Here is what I don't understand: actions like this takes more than one person. It takes hundreds of people, complicit in actions that are the opposite of what anyone would consider 'American'. It's plainly fucking unamerican. So who the hell are these people? Why are they getting away with it? Sure covert things have always been going on to protect the public...but this is so in-your-face against what we should stand for that I cannot fathom how it is allowed to continue. I am so very angry that things like this are happening. The worst part? we can't seem to do anything about it so we just end up whining on the internet.
I'm not so sure about that. Grand juries traditionally operated in secret, and subpoenaing information on someone without tipping them doesn't necessarily violate the constitution. Now if someone is charged with a criminal offense, they have a constitutional right to confront witnesses under the 6th amendment. but that's not the same as a requirement to be notified of being the subject of an investigation where no charges have been brought.
Note that the grand jury system itself is is explicitly provided for in the Constitution - one of the less well-known aspects of the 5th amendment, which requires that prosecutors make a case before a grand jury before attempting to bring suspects to trial in serious cases. I'm not an expert on the history of grand juries, but I believe this summary from US v. Johnson (319 U.S. 503 (1943)) suts things up well:
Were the ruling of the court below allowed to stand, the mere challenge, in effect, of the regularity of a grand jury's proceedings would cast upon the government the affirmative duty of proving such regularity. Nothing could be more destructive of the workings of our grand jury system or more hostile to its historic status. That institution, unlike the situation in many states, is part of the federal constitutional system. To allow the intrusion, implied by the lower court's attitude, into the indispensable secrecy of grand jury proceedings — as important for the protection of the innocent as for the pursuit of the guilty — would subvert the functions of federal grand juries by all sorts of devices which some states have seen fit to permit in their local procedure, such as ready resort to inspection of grand jury minutes. The district court was quite within its right in striking the preliminary motions which challenged the legality of the grand jury that returned the indictment. To construe these pleadings as the court below did would be to resuscitate seventeenth century notions of interpreting pleadings and to do so in an aggravated form by applying them to the administration of the criminal law in the twentieth century. Protections of substance which now safeguard the rights of the accused do not require the invention of such new refinements of criminal pleading.
The hiring filters for most of the security services seem to select for people who consider following orders to be the most American thing they could possibly do.
The FBI and CIA dont seem to weed out poor quality candidates maybe they are placing to much reliance on patriotic hooha and polygraphs and not doing proper vetting checks.
The uk found out the hard way that he seems a good sort of chap belongs to all the right sort of clubs isn't agood selection criteria for the SS and SIS the hard way with the Famous 5 (Philby Maclean Burgess Blunt and Caincross)
Ok sure, plenty of cogs in the wheel following orders. But what about the judges? What about the leaders? The people we elect into office? Where is the accountability?
> judges? What about the leaders? The people we elect into office?
Judges are appointed by the president, and confirmed by the senate[1] (I guess that means voted on by the senate after a high ranking civil servant decides they would make a good judge) so if this person disagrees with the policy of the senators, there's a good chance he's not going to get into power. The people who are in office are normally so caught up in this sort of thing that they would end their own careers by speaking out about it, or worse, be called traitors of their own country and hunted by the NSA/FBI (see Snowden). The problem is once you know about it, you're already in deep, and your head will roll if it rolls. For many people, that sacrifice is too much to make. If you have a family, you ruin their lives too remember. All your friends, parents, relatives lives will be turned upside down at the same time... Is that something you would risk and give up if you were in this position?
The standard argument I've heard against "accountability" is that "leaders" won't "lead" properly if they know they could be held accountable for the consequences after leaving "office". It's utter bullshit, and there is absolutely no way for any of us to change it, or do anything about it.
I'd call for us to 'scientificize' the shit out of politics, but it would do no good. We all know what an utter failure the social sciences are when it comes to the scientific method. Mainly due to unpredictable human nature and the vagueness of social and political policy.
That said, if the people hired already have a righteous belief in a cause they think they are serving then they are much more likely to go along with things that, from the outside, seem quite wrong.
I love these sorts of articles. They criticize Milgram for a lack of scientific integrity, but nobody seems to point out that prisons aren't a bastion of scientific integrity, either. If anything, Milgram's sloppiness made his study a better model of the institutions in question. He allowed his human biases to overcome his duty -- which, as his own results show, is exactly how these things happen.
Milgram's experiment wasn't about prisons (at least not directly), and it didn't really seek to model any particular situation. It just sought to examine people's response to authority, and the setting chosen was merely a convenient way to do that.
If you're referring to the Stanford Prison Experiment, there's no point making something a "better" model if you lose your controlled environment in the process. The fact that Zimbardo interfered might be an interesting observation, but since it's not a repeatable experiment, it becomes merely a well documented anecdote.
Also, this isn't what the articles were about. They're mostly just presenting alternative explanations for the results, and the experimental evidence which supports them.
You say it is unamerican, but as a european (a non person) if I hear about these things I can only assume it were ... the Americans, or possibly the Brits.
EDIT: This seems to be a language issue, I thought as in 'Ford cars' are American.
"It doesn't happen in America" and "it's un-American" are not the same statement. On the assumption you're being serious and not facetious, when an American uses the term "un-American," it's meant to mean that the action flies in the face of ideal American values (chiefly freedom).
It's obvious to all of us that these ideals don't reflect reality, but simply accepting that what the American government does is the ideal representation of values the American public actually holds isn't something most of us are willing to do.
As an American the phrase "chiefly freedom" sends shivers down my spine. I'm sure you don't mean it as such, but it sounds so narrow minded and "rah rah" patriotic. I wish America was "chiefly education and free thought".
Our country's founders went to war specifically for the ideals of freedom and fair treatment by a government that represented them, rather than merely ruled them. Free thought and speech are certainly central features of that -- but they felt many more things were essential to being Free.
"Freedom" sounds rah-rah patriotic because it is both TRULY patriotic, and also used as weasel-words by those who are wanting to do the things we would consider un-american ("preserve your freedom and safety by groping you at all airports and train stations...", "detain indefinitely foreigners For Your Freedoms", etc).
Consider re-reading America's Declaration of Independence, or reading it for the first time if you never have. It's remarkably easy to understand, and pretty clearly states some of the ideals that the original "Americans" felt were reason enough to go to war with England.
Indeed. All to often people mean freedom for me. Like, for example "I should be free to impose my religion on others if that's what my religion says I should do."
Theoritically, the principle of reciprocity should preclude this kind of thinking. In practice it tends not to.
Chiefly education and free thought have nothing to do with free speech and the other freedoms granted by the Constitution. What you are wishing American meant could be completely fulfilled by a ruthless dictatorship that put an emphasis on education.
