalty, secrecy, lots of military investment, our country is the best, etc.
It might also be a thing of size. There have been political-philosophical works about this, partially with practical implementation (The Breakdown of Nations).
However, as history tells us (see various empires) these things break down in bad ways. Sadly it usually means the next nation will become like this and won't be any better at all. And yeah, I am not a friend of nations and stuff, but I am realist enough to know, no matter how long the US remains like that (yeah, I think it is trembling, but I think it's far from falling) or whatever, this isn't going to change. I also don't think there can be any kind of utopia. It would be really cool if people just abandoned stuff, but no matter how wrong communists are. There is one thing they got correctly (but usually still don't live after, else they wouldn't be communists): It might be nice for a while, when everyone understands how shitty things were and how nice it is to just live together, but people forget that and then it really starts from the beginning.
But they do have some. And they have police, don't they? So they provide some security to their citizens, meaning that their people are free to live without someone bigger than them taking all their things.
When I look back at history, I see that the worst people that have done the worst things are in fact people in state governments, using the powers of government against civilians.
That's because you're looking at the largest damage influenced by a small group of people, instead of total amount over a period of time.
Obviously the most damage done by any single person was done by a person with a lot of power, and thus probably a member of the government. That doesn't mean more damage is done when a government is present rather than in total anarchy.
Consider a choice between:
1. A mad governor that kills 100 people yearly, but prevents any other killings (somehow)
2. An anarchy system where 100 mad people kill 10 people each every year
Your heuristic of 'the worst people that have done the worst things are in fact people in state governments' still holds, because any other murderer only killed 10 people. However, comparing the two options clearly shows the first one is better.
TL;DR - availability bias
That's the official story. In reality, those things are used to enslave people and keep them happy on the modern plantation, looking to the master to keep them safe. Freedom is the absence of coercion, and those things have utterly failed to safeguard that, and indeed have actively warred against it.
It's entirely legitimate to question whether the NSA has been going too far -- there's been debate about it for years. However, there is zero evidence that any of the data being collected had even been used in any way that impacted or threatened the freedom of people in the US -- it's all possibilities and abstract paranoia. It's difficult to have a serious debate when people put on tin-foil hats, plug their ears, and refuse to even acknowledge the broader realities. It's not all just a conspiracy to monitor Facebook and take away our bitcoins. All of these issues demand a dynamic balancing of risks and benefits, and of the rights of individuals against society. Any extreme philosophical positions are dangerous.
Either that or not make broad generalizations.
But my broader point was, larger government surveillance and national security powers won't stop genocides or wars between governments. This isn't what they are there for. They are there to prevent groups which are deemed politically dangerous ("terrorists" which evidently include nuclear protesters, environmentalists, and states' rights advocates).
It's one thing to have spy agencies. However widespread spying on one's own people is never a good sign.
(By all means read "Creature from Jekyll Island" to learn the details of that deliciously evil story. :)
The requirement to pay taxes in USD is the primary "inherent value" which makes that particular commodity circulate as money. The "inherent value" is to increase the odds that one may continue living outside of a cage.
When I call that value "inherent", I am obviously speaking very loosely and tongue-in-cheek. Remove the threat of force, and USD paper cash has no significant value -- it's too rough to use as toilet paper and doesn't even burn particularly well in the winter. It is durable enough to function as wallpaper, though with a rather busy and avant garde retro design.
Combine that dynamic with the Mandrake Mechanism described in "Creature", and you have a very powerful monopoly fiat money, consisting of cash and bank "deposits", useful for financing horrors like World War I, the Marxist overthrow of the Kerensky government, endless bailouts of banks and corporations throughout the '70s, '80s, '90s, and '00s, and a litany of other ridiculous, juvenile schemes.
It is the monetary inflation, produced by the central bank buying government debt (i.e. a promise to tax), which gives governments most of their "spending money". Taxation itself merely gives people a reason to accept the USD in the first place, and also serves as the principal means of social engineering.
When you look at it that way, taxation and inflation are seen as two mutually recursive functions, whose fixed point is the gun.
Or perhaps it's to bring wars and genocide to people in other countries.
I do have an extreme philosophical position: that relations among people should be by mutual consent, or not at all. It is compromise that is dangerous.
I'm going to single out the US in the "western democracies" and state that while this may be true, it certainly isn't true for just about anybody alive in this country today. The last time we actually fought for OUR freedoms, in my mind, is the War of 1812. Other than that, it was fighting for our interests, which are not the same. But, those in power need to keep up the idea that the war machine always needs to be at the ready because those darn communists/socialists/terrorists are after our freedoms and we need to be proactive.
You want to know what officers are working under cover in the police force? Who are informants on terrorist organizations working against the state? The home phone numbers and addresses of all public employees? Their emergency contact numbers? Medical histories relevant to their jobs? One can go on and on.
Demanding better of elected officials makes sense, crippling the capacity of government to do kinds of work that it has to do does not.
What you have to do is
1. Any agency can designate a document as classified, a designation which remains in play for four years. This dovetails nicely with the election cycle. Also, the majority of police, etc. undercover operations are shorter than this period. Above this you are in "major case" / RICO / terrorism / etc. territory.
2. Extending the classification beyond four years requires a motion to show cause before a bona fide judiciary, where the agency must show by clear and convincing evidence that the classification falls into an enumerated exemption criteria. The classification can be extended indefinitely, but only in increments of 12 months and only upon the approval of the judicial branch.
A proposal like this addresses most people's objections. The real problem with the current classification scheme is A) like Mickey Mouse's copyright, it expires on paper but not in real life, and B) the agencies are all essentially self-policing and nobody really checks in on them to see if the classification decisions are correct.
The thing about this proposal is that it requires all three branches to sign off and say "yes, this should stay classified" and it also limits the number of secrets you can have, because there are only so many lawyers and so many judges, and now you have to decide if you want to allocate time in the budget to make motions for the next 50 years. There are legitimate secrets that are worth that kind of hassle, and then there are the other 90% of stuff that the alphabet soup of agencies does.
Here in Australia too many governments agencies spend tax payer’s money, issuing big contracts to private companies and the all the contract details remain secret.
One example was a company awarded the right to build a cross city tunnel toll way. The contract included a $100 million payout to a government body in exchange for massive road closures designed to divert traffic into the (toll paying) tunnel.
All the road closures did was create traffic chaos and the secret collusion was only revealed when the tunnel company went broke.
I don't think that there need to be undercover police officers.
> Who are informants on terrorist organizations working against the state?
I don't think there need to be informants on terrorist organizations.
> The home phone numbers and addresses of all public employees? Their emergency contact numbers? Medical histories relevant to their jobs?
I wouldn't classify (teehee) this as "government secrets." If they're public employees, then obviously their names should be public, but I don't see their personal information as a "government secret."
> crippling the capacity of government to do kinds of work that it has to do does not.
People disagree about which kinds of work have to be done by government.
Even some of the most staunch anarcho-capitalists I know believe in centralized national defense as one of the very few legitimate functions of the state.
Would not having planes invisible to radar (B-2), or those that could fly faster than missiles (SR-71) be nice secrets to keep from everyone who's thinking about invading you?
Really? You or they must be using the term "anarcho-capitalism" in a non-standard way. In the standard usage of the term, the whole point is to be distinguished from pro-government libertarians and minarchists who believe that there are a few legitimate functions of the state. I've never heard anyone use the term to refer to an ideology that accepts any legitimate functions of the state.
I'm not claiming any authority over the term "anarcho-capitalism," and you can use it however you like, but I have read a lot of works by people who are widely considered to be pivotal to anarcho-capitalism, and I've been somewhat active in several online communities that call themselves anarcho-capitalist, and I am reasonably confident that your usage is incredibly non-standard, and that very few people who are aware of the term would use it to describe minarchists.
I'm strongly against it. A lot of our breakthroughs are too expensive for dangerous countries to copy in any case.
> be nice secrets to keep from everyone who's thinking about invading you?
When is the last time the US was invaded by anyone? When is the last time any country even tried to invade the US? If all your justifications are about nightmare scenarios that haven't occurred in centuries they're probably not very good justifications.
Why do you think those answers are what they are?
Could it be that the latest public data we have is that we were building planes FIFTY YEARS AGO that could effortlessly outrun SAMs? Can you possibly imagine the shit that is flying out of Groom Lake these days?
The US' geographical position has had more to do with their safety than any secret they've ever had. But don't let me disrupt your "G.I. Joe" comic book fantasies.
There is no global existential threat that is anywhere near as grave as the nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union once was.
So, where is secrecy really needed? Is it more than 5% of the secrecy we have?
Honest question: What danger would that put us in? My instinct says a moderate amount, but I guess none of us know for sure, which makes it a little scary to imagine.
Contrast this with things like NSA: no end date, literally global scope, etc. Surely you can see how these things are different.
What if what they're not telling us is that FISA collection orders and analysis has kept people from nuking Manhattan a half-dozen times?
There is no number high enough to make me think getting rid of government secrecy is a bad idea. The reason is that there are other methods to deal with these kinds of problems. If other countries want to nuke us, it's probably a better idea to find out why they want to nuke us then to become a police state.
>What if what they're not telling us is that FISA collection orders and analysis has kept people from nuking Manhattan a half-dozen times?
What if they've also kept the big fight between Godzilla and King Kong from us? This is nonsense, they have not stopped anything like that. Pretty much everything terrorists have actually tried to do, they've succeed (or were foiled by their own incompetence). The cases where the government actually managed to "stop" a terror attack were very clear cases of entrapment. If they're actually out there like Jason Bourne saving the US in the last second all the time, why would they chose to show us clear cases of entrapment as their success stories?
But if you really believe they're keeping us safe, then I'd like to give you a great offer on my anti-Godzilla rock. Godzilla has not so much as inconvenienced me on the way to work since I have this rock. I'm willing to make you a great deal on it, $1B. That's less than you're paying for the other charade.
What will your next step be, when you learn that the answer to your question is "Religion"?
The saddest part is, we appear to have learned literally nothing since our handling of native Americans. It's disgusting.
You're engaging in wishful thinking.
If you truly believe there are a group of people for whom religion is enough to make them want to kill, then the solution would be education and financial investment. Middle class people make poor martyrs. The idea that the only thing that can be done is murder them is sickening.
There are many religious people who openly explain that freedom is evil, and everyone should convert to Islam or face death.
You're essentially claiming that I am brainwashed, and you know the real truth instead. I'd like to claim the opposite.
The problem with your argument is that it basically allows the government to do anything it wants, and then claim that there is secret information that proves that what they are doing is necessary to save lives.
In my view, there is a need for government secrets. Diplomatic cables need to be secret. The names and locations of informants and spies need to be kept secret (I will not deny the need for such agents). During times of war, the locations and planned movements of troops must be kept secret. On the other hand, the existence of diplomats, the existence of spies, and the existence of the military absolutely should not be kept secret.
Whoa, you've just gone all straw-man on me. Stop presuming and just answer my question. Somewhere between "nothing happens" and "vaporizes the whole planet" is a consequence that makes the loss of privacy an acceptable option. Where is it?
I didn't make an argument one way or the other.
All of her emails, meeting minutes, agendas, etc. are all on the public record. Anyone can search/read/whatever them at any time.
AFAIK, all local governments do this
E.g., Here's the FOIP request page for the City of Calgary http://www.calgary.ca/CA/city-clerks/Pages/Freedom-of-Inform...
Where are your nuclear subs and what are their missions?
Sincerely, Definitely a U.S. citizen
I'm not trying to be a troll, or funny. What threat is currently best dealt with by deploying ICBMs in nuclear subs? And why is the money better spent on that than on any other alternative use?
There are so many other ways you can prevent such attacks. Diplomacy, commerce, keeping good relations, etc. The threat of an axe on your neck makes it hard to look like you have good intentions in the first place.
The problem is you can't always assume that the other guy has good intentions. If they're rational, then mutually assured destruction keeps everyone rational. If they're crazy, then that certainly is a problem, which is why there is enormous effort put into preventing proliferation and containing the capabilities of countries like North Korea and Iran.
The ability to drop a bunch of nukes on someone on short notice is not to deter terrorists, it's to deter nation states - anywhere between North Korea through Pakistan.
The existence of nukes and the submarines that carry them is almost entirely orthogonal to the (relatively new) thread of terrorism.
I realize it's a circular argument, but MAD is for other nuclear nations (or future nuclear nations).
MAD wasn't just about deterrence, but also about ensuring mutual access to early warning information. The combination of the two is actually not a bad thing. "I know you can destroy me if I attack you, and I know you can see me if I start to do so" is not a bad set of factors. Unfortunately things like anti-satellite missiles and weapons in space really endanger that because if a small piece of space junk collides with a satellite over the other guy's territory, you may not know for sure that this is not the prelude to an attack.
So the actual MAD strategies as they developed through the Ford years were actually quite sophisticated and stabilizing. But what happens when your threat is a nuclear weapon in a twenty-foot container instead of an ICBM (because some country like North Korea knows we can have 747's with lasers shoot down launching missiles if we launch a first strike)?
Conversely: what goes does a standing army of 1,127,801 people do you if your adversary has nuclear weapons?
OK. Assume China cuts off shipping lanes in the Pacific. They position their naval fleets in some aggressive formation over major lines (likely blockading Taiwan or something). Assumedly, they have to sink a ship or at least fire shots and take one captive. The U.S. and Japan respond by moving their forces into aggressive positions threatening China. The situation either A. ends when China or the U.S. back down or B. accelerates into military conflict. The conflict is either small, likely involving only SEALs, drone/tactical strikes, or another group of special forces, or full scale, involving (initially) a Pacific strike group fleet. The only logical progression of a full scale military conflict between two nuclear powers is nuclear warfare, at which point it won't matter how big either standing army is. Again, some assumptions, but not unreasonable.
The same scenario without a large standing army has no "standoff." The "standoff" is MAD from nuclear weapons, and understanding on all sides that military action that threatens any nation's "security" will quickly go from tactical to nuclear.
I suppose I just see the massive standing army (special forces not included) like I see air superiority fighters. There's really no scenario where they are necessary for the defense of any modern nation.
It's not quite as black-and-white as that, as illustrated by the history of the second half of the 20th century: The U.S. and USSR engaged in several proxy wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan, arguably Central America), but never came close to nuclear war.
(Neither the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis nor the 1983 Able Archer scare involved a war, and the Korean War of 1950-53 was apparently started on Kim Il Sung's own initiative to the surprise of the USSR, although there have been reports that Russian pilots flew North Korean MIGs in air-to-air combat with U.S. planes; when China came into the war in November 1950 it wasn't yet a nuclear power.)
Stalin was careful enough to enlist pilots as "volunteers", suspending their official service in Soviet Army for the duration of mission.
And the U.S. killed more people using conventional ordnance in a single night in Tokyo than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined from the atomic bombings, so what is it that you're actually upset about? Because it's obviously not the number of Japanese killed.
Think about it: Germany never used nuclear weapons on the U.S.S.R., were they somehow more moble?
If it's a problem to know where all the subs are and what they are doing in my name, then I have a problem.
I don't personally want the launch codes for the missiles, but I want to know who has them, what the policy is for using them, when they are used (each and every time), what was targeted, who was hurt, what the damage was, how much it cost to build them, keep them, use them, and dispose them.
The military serves at everyone's behest, not of their own accord.
I'm glad you aren't in the Department of Defense, then.
The military serves at everyone's behest, not of their own accord.
This is a false dichotomy.
It's not a dichotomy, let alone a false one. Please explain your objection.
During the Cold War the Soviets lost a nuclear submarine in international waters. The Soviets couldn't find it, the US (through its network of acoustic listening stations in the oceans) could. There was a multi-year effort to recover the sub, which required an elaborate cover story and operational security.
If the Soviets knew what the recovery ship was doing, they would have blown it out of the water. All the secrecy was necessary to protect the mission.
Edit: If you need to keep public things that secret, maybe you shouldn't be doing them.
(shrug)
Knowing the location of the troops months or years ago isn't likely to cause much harm: A competent enemy can probably know all that anyway, if they care to.
Submarine Spotting
Now a report in the magazine New Scientist says the probable reason for the action is that the scientists are all study bioluminescent plankton which can reveal the whereabouts of submarines.
Secrecy is also an essential part of negotiations - you can't reach middle ground if all your concessions are made public. There's a balance to be struck, though we're clearly far from achieving that atm.
A little secrecy by itself is not an issue, as long as the process built around it is as transparent as possible. That's the issue you're facing with this whole PRISM thing, lack of accountability and transparency.
With complete transparency comes little ability for security. Terrorist attempts become more frequent. Crime becomes more rampant and life become more unstable.
If you ask a typical American if they are willing to die for their freedom, very few would. They'd rather the security. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, it's just true.
I understand how it can seem that way, and I'm not criticizing, but is there any evidence anywhere for these claims?
But I will ask you this. Is open government intelligence something that should be tested?
While I might be wrong with my claims, what's worrisome to most is that I'm not. And opening up intelligence as a test isn't exactly something that can be fixed with the next iteration.
Citation needed. We have no reason to believe that any actual terror attacks have been stopped. People who wanted to use terror against the US have either managed to or failed by their own incompetence. What we do know is that before we started getting insane about security there would be some attack about once every 10 years. Why do you imagine it's any higher frequency now?
And the part that irritates me the most is: if there is more frequency to the attacks, why aren't we trying to find out why and addressing that. If you think the answer is "they hate us for our freedoms" then you're simply an idiot.
My guess would be that NSA guys probably take the fact that many Americans hold that view as a huge compliment. I'd be willing to be there's a whole book of "if only you knew".
(FWIW, I still don't think that warrants the program.)
If the government actually were stopping constant terrorist activity (a) they wouldn't parade obvious entrapment cases as "wins", they'd pick something legit to make us feel safer and (b) someone would talk. One of the contractors, loud mouths, drunks, etc. would eventually leak something. A group as large as NSA wouldn't be able to keep their world-saving completely quiet forever, that's just unrealistic.
Consider for a moment how long they've kept the fact that THEY HAVE A REALTIME MIRROR OF GOOGLE a near-total secret. Consider the fact that private companies like Apple and Google have been able to keep their source trees secret with far lower penalties for accidental/intentional disclosure and much less attention and fewer resources devoted to OPSEC.
Also, I think you are confusing FBI/LEO with NSA/military intelligence. It's the former that does those silly things. NSA never parades anything, ever. It's like STFU is in their DNA.
As far as the rest of the military goes: the coolest plane we know that they've built is the SR-71, which was built in... 1964. It's fifty years old. Do you suppose they've sat on their hands since then, with all the advances in materials and computer/avionics technology since? To put the R&D in perspective, it is believed that the NSA's Utah datacenter is built to store a yottabyte of data. The mind reels. Where do you think all that classified budget defense money is GOING, building shit that gets press releases?!
Keeping secrets is pretty straightforward, actually, if you're willing to go to the (order of magnitude increase in) trouble and expense. USDoD is.
> Citation needed.
My insinuation that terrorist attempts would become more frequent was IF our intelligence agencies opens up all its data to the public. I was not defending the competence of the US government's intelligence agencies.
Please read the opening post.
First, we have to recognize that these are still people, and people do not function well with zero privacy (which is part of the problem here).
Second, any information the government keeps about me should be kept secret from others (though I should be able to pull - and contest - it, potentially with a time delay if I am being investigated).
However, we really do need to open things up. Secret programs in particular are fundamentally broken in a democracy - supposedly, our elected officials have oversight; but we have no means of assessing how good of a job they are doing in that capacity.