Bad Behavior: It's my contention that the NSA has a long criminal history

[cali]

and that institutional patterns of behavior are even harder to break than personal ones.

Put Snowden aside if you can and simply focus on the NSA's pattern of breaking laws. Not terribly reassuring, is it? Anyone with a few functioning brain cells can easily deduce that we know about unauthorized, criminal NSA actions, is the tip of a large, dangerous iceberg. If you're defending the NSA, you should own the label "authoritarian".

<snip>

If recent stories about the NSA don't alarm you, odds are that you've never read the Church Committee findings, which ought to be part of the standard high-school curriculum. Their lesson is clear: Under cover of secrecy, government agents will commit abuses with impunity for years on end, and only intrusive Congressional snooping can stop them.

<snip>

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/lawbreaking-at-the-nsa-bring-on-a-new-church-committee/278750/

http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/church/contents_church_reports.htm

The Criminal N.S.A.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/28/opinion/the-criminal-nsa.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

<snip>

The redacted 85-page opinion, which was declassified by U.S. intelligence officials on Wednesday, states that, based on NSA estimates, the spy agency may have been collecting as many as 56,000 “wholly domestic” communications each year.

In a strongly worded opinion, the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court expressed consternation at what he saw as a pattern of misleading statements by the government and hinted that the NSA possibly violated a criminal law against spying on Americans.

<snip>
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-gathered-thousands-of-americans-e-mails-before-court-struck-down-program/2013/08/21/146ba4b6-0a90-11e3-b87c-476db8ac34cd_story.html

[truebluegreen]

1. I'd like to see both the NSA and the CIA defunded

along with their secret "laws", secret surveillance, black ops...all of it sans scrutiny or oversight, darn near all of it making us less safe instead of more. At great expense, in blood and treasure.

Of course, it would take a national movement to turn the Defense Dept back into the War Dept--you know, something we might need occasionally as opposed to something we can't get enough of.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

2. Here's a list of Representatives who voted against defunding the NSA, 217 - 205:

http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/24/a-list-of-congressmen-who-voted-for-against-the-amendment-to-stop-nsa-spying/

[truebluegreen]

3. Thanks.