Secret government: America against democracy

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/07/secret-government

by primelens • 13 years ago

374 153 13 years ago

tptacek16• 13 years ago

A court that is supreme, in the sense of having the final say, but where arguments are only ever submitted on behalf of the government, and whose judges are not subject to the approval of a democratic body, sounds a lot like the sort of thing authoritarian governments set up when they make a half-hearted attempt to create the appearance of the rule of law.

It does sound like that. I agree. But so far as I can tell, even the the most strenuous credible arguments against the FISC don't argue that its judges have the "final say" over surveillance issues; FISC judges issue warrants which can be overturned by federal courts. The FISC isn't "supreme" and is in fact subject to the judgements of SCOTUS.

As I understand it, the warrant process used in domestic criminal law is also not adversarial, implying somewhat that the second part of the topic sentence of this graf might mislead.

Another error, this one more egregious:

None of the judges of the FISA court were vetted by Congress. They were appointed by a single unelected official: John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Of course, this isn't actually true; every sitting FISC judge was approved by the Senate, since FISC judges are appointed from the federal bench.

The article also cites sources selectively, which is unsurprising because it doesn't do any actual reporting but is instead an editorial analysis; so for instance it captures what the law professor who spoke to the New York Times believes, but misses what Orin Kerr, a GWU law professor and widely known expert on computer crime law (and, as I understood it, one of Weev's advocates at appeal), has said about the same process. Kerr has the (mis)fortune of not speaking through the prism of the mainstream media, but directly from his blog.

By way of bona fides, before I'm again asked how long I've worked for NSA: I think the FISC process is extremely bad and poses a long-term threat to civil liberties. But to read this article, you might come away with the idea that the solution would be to fix the FISC, when in reality what needs to happen is for Congress (which retains the authority to abolish FISC entirely) to establish some kind of bright-line rule about the limits of "foreign" surveillance (now that so much foreign traffic routes through the US) and to ensure that foreign surveillance is firewalled off from the rest of the government.

mtgx• 13 years ago

FISC judges issue warrants which can be overturned by federal courts

How? EFF and ACLU have tried that a few times, and they've been rejected by federal Courts either because "they had no standing" - and they can't get standing because they can't get the proof whether they're being spied upon or not because the government keeps it secret (and has rejected all FOIA requests for it), or because the government appealed state privileges.

They've made it in such a way that it it's almost impossible to do it without someone actually leaking all this stuff out. Even Ron Wyden, who was in the intelligence committee didn't know all the facts, and even if he did, he couldn't even tell it to the rest of the Congress.

Everything about this whole process was air tight, so you can't appeal it in any way, or stop it. I've watched the FISA Amendments Act voting. All the Congress heard about it was that "it's necessary to protect against terrorists, so vote for it". And Ron Wyden and a few others said it's being abused, but couldn't say much else.

hkhanna• 13 years ago

FISC judges issue warrants which can be overturned by federal courts. The FISC isn't "supreme" and is in fact subject to the judgements of SCOTUS.

I admit this thought crossed my mind as well when I read the article. But then I realized that federal court review of FISC decisions doesn't mean much when there is nobody to appeal the decisions of FISC to those federal courts.

The FISC warrants hearings are ex parte, and the vast majority of them are granted. The government won't appeal their victories. They probably don't appeal their losses either, electing instead to refine their evidence and apply again in that sliver of cases where their initial warrant request is denied.

For all practical purposes, then, FISC is supreme. With no mechanism for their decisions to reach the normal federal court system, their secret decisions stand unchallenged and those secret decisions stand as precedent for future cases that come before FISC.

A question for someone more familiar with federal courts than I: can higher federal courts review the decisions of lower courts without any party making such a request, or must cases reach higher courts only on appeal?

md224• 13 years ago

None of the judges of the FISA court were vetted by Congress. They were appointed by a single unelected official: John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court.
Of course, this isn't actually true; every sitting FISC judge was approved by the Senate, since FISC judges are appointed from the federal bench.

The original author (Will Wilkinson) seems to be making a rebuttal against that point in his reply here:

https://twitter.com/willwilkinson/status/354725080288346112

dragonwriter16• 13 years ago

The rebuttal is technically true but not much of a rebuttal.

Congress wrote the rules that makes serving on the FISC and FISCR, on assignment by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, part of the duties of judges of the district and circuit courts, and the Senate was aware of those rules when it confirms judges to those courts. So, with the possible theoretical exception of any FISC and FISCR judges who were confirmed to their current district or circuit court seats before FISA was adopted in 1978 -- there aren't any actual examples now, though obviously there have been some in the past, and there aren't new opportunities being created -- all FISC and FISCR judges were appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate to a position from which availability for additional assignment to the FISC and/or FISCR was, under law at the time of their appointment, part of the position.

dragonwriter16• 13 years ago

FISC judges issue warrants which can be overturned by federal courts.

The only review process for FISC orders is for denials of petitions for surveillance. See, generally, 18 USC § 1803, and particularly subsections (a) and (b); and where that process does extent beyond the special courts set up under FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and its big brother the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review), it goes directly and solely to the US Supreme Court; usually, one does not refer to something that is reserved solely for the Supreme Court as belonging to "the federal courts".

Even if there was a process for reviewing approved petitions, the only people who will know about a petition being approved are the judge issuing it and the executive officers applying for it, so no one who would be interested in challenging an order is going to know that it exists to be challenged.

tptacek16• 13 years ago

Happy to be reading you in another thread. Questions:

* How does this process differ from domestic criminal law?

* What enforcement mechanisms does FISC have, and might those methods involve transactions with the federal courts in general?

* Doesn't Google have standing to sue the USG in addition to petitioning the FISC (in the manner, for instance, described by the Yahoo disclosure the NYT ran a couple weeks ago)?

* Similarly, don't the electronic providers have ways to engage the federal courts on the issue of gag orders?

I concede what I perceive to be your fundamental point, which is that regardless of the process used by FISC, the setting in which it operates makes it difficult as a practical matter for any other court to oversee their actions. But then, I wonder whether that's because in domestic criminal law, warrants are mostly confronted as a consequence of the exclusionary rule, and thus involves named defendants.

jarrett3• 13 years ago

As I understand it, the warrant process used in domestic criminal law is also not adversarial

Not entirely true. The issuance of the warrant is not adversarial. However, due to the exclusionary rule, a warrant can be overturned after the fact. Not only does this exclude evidence obtained from the warranted search, it also provides an incentive for police and judges to maintain high standards for warrants. Thus, there is a strong adversarial component in the process, and it's an essential one.

Of course, this isn't actually true; every sitting FISC judge was approved by the Senate, since FISC judges are appointed from the federal bench.

But Congress has not had a chance to downvote their appointment to the FISC. How can we assume that every judge whom Congress deems fit for the federal bench would also be approved to join the FISC, were the question put to Congress?

tptacek16• 13 years ago

If Congress is uncomfortable with the current makeup of the FISC, the same vote that would confirm or deny an individual judge could reconstitute the entire court. FISC is some sense an instrument of Congress. To the extent that it's an Article III court (I still contend it might not be), FISC even avoids the issue of judge tenure because its judges are part-timers who already sit on the federal bench. Unlike the federal court system, Congress has near total authority over FISC.

metaobject• 13 years ago

FISC judges issue warrants which can be overturned by federal courts

But if nobody knows that the warrants have been issued, how can they be challenged in court?

modeless4• 13 years ago

The FISC is de-facto supreme. Due to the secrecy of its subject matter and rulings, nobody can prove standing to sue in the first place, so it's impossible to challenge it in practice.

joewallin2• 13 years ago

Modeless, you are right. This court should be subject to the full light of day and a true adversarial process. All opinions published. With judges having to put their names on the opinions and own up to them.

DannyBee9• 13 years ago

This doesn't make any sense. Constitutional injury does not occur because a judge interprets the law. Constitutional injury occurs when the government does something to you.

If the government is the one surveilling you, you challenge that, and then you have standing.

All existing decisions i'm aware of (except the one in the past few days), even the SCOTUS one, dealt with third parties making claims that they were "likely being surveilled".

None of them could prove anything, because nobody has used the info against them. SCOTUS held that they could not establish standing, because they couldn't show it was actually happening. The parties wanted abrogation of the state secrets privilege to get the government to admit or deny whether they were being surveilled.

IE It wasn't known surveillance targets suing, it was "a group of international organizations, lawyers, and media personnel"

If you have a case where someone who was surveilled has been denied standing, i'd love to see it. So far, Jewell has not been denied standing in Jewell vs. The NSA

carbocation• 13 years ago

what needs to happen is for Congress (which retains the authority to abolish FISC entirely) to establish some kind of bright-line rule about the limits of "foreign" surveillance

So, I agree. And as much as I find many/most aspects of the FISC to be deeply problematic, the existence of the FISC has in the past few days been a boon (probably for the first time that I am aware). Basically, state secrets claims were rejected because the FISA court's existence displaces such claims. (This is an oversimplified read, and IANAL.)

From the opinion (Do I get to say "FTFO" for the first time ever?) [1]:

"The Jewel Plaintiffs move for partial summary adjudication seeking to have the Court reject the Defendants’ state secret defense by arguing that Congress has displaced the state secretes privilege in this action by the statutory procedure prescribed by 50 U.S.C. § 1806(f) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”)."
"... the Court GRANTS Defendants’ motions to dismiss Plaintiffs’ statutory claims on the basis of sovereign immunity"

1 = http://ia600508.us.archive.org/10/items/gov.uscourts.cand.20...

rayiner2• 13 years ago

By way of bona fides, before I'm again asked how long I've worked for NSA

I hate that you have to make that disclaimer. I think the attitude that only people who have a vested interest in the current system could possibly not agree completely with the group think is part of the reason why privacy advocates have so little political clout.

It's really easy to convince yourself that the system is irredeemably broken and any attempts at change are futile when you can't acknowledge that people might have legitimately different opinions on the subject than what you and your friends personally believe. You can't find common ground with others if you reject offhand differences in how they approach a given problem. And when you can't find common ground with others, you'll never have any impact in a democratic society.

tptacek16• 13 years ago

Ordinarily, I wouldn't. I don't think I should have to pass an ideological purity test to put forward a descriptive argument about how FISC works.

But I found this article because Paul Graham twerped (approvingly) about it, and bothered to comment because HN was an easier place to disagree with him about the quality of the article than Twitter.

In doing that, I didn't want the thread to become a gigantic pointless fight about who does or doesn't support the surveillance state. It was a courtesy, is all.

lbarrow2• 13 years ago

Could you explain what you mean by "ensure that foreign surveillance is firewalled off from the rest of the government"?

tptacek16• 13 years ago

The FBI should be forbidden to use information obtained through the FISA process to make criminal cases, and evidence that can be traced causally to FISA information should also be excluded as fruit of a poisoned tree.

What we should do is fix the incentives. If we want to restrict the targeting of mass surveillance to foreign entities, we should (and could) turn information on citizens gained from FISA into legal hazmat; any evidence a defense team could generate that an FBI investigator got their fingers into FISA data to help a case would/could/should create a huge hassle for the AUSA in court.

If there's some other use we're worried about the USG putting NSA surveillance to, we should identify that specific use, identify the incentives behind that use, and fix the incentives.

unclebucknasty2• 13 years ago

As I understand it, the warrant process used in domestic criminal law is also not adversarial, implying somewhat that the second part of the topic sentence of this graf might mislead.

No. What you're missing here is that he is not speaking about the FISA court's warrant process being non-adversarial. He is saying that the process by which laws and permissions are being extended to the NSA/government is based solely on the representations of the government, without rebuttal. That's what's non-adversarial.

It's a huge distinction. Effectively, laws are being created based solely on the statements of the government. The example he gave:

In one of the court’s most important decisions, the judges have expanded the use in terrorism cases of a legal principle known as the "special needs" doctrine and carved out an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of a warrant for searches and seizures, the officials said.

tptacek16• 13 years ago

The only thing the FISC is empowered to do is to grant warrants and certifications to intelligence services. My point was, domestic criminal warrants work the same way: they're non-adversarial and often secret.

I'm having a hard time understanding how we make the jump from "warrant" to "law". The word "law" connotes a huge sweep of authority that the FISC simply doesn't have.

As a reminder: the Fourth Amendment doesn't protect foreigners abroad; the Constitution covers people on American soil, and American citizens abroad, and that's it. There's a robust meme on HN that the USG is bound by the Constitution when dealing with (say) Malaysians. It simply isn't. The distinction is important because the FISA process pertains exclusively to foreign intelligence. The FISC has no authority to authorize deliberate surveillance of American citizens.

glesica2• 13 years ago

I agree. But so far as I can tell, even the the most strenuous credible arguments against the FISC don't argue that its judges have the "final say" over surveillance issues; FISC judges issue warrants which can be overturned by federal courts. The FISC isn't "supreme" and is in fact subject to the judgements of SCOTUS.

You're wrong. How can the SCOTUS review a FISC decision if those decisions are never made public and if, upon challenge, the government can invoke the state secrets privilege. This is exactly what has happened in the past.

The supreme court doesn't hear cases unless there are two parties. It does not issue "advisory" rulings. But if the citizenry aren't allowed to know how the FISC interpreted the constitution, then how can we possibly object and challenge the interpretation before the SCOTUS?

Further, judges don't generally do a lot of constitutional interpretation when issuing warrants. They rely on precedent. If a judge were to step a bit outside of whatever precedent existed on a given topic (for whatever reason), the person against whom the warrant was to be served would later have the opportunity to challenge the warrant, and the constitutional interpretation that resulted in its issue. None of this is the case with the FISC. They are free to interpret the constitution however they see fit without any real possibility of their opinions being challenged or reviewed.

Of course, this isn't actually true; every sitting FISC judge was approved by the Senate, since FISC judges are appointed from the federal bench.

Nice try, but nope. Just about every Supreme Court justice has been a federal judge previously. Did that mean that there was no confirmation process? Not a chance.

Congress vetted these people to be federal judges, not members of a secret tribunal that makes secret constitutional interpretations that have the force of law and are effectively immune from further scrutiny.

tptacek16• 13 years ago

I actually agree with you about the appointment issue --- in the sense that my guess is that FISC court appointment procedures mean it isn't an Article III court. But a couple problems with that for this line of argument:

* There are Article I courts; Congress is empowered to create tribunals for which the Article III appointment rules don't apply. Since the FISC is adjudicating policies that Congress is already empowered to legislate (the Constitution being as silent on foreign surveillance as it is on the makeup of the Air Force), not adhering to Article III doesn't automatically make the FISC unconstitutional.

* In trying to pursue my leg of this argument over the past couple days, I've been pretty well slapped down on the idea that appointment issues damage the Article III standing of the FISC:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6010406

dragonwriter16• 13 years ago

Nice try, but nope. Just about every Supreme Court justice has been a federal judge previously. Did that mean that there was no confirmation process? Not a chance.

If you read the Appointments Clause, you'll find that the only judges explicitly called out that must go through the advice and consent process are Justices of the Supreme Court. So, while that's true, it doesn't really support any kind of broader argument by analogy.

DannyBee9• 13 years ago

"You're wrong. How can the SCOTUS review a FISC decision if those decisions are never made public and if, upon challenge, the government can invoke the state secrets privilege. This is exactly what has happened in the past."

This is not correct. 50 USC 1803(b) specifically provides that the record will be transmitted to SCOTUS upon write of certiorari.

There have been non-parties that have attempted to get access to the rulings, and those have been denied.

" But if the citizenry aren't allowed to know how the FISC interpreted the constitution, then how can we possibly object and challenge the interpretation before the SCOTUS?"

The injured party would normally file a writ of certiorari with SCOTUS after losing in FISC. This is specifically provided for.

snowwrestler2• 13 years ago

How is the FISA court like a shadow Supreme Court? Its interpretation of the constitution is treated by the federal government as law.

All federal court decisions are treated by the federal government as law. The Supreme Court just happens to have the last word on appeal.

Generally speaking in the U.S., "the law" is not what the text of a bill says, it is what the courts say the text means.

And then there's the fact that "the FISA court hears from only one side in the case—the government—and its findings are almost never made public."

Grand jury proceedings are also secret and hear only from the government. That is ok because a grand jury is not determining guilt, it is just deciding whether a prosecution can proceed. Likewise, FISA is not determining guilt, it is just deciding whether an investigation can employ certain tactics and technologies.

aetherson2• 13 years ago

Grand juries do not issue opinions on things like "the meaning of the 4th Amendment." It seems appropriate to apply just a tiny bit more scrutiny to the FISA court than grand juries.

tptacek16• 13 years ago

FISC also doesn't issue opinions on "the meaning of the 4th Amendment". The most important way the courts have shaped 4th Amendment jurisprudence in the last century is through application of the exclusionary rule in criminal cases. FISC doesn't hear criminal cases, and if evidence from NSA/FISA was brought up in a domestic criminal case, it would be evaluated by a normal domestic court judge and, very likely, excluded.

snowwrestler2• 13 years ago

4th Amendment protections do not even apply to grand jury proceedings; prosecutors can present evidence to a grand jury even if it was collected illegally and will likely be excluded at trial.

lukifer• 13 years ago

This abuse of "special needs" is horrifically egregious, but I find myself wondering exactly how one would go about codifying "common sense" exceptions to the Constitution, like the infamous example of shouting fire in a crowded theater.

If one allows for genuine edge-case exceptions, whether explicitly in law or implicitly by interpretation, how can we prevent the gap from widening into eroding the law completely? For instance, it's not a far leap from shouting fire, to so-called hate speech, and from there to silencing dissidents.

(Note also the use of the word "reasonable" in the 4th; while it has a very specific legal meaning, clearly the courts are interpreting it very differently from civil liberties advocates.)

visarga• 13 years ago

FISA redefined the word "reasonable". Bill Clinton redefined the word "is". It would seem anything is fair game.

DanielBMarkham2• 13 years ago

Warning: a bit of meta ahead.

I upvoted this as I was reading the first paragraph, even though I had a sneaking suspicion it was just a recap of secrecy state news. I did this probably because I'm a sucker for things that I feel strongly about emotionally.

But as I continued reading, I'm thinking Good grief! Here's some other person rightly upset about where we are but clueless about how we got here or what to do about it. What have I gotten into?

Then I come to this:

"All this somehow got me thinking of the doctrine of "democracy promotion", which was developed under George W. Bush and maintained more or less by Barack Obama"

What? America has publicly and openly supported democracy -- sometimes at the pointy-end of a gun -- for decades. Then several other errors stood out.

I'm sure that W.W., whoever he might be, means well, but we've kind of reached the point here where there are a hell of a lot of people getting the general message that things are fucked up and carrying a ton of baggage with them when trying to figure out how. So break out the pet theories: evil bankers, corporations controlling the government, one party or the other out to set up a kingship, GW Bush policies continues to destroy the country -- whatever emotional baggage they're dragging around, they're bringing it to this discussion.

This is a really bad thing because it trivializes the entire issue. Ezra Klein the other day was talking about FISC judges mostly being Republican, as if the problem here were not that we have the FISA court in the first place, but that the wrong people are on it!

(I find a bit of self-referential critques to all of this; it seems the charges being leveled are those the authors would be most guilty of themselves given the chance, but I digress)

This guy wants to go on a riff about how the select few -- our betters -- are making these incredible decisions about the disaster we've created.

Let's be clear about this: the government keeping detailed records of all the communication and movement of each citizen is not okay, even if 90% of the country voted for it. It's not okay because a democracy cannot survive in a perpetual state of war, and once we are at war with the population itself, it's never going to end well. Police counter-intelligence is one thing. There are probably 10K people in the US that need secret files and should be watched because they are dangerous. Fishing expeditions against huge databases of facts from years ago regarding any random citizen are out of the question. It's not that it's bad or makes me angry. It's that it doesn't work. The system is unsustainable over the long-term.

So kudos to the author for being outraged and making a point about the system broken. I encourage whoever it is to stick around and learn to articulate the good parts of the system as well as the shitty parts. Learn the difference between what a lot of the rhetoric folks read, like about the judges being unaccountable, and what the reality actually is. Otherwise it's just more mindless ranting. (About something many of us are legitimately upset about) Because it confuses the issue as much as illuminates it, this is not helpful.

I'm going to start being much more careful with upvotes for security state articles on HN. Love 'em, but they need to bring more quality to the table to be here.

MaysonL• 13 years ago

W.W., whoever he might be

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Wilkinson

marshray• 13 years ago

I agree the 'democracy promotion' angle was a little play for ironic guilt. But it's his piece, his audience, and his editor.

When I hear people speaking as if 'democracy promotion' were a policy begun under Bush 43, I figure they're just young. Folks under the age of (gasp) about 38 are just not going to remember.

DanielBMarkham2• 13 years ago

I think that was what really did it for me.

These issues have been festering since the turn of the 20th century, maybe before. It's a result of one edge case piled on top of another.

To try to draw it all into some simple narrative that happened in the last 12 years? It's simplistic to the point of being preposterous.

ThomPete• 13 years ago

Perhaps (and I am merely guessing here) he is referring to this:

"After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, U.S. government officials questioned the lack of large-scale American democracy promotion mechanisms in the MENA region, viewing democracy as a means of promoting moderation and stability and preventing terrorism"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_democracy_promotion_in...

l33tbro• 13 years ago

What confounds me is how Obama continues to drink his own kool-aid. Did anyone catch him on Charlie Rose a little while back? (30 minutes in - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlThTTJgKYo). The author of the article is right: it is difficult to know whether to laugh or cry.

malandrew2• 13 years ago

Question:

Do all the justices in SCOTUS have access to each and every ruling made by FISC? If so, can a SCOTUS justice unilaterally promote a FISC ruling to be heard by SCOTUS?

In other words, can SCOTUS provide a secondary source of oversight over FISC in addition to the oversight from the intelligence committee in Congress?

kposehn• 13 years ago

Excellent question. I'd definitely like to know the answer to this. If it isn't classified, that is.

dragonwriter16• 13 years ago

Do all the justices in SCOTUS have access to each and every ruling made by FISC?

No.

If so, can a SCOTUS justice unilaterally promote a FISC ruling to be heard by SCOTUS?

No, even if they have knowledge of a lower court decision (and there is an intermediate court between the FISC and SCOTUS), neither a single Justice nor the Supreme Court itself can "pull" a case that hasn't been brought before them by a party.

DannyBee9• 13 years ago

You are correct in the first instance, however, the law does direct FISC to transmit records to SCOTUS upon writ of certiorari.

So at least in the case that someone wants to actually appeal one, it's not kept from SCOTUS See 50 USC 1803(b)

As for the second part, again, you are technically correct. They cannot promote such rulings.

However, they can stay them, per 50 USC 1803(f). In fact, individual justices can stay them.

o0-0o• 13 years ago

America is not against democracy. It is about restraining itself from making that whole area over there a glass parking lot. It may come to that, anyway.

api2• 13 years ago

The U.S. has a very long history of foreign policy hypocrisy, especially since WWII.

One of the reasons the British finally divested themselves of their empire is that it was bankrupting them and destroying their civil society. The empire eventually comes home. Everything we've done overseas will eventually be applied to us, and the costs will be ours to bear. Hopefully we'll be as wise as the British and divest ourselves of empire before it destroys us, because it seems like civilizations that do not gracefully exit empire collapse.

jivatmanx• 13 years ago

Indeed, the Roman Republic turned into an Empire as it gained more territory, and having a representative system with most people being non-citizens became an untenable contradiction.

digitalengineer3• 13 years ago

It would seem the British were 'assisted' with parting with their empire by the US: "...an ambitious geopolitical agenda hatched within President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Treasury and aimed at eliminating Britain as an economic and political rival". http://www.amazon.com/The-Battle-Bretton-Woods-University/dp...

api2• 13 years ago

Maybe we can dump our empire on China. Bonus: they'll think it's a good thing.

jussij• 13 years ago

"said he was troubled by the idea that the court is creating a significant body of law without hearing from anyone outside the government, forgoing the adversarial system that is a staple of the American justice system."

What bothers me is why a civilised country would even consider that type of system constitutes a court of law.

Dictators and tyrants around the world use pretty much the same model and no one in their right mind would call those legal systems.

tracker1• 13 years ago

Regarding "none of the fisa court judges are vetted by congress" ... weren't they vetted when they were appointed as federal judges (since all fisa judges are also federal court judges)?

Not that I agree with there even being a FISA court... just curious on that point.

adventured2• 13 years ago

"I'd very much like to know what led Mr Obama to change his mind"

He didn't change his mind. He lied to get elected. His team knew exactly what message to hit, riding the wave of anti-Republican / anti-George W. Bush sentiment, to win the election. Obama is a politician above all else, and a scoundrel; but then I repeat myself [hat tip Mr Twain].

Normal people get confused by how a politician's brain works. Typically a person holds a set of beliefs, and attempts to follow those whenever they reasonably can. They have a code of morality, knowingly chosen or absorbed by default, and they try to be good, most of the time. Politicians do not function that way professionally. Work life Obama is not private life Obama. A voter sees what they think is a normal person when they vote; there's nothing normal about the business life of a politician. The really talented ones hold every belief simultaneously, and switch when it's required. With the only restriction being the party ideology; and the only variable within that being the strictness of adherence (it's the same game of ideological flexibility, just played within the party's limits).

In this day and age, to aspire to the Presidency, you're either a psychotic power luster capable of any lies and misdeeds necessary to win the office, or you're an ideologue willing to fall on the sword. The former usually wins.

diminoten6• 13 years ago

That's nice fiction, but it's entirely unfalsifiable, making it a completely ineffective as a theory.

wissler8• 13 years ago

The theory that it should be falsifiable in order to be valid, is not falsifiable.

fractallyte• 13 years ago

Has anyone invented/discovered a system where this can't happen?

There's that famous phrase (Churchill): 'It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried'. But this is more subtle: it's about lying, and ultimately, corruption. Is this a solved problem in hard political science?

I know of various solutions explored in science fiction, notably by Robert Heinlein, Arthur Clarke, Eric Frank Russell, Christopher Anvil, et al. There's game theory, where cooperation 'breeds' more cooperation, in a world of defectors.

But, it seems to me, corruption is now the biggest problem facing humanity. If we can fix that, it'll cascade down through everything else: climate change, energy sources, ecological destruction, sexism, etc...

jdc• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

digitalengineer3• 13 years ago

There have been studies like 'Democracy, the God that failed'. The book argues a emperor (or king) looks way beyond the typical 4 year time-span politicians do. A king plans for generations and can not push his population too far as they would revolt. Compared to endless 'Blue team vs Red Team' games filled with fake promises, the thought isn't all that crazy. The book sees Wold War 1 as a battle between emperor-states (like Central Europe and Germany) and democratic states Great Britain, France and the US).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy:_The_God_That_Failed

st-keller• 13 years ago

Yes, maybe China - take about 20 minutes and listen to this talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/eric_x_li_a_tale_of_two_political_s...

At least - a system without elections doesn't breed people, whose primary ability is to get elected.

exratione• 13 years ago

"Medieval Iceland and the Absence of Government" http://mises.org/daily/1121

Distributed dispute resolution services, a market for justice, as the foundation for a society free from most of the issues that plague the stationary-bandit state characterized by attempted monopolies on violence, law, and coercion. A system that lasted many times longer than the US did as a free society before falling to cartelization.

vijayr• 13 years ago

Corruption is a huge problem, but I think apathy/indifference is a bigger problem. Most people just don't care about anything, anyone other than themselves, and may be their loved ones. Until this changes, no amount of open gov, transparency, education etc will help - in fact, many times, highly educated people are more indifferent than less educated/less bright ones. If enough people cared, most problems wouldn't exist in the first place.

userulluipeste• 13 years ago

Yes, the corruption is the ultimate problem for all societies. It is innate, it is adaptable, it faces only limited counter-corruption defense systems, and it usually has the freedom to choose its own time and place (avoiding this way most of the traps). Also, if that wouldn't be enough, like vijayr said in the sibling comment - "Most people just don't care about anything, anyone other than themselves, and may be their loved ones." I would conclude that we have not found so far the most efficient and effective strategy to prevent and counter corruption. Our organizations specialized in fighting corruption are weak and more importantly - are by themselves exposed to be corrupted in a way or another. My solution? Offer incentives at the individual level to fight corruption and create in this way the most extended system against it.

newnewnew• 13 years ago

"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

Moldbug comments that people who use this quote rarely give serious consideration to any of the others. Universal democracies are a very new form of government, and to ignore their problems requires willful ignorance.

SkyMarshal• 13 years ago

This is more your anger speaking than any real direct experience, unless you've worked Obama or other Presidents.

honzzz2• 13 years ago

>> In this day and age, to aspire to the Presidency, you're either a psychotic power luster capable of any lies and misdeeds necessary to win the office...

Just a little clarification - I am pretty sure you make the same mistake that apparently many people do and confuse 'psychotic' and 'psychopathic'. Those are very different things and what you describe seems to be psychopathic (characterized by psychopathy or antisocial personality disorder - lies, manipulation, lack of remorse etc.) behaviour - this behaviour is not typical for psychotic people.

Psychotic person is someone who suffers from psychosis - for example schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

Psychotic people have really difficult life and it is partially because of the social stigma attached to psychoses - we should not make it worse by associating psychoses with morally despicable behaviour typical for psychopaths.

adventured2• 13 years ago

I certainly do understand there are very important differences between, for example: psychotic, psychopathic, schizophrenic, sociopath, and so on. I'm not a doctor, and won't pretend to be one. Even in the mental health industry these definitions are constantly evolving and have been for a long time. I just needed to get the point across, and for that purpose I knew the word psychotic would do the trick. Most people understand in general terms what you mean when you use that term: they think cold blooded, someone without the ability to empathize, cold and calculating, willing to hurt people to reach their objectives, etc.

Sociopathic would have been a better choice: "a personality disorder characterized by amorality and lack of affect; capable of violent acts without guilt feelings"

gcv• 13 years ago

The truth about Obama's views has always been right there in his Senate voting record. When he bothered to attend, he consistently voted to do things like extend the Patriot Act.

amerika2• 13 years ago

I don't think this is America against democracy. Democracy is mob rule.

I think this surveillance was originally a good idea, since all the data's out there and the bad guys are using it. It was abused when it was turned from "listen to all traffic and see if you can find terrorists" to "use this whenever we suspect someone of anything."

ckozlowski• 13 years ago

(There's a fantastic discussion and analysis in this comments thread, and I'm learning a lot from it.

Thanks to all involved. =)

bayesianhorse• 13 years ago

I don't believe the U.S. system can change these undemocratic features at a favorable cost.

Mordor• 13 years ago

It's worrying that words are being redefined to the extent that Obama doesn't make any sense anymore.

amerika2• 13 years ago

It's not popular to say this but: democracy is a failure.

We have constant political turmoil, constant corruption, and constant interruption by "well-intentioned" but insane government programs.

The world is constantly unstable.

Let's get away from the popularity model of government and move to the competence model.

Secret government: America against democracy

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