Hacker News Reader

Comment by lukeschlather | Hacker News Reader

Qualitatively speaking, I think as opaque as the NSA and CIA are, they're more accountable to the average US Citizen than their Chinese equivalents are to the average Chinese citizen.

They're less accountable than I would like, but they are accountable for their actions.

View on HN

Not everyone here is American.

The US is just as much a direct threat to my countries economic interests as China. A pity my countries politicians are in Washington's pockets and are silent now when only two years ago they were yammering about the threat from Chinese government hackers and Huawei.

Can you point to that quantitative evidence and where NSA has been held accountable?

I smell propaganda in the air.

FISA Courts. Senate Intelligence Committee. Yes, sometimes they have been ignored, and yes, sometimes they have been rubber-stampers. But presently both are, in some capacity, rebelling and, in some capacity, angling to reign in the intelligence bureaus. Nothing similar exists in, for example, France, Russia, China, or India.

What of any of that speaks to "accountability to the average US citizen?"

I thought we were speaking quantitatively. Where's that quantitative evidence?

EDIT: No offense, peterwwillis, but I tend to take arguments such as those from Americans with a grain of salt. Americans like to think that they are better than those nasty commies, but history says otherwise, what with the CIA transporting cocaine and overthrowing foreign governments, and the nsa actively carrying out MITM attacks.

No, he said Qualitatively. He doesn't need numbers, only the subjective property of the NSA or CIA's character versus similar agencies in China. I would probably also wager that we have more accountability over our intelligence agencies than Chinese people have over their intelligence agencies.

Sorry, my bad. Qualitatively, it is.

But qualitative statements are of literally no value. It's all gut instinct. Of course you'd like to think that the US can take moral high ground over the Chinese.

Try to get a Chinese security researcher to expose a hack by a Chinese security agency, on their own blog hosted in China. Don't need numbers to know I wouldn't do it. And I'm not American.

I don't see how this is relevant.

What we're discussing is the subjective perception of both agencies. NSA has most of their programs exposed, as opposed to the PLA, and yet the public still gives NSA the benefit of the doubt. Now that's what I call freedom.

> I would probably also wager that we have more accountability over our intelligence agencies than Chinese people have over their intelligence agencies.

Neither citizenry has any meaningful control over "their" spy agencies. They're not your favourite sports team that you need to defend. If you harbour any illusions of democratic control: the elected class is a lot smaller and a few degrees more stable than the candidate pool. Before they get access to power, candidates tend to renounce any action against the NSA.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/jul/14/...

> Nothing similar exists in, for example, France, Russia, China, or India.

Not true. France does have an Intelligence Committee ("Délégation parlementaire au renseignement"). And there is a control organism like the FISA Courts ("Commission nationale de contrôle des interceptions de sécurité"); while legally their decisions are only consultative, in practice the government almost always respects them. And it denies between 1% and 2% of requests, whereas the FISA only denies 0.03%.

However I'm no expert, so I can't say how much power or independance they actually have.

You can read their annual reports (in French):

http://www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/rapports-publics/1440... http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/connaissance/delegation_re...

If they are accountable, where can this company send the bill for the break-in?

Going around like thieves in the night and breaking into places and steal stuff like common criminals is not exactly the conduct of someone accountable for their actions. I would actually say its the opposite behavior.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com