5 ms·

While I agree with you, I can also appreciate that intelligence/law enforcement agencies are not keen to go back to the alternatives. HUMINT is a nasty (in the

While I agree with you, I can also appreciate that intelligence/law enforcement agencies are not keen to go back to the alternatives. HUMINT is a nasty (in the moral sense), dangerous, and expensive enterprise. Would you rather train for a few years, then live a fake life with the constant threat of gruesome death, lying to everyone you know - possibly even your fake wife and kids or rather just tap a few phones/emails? It's no wonder that most agencies have pretty much entirely dropped their expertise on this as soon as the alternative showed up. I don't think they are geared up to get back into that game.

coldtea 7y ago
>HUMINT is a nasty (in the moral sense), dangerous, and expensive enterprise. Which they use all the time still, so that's not a real difference. It's not xor with digital surveillance. Besides what you describe (double life, death, etc) would be a problem for the spy, not the general population. I could not care less about the spies. But I wasn't talking about spying as much, but for government / police / etc surveillance. Where if they have to deploy humans to spy on some drug dealers or suspected murderer or whatever, is fine. And the fact that they're humans, makes it more costly to mass deploy (and thus serves as a natural check and balance).
mnm1 7y ago
Of course I'd rather have my privacy even if it means thousands of CIA agents get tortured and killed. They're the ones who signed up for that job, a job that is likely unnecessary. And even the necessary spying would in no way justify that I and everyone else give up our privacy. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have already died so we could have that privacy in the first place. A few thousand more dying to keep it is a miniscule price to pay at this point, a negligible price. So are a few crimes being committed that could potentially have been stopped by back doors.

coldtea 7y ago

>HUMINT is a nasty (in the moral sense), dangerous, and expensive enterprise. Which they use all the time still, so that's not a real difference. It's not xor with digital surveillance. Besides what you describe (double life, death, etc) would be a problem for the spy, not the general population. I could not care less about the spies. But I wasn't talking about spying as much, but for government / police / etc surveillance. Where if they have to deploy humans to spy on some drug dealers or suspected murderer or whatever, is fine. And the fact that they're humans, makes it more costly to mass deploy (and thus serves as a natural check and balance).

mnm1 7y ago

Of course I'd rather have my privacy even if it means thousands of CIA agents get tortured and killed. They're the ones who signed up for that job, a job that is likely unnecessary. And even the necessary spying would in no way justify that I and everyone else give up our privacy. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have already died so we could have that privacy in the first place. A few thousand more dying to keep it is a miniscule price to pay at this point, a negligible price. So are a few crimes being committed that could potentially have been stopped by back doors.