In what ways could the NSA be abused?

We don’t have to imagine any abuses. We can stick with the reality of current abuse.

The Fourth Amendment (Amendment IV) to the United States Constitution is the part of the Bill of Rights that prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and requires any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause.

Our private discussion on phone or email is compromised. This could include our political strategy, or just the right to assemble peacefully. Information concerning the patent of a new energy resource or technology could easily be sold to the highest corporate bidder. Unwarranted scrutiny placed upon political, religious, or business groups.

“If tyranny and oppression come to this land it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy”
James Madison

Read up on J. Edgar Hoover. He supposedly maintained his power by keeping dirt on almost everyone. He ruled the FBI as a private fief for much of its history, and was such an authoritarian thug that even Nixon wouldn’t fuck with him.

The point of the NSA is to intimidate anyone deviant, whether they are deviant for pro-social reasons or not.

A few abusers can become very rich by knowing about certain upcoming changes in the market and acting upon the insider info.

Somebody stole my premier Swiss Army Knife enclosed in a leather case out of my checked suitcase. There was even a note from NSA that my luggage had been searched.

@YARNLADY That’s not NSA, that was Homeland Security. Almost all checked bags are searched, first by going through a screening imager, and then being opened if there is the least suspicion.

Don’t give them any more ideas!

@zenvelo Oh, yes. Of course, I get those acronyms confused

Listen to the Watergate tapes where Nixon has pulled out notebooks full of names he had collected throughout his political career. It was his Enemy List. It included politicians that ran against him, donated to his opposition, didn’t endorse him when he thought they should, opposed measures he supported and reporters he felt had written things that were unflattering to him. He told his staff he wanted the IRS to audit those fuckers over and over till they could find something to jail every one of them.

Think of Stalin’s use of an enemy list. As many as 20 million Russians were killed because Stalin was concerned they might be disloyal to him, or because they actually did oppose the brutal thug, or sometimes just to strike terror into his countrymen’s hearts lest they even think about opposing him. His secret police collected the names. They paid neighbors to rat on neighbors. Some informants used it as a chance to screw over someone just because they didn’t like them.

People often were “disappeared” just vanishing one morning on the way to work, with their family never finding out what happened to them. With a secret police here FAR more invasive than the KGB of Stalin’s day could be, imagine the threat to liberty if WHEN some asshole like Nixon gets into the Oval Office again and decides to become dictator for life, or like the Kim family of North Korea, for generations. Bye-bye freedom.

Domestic spy agencies are a far more pervasive, dangerous threat to freedom and democracy than some idiot with explosive panties or a plastic explosive heel on his shoe. And in point of fact, the NSA didn’t have a clue about the underwear bomber or the shoe bomber. They didn’t protect us from them, average Americans on the two airplanes foiled their plots.

I’m not saying we want to throw the doors open to terrorist, but we have to be very, very aware that having big brother watching you and looking for thought crimes is not the sort of protection we need or want.

self-edit