The NSA e.g. denies to archive content of us-american citizens mails. It is
thus perfectly reasonable to assume it does so with all other ones.
They also deny being able to violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics:
is it thus perfectly reasonable to assume they can violate the other
ones?
"Just because they deny X means it's reasonable to believe Y" is logic
that will get you in a whole lot of trouble. If you have evidence to
support your assertion I'm sure we'd all love to hear it -- but as I
don't believe such evidence exists, the most we can reasonably say is
"we don't know."
Besides, you believe their denials - are you kidding?
Let me tell you a story about Allan. Allan was a great guy, one of
the true heroes of American government. He never got the recognition
he deserved. Allan was a veteran FBI agent with a Ph.D. in criminal
justice, with a thesis that focused on police corruption. His life
goal was to someday get appointed as a federal judge. He authored
part of the FISA Act. Later in his life he was appointed by the
Attorney General to become the Department of Justice's gatekeeper to
the FISA Court. All warrant applications had to go through him.
He thus had two compelling reasons to be strict about the warrants he
presented to FISA. The first was that he hated corruption in a
deep-in-his-bones way. The second was he knew that if he allowed any
inadequate warrants to be presented to the FISA Court, those
inadequate warrants would come up in Senate confirmation hearings for
the federal judgeship he wanted. As a result, he had a reputation for
being harder to convince of a warrant than the FISA Court itself was!
-- Now, who told me about him first? My father, a federal judge who
at one time was tapped for FISA. (He refused for personal reasons: he
was approaching retirement and didn't want the additional
responsibilities.) Dad had a good laugh about it and thought that if
the American people ever knew it was harder to get Allan to bring a
warrant application to FISA than it was to actually get FISA to
approve a warrant, they'd be reassured. Dad would tell me all about
how in all the time Allan had been responsible for bringing warrant
applications to FISA, FISA had only ever denied three or four -- and
that years later Allan was still sore about those!
Nowadays, of course, the meme is "FISA has only rejected a handful of
warrants in all its time! Clearly, it must be a rubber stamp court!"
Nothing is further from the truth. For many years the reason why FISA
so rarely bounced an warrant application is because Allan refused to
bring inadequate ones to the Court.
The former General Counsel of the National Security Agency, Stewart
Baker, has written a fine book that I think everyone here should read:
_Skating on Stilts_. Baker has some harsh words for Allan, claiming
that he was such a hardass about warrant applications that he got in
the way of many national security investigations. I first read this
shortly after Allan's death and I almost bust a gut laughing. If he
knew that his major claim to fame was having GC-NSA call him an
obstruction to national security, I think he'd consider his place in
posterity to be well-established.
Allan died of cancer a few years ago -- but before he did, he achieved
his life goal of being appointed to the federal bench. I had the
honor of talking with him on several occasions from 2008 to 2010.
Even dying of cancer, he was still a partisan for integrity in
government. His commitment to it even in the face of imminent death
impressed me as few things in the world have.
Do I believe the NSA when they say that for U.S. persons only metadata
is collected? No.
But it was Allan's job to watch the NSA, and I trust that Allan didn't
lie to me.
I know that the common meme on this mailing list is, "ooh, government
*bad*, government *always* looking for ways to exploit us." But
that's an insulting and childish belief. It's about as grown-up and
about as mature as believing there are monsters under the bed or a
bogeyman in the closet.
Government *can be* bad, sure. Absolutely.
But government also has people like Allan, and when we forget that we
diminish ourselves.
Frankly, I think people on this list ought celebrate his birthday --
March 4 -- as some kind of holiday.
You know what? To hell with it. I /will/ celebrate his birthday,
just ten years late. I'm going to make a donation to GnuPG today, in
the memory of a government intelligence official who stood up for
civil liberties. They *do* exist. Werner, if the donation I make
later today could be credited as "In memory of the Honorable Allan N.
Kornblum," that would be appreciated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Kornblum
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