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You are missing the limits that simple practicality has on each scenario. There is an enormous difference between a military coup and the kind of risks the NS
by Amadou 13y ago
You are missing the limits that simple practicality has on each scenario.
There is an enormous difference between a military coup and the kind of risks the NSA databases create. A military coup requires tens if not hundreds of thousands of military to agree that potentially killing their neighbors and maybe even own family members is a necessity. For the NSA databases to be abused all it takes is a handful of motivated actors to quietly blackmail specific individuals. Not unlike the FBI tried to do with their surveillance tapes of Martin Luther King.
- mpyne 13y ago> For the NSA databases to be abused all it takes is a handful of motivated actors to quietly blackmail specific individuals. And what if it takes more than a handful? Would such a system be safe then?
- Amadou 13y agoGet it up to a couple of hundred and we'll talk. But if you think you can do that simply through process rather than physical design, we won't talk - process can not address the problem of turnkey tyranny.
- DanBC 13y ago> For the NSA databases to be abused all it takes is a handful of motivated actors to quietly blackmail specific individuals. This is a baffling comment. Are you aware of the background checks that NSA do on staff? And the audit-trails on access to various bits of data?
- Amadou 13y agoYou mean like the background checks and audit trails that prevented Snowden from absconding with all those documents? Background checks don't stop people who think they are righteous and audit trails are only as good as (a) the audit policies and (b) the auditors. Snowden was pretty explicit with his claims that putting down any half-assed justification was enough to satisfy the auditors.