Necessity plays a large role in determining whether something is legal.

Many court opinions about a law or government action hinge on whether there is a compelling state interest in the result. When balancing what a government does against rights defined by the bill of rights, you need to show that there is a good reason for the government to do what it's doing beyond simply denying the people their guaranteed rights.

For example, you may have laws about having a parade without a permit. Now, if you took an extreme view on the first amendment, you might say this abridged the rights of the people to peaceably assemble and speak their mind. However, there is a compelling state interest in controlling access to the roads that are shared by everyone; if anyone could parade at any time, it would screw up traffic. So governments are allowed to require a parade permit, as long as the requirements for obtaining one are content-neutral and don't single out any particular groups.

Likewise, whether the spying is legal does depend on whether it's necessary. The fourth amendment clearly says "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures..." Whether the search is reasonable plays a large role in whether it's legal. Thus, necessity is important, as well as being legal in the sense of having followed the letter of the law (gone through the appropriate warrant process, as outlined by the various laws and regulations that control it).

>And second, what's with this business of "legal and necessary"? It doesn't matter if it's "necessary", it doesn't matter if it's really really super useful, it doesn't matter if it's very efficient. The only thing that matters -- that should matter, in a democracy -- is whether it's legal and constitutional.

Well, no. The Constitution is not the be-all and end-all of governance, nor does it forbid all possible onerous behaviours. The position of the USG is that what the NSA engages in is constitutional. Even if that were the case, that wouldn't make it a good idea--unless it were necessary. You could implement a 1000% tax on beer and it would be perfectly legal and constitutional, but would also need to be somehow necessary in order for it to be justifiable.

Even if what the NSA is doing is deemed constitutional, that doesn't mean it's right or a good idea. In order for that to be the case, it'd also have to have a strong claim of necessity.

That's what I meant. First we need to see if it's legal, and THEN whether it's useful / serves any kind of purpose with any kind of efficiency.

The problem is, "necessity" or "usefulness" are used as substitutes for legality.

"Well, it's not, technically, one hundred percent legal, but look at how well it works in fighting [terrorism|pedophilia|some other big cause that gets people all worked up without actually threatening anyone in any statistically meaningful way]".

> "Well, it's not, technically, one hundred percent legal, but look at how well it works in fighting [terrorism|pedophilia|some other big cause that gets people all worked up without actually threatening anyone in any statistically meaningful way]"

Uh, paedophillia is statistically significant. The wider issue of child abuse (physical, emotional, sexual abuse or neglect) means that about 5 children a day die in the US from abuse-related causes.

Numbers are difficult, but over 3 million reports (for over 6 million children) are made every year in the US, and about 9% will be for sexual abuse. (And about 90% of those will be where a child knows the offender in some way.)

Very many people are harmed, sometimes severely, by paedophiles.

Please don't ever place paedophilia in the same category as 'nonsense boogeymen' like terrorism.

I don't think anyone is trying to minimize the heinousness of child abuse. I think the point being made is that just because a particularly technique may be effective against a particular crime, doesn't mean that technique is morally or legally right.

We could castrate everyone even accused of pedophilia and that would probably discourage some amount of child sexual abuse, but clearly that wouldn't be right. Similarly, we could forcibly commit everyone with a history of mental illness in mental institutions and maybe that would've prevented Sandy Hook, Aurora, and most recently the Santa Monica shooting. Yet, that wouldn't be right.

In short, the ends don't justify the means. Usurping constitutional rights because it would make it more convenient to fight terrorism is the worst possible path we could take in dealing with the threat of terrorism.

Terrorism is real, too. The problem is that terrorism, like child abuse and pornography, is used as an excuse to grant the government wide-ranging powers vastly disproportionate to the scale of the problem, and quickly misused for other purposes (eg: piracy).

Child abuse is not happening on the internet or mobile phone though, but usually at home. No internet surveillance is going to change any of it. You'd have to start installing cameras in every child's living rooms.

But, the part you quoted said "legal and necessary". They were trying to convince Congress of both, because both are necessary for the surveillance to be acceptable.

They weren't saying that they were trying to convince Congress that it was "legal or necessary", which is what you seem to be complaining about.

The drone killings are happening elsewhere, so of course less of a scandal. The surveillance will give the supposed ally Europeans a taste of being a Middle East enemy and possibly change their perspective on a few things.

First, the big 'thing' is the secrecy. Why is it a secret? Because it will damage the operation, pure and simple, and the operation is justified, necessary for public protection and the sake of the greater good.

So, we have 'to keep secrets' being applied here, as a dominant principle, because to not do so is unsafe, irresponsible, bad policy, practice, americans will get killed, and so on.

But I would wager that the people making these statements aren't the ones who put themselves into the position of being killed because of associationg with, or killing for, The Country. People need to be reminded, in this big 'secrecy debate' that secrets can be kept, whether a person is dead or alive, but only the LIVING tell the truth for the greater good.

>First, I don't think you want to fight counterterrorism, but, rather, terrorism?

You could read "fight" in that sentence as intransitive and "counterterrorism" as the domain of that fight.

Ah yes, I hadn't thought of that way of parsing it... like "fight the good fight"...? Interesting how language can be interpreted in so many different ways... Kind of like the law I guess... ;-)