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This whole story has had a baffling effect on HN. For the last few days 4/5ths of everything on the frontpage has been related to the NSA. I'm not saying that i

This whole story has had a baffling effect on HN. For the last few days 4/5ths of everything on the frontpage has been related to the NSA. I'm not saying that its not an important issue, but Christ do we need to have every bloggers opinion upvoted to the top? Even Apple was only able to make the top of front page for a short time. This is HN and Apple's latest news is not the top story. It's like I'm on a completely different site.

md224 13y ago
Devil's Advocate: are we really upset that an unfolding scandal involving the right to privacy is displacing content about a shiny new product launch? It's kind of interesting to witness the interaction between HN's overlapping circles of technologists, civil libertarians, and entrepreneurs. To be fair, I agree that we need to avoid letting this discussion devolve into a frenzied mob of speculation. Misinformation can almost be worse than ignorance.
- Taylorious 13y ago
  I'm not saying its terrible that HN is in an uproar over this, its just that I haven't seen HN this dominated by one topic since Steve Jobs died. There does seem to be a major lack of information on the issue though and unfortunately this topic always brings out some of the more "eccentric" members of the tech industry. I'm sick of seeing hyperbole comments like "we need a revolution", "we are in a police state", "America is done for time to move", etc. If all of our worst fears turn out to be true then it should be a call to action not a call to abandon ship.
  - hkmurakami 13y ago
    The entire frontpage was Aaron Swartz links when he died earlier this year.
    - Taylorious 13y ago
      Ahhh that's the event I couldn't think of. Yes the Aaron Swartz totally took over HN for a while.
baconner 13y ago
You're not wrong that it doesn't feel the same his week, but is that a bad thing? Seems to me that even from a technology business perspective this is vastly more important than any iOS revelation could possibly be as fun as it might be to read about. I find the constant NSA discussion depressing and exhausting but not baffling. Its very relevant to hn IMO.
javajosh 13y ago
What astounds me is that the mainstream media is not similarly in uproar. People don't seem to understand what this means: the government is spying on us, it is lying about the spying, and now it is telling us to not worry about it, to just move along, AND WE'RE DOING IT. This is the most alarming thing I've seen in my adult life.
- bdamm 13y ago
  Considering how codified lying to the public is in American law, I have to start wondering how codified lying to the President is in Intelligence Community practices.
- aswanson 13y ago
  This is the second most alarming thing, on a national discourse level, that I have seen in my adult life. The first being the lies and media complicity readily swallowed by the u.s. public preceding and during the invasion of Iraq.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  The government isn't really spying on us en masse, any more than terrorists are out to get us en masse. for one thing, people are more concerned with external threats than internal ones (and I think that's reasonably rational, because the US is really a very long way from anything resembling totalitarianism); for another, most people assume taht the government already has/had access to what you do on your cellphone/facebook/internet searches so actual evidence of data manaing doesn't seem all that big of a revelation. Most Americans are already used to having everything they do entered into a database already; consider that the course of most people's lives are already shaped by their credit scores without any particular help from the government. At least you can FOIA the government to see what information they have on you. Good luck getting any private firm like Google to give you that information; we had to pass a law to ensure people have access to their own credit report, and that only entitles one free request annually.
  - javajosh 13y ago
    >The government isn't really spying on us en masse Actually they are. >most people assume taht the government already has/had access to what you do on your cellphone/facebook/internet searches I think that most people assume that email is just like mail: private, and protected by the 4th amendment. I think most people assume that their phone records are similarly protected. And I doubt that most people, possibly including people in Congress, know what is possible to infer from the data they are collecting.
Zigurd 13y ago
For one thing, it's the only interesting thing that has happened in American politics since... Watergate, maybe? Second, if the resolution doesn't go far enough to restore confidence in US cloud and telecom technology companies, it could have a large effect on the tech economy. Third, the only practical solution may to adopt real security measures: End-to-end strong encryption. Encrypted storage. Audited open source systems.
ouiea 13y ago
OK let's talk about Apple and their new NSA-sponsored iCloud keychain then :P

md224 13y ago

Devil's Advocate: are we really upset that an unfolding scandal involving the right to privacy is displacing content about a shiny new product launch? It's kind of interesting to witness the interaction between HN's overlapping circles of technologists, civil libertarians, and entrepreneurs. To be fair, I agree that we need to avoid letting this discussion devolve into a frenzied mob of speculation. Misinformation can almost be worse than ignorance.

Taylorious 13y ago
I'm not saying its terrible that HN is in an uproar over this, its just that I haven't seen HN this dominated by one topic since Steve Jobs died. There does seem to be a major lack of information on the issue though and unfortunately this topic always brings out some of the more "eccentric" members of the tech industry. I'm sick of seeing hyperbole comments like "we need a revolution", "we are in a police state", "America is done for time to move", etc. If all of our worst fears turn out to be true then it should be a call to action not a call to abandon ship.
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  The entire frontpage was Aaron Swartz links when he died earlier this year.
  - Taylorious 13y ago
    Ahhh that's the event I couldn't think of. Yes the Aaron Swartz totally took over HN for a while.

baconner 13y ago

You're not wrong that it doesn't feel the same his week, but is that a bad thing? Seems to me that even from a technology business perspective this is vastly more important than any iOS revelation could possibly be as fun as it might be to read about. I find the constant NSA discussion depressing and exhausting but not baffling. Its very relevant to hn IMO.

javajosh 13y ago

What astounds me is that the mainstream media is not similarly in uproar. People don't seem to understand what this means: the government is spying on us, it is lying about the spying, and now it is telling us to not worry about it, to just move along, AND WE'RE DOING IT. This is the most alarming thing I've seen in my adult life.

bdamm 13y ago
Considering how codified lying to the public is in American law, I have to start wondering how codified lying to the President is in Intelligence Community practices.
aswanson 13y ago
This is the second most alarming thing, on a national discourse level, that I have seen in my adult life. The first being the lies and media complicity readily swallowed by the u.s. public preceding and during the invasion of Iraq.
anigbrowl 13y ago
The government isn't really spying on us en masse, any more than terrorists are out to get us en masse. for one thing, people are more concerned with external threats than internal ones (and I think that's reasonably rational, because the US is really a very long way from anything resembling totalitarianism); for another, most people assume taht the government already has/had access to what you do on your cellphone/facebook/internet searches so actual evidence of data manaing doesn't seem all that big of a revelation. Most Americans are already used to having everything they do entered into a database already; consider that the course of most people's lives are already shaped by their credit scores without any particular help from the government. At least you can FOIA the government to see what information they have on you. Good luck getting any private firm like Google to give you that information; we had to pass a law to ensure people have access to their own credit report, and that only entitles one free request annually.
- javajosh 13y ago
  >The government isn't really spying on us en masse Actually they are. >most people assume taht the government already has/had access to what you do on your cellphone/facebook/internet searches I think that most people assume that email is just like mail: private, and protected by the 4th amendment. I think most people assume that their phone records are similarly protected. And I doubt that most people, possibly including people in Congress, know what is possible to infer from the data they are collecting.

Zigurd 13y ago

For one thing, it's the only interesting thing that has happened in American politics since... Watergate, maybe? Second, if the resolution doesn't go far enough to restore confidence in US cloud and telecom technology companies, it could have a large effect on the tech economy. Third, the only practical solution may to adopt real security measures: End-to-end strong encryption. Encrypted storage. Audited open source systems.

ouiea 13y ago

OK let's talk about Apple and their new NSA-sponsored iCloud keychain then :P