5 ms·

It is ridiculously amazing they can go to such an extent to literally say that it is their job to "penetrate other people's networks", and it feels so "good". (

by raldu 10y ago

It is ridiculously amazing they can go to such an extent to literally say that it is their job to "penetrate other people's networks", and it feels so "good". (Actual quotes of the spokesperson) Some parts from the text reads like a prank article from The Onion. They openly say that they are invading (sorry, "penetrating") the privacy of everyone in the world, and still manage to get away with it. How? Misuse and abuse of the concept of "terror". It is high time for American public to realize that this "terror" rhetoric is just an abusive device to legitimatize the violation of very fundamental human rights. The NSA can just do whatever they want, because it is "terrors that made them do it", right? Violating the privacy rights of potentially everyone in the world? No problem, just drop "terrors", "terrorists" here and there, then everyone will shut up and not care. We do not need to be political scientists or experts in discourse analysis to spot the difference: just subtract the b.s. about "terror" and see the actual picture.

ams6110 10y ago
The charter of the NSA is international signals intelligence. It is exactly their job to penetrate/eavesdrop on other people's networks. Every other first world country has a similar agency/bureau. Perhaps not as capable.
- raldu 10y ago
  Obviously the point is not about questioning whether it is the job of a spy agency to spy on other people. Following the same reasoning, it would similarly be exactly military's job to kill people, with every other world country having a similar military with various capabilities... This is just semantics. It is about questioning the very legitimacy of the exact jobs of those institutions, along with their very existence. What makes their activities so normal that we even respond, "it is their job, everybody knows that", based on definitions? So my answer to this question of legitimacy was that, "they just legitimize it themselves, with their rhetoric on 'terrors'".
  - jonnybgood 10y ago
    > So my answer to this question of legitimacy was that, "they just legitimize it themselves, with their rhetoric on 'terrors'". That answer would work if NSA was created after 9/11 or as part of the PATRIOT act or whatever. What was the NSA doing before? And don't you think NSA would still be doing that? My point is that NSA doesn't need terrorism to legitimize their operations. The reasons NSA came in to existence in the first place is still relevant and enough to legitimize itself.
    - thatcat 10y ago
      Obviously they're doing similar stuff, the scope got considerably wider, the purse got deeper, and memory/cpu has scaled to make it all feasible. They're penetrating BC they can, but it also helps things scale if everyone has a default reason to agree that they should.
  - niels_olson 10y ago
    > questioning the very legitimacy of the exact jobs This argument has been dispatched so thoroughly, for so many centuries that what you really did there was establish that you haven't been doing your reading. But rather than just refer you to Plato, let me address your exact situation, and we'll do it with a nice particular-general-particular teaching strategy. The US military could lay down its arms. Likely we would need all of the peoples of the earth to lay down their arms. I assure you, no one wants peace more than a professional soldier. Lets assume it happens. But there will still be people able to rally the masses with nationalistic messages. Even if we burned every book on the making of guns, arrows, missiles, guidance systems, deleted all the information from the collective conciousness, we would still have these bad actors. And their followers would be incentivized to develop means of carrying out their nationalistic ambitions. And then there will be war. Even if it's with stones, they will make spears, arrows, crossbows, grenades, muskets, rifles, rockets, guided missiles and drones. This generally comes down to simple engineering at a world scale: a prestressed sysem is more predictable than an unstressed system and often requires fewer resources to maintain. The threat of violence is more persuasive than violence itself. So, onto the closing particular: the NSA. Someone will collect signals intelligence. Are you seriously asserting your government alone should abstain? Do you assert that the Germans, French, Chinese, or Pakistanis, Indians, Russians, Brazilians, or Laotians aren't clever enough to do sigint or don't have the incentives to engage in it, given the insane gradients of wealth and power across national borders? So, yes, regulation is key. And the social outcry sends a strong signal itself. The regulations are merely an attempt to condense the social consensus to paper. The people who work at the NSA read the headlines. They read blogs. They read a lot. right? They're in sigint. They read a lot. I'm fairly certain there's are many very active debates within the NSA, at every level, about just exactly what is it that they should be doing. Does that mean society should give them a pass? No, of course not. Holler loud. But next time, before you holler, maybe read up on Plato or Epicurus or Kant or Bertrand Russell, or somebody. And holler something new.
- a_imho 10y ago
  >Every other first world country has a similar agency/bureau. It is funny how Hungary is setting up a similar agency (TIBEK) currently and uses this exact same argument to get privileges other governments already enjoy. edit: T refers to (counter)Terrorism
- coroutines 10y ago
  I wish there were a clear separation between passive surveillance and active. I'd be happier if the NSA merely analyzed signals coming from foreign nations, rather than trying to penetrate the networks of said nations - even if it's North Korea. If I were someone working for the NSA, I would not feel like a "good guy". Maybe I'm just a naive young person who hasn't lived through the brutality of a world war to know why this penetration is necessary. I equate this to invading a foreign country. I don't feel good -- as a citizen -- waking up in this country knowing this goes on.

by raldu 10y ago

ams6110 10y ago

The charter of the NSA is international signals intelligence. It is exactly their job to penetrate/eavesdrop on other people's networks. Every other first world country has a similar agency/bureau. Perhaps not as capable.

raldu 10y ago
Obviously the point is not about questioning whether it is the job of a spy agency to spy on other people. Following the same reasoning, it would similarly be exactly military's job to kill people, with every other world country having a similar military with various capabilities... This is just semantics. It is about questioning the very legitimacy of the exact jobs of those institutions, along with their very existence. What makes their activities so normal that we even respond, "it is their job, everybody knows that", based on definitions? So my answer to this question of legitimacy was that, "they just legitimize it themselves, with their rhetoric on 'terrors'".
- jonnybgood 10y ago
  > So my answer to this question of legitimacy was that, "they just legitimize it themselves, with their rhetoric on 'terrors'". That answer would work if NSA was created after 9/11 or as part of the PATRIOT act or whatever. What was the NSA doing before? And don't you think NSA would still be doing that? My point is that NSA doesn't need terrorism to legitimize their operations. The reasons NSA came in to existence in the first place is still relevant and enough to legitimize itself.
  - thatcat 10y ago
    Obviously they're doing similar stuff, the scope got considerably wider, the purse got deeper, and memory/cpu has scaled to make it all feasible. They're penetrating BC they can, but it also helps things scale if everyone has a default reason to agree that they should.
- niels_olson 10y ago
  > questioning the very legitimacy of the exact jobs This argument has been dispatched so thoroughly, for so many centuries that what you really did there was establish that you haven't been doing your reading. But rather than just refer you to Plato, let me address your exact situation, and we'll do it with a nice particular-general-particular teaching strategy. The US military could lay down its arms. Likely we would need all of the peoples of the earth to lay down their arms. I assure you, no one wants peace more than a professional soldier. Lets assume it happens. But there will still be people able to rally the masses with nationalistic messages. Even if we burned every book on the making of guns, arrows, missiles, guidance systems, deleted all the information from the collective conciousness, we would still have these bad actors. And their followers would be incentivized to develop means of carrying out their nationalistic ambitions. And then there will be war. Even if it's with stones, they will make spears, arrows, crossbows, grenades, muskets, rifles, rockets, guided missiles and drones. This generally comes down to simple engineering at a world scale: a prestressed sysem is more predictable than an unstressed system and often requires fewer resources to maintain. The threat of violence is more persuasive than violence itself. So, onto the closing particular: the NSA. Someone will collect signals intelligence. Are you seriously asserting your government alone should abstain? Do you assert that the Germans, French, Chinese, or Pakistanis, Indians, Russians, Brazilians, or Laotians aren't clever enough to do sigint or don't have the incentives to engage in it, given the insane gradients of wealth and power across national borders? So, yes, regulation is key. And the social outcry sends a strong signal itself. The regulations are merely an attempt to condense the social consensus to paper. The people who work at the NSA read the headlines. They read blogs. They read a lot. right? They're in sigint. They read a lot. I'm fairly certain there's are many very active debates within the NSA, at every level, about just exactly what is it that they should be doing. Does that mean society should give them a pass? No, of course not. Holler loud. But next time, before you holler, maybe read up on Plato or Epicurus or Kant or Bertrand Russell, or somebody. And holler something new.
a_imho 10y ago
>Every other first world country has a similar agency/bureau. It is funny how Hungary is setting up a similar agency (TIBEK) currently and uses this exact same argument to get privileges other governments already enjoy. edit: T refers to (counter)Terrorism
coroutines 10y ago
I wish there were a clear separation between passive surveillance and active. I'd be happier if the NSA merely analyzed signals coming from foreign nations, rather than trying to penetrate the networks of said nations - even if it's North Korea. If I were someone working for the NSA, I would not feel like a "good guy". Maybe I'm just a naive young person who hasn't lived through the brutality of a world war to know why this penetration is necessary. I equate this to invading a foreign country. I don't feel good -- as a citizen -- waking up in this country knowing this goes on.