3 ms·

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

by 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.
- raldu 10y ago
  I must have to admit that I have been disturbed by your patronizing attitude about claiming to "teach" something regarding Plato, Kant, etc. You did not connect your "arguments" with the ideas of those philosophers either. This kind of attitude is not very productive, and not welcome in a community like HN. Bringing up names of some classical, old-fashioned philosophers as if they represent some kind of absolute "truth" never works to support an argument (see: appeal to authority). Plus, we are talking about Plato who confused actual reality with abstractions, and Kant whose ideas had have led to "instrumentation" of reason; both of whose outmoded ideas have been criticized thoroughly in recent social thought. I would similarly suggest that you "haven't been doing your reading" on Foucault, Baudrillard, Adorno, Horkheimer, Deleuze, etc., but I am not going to do that. Still I hope that you would emphatize with my situation imagining the case that I did. Textbooks aside, let's look at the real situation at hand with some clear, simple, direct language. > The US military could lay down its arms. They don't. > I assure you, no one wants peace more than a professional soldier. I, for one, don't believe that they do. And nobody can quite assure anyone whether they do want it or not. > Someone will collect signals intelligence. Why is this even necessary? > The people who work at the NSA read the headlines. If they really do, this makes the situation even worse because they are either too uninformed (or even stupid) to understand the ethical implications of their work, or reading the wrong headlines. > I'm fairly certain there's are many very active debates within the NSA But about what? To find out, just refer to Snowden documents to see what exactly they have been having debates about. By the way, how could you be so "certain" of everything? One might or might not further counteract to my points, or comment that I am overreacting. But it doesn't really matter. The more we talk, the more get away from the actual reality of what is happening. What is happening is, SURVEILLANCE. Those who defend power of surveillance fear nothing more than "privacy", which they call "conspiracy". I wish we could spend more time participating in meaningful action instead of getting lost in rhetorics.

by raldu 10y ago

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.

raldu 10y ago
I must have to admit that I have been disturbed by your patronizing attitude about claiming to "teach" something regarding Plato, Kant, etc. You did not connect your "arguments" with the ideas of those philosophers either. This kind of attitude is not very productive, and not welcome in a community like HN. Bringing up names of some classical, old-fashioned philosophers as if they represent some kind of absolute "truth" never works to support an argument (see: appeal to authority). Plus, we are talking about Plato who confused actual reality with abstractions, and Kant whose ideas had have led to "instrumentation" of reason; both of whose outmoded ideas have been criticized thoroughly in recent social thought. I would similarly suggest that you "haven't been doing your reading" on Foucault, Baudrillard, Adorno, Horkheimer, Deleuze, etc., but I am not going to do that. Still I hope that you would emphatize with my situation imagining the case that I did. Textbooks aside, let's look at the real situation at hand with some clear, simple, direct language. > The US military could lay down its arms. They don't. > I assure you, no one wants peace more than a professional soldier. I, for one, don't believe that they do. And nobody can quite assure anyone whether they do want it or not. > Someone will collect signals intelligence. Why is this even necessary? > The people who work at the NSA read the headlines. If they really do, this makes the situation even worse because they are either too uninformed (or even stupid) to understand the ethical implications of their work, or reading the wrong headlines. > I'm fairly certain there's are many very active debates within the NSA But about what? To find out, just refer to Snowden documents to see what exactly they have been having debates about. By the way, how could you be so "certain" of everything? One might or might not further counteract to my points, or comment that I am overreacting. But it doesn't really matter. The more we talk, the more get away from the actual reality of what is happening. What is happening is, SURVEILLANCE. Those who defend power of surveillance fear nothing more than "privacy", which they call "conspiracy". I wish we could spend more time participating in meaningful action instead of getting lost in rhetorics.