What I find scary is that we live in a nation where such scandals are capable of ending political careers. Where we even have political careers. Where we think it's okay to be worried about single politicians rather than policy in general, because eliminating a politician is capable of shuttering a policy. Where protecting someone's reputation is a necessary political factor.
This reminds me of the 1998 movie Enemy of the State (I know, I know its hollywood but bare with me) where the NSA targeted Will Smith's character for having the video tape of them assassinating a politician. The NSA's first course of action (after wiretapping his phones) was to publicly discredit him in the media, lose his job, etc.
So if he did leak the video tape to the press, he would appear to be a quack.
Then again, in reality NSA wouldn't have been able to wiretap him or track him down independently, since they can't conduct direct surveillance domestically by policy.
Then again, in reality NSA wouldn't have been able to wiretap him or track him down independently, since they can't conduct direct surveillance domestically by policy.
Except when they do it by mistake during a presidential election:
In one instance, the NSA decided that it need not report the unintended surveillance of Americans. A notable example in 2008 was the interception of a “large number” of calls placed from Washington when a programming error confused the U.S. area code 202 for 20, the international dialing code for Egypt, according to a “quality assurance” review that was not distributed to the NSA’s oversight staff. [1]
Yes, "by mistake". I wonder how many crimes we could get away with if we just said we did it by mistake, like they do.
There should be a zero tolerance policy for this sort of thing. The government itself and authorities need to be held at a higher standard than everyone else.
> This reminds me of the 1998 movie Enemy of the State (I know, I know its hollywood but bare with me)
All jokes aside, that is a great Tony Scotty movie and it has been acknowledged as such even by the "cocky" French cinema critics from Cahiers du Cinema.
You don't even have to go to a fictional account to look at how "the system" will seek to discredit people who could harm it. Take a look at Adrian Schoolcraft [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft], who was in the NYPD and tried to show investigators about corruption within the force.
"After voicing his concerns, Schoolcraft was reportedly harassed and reassigned to a desk job. After he left work early one day, a swat unit illegally entered his apartment, physically abducted him and forcibly admitted him to a psychiatric facility, where he was held against his will for six days."
>Then again, in reality NSA wouldn't have been able to wiretap him or track him down independently, since they can't conduct direct surveillance domestically by policy.
That's like saying your career as a web developer ended, but at least you're still a web designer at another company in another field. It misses the point that the project you championed for five years because it provided real value to real customers just got scrapped and tossed just to make sure none of your taint is left upon it, and half the people you helped hire in order to make it a high quality product got fired because they didn't spend enough time kissing ass rather than shipping code and you were covering for their occasional, warranted antagonism.
I honestly don't give a fuck about politicians' after-careers. You failed to lynch them. Fine. We don't do seppuku in this country. Fine.
No, I care, for instance, that Obama had to burn down his entire capacity to move and shake politically just to get a half-assed piece of healthcare reform into effect, and that it very well may have failed if Snowden had happened three years earlier.
I think you missed my point.. also, individual politicians represent their respective districts, I would sure hope that people in a democratic society worry about them
With current reelection rates over 80% in congress for the last fifty years [1], one wonders if they have any need to represent their districts at all.
http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/reelect.php
