3 ms·
most spies are highly efficient and useful to our governments goals / protecting people from bad things. the hand-full of derps we see in the news are unfortuna
by vectorEQ 7y ago
most spies are highly efficient and useful to our governments goals / protecting people from bad things. the hand-full of derps we see in the news are unfortunate but shouldn't be taken as the general state of spying / intelligence work.
people like to make an elephant out of a mosquito, but in reality, without spies crime / terrorism and other things generally bad for our society (which we do all cherish and want to keep, admit it. you want your house, tv and job safety, and to go to work without having too much worries if you will be able to go home at end of the day safely) would be able to cause much more disruption.
i'd agree that in recent times, especially in the cyber / internet domain there have been grave mistakes / misjudgements made on all sides of the fences, but the evilness / incompetence etc. etc. is by far overestimated by the public.
this is the same idea as that 'all banks are bad' just because some bankers misbehave or make bad calls. you still want banks and use them, so perhaps try to see that people arent inherently bad or incompetent, and are trying their best to avoid such calamities.
be sure that for any 'incompetence' which comes to light, internally these agencies are much much more critical and taking action than what you 'see' them doing.
most of this work (99.99999999%) is still not in the public eye and will never be. saying spying is inherently bad due to some mistakes is grosly underestimating what good they do, and overestimating the incompetence / bad intentions of these actors and agencies.
you never hear it if a spy does a good job, he'll just submit some intelligence, or prevent some calamity, and remain anonymous. these people should be praised, not shot down due to some of their colleagues missing the mark.
remember you are observing MEDIA, not actual reality. if the media speaks about most topics, you will take their words with a bucket of salt, but if they speak about corporate or goverment mishaps, suddenly their word is absolute truth? get real.
- hutzlibu 7y ago"most spies are highly efficient and useful to our governments goals / protecting people from bad things. the hand-full of derps we see in the news are unfortunate but shouldn't be taken as the general state of spying / intelligence work." Sources? Because there is this other theory, that the "handful of derps" we see in the media are just the tip of the iceberg, because most failures can and do get shoved easily under the carpet, with a "top secret" stamp.
- vectorEQ 7y agoyou want me to send some nytime linkes for u there :')... sure they are reliable sources. :')... offering counter-point as most views are highly negative and paranoid. but i suppose in my country, there's not really much negative media about these sort of things, guess intelligence agency quality and media coverage varies by country, feeding this paranoia of you guys (guessing most will be basing their well founded and very knowlegable opinions on US media posts.) in my country, the coverage for our intelligence services looks much more positive... https://nos.nl/artikel/2253313-mivd-we-hebben-russische-hack-van-opcw-in-den-haag-voorkomen.html https://nos.nl/artikel/2253313-mivd-we-hebben-russische-hack... (sorry, sure you can figure out google translate.. - and yes, tis is also public media, highly reliable source as always. :')... but i guess at least it's public enough for u...)
- boomboomsubban 7y agoMedia coverage of the intelligence agencies is disgustingly positive in the US. Most of the press will report anything they say and cable news is overrun with their representatives. Hell, the New York Times has delayed or cancelled stories that would be embarrassing to them.
- boomboomsubban 7y ago>people like to make an elephant out of a mosquito, but in reality, without spies crime / terrorism and other things generally bad for our society (which we do all cherish and want to keep, admit it. you want your house, tv and job safety, and to go to work without having too much worries if you will be able to go home at end of the day safely) would be able to cause much more disruption What about all the crime/terrorism they themselves have enabled in foreign countries. Why is our society worth ruining others? And maybe these spies do end up doing some good, but their failures have led to millions of deaths. They also aren't shy about boasting over their successes, do I find it hard to believe their successful yet secret work can atone for that.
- saiya-jin 7y ago> the evilness / incompetence etc. etc. is by far overestimated by the public Yeah nice talk and all, but whenever some clusterfuck permeates to the public its such an epic fail on many levels that often shows utter incompetence... coming from people who shouldn't fail like that. I wish secret services around the world would be those nice good guys guarding freedom, being just, highly competent etc. But reality is simply not like that. Either the folks are semi-incompetent and drowning in politics and chasing money and careers more than actual job they should do, or those highly competent are often cold-blood murderers who couldn't care less whom they kill (ie mosad guys). And I don't even go into topic of all of them desperately wanting to know every private detail of every single person on the globe, because 'security'. I used to expect more from them. But that naivety was lost along the road long time ago.