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I'm going to 'recycle' an older comment of mine, pertaining to the comments about the book. The original comment can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com

I'm going to 'recycle' an older comment of mine, pertaining to the comments about the book. The original comment can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20583363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20583363 I was annoyed that someone called Ed Snowden a 'Traitor'. Hopefully it gets a bit more recognition in this thread __________________________________ For me he made the Great Game of Privacy a lot fairer. You should read the excellent entry on Wikipedia about the aftermath of the leaks[0]. If the leaks meant that privacy-loving folk went 'dark' in light of the leaks, then this is a net plus. Snowden's actions possibly hindered NSA in catching undesirables, but it's a small price to pay for a bolstered Internet and privacy-respecting comms. And who's to say that the apparatus even worked that well in foiling the efforts of plotters? Bill Binney[1] consistently drives his message home that the NSA's surveillance apparatus is very inefficient at foiling plots, and I agree with him. Even if it stopped one plot in all the time of its existence, it's still an enormous effort and an enormous amount of money spent just to foil one plot. Old fashioned police work is better at foiling plots because it doesn't have to rely on big data algorithms sifting through the noise of Internet traffic (most of which is innocuous). Old fashioned methods work because they employ simple detective work - it doesn't need the NSA at every choke point and decrypting countless crypto. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowden_Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowden_Effect [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_%28U.S._intelligence_official%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_%28U.S._intelli...

tomatotomato37 7y ago
Wow, I thought Binney was just some random analysist news shows brought on to discredit the 2016 hacking thing. Didn't realize he was the key catalyst for the Snowden leak after the government shafted him when he tried to reveal the same NSA overreach using the "proper" channels.
- ev0lv 7y ago
  Bill Binney is an American patriot and a hero.
dx87 7y ago
Honestly, saying that the NSA has done maybe one useful thing in its entire existence and that everything it does could be replaced by "simple detective work" just shows you to be incredibly uninformed and ignorant about what the job of the NSA actually is.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  So inform us. Present evidence for your opinion or keep your opinion to yourself.
  - outside1234 7y ago
    You are kidding right? The whole cold war?
    - WhompingWindows 7y ago
      Unfounded claims, calling someone incredibly uninformed and ignorant, with zero evidence to back up these admonitions, shouldn't be posted here. If you have a claim to post, back it up with some kind of evidence or data. No one should have to be called "kidding" when they call out a lack of any kind of data.
      - jonnybgood 7y ago
        The person you’re responding to didn’t call anyone anything. Be sure to check usernames.
    - kerkeslager 7y ago
      During the Cold War, the US government did a lot of things which were extraordinarily harmful to US Citizens and contributed nothing to fighting Soviet totalitarianism. Soviet totalitarianism was certainly a threat, but US repsonses to Soviet totalitarianism were often counterproductive. There's a strong argument to be made that the US government did more harm to US citizens during the Cold War than the Soviets ever did. I'd be open to hearing evidence that the NSA was an exception, but you certainly haven't presented any. Simply trotting out old tired Russophobia doesn't prove that pervasive surveillance has been good for the American people, it just shows your own bias. You're turning a blind eye to the wrongs done by the US government, some of them much worse than pervasive surveillance.
kerkeslager 7y ago
At a fundamental level, I trust the moral compass of the average person more than I trust the moral compass of government which has incentives to do the wrong thing. The most basic tool of law enforcement investigation is the average citizen calling the police when they see someone doing something wrong. Unethical laws are more difficult to enforce, because the average citizen doesn't call the police when they see someone breaking an unethical law. Most people don't call the police when they see someone smoking marijuana, for example, because the average person has a moral compass which tells them that putting someone in jail for smoking marijuana is reprehensible. Historically, whenever the law has been wrong, many people have been saved by people refusing to report them: the underground railroad, hiding of Jews in Nazi Germany, gays under anti-sodomy laws, etc. In contrast, I believe that when someone is actually doing something wrong, people call the police on them. If I witness a murder, rape, child abuse, etc., I would absolutely call the police. And while there are certainly high profile cases of people standing by and letting bad things happen, I trust people to do the right thing most of the time. Pervasive surveillance bypasses witnesses as the basic tool of law enforcement, which takes the power out of the hands of the average person. This might allow law enforcement to catch more bad guys, and if that were the only concern, violating our privacy might make sense. But the flipside is that it allows law enforcement to put more people in jail who aren't bad guys--people who smoke weed, teenagers who sext, etc. As long as there are unethical laws, privacy is the fundamental tool which allows average people to trust their own moral compasses and not call the police on people who are breaking unethical laws.
- cmurf 7y ago
  Pervasive surveillance also takes responsibility and knowledge of their rights, out of the hands of the average person. Witnessing should lead to empathy, the imagination that the same thing could happen to me, and if I think that would be wrong, I need to call out that wrongness when it happens to others. That is civility. That is how we build trust. That is foundational whether it's the average person or the average lawmaker or the average police person. When we're carving out areas of society where we accept less trust, then we can only lose trust, and that area becomes dangerous to us and a safe haven for corruption.
99052882514569 7y ago
>Bill Binney[1] consistently drives his message home that the NSA's surveillance apparatus is very inefficient at foiling plots, and I agree with him. Oh, were you also with the NSA? For how long, and what did you do there? Or is that (let's put it charitably) an "Internet agree"?
CWuestefeld 7y ago
I find that "traitor" argument very troublesome. To make the argument, you must believe that A) Privacy is a liability, so that by curtailing privacy we strengthen the country (and conversely, by having more privacy the country is weakened) B) The government must allow us only what measure of privacy it deems appropriate, and even has the authority to balance based on factors it need not disclose. Both of those ideas should be repugnant in a free society.

tomatotomato37 7y ago

Wow, I thought Binney was just some random analysist news shows brought on to discredit the 2016 hacking thing. Didn't realize he was the key catalyst for the Snowden leak after the government shafted him when he tried to reveal the same NSA overreach using the "proper" channels.

ev0lv 7y ago
Bill Binney is an American patriot and a hero.

dx87 7y ago

Honestly, saying that the NSA has done maybe one useful thing in its entire existence and that everything it does could be replaced by "simple detective work" just shows you to be incredibly uninformed and ignorant about what the job of the NSA actually is.

kerkeslager 7y ago
So inform us. Present evidence for your opinion or keep your opinion to yourself.
- outside1234 7y ago
  You are kidding right? The whole cold war?
  - WhompingWindows 7y ago
    Unfounded claims, calling someone incredibly uninformed and ignorant, with zero evidence to back up these admonitions, shouldn't be posted here. If you have a claim to post, back it up with some kind of evidence or data. No one should have to be called "kidding" when they call out a lack of any kind of data.
    - jonnybgood 7y ago
      The person you’re responding to didn’t call anyone anything. Be sure to check usernames.
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    During the Cold War, the US government did a lot of things which were extraordinarily harmful to US Citizens and contributed nothing to fighting Soviet totalitarianism. Soviet totalitarianism was certainly a threat, but US repsonses to Soviet totalitarianism were often counterproductive. There's a strong argument to be made that the US government did more harm to US citizens during the Cold War than the Soviets ever did. I'd be open to hearing evidence that the NSA was an exception, but you certainly haven't presented any. Simply trotting out old tired Russophobia doesn't prove that pervasive surveillance has been good for the American people, it just shows your own bias. You're turning a blind eye to the wrongs done by the US government, some of them much worse than pervasive surveillance.

kerkeslager 7y ago

At a fundamental level, I trust the moral compass of the average person more than I trust the moral compass of government which has incentives to do the wrong thing. The most basic tool of law enforcement investigation is the average citizen calling the police when they see someone doing something wrong. Unethical laws are more difficult to enforce, because the average citizen doesn't call the police when they see someone breaking an unethical law. Most people don't call the police when they see someone smoking marijuana, for example, because the average person has a moral compass which tells them that putting someone in jail for smoking marijuana is reprehensible. Historically, whenever the law has been wrong, many people have been saved by people refusing to report them: the underground railroad, hiding of Jews in Nazi Germany, gays under anti-sodomy laws, etc. In contrast, I believe that when someone is actually doing something wrong, people call the police on them. If I witness a murder, rape, child abuse, etc., I would absolutely call the police. And while there are certainly high profile cases of people standing by and letting bad things happen, I trust people to do the right thing most of the time. Pervasive surveillance bypasses witnesses as the basic tool of law enforcement, which takes the power out of the hands of the average person. This might allow law enforcement to catch more bad guys, and if that were the only concern, violating our privacy might make sense. But the flipside is that it allows law enforcement to put more people in jail who aren't bad guys--people who smoke weed, teenagers who sext, etc. As long as there are unethical laws, privacy is the fundamental tool which allows average people to trust their own moral compasses and not call the police on people who are breaking unethical laws.

cmurf 7y ago
Pervasive surveillance also takes responsibility and knowledge of their rights, out of the hands of the average person. Witnessing should lead to empathy, the imagination that the same thing could happen to me, and if I think that would be wrong, I need to call out that wrongness when it happens to others. That is civility. That is how we build trust. That is foundational whether it's the average person or the average lawmaker or the average police person. When we're carving out areas of society where we accept less trust, then we can only lose trust, and that area becomes dangerous to us and a safe haven for corruption.

99052882514569 7y ago

>Bill Binney[1] consistently drives his message home that the NSA's surveillance apparatus is very inefficient at foiling plots, and I agree with him. Oh, were you also with the NSA? For how long, and what did you do there? Or is that (let's put it charitably) an "Internet agree"?

CWuestefeld 7y ago

I find that "traitor" argument very troublesome. To make the argument, you must believe that A) Privacy is a liability, so that by curtailing privacy we strengthen the country (and conversely, by having more privacy the country is weakened) B) The government must allow us only what measure of privacy it deems appropriate, and even has the authority to balance based on factors it need not disclose. Both of those ideas should be repugnant in a free society.