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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

Note that since it wasn't immediately apparent to me what or when the data was collected, this is about bulk collection of financial data in order to combat ISIL. Given the timeline of the report, https://www.cia.gov/static/63f697addbbd30a4d64432ff28bbc6d6/..., it makes it sound like they looked into activities in the 2014 timeframe.

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You make it sound like they're not doing this all the time, every day, anyway.

Perhaps if that's the case the ACLU (or you) should provide some evidence of that instead of dressing up the most mundane incidental collection I've heard in my life.

IMO, it’s not the CIA you need to worry about here.

You should be worrying about the NSA.

It doesn't matter what information they were looking for:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.[2]"

Yeah but they had secret courts issuing secret warrants. Or something. So they’re fine.

No, this isn't the FISA stuff (which, while still unconstitutional, claims authority from the FISA Amendments Act, and, yes, the secret rubber stamp FISA court), this is worse: this is the CIA doing something completely unrelated via an executive order interpretation.

This doesn't even go to the FISA court, and they didn't tell the congressional oversight committees about it (all of whom have clearance to know/hear).

It always bothers me that people claim it's terrible because it's a "rubber stamp court". But I've dealt with government procurement, and if you're undergoing a massive project applications process, then you do the due diligence to make sure your application is likely to pass. Time spent making applications that aren't going to pass is time wasted.

"Likely" in your sentence seems like something orders of magnitude below the 0.03% fisa court stamp rate though. A fail rate that low means the exact opposite of what you're saying, which is that it would be a waste of time to be so careful because making a mistake and having to redo it 1% of the time would be overall faster (and that's still assuming the government only targeted entirely "correct" cases)

In my experience 0.03% is below rate of form-filling / typographical errors that don't get caught even with several proofreaders.

Not only do they have clearance,

they're also the only meaningful oversight.

Yeah, there’s a secret law saying that it’s all good.

Trust Us.

If you can't trust shadowy organizations with a track record of lying or misleading congress, who can you trust?

I trust you.

> Note that since it wasn't immediately apparent to me what or when the data was collected, this is about bulk collection of financial data in order to combat ISIL.

The second statement does not logically follow from the first.

And. That link. Not clicking.

>The second statement does not logically follow from the first.

Yes it does, "it was not immediately apparent, so I did some research and it was x. Now you don't need to do the research."

And the CIA is mandated to produce such reports, while they could add malware it'd likely be more of a liability than a benefit.

Okay, got it.

> "it was not immediately apparent, so I did some research and it was x. Now you don't need to do the research."

If OP had written that, I'd have understood.

> And the CIA is mandated to produce such reports, while they could add malware it'd likely be more of a liability than a benefit.

I had a passing paralysis of paranoia. I'm not normally prone to paranoia about the CIA, but the topic is bulk surveillance, and the URL isn't exactly https://cia.gov/report/about-that-bulk-surveillance Its path is `.../63f697addbbd30a4d64432ff28bbc6d6/...pdf` Along with a half understood comment that sounded like "Relaaax everyone! No big deal. It was all about ISIL! Look at this liiiink."

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