I know this will, forever, brand me the NSA Defending, lackey of authoritarianism; but ...

[Gravitycollapse]

84. You finished with mentioning accountability which, incidentally, doesn't exist for the NSA.

Or the CIA or pretty much any agency tasked with operating under the cloak of secrecy.

In order to maintain secrecy, accountability to the public cannot exist. They can, at best, be accountable to those we give the authority to watch over these agencies. But even they are sworn to secrecy. At the end of the day, there is no accountability to the people. And that is why agencies like the CIA and NSA are, historically and presently, some of the most corrupt, destructive forces in the world.

We have to ask ourselves if that is a cost we are willing to absorb in order to maintain at least the veneer of prosperity. Since we in effect rely on them reporting their own efficacy, we don't have the foggiest idea how necessary they are as government agencies. When light is cast on their operations, when the people really see, every single time it is revealed they are immensely duplicitous.

I will never just assume I need a military or a secret police or an agency of espionage to protect my life. Because I know these entities have a vested interest in maintaining their own authority and that combined with a total lack of public accountability makes them almost unspeakably dangerous.

The truth is the more power an agency possesses, the more oversight it needs. Secrecy forces a contradiction by granting more power while necessitating less oversight. We have to confront this contradiction rather than cast it away because we have "faith." That is the kind of absurdism which gives birth to totalitarianism.