Hacker News Reader

The legislative branch asked:

> "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"

To which, of course, Clapper answered, under oath,

> "No, sir."

And then, later, as the article recounts:

> Upstream's existence was revealed in leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013 and the lawsuit was filed in the aftermath of those revelations.

Or as Snowden puts it:

> "seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress"

The legislative branch cannot check the executive branch if the executive branch simply lies when asked "are you violating the Constitution?". I have no idea why Feinstein herself (as then chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee) doesn't laud Snowden as a hero for revealing the truth: that the committee she chaired got lied to. I have no idea why California continues to re-elect her, beyond they see "Democrat" and vote. Choose a different democrat.

Honestly in a healthy system lying under oath to the congress should put you into prison no matter weather it's about national security or not.

Also not on discretion of the senators or anything, basically the state should be by its own law required to act immediately with high priority and trying to avoid that should also handled with penalties the same way.

Feinstein’s career is the perfect example of why two-party, first-past-the-post elections are fundamentally broken. Feinstein is universally disliked by Californians across party and age demographics, yet she keeps winning because the people who run against her are typically clinically insane (even more than her).

Yes. The courts can't control the executive branch, the legislature can't control the executive branch, the president can't control the executive branch.

It sounds like you're bordering on deep-state conspiracy theory wrongthink here.

> The legislative branch cannot check the executive branch if the executive branch simply lies when asked "are you violating the Constitution?".

I imagine the Senate could have ordered Senate's Sergeant-at-arms to take Clapper into custody. The Senate probably decided not to do that for reasons they thought were good ones, even if you or I might disagree with those reasons. I'm not exactly sure how things would have worked from that point; I expect it's really hard to arrest and try someone for a crime when the executive branch doesn't want to pursue things.

> I have no idea why California continues to re-elect her, beyond they see "Democrat" and vote. Choose a different democrat.

I've done so, every time she comes up for re-election, but so far for some reason the majority likes her...

Didn't Clapper go on to reply, "Not wittingly?"

You know, just like in every other criminal trial where the defendant is the one who gets to make the determination as to their own intent.

Yes, see

http://www.hasjamesclapperbeenindictedyet.com/

The lie is now well known, and the legislature is still free to check the executive branch and the NSA.

Cite a source where the NSA is shown to have records on millions of US citizens please.

The (now open) secret is the NSA possess those records on hard drives and in a database, but that those records are (via a legal fiction) "uncollected" until a query is made that returns those records. And if the NSA wants to return those records from a query, a user needs to fill in the field alongside the request with a good justification, and (most of the time) that query is logged.

I don't think there is any dispute that such records actually exist.

Right? That was a such a toothless law. "Oh yeah, that thing you were doing in secret? Well now you better not get caught."

Do you not remember the leaked documents that Snowden showed us confirming that? Or the fact that congress literally passed a low to ban the NSA doing that practice? Well, if they were doing it secretly before, who's to say they aren't now. You can't audit something that's being intentionally obscured by a spy agency.

This comment won't age well.

At the risk of sounding defeatist, I don't think this strategy works. It's a static view of what is a dynamic system with strong feedback loops. Feedback loops that all but ensure one of the following outcomes:

- You succeed in becoming a politician with the power you need, but in the process you either no longer care about your original goal, or are bound by enough deals with other people that you can't do anything about your goal.

- You succeed in becoming a politician, but you get marginalized because your co-workers realize you can't be trusted to play along.

- You fail at becoming a politician, because your co-workers realize you won't play along, and ensure you never get anywhere close to any power.

The way I see it, the whole system has evolved to protect itself from changes that hurt its participants.

"Just become a politician, gain political power, and change everything"

What about the rest of the owl?

Did you expect changing the way an entire country does something would be easy?

Quite the opposite, which is why my comment is poking fun at the parent post which summarizes to "just become a powerful politician".

But the "joke" only works if parent had presented the solution as something that shouldn't be difficult or that was the expectation. If the expectation is that changing this thing is difficult, and parent gave solutions that are indeed difficult, how does pointing out that it is actually difficult add up to humor?

>only works if parent had presented the solution as something that shouldn't be difficult

Sort of like presenting a decades long journey of politics as:

>Become a member of Congress and marshal support for a bill.

Or telling people they should just:

>Gain some hard political power to make or break laws and policies.

Because it certainly read to me that the parent is grossly understating the effort, time, commitment, and luck required to just "become a member of congress" and wield "some hard political power to make or break laws".

They make it seem like tomorrow I can walk into Congress and get to changing laws by Monday. Hence, where's the rest of the owl?

> Or telling people they should just:

Nowhere in the original post does the word "just" appear. I don't think the poster was being flippant at all, or was suggesting that taking this path is easy, or one to be taken lightly. Just that it should be no surprise that trying to take the "easy way" to change public policy is not one that's likely to work. (Or, rather, that trying to change the government from the outside, on a part-time basis, is going to give you limited results.) Doing so is very hard, and might require a career change if you are serious about making a difference.

>Nowhere in the original post does the word "just" appear.

Yes, that's why it isn't part of the stuff I quoted, it's part of what I wrote.

>I don't think the poster was being flippant at all, or was suggesting that taking this path is easy

Well, I suppose our opinions wildly differ on that.

> They make it seem like tomorrow I can walk into Congress and get to changing laws by Monday.

I didn't get that impression at all.

The sacrifice element is key. To quote Douglas Adams,

“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.

To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.

To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem. And so this is the situation we find: a succession of Galactic Presidents who so much enjoy the fun and palaver of being in power that they very rarely notice that they’re not. And somewhere in the shadows behind them—who? Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to do it can be allowed to?”

One word answer: sortition

I thought that our representative system existed exactly so we don't all need to become politicians or have to vote on every issue through direct democracy.

There is hope for software engineers working together to improve access to information instead of, argh, becoming all politicians. That also would be to the detriment of the entire human race which wouldn't have as many software engineers.

Of course, that is the correct answer!

But, if you actually want to change the country, you must first go into finance or otherwise accumulate the wealth and influence needed to "corrupt" enough legislators into abolishing the current campaign financing and lobbying rules, so that all those whom you exhort might actually have a chance of winning office. Note this also immediately removes your source of power (not something people often do voluntarily).

I really don't see an obvious way to change things from within the system. I hope there is, otherwise we get either unending corporate feudalism or revolution.

And how does one see revolution going against the world's most-funded military (by a long shot) staffed by lifelong professional soldiers wielding an arsenal almost all of which is extremely restricted?

I'm not saying revolution would be desirable (heck, I wouldn't have supported the original American revolution - why kill people over taxation?), but the concept of revolution is some weird persistent American fantasy just because it miraculously worked once three centuries ago against an adversary across the ocean during the Age of Sail (and when France immediately tried the same thing, it devastated their country). It doesn't even bear mentioning today.

Anyway, undermining corporate feudalism seems more likely. People just have to sacrifice convenience and support ethical small businesses. Corporate behemoths rely on the masses for profitability. Cut that off, and they have no legs to stand on.

> And how does one see revolution going against the world's most-funded military (by a long shot) staffed by lifelong professional soldiers wielding an arsenal almost all of which is extremely restricted?

The military is made up of citizens who would likely be divided in case of a revolution. And what the last several military involvements have shown, if anything, is that a bunch of motivated amatuers with ready access to guns and extensive knowledge of the terrain can give our elite military serious problems.

I agree with you about revolution, though things could play out more along the lines of 1989 in Romania or East Germany. At some point, officials quit obeying orders among mass demonstrations.

> ...undermining corporate feudalism seems more likely. People just have to sacrifice convenience and support ethical small businesses.

I am dubious that we can essentially consume our way out of our political problems.

Don't know why you were immediately down-voted, litigation is the wrong approach to use, since the litigation process is already captured by our national security cabal. I think many of us here writing walls of text plan to run for office, but do not have access to the kind of capital that it would take to actually have a chance

Unless you are rich, you can't just decide to run for President (or Congress) tomorrow without having any existing political experience.

First stop would be to run for a local elected office, like a school board, county/city treasurer, or something like that. If your city has some sort of city council, work your way up to that. From there, give mayor a go. Next stop might be your state legislature. From there, you might have enough popularity and name recognition to run for the US House. If the US Senate is your goal, you may have to spend more time at the state level -- controller, secretary of state, perhaps lieutenant governor or governor -- before you'll have the backing for a US Senate run.

And that's the thing. Even if everything goes to plan, you're looking at 10-20 years before you're competitive enough to get into US Congress (either chamber, but the Senate will take more work and time). I'm not surprised that it's hard for people to go from "I'm really upset with how the US is turning into a surveillance state; I wish there was something I could do to change that", to "I'm gonna ditch my existing career and dedicate the next several decades of my life to politics". And consider that doing all that is no guarantee you'll be successful! Even if you make it to the House or Senate, it'll still be a hugely uphill battle to get any kind of surveillance reform bill passed and signed into law.

It seems this is the problem with our representative democracy. The system is designed to impede and frustrate good-faith efforts by throwing up a bunch of barriers and then offering opportunities to compromise your principles to get past them.

It's like a freemium game that you pay for by gradually selling out to those who already have power. Sure, theoretically it's possible to win the freemium game without selling out, but that theoretical possibility serves only as marketing for the game itself.

If power was more decentralized (e.g. delegated to cities or counties), then an ordinary person running for office would be a lot more viable.

This is why some of us oppose "big government". It's not necessarily that we all want a wild west with no laws, but there are a lot of layers of government between a citizen and national government and ideally as much decision-making power sits as low on that pyramid as possible so that people can plausibly "self-govern".

It also means that policies can be tailored to the needs of the people. The needs of dense urban populations are different from the needs of rural farmers, so you can't effectively govern both at the national level.

Yes, I'd like to know exactly what part of our current US government is tenable even from within. The only office I can think of is the unitary executive. The Senate was created in the founding father's own words to protect the "opulent from the many". The house is perpetually obstructed by this Senate, the likes of which smarter nations have discarded. But, even the house is captured in such a manner that citizens in more populated states have less representative voting power than slaves during the 3/5 compromise.

What other option is left, aside from rebirth? It's no coincidence that dark forces conspire to now "get out in front" of this zeitgeist and swap the baby in its cradle for something ugly.

If you want to understand how to actually save the environment become an economist.

If you want the hypothetical power to save the environment but no ability to effectively do so become a politician.

If you want to save the environment, become a billionaire. They are the only ones with the power to move the needle in a way that isn't limited by bumper marketability to the media.

Translation - everyone who wants to have their rights respected must quit doing whatever they do and become a politician. And we of course would leave it to a career politicians to bake our bread, write software etc. etc.

If you care about an issue, any issue, the answer is to find like minded people and build or attend a meeting, a coalition, a movement, or some other form of solidarity between individuals to pursue it. Maybe that means you get elected, maybe it means candidates seek your support, but unless you have millions of dollars to donate, your biggest power is not as an individual, but as part of a group.

I find it sad that the above comment was heavily downvoted given that he's is correct.

Hardly.

> Trying to litigate a matter of national intelligence through the courts is the wrong approach to use. The government has nearly unlimited powers in matters of national security, which includes the collection of intelligence. The right approach for those who believe to have standing is to write to your congressman or senator, especially if they sit on the House or the Senate Intelligence committees.

This isn't the way the government is supposed to work. We cannot count on the legislature to pass constitutional laws in all circumstances, that's why we have these landmark court cases that overturn bad laws. To say that the real solution is to just hope and pray that the legislature comes to their senses and reforms the laws themselves completely circumvents the role of our courts. If that was realistic, why do we have courts at all?

>This isn't the way the government is supposed to work.

But clearly this is how the government currently works. If you don't want it to work that way, you'll need to change it.

>To say that the real solution is to just hope and pray that the legislature comes to their senses

No, the solution isn't hope and prayers, its activism, donations and getting others politically involved (especially about things that aren't the president).

The courts are an independent body of government, the legislature has (and should always have) zero impact on the way that the courts make decisions. That's by design. This decision was rooted in common law. The onus is on the courts to reassert authority to review these cases, not on anyone else. There are no elections or legislation that will impact this.

Clearly the elections end up influencing who sits on the bench.

In this decision, there were three judges:

> Judge Diaz [Obama] wrote the majority opinion, in which Judge Motz [Clinton] joined as to Parts I and II.A, and in which Judge Rushing [Trump] joined as to Part II.B.2 and C.

> Judge Motz [Clinton] wrote an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. Judge Rushing [Trump] wrote an opinion concurring in part and in the judgment.

https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/201191.P.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals...

Three judges from three administrations and both parties, all in agreement and disagreement. It's that way because they're a circuit court and they're applying law and precedent.

> It's that way because they're a circuit court and they're applying law and precedent.

There was dissent because it's not about applying law and precedent, but interpretation and choosing to apply or not.

> that's why we have these landmark court cases that overturn bad laws.

Because the court is subject to the population's prevailing opinion, in part. As public opinion shifts, so do courts (over longer cycles ofc).

> The courts are an independent body of government, the legislature has (and should always have) zero impact on the way that the courts make decisions

Wrong on all counts, around the world, throughout time. Pointing to concepts of "court impartiality" is like arguing about "pure democracy", discounting the human behavior when discussing the reality, is not compelling.

Philosophers since (at least) Plato have tried to theorize a system for impartial philosopher kings, much less declare a profession to point to and say "that person is completely objective". https://midnightmediamusings.wordpress.com/2014/07/06/plato-...