The Top 5 Claims That Defenders Of The NSA Have To Stop Making To Remain Credible - EFF

[joshcryer]

94. Mixed opinion on 3 and 5.

3 in particular I've seen people admit that the ex-lover spying was an abuse of power, what they tend to say is that oversight works. That ties into 5 because the fact that they were caught means that the oversight within the system works, etc.

2 I admit I've seen several times here. What they always fail to recognize is that it's not just meta-data being collected but also the data itself. What's being looked at is the metadata, but if the metadata tells a story, they can then "go back in time" and look at the data itself (with a warrant). What's unclear is whether someone like Snowden could really do that, without the warrant. That's a huge deal, and it seems that's what Snowden was saying. This, btw, would be a function of a lack of perfect forward secrecy within the underlying metadata-data collection system; you would want a sort of "nuclear football" for the warrant to use the metadata to unlock the past data. If that doesn't exist then there's a gaping hole there, too.

So I'll say 2 I've definitely seen before and I would not chastise posters for 3 and 5 too much because I know all of them would be for passing the "Ending Secret Law Act." When people start judging other posters here it's BS because just because they're not overly concerned doesn't mean they'd be against more government transparency.

Full disclosure, I advocate abolishing the NSA. I'm playing devils advocate / legalese here.