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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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Why do you have those forks marked 'for long pig only

Which forks are those? You have a citation for those markings, right?

part of the correct answer would be "Email, Video/voice chat, Photos, stored data, VOIP, file transfers, video conferencing, activity notifications, social networking details and special requests"

...for who? That answer will be precisely what I said. You get an even louder incorrect buzzer. Please educate yourself.

He didn't provide a correct, classified answer to them in a secure channel afterward

This is a lie. Note that when you quote the phrase

correct the record

he means, "Correct the public record". Which means putting classified information in the public record. Which is illegal.

The reason I bring up LOVEINT is that by virtue of the problem existing at all it shows that the warrant requirements aren't being applied and domestic communications are being collected - if the surveillance panopticon was functioning with the restrictions and rules that you are implying, it could never actually be a problem. But it is a problem, and the fact that it is means that the system is capable of abuse and is actively being abused.

There are strategies put in place to discover these things. When discovered, those people get fired and prosecuted. Can you design a system that "functions with the restrictions and rules"... with absolutely zero possible failures? If you can, you can make a bundle of money, because everyone wants this. Just give it to us. We'll pay you an insane amount of money.

Mind you, I'm not saying that SIGINT doesn't deserve to exist

Then just tell us how to do it better! Make tons of money by telling us how to magically design these systems!

the corrupt surveillance of the Trump campaign, including when he was President Elect, was far more serious

Perhaps. I've seen some serious suggestions for how to improve the systems that are in place. Do you have any? Or are you just bitching and lying about the facts that are in evidence?

...for who? That answer will be precisely what I said. You get an even louder incorrect buzzer. Please educate yourself.

The data included domestic communications from American citizens, and it comes from the companies listed in the slide. You're the one trying to claim that this data doesn't include domestic communications, and the reason you have so much trouble answering this question in an earnest way is that the answer destroys your position.

This is a lie.

I'm going to trust Ron Wyden over an anonymous person on the internet when it comes to matters directly involving whether something was said to Ron Wyden or not. Do you have any evidence behind this claim?

There are strategies put in place to discover these things. When discovered, those people get fired and prosecuted.

Even if these strategies had a 100% success rate (which I highly doubt)... them getting caught and reprimanded does nothing to address the point that the fact they could actually do this is the problem! It's incredibly easy to design a system that doesn't fail in this way - you need to go to a court and apply for a search or wiretap warrant, then you can start collecting information on a target. If you actually enforce these requirements LOVEINT cannot happen outside cases where somebody is actively dating a legitimate surveillance target (in which case they should be forced to recuse themselves). Hell, some incredibly smart Americans actually came up with those requirements and put them into law hundreds of years ago.

If you can, you can make a bundle of money, because everyone wants this. Just give it to us. We'll pay you an insane amount of money.

No, the US government doesn't want this - nor would they pay me money for pointing out that they need to completely clean house in the intelligence community. A system which actually prevented abuse would prevent abuse, and it is abundantly clear that abuse was precisely what a lot of people in the US government wanted. There already WAS a system which functioned the way you're asking - the existing court system, where real judges in adversarial courts had to sign off on a warrant, not some rubber stamper that lets someone use opposition research they know is false to spy on presidential candidates. But that said, I'm not obligated to design a complete replacement for the government because I think that inescapable, warrantless surveillance is bad.