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I'm not convinced that the NSA counts as a counterexample. From my very limited knowledge, it appears that the NSA's programs are known an approved by a reasona

I'm not convinced that the NSA counts as a counterexample. From my very limited knowledge, it appears that the NSA's programs are known an approved by a reasonably large swath of government. I think the response of the article would be that, rather than being the result of scheming by a small group of people, the NSA programs arise from a combination of initial government consensus and subsequent expansion of powers. For example, Obama could have stopped programs like PRISM when he became president, but chose to continue them. The point I got from the article isn't so much that secret and far-reaching programs can't exist. It's that these programs do not come into being based on the will of a small group of people, but rather based on a complex bureaucratic process in which many parties partake.

enraged_camel 10y ago
NSA's existence and its activities aboard were well-known. What wasn't well-known was that NSA was spying on American citizens, not just a few suspicious ones but ALL of them. That revelation hit most people like a ton of bricks.
- thr0waway1239 10y ago
  >> That revelation hit most people like a ton of bricks. That seems a bit naive considering how fast technology improves. Another pet peeve of mine: how can people possibly not be more worried about the kind of data collection happening at the tech behemoths? I can imagine about a 100 different ways they can by themselves, or by collusion with other powerful companies, completely suppress and eliminate serious competition. (And if all else fails, of course eventually buy them off plus their principles - such as what happened with WhatsApp). Nominally at least, organizations such as the NSA will probably have a few people who are conflicted about stated purpose of the organization vs actual behavior (e.g. Snowden). There are no such checks and balances for corporate entities, except for this notion of competition, which is now acknowledged to be ineffective in the winner take all high tech ecosystem. The absence of any input from employees in these forums around, for e.g. Windows 10's heavy handed updates, or Facebook's extraordinary chutzpah in attempting to triangulate every piece of information they can to a person in their database, is quite telling. Think of the FB experiment which was trying to manipulate people's emotions. Why aren't Mark Z and co being investigated for crime? [1] No legal precedents? - perhaps it is time to create some. At the very least, it will expose their data collection practices to the world and make similar companies more wary of taking people for granted. [1] http://www.ibtimes.com/facebook-experiment-raises-legal-questions-could-lawsuit-follow-mood-manipulation-research-1615970 http://www.ibtimes.com/facebook-experiment-raises-legal-ques...
  - balabaster 10y ago
    Those of us in the tech industry had a good idea of what was possible or even plausible given unlimited budgets and will power. We wrote it off that even though it was plausible, it wasn't probable because we'd like to think the best of our democratically elected governments that espouse freedom, freedom of speech and human rights at every turn. Even we, who knew what was possible chose not to entertain the probability of it actually happening. Who was naive? It's becoming harder and harder to write off conspiracy theories as nonsense, especially with the amount of hard evidence to the contrary.
  - christophilus 10y ago
    I've switched to DuckDuckGo and Firefox and am mostly happy with that decision. I still use Gmail, YouTube, and Google Docs, though. Do you have recommendations for good free or cheap alternatives to those? Also, we really need an OSS smartphone operating system that really works... Any suggestion on Android vs some alternative?
    - dandelion_lover 10y ago
      email: I am a happy user of https://posteo.de; https://posteo.de; it costs one euro per month phone: I am waiting for https://neo900.org https://neo900.org
- obastani 10y ago
  The point I was trying to make isn't that the NSA doesn't have secret programs (like spying on American citizens), it's that these programs didn't come about through the scheming of a few people. Maybe it did, but I think it is more likely that the organization organically pushed the limits of what it thought it could get away with (and I think the article would agree).
- kakarot 10y ago
  If I was reading about rerouting/cloning installments and secret rooms in nodes and datacenters across the US on news sites and blogposts all the way back in 2007, then there is not a shred of doubt in my mind that dozens, potentially hundreds, of mid-level and top-level government employees were aware as well. Which means the top brass were completely informed.
titzer 10y ago
I doubt that Obama specifically knew about what the NSA was doing, both for his own plausible deniability and so that the NSA could protect itself against political turmoil.

enraged_camel 10y ago

NSA's existence and its activities aboard were well-known. What wasn't well-known was that NSA was spying on American citizens, not just a few suspicious ones but ALL of them. That revelation hit most people like a ton of bricks.

thr0waway1239 10y ago
>> That revelation hit most people like a ton of bricks. That seems a bit naive considering how fast technology improves. Another pet peeve of mine: how can people possibly not be more worried about the kind of data collection happening at the tech behemoths? I can imagine about a 100 different ways they can by themselves, or by collusion with other powerful companies, completely suppress and eliminate serious competition. (And if all else fails, of course eventually buy them off plus their principles - such as what happened with WhatsApp). Nominally at least, organizations such as the NSA will probably have a few people who are conflicted about stated purpose of the organization vs actual behavior (e.g. Snowden). There are no such checks and balances for corporate entities, except for this notion of competition, which is now acknowledged to be ineffective in the winner take all high tech ecosystem. The absence of any input from employees in these forums around, for e.g. Windows 10's heavy handed updates, or Facebook's extraordinary chutzpah in attempting to triangulate every piece of information they can to a person in their database, is quite telling. Think of the FB experiment which was trying to manipulate people's emotions. Why aren't Mark Z and co being investigated for crime? [1] No legal precedents? - perhaps it is time to create some. At the very least, it will expose their data collection practices to the world and make similar companies more wary of taking people for granted. [1] http://www.ibtimes.com/facebook-experiment-raises-legal-questions-could-lawsuit-follow-mood-manipulation-research-1615970 http://www.ibtimes.com/facebook-experiment-raises-legal-ques...
- balabaster 10y ago
  Those of us in the tech industry had a good idea of what was possible or even plausible given unlimited budgets and will power. We wrote it off that even though it was plausible, it wasn't probable because we'd like to think the best of our democratically elected governments that espouse freedom, freedom of speech and human rights at every turn. Even we, who knew what was possible chose not to entertain the probability of it actually happening. Who was naive? It's becoming harder and harder to write off conspiracy theories as nonsense, especially with the amount of hard evidence to the contrary.
- christophilus 10y ago
  I've switched to DuckDuckGo and Firefox and am mostly happy with that decision. I still use Gmail, YouTube, and Google Docs, though. Do you have recommendations for good free or cheap alternatives to those? Also, we really need an OSS smartphone operating system that really works... Any suggestion on Android vs some alternative?
  - dandelion_lover 10y ago
    email: I am a happy user of https://posteo.de; https://posteo.de; it costs one euro per month phone: I am waiting for https://neo900.org https://neo900.org
obastani 10y ago
The point I was trying to make isn't that the NSA doesn't have secret programs (like spying on American citizens), it's that these programs didn't come about through the scheming of a few people. Maybe it did, but I think it is more likely that the organization organically pushed the limits of what it thought it could get away with (and I think the article would agree).
kakarot 10y ago
If I was reading about rerouting/cloning installments and secret rooms in nodes and datacenters across the US on news sites and blogposts all the way back in 2007, then there is not a shred of doubt in my mind that dozens, potentially hundreds, of mid-level and top-level government employees were aware as well. Which means the top brass were completely informed.

titzer 10y ago

I doubt that Obama specifically knew about what the NSA was doing, both for his own plausible deniability and so that the NSA could protect itself against political turmoil.