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It makes sense to wonder. After all, when you find out someone lied to you once, you tend to doubt everything else they've ever said. That seems natural. And wh

It makes sense to wonder. After all, when you find out someone lied to you once, you tend to doubt everything else they've ever said. That seems natural. And while the scandal is in the air and our elected officials are doing their initial "what scandal?" dance, our conspiracy theorists are in rare form, re-iterating their practiced denouncements. I would take care to stay focused on the actual issue and not get distracted by conspiracy theory bullshit. PRISM is bad enough. When our wingnuts start babbling about how this is just like <insert conspiracy theorist bullshit here> and trying to "demand answers" there, they weaken our position. The feeling you have now thanks to PRISM is, apparently, addictive. But the last thing you want to do is align your position with a bunch of easily dismissed nonsense. Attack the problem you know about first. Discover more problems later.

w_t_payne 13y ago
Very sensibly put. In fact, after the initial mob-mentality reaction has worn off, after the glee at seeing the high-and-mighty taken down a peg or two has subsided, I am starting to feel ... well, a bit conflicted about the whole thing. One thing that I am pretty certain about: blame is not the appropriate response; particularly as far as the security services are concerned. Assuming there were no procedural abuses (a big assumption), one has a great deal of sympathy for the difficult position the security services were in: asked to solve an (almost if not actually) impossible problem, they reached for exactly the same tools and techniques that I would have done, were I in the same situation. Given the same task, and the same constraints, I cannot see how I would have reacted differently. For me, the real question is whether they should have been given that task in the first place. Intuitively, the answer seems to be an obvious and resounding "No"; although I do acknowledge that the problem is a difficult and nuanced one. The temptation to blame Bush for the whole thing is quite strong, although as I mentioned; I am sure that the debate is difficult and nuanced, and we do not have all the facts (although the trust that we might use in place of the facts is in precious thin supply).

w_t_payne 13y ago

Very sensibly put. In fact, after the initial mob-mentality reaction has worn off, after the glee at seeing the high-and-mighty taken down a peg or two has subsided, I am starting to feel ... well, a bit conflicted about the whole thing. One thing that I am pretty certain about: blame is not the appropriate response; particularly as far as the security services are concerned. Assuming there were no procedural abuses (a big assumption), one has a great deal of sympathy for the difficult position the security services were in: asked to solve an (almost if not actually) impossible problem, they reached for exactly the same tools and techniques that I would have done, were I in the same situation. Given the same task, and the same constraints, I cannot see how I would have reacted differently. For me, the real question is whether they should have been given that task in the first place. Intuitively, the answer seems to be an obvious and resounding "No"; although I do acknowledge that the problem is a difficult and nuanced one. The temptation to blame Bush for the whole thing is quite strong, although as I mentioned; I am sure that the debate is difficult and nuanced, and we do not have all the facts (although the trust that we might use in place of the facts is in precious thin supply).