Comments by "Titanium Rain" (@ChucksSEADnDEAD) on "Melissa Chen: What Americans Don’t Understand About China" video.

@Carthodon non-disclosure agreements don't superceede the law. That's why we call them "whistleblowers", typically they're blowing the whistle on something nefarious. Otherwise they're just disgruntled employers, leakers, hackers, etc.
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@Carthodon A system "we rely on those who have democratically elected to determine what should be revealed and what shouldn't be" - the vast majority of government is unelected. You only vote a few figureheads into power and most of them don't have enough clearance to even know what certain agencies are doing. "does a moderately good job of keeping things legal" - bruh the US government has consistently trampled on the constitution and human rights for decades, it's not even concerned with keeping anything legal
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@Carthodon "A system can be democratic even if you don't vote for every person in the bureaucracy." - That's not the point. The point is that those who determine what should be revealed are not democratically elected (and it wouldn't make sense if they were). An intelligence service has to be undemocratic by design. Those positions you can vote for, they cannot hold the intelligence agencies accountable. What are they gonna do? Have Congress hearings? "No, sir, I do not recall". "No, I don't think I've ever met that person". "That person has never worked for us". 50 years later a FOIA request ends up proving that everything was a lie, nobody cares. That's how it works, and in a sick sense it should be how it works. People say Trump is a Putin asset - if the democracy is so easily corruptible that foreign leaders can straight up get their men elected into the presidency, it wouldn't make sense to let the people elect anyone into office and then let that someone declassify things that other countries might want. "It is also a stretch to go from saying that the US government, with millions of people working for it, will at any point in time be doing something illegal" - millions of people who don't know anything about things that happen outside their area of responsibility. When CIA agents were involved in Southeast Asian drug trade during the Vietnam war to support local guerrillas, you think the people on the Department of Education were getting reports about how much drugs were loaded onto Air America planes? You think that the CDC was involved in the planning for the Bay of Pigs invasion? The excuse that there's millions of people working for the government doesn't hold up because the vast majority is oblivious to what's actually being done by intelligence agencies. "the system works fairly well" - Have you paid attention to the news... in the last 50 years? Because it's clearly not. "In contrast, a system with total transparency in an effort to remove illegality will mean that the intelligent services just can't work at all" - I don't know if you've been paying attention but American intelligence services are responsible for so much evil and so many things that blew back in America's face that it might actually be preferable to gut them. You do realize that it was because of intelligence services that the War on Terror started, right? You do realize that intelligence services, in an attempt to take down Al-Assad, ended up arming insurgents who turned out to be ISIS, right? After trillions of dollars spent on war, thousands of Americans dead, over a million dead, a little transparency would go a long way considering all the shit that the CIA pulled in the 20th century, and also the fact that THEY ARE LITERALLY SPYING ON EVERYONE.
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@Carthodon "Out of the billions that are spent and the thousands who work for these agencies, yeah it has worked pretty well." - So despite all of the death, misery, destruction and loss of civil rights, it works pretty well because the government also hires a bunch of useless bureaucrats to dilute the evil? "the President can launch an investigation by himself if he so chooses" - Investigate what? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPt-zXn05ac Their job is to lie, cheat and steal. You think they won't destroy evidence (or simply withhold it because nobody knows it exists)? You think that the CIA doesn't have a contingency plan for official investigations? "In the case of the Bay of Pigs President Kennedy was not only well aware of the plan but was the one who approved when it was finally launched and also withdrew the military support when he felt it was not worth it. It is a pretty clear example of democratically elected leaders having full control of the intelligence services" - you're shifting the goalposts. This was about the number of employees on government payroll. But funny how you mention Kennedy controlling the intelligence services. It was really fortunate for them that JFK took a bullet to the brain. What a stroke of luck for the CIA. "by your logic you would argue that the US should not have provided immense material support to the Soviet Union in order to fight the NAZI" - by my logic the US shouldn't have gotten involved in any foreign affairs like the Founding Fathers intended. Everyone should be minding their own business. If countries did that more, the conditions that lead to the Nazis taking over wouldn't have existed in the first place. War is a racket. "Similarly, when Kissinger pushed for the US to side with Mao Zedong's China over the Soviet Union, he was siding with an even more backwards country with a regime that was even more totalitarian." - uhhhh I don't know what's the point of saying this when essentially of all the people who know who Kissinger is, probably 80% see him as a criminal of the highest order and want him to burn in hell. "a moderate amount of illegality" - bruh that was so tone deaf it's actually masterful satire. That's like the subtitle for a Dr. Strangelove sequel.
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