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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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From your link:

Officials have stressed that the NSA and DEA telephone databases are distinct. The NSA database, disclosed by Snowden, includes data about every telephone call placed inside the United States. An NSA official said that database is not used for domestic criminal law enforcement.

The DEA database, called DICE, consists largely of phone log and Internet data gathered legally by the DEA through subpoenas, arrests and search warrants nationwide. DICE includes about 1 billion records, and they are kept for about a year and then purged, DEA officials said.

Regardless of controversies about parallel construction (which is already illegal), your own cite doesn't even purport to show what you claim it shows.

"Officials have stressed" that everything the officials were (and are) doing is legal, yes. But they cover it up anyway.

So, you have some other cite that demonstrates that they were using NSA data? Or is this just baseless speculation?

It's the same cite. The claim isn't that they weren't using NSA data, only that they weren't using that particular NSA data. And no, it's not "baseless" speculation. When they've been revealed to having been up to no good in various ways, the prior should be that they've been up to no good in adjacent ways they weren't caught for as well.

Ok, so you don't. Got it. Sounds like there are all sorts of things that NSA does that could conceivably be used in a military operation on foreign soil that cannot be used against domestic drug dealers.

There are all sorts of things the NSA does that could conceivably be used in a military operation on foreign soil that have not yet been publicly demonstrated to have been used against domestic drug dealers.

With the same reasoning, we can conclude that the CIA and other military agencies already routinely assassinate domestic drug dealers. Ya know, if that's the kind of epistemics we're going with. Hell, I'm pretty sure we can conclude that you already routinely assassinate domestic drug dealers. Why do you do that, and why aren't more people outraged about your obscene behavior? (...not to mention your wife beating...)

With the same reasoning, we can conclude that the CIA and other military agencies already routinely assassinate domestic drug dealers.

No. In the DEA and NSAs case we know the NSA shares some data with DEA and the DEA fakes up a chain of evidence to conceal its source. Expecting that the data we know they share isn't all the data they share is not a great leap.

Expecting that the data we know they share isn't all the data they share is not a great leap.

You eat meat, yes? Expecting that the meat we know you eat isn't all the meat you eat is not a great leap. ...turns out, you're not just routinely assassinating domestic drug dealers... you're cannibalizing them! Big oof.