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"In such moments one feels pride with our country and regret over the course taken by United States -- a country betraying the principles it was once built on,"

• weland 13y ago
  This painfully reminds me of George Carlin, who referred to the original artisans of his country -- in jest -- as "a bunch of white slaveowners who wanted to be free".
  • dmix 13y ago
    I understand this was in jest, but this comes up on HN often. Slavery was introduced in America ~two centuries before the founding fathers had influence. They were focused on the threat of authoritarianism/british rule, and failed to properly address their own complicit authoritarianism. Very much like many people today who are all of a sudden concerned about the abuses of the "police state" aggressively targeting protesters and activists, when black communities have been harassed and targeted for decades (see the only domestic aerial bombing in US history targeting black activists in the 1980s [1] or recently "stop and frisk") with little public protest from white communities. ...or the difference in legal sentencing for crack cocaine vs powdered cocaine. Racial hypocrisy is hardly a thing of the past in public discourse. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE
• Gonzih 13y ago
  Believe me, Russian government is doing the same thing as NSA did. There are rumors about spying hardware installed in Russian ISPs. There are rumors about Russian organization that produces hardware for logging all internet traffic, decrypting on the fly encrypted data, filtering it and etc. Difference between this and NSA is than information about NSA is now public.
  • praptak 13y ago
    No contradiction to the point that GP made. Nobody said that Putin's Russia is more free than US. They just did the right thing in this particular case and made the "land of the free" look hypocritical as a result. This doesn't imply anything about how Russia citizens are treated by their own state.
    • Gonzih 13y ago
      I just don't understand how someone can be proud about modern Russia in any way.
      • precisioncoder 13y ago
        Bad doesn't cancel out good, they exist side by side. I admire the US for it's amazing alternative culture (steampunk, goth, robots, anime, comic books, oh my). I admire it for it's incredible technological innovation. I have often weighed those things against the lack of support for it's citizens (No free healthcare, little to no vacation, often mandatory overtime, rich wins legal system, etc). I don't know as much about Russia and the US but I'm sure that it has a tremendous amount of good and bad living side by side. There's plenty to be proud of as well as ashamed of.
        • Gonzih 13y ago
          > I don't know as much about Russia... Unfortunately I know about Russia too much. I totally agree with you, but from my point of view and with information that I'm getting about Russia I can't see how to look at that country from positive perspective.
          • lvturner 13y ago
            Go visit Russia, it's hard to evaluate any country based on information gleaned from the outside. Edit: Actually, by visit, I mean go and live there for a while
• calibraxis 13y ago
  I recall hearing about polls where like a third of US respondents believe that the US government was behind 9-11. Of course I don't believe it did, but clearly lots of us think we're run by a bunch of criminals. In comparison to graver problems (being the most incarceration-happy nation, mass international killings, etc), the Snowden thing is minor. Durov's whole line about "betraying the principles it was once built on" is a reference to the usual quasi-religious nationalist founding mythologies.
• melling 13y ago
  I really don't get how people can be so naive on HN. Let's talk about Snowden all day and wish we were more like Russia, where it's perfectly ok to say anything you want. Sorry guys, but not every one really believes the NSA should be disbanded. They have a real job to do. Certainly there needs to be limits, which we could of course discuss for years on end, but I don't see the point of doing it in a forum that really isn't suitable for the topic. Ok, back to the echo chamber. 4 downvotes and this message disappears. Well, I do need to try occasionally. HN used to be a great site.
  • bazillion 13y ago
    Seeing this post made me very happy, actually. I've commented before about my perspective in the NSA and doing government work, but immediately get showered with downvotes because I have a point of view that differs from what other people have been rallying towards. I don't understand the motivation behind preventing discussion of actual facts or interesting points of view. If 11 year old BBS-hacking NSA-conspiracy-fearing me had an opportunity to talk to and ask questions of former NSA analyst/programmer me, I would definitely have come up with a better discussion than the HN community. At least my upvote will counter at least one close-minded person.
    • k__ 13y ago
      What's the deal with everybody always taking sides?! NSA AND Russia are bad. There is nothing good in spying on people OR outlawing gays...
      • userulluipeste 13y ago
        Not only individual people take sides, organizations and governments take too. For how I see it, NSA is bashed because it took a side against the most of us. Russia on the other hand, gets its "hurray" because it opposes the one that is against us right now. It's not necessarily taking a side and sticking with it as a partisan, it is just condemning or recognizing one's merit when it's the case, simple.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• drone 13y ago
  Even Russians get it... Why don't more Americans get it? Get what? A large group of the American people are upset that the NSA was spying on its own citizens. There's a healthy, and sometimes rancorous discussion going on over here. Lawmakers are trying to tighten up laws, the cabinet is defensive, and the populace is arguing amongst its self. betraying the principles it was once built on... No, "the country" is not. There seems to be this mythical belief that varies from country to country as to what it "means" to be the United States; even within the United States no one can agree as to what those principles actually are -- so how can someone outside of it be so sure? What have we learned in 200+ years of representative democracy? It hurts, it's hard, we can't always agree, we can't always make up our mind, we struggle to find balance, and when groups of people can make rules sometimes they make absolutely atrocious ones just like individuals do. Along the way, it will look terrible and horrible to outsiders who think they "see the obvious that no one inside of the system sees." Sorry, as an outsider you're not miraculously the only one aware of the truth - you're like that annoying other programmer who is always full of great ideas about how your code should be written, but always seems to gloss over the hard parts. So, for those countries that romanticized about how utopian the United States must be for decades and decades of some other type of rule, and very recently have been given some semblance of democracy, it must be jarring to see there is no magic pill for the corruption and tyranny they may occasionally live under. But to think that "America has lost its way," it to act like a partisan here. I hear that every day from someone who is griping about some thing they don't like. It's trite at best. The person who made the statement clearly has no idea as to what the principles of the United States actually are, and instead has idolized them into some inner picture of perfection that never existed.
  • thuuuomas 13y ago
    You speak as though you know "what the principles of the United Sates actually are", but much like the maligned "annoying other programmer", you don't mention what these principles might be.
    • drone 13y ago
      You speak as though you know "what the principles of the United Sates actually are", but much like the maligned "annoying other programmer", you don't mention what these principles might be Quote: even within the United States no one can agree as to what those principles actually are -- so how can someone outside of it be so sure
• dylangs1030 13y ago
  You're ridiculous. This comment is a spectacular example of the faulty politicizing and black and white mentality being tossed about willy-nilly since the NSA scandal. First of all - this is not indicative of Russia. This is just one Russian national giving him a job, and his stated reasons in the press may not be the real reasons why. Second, Russia gave him asylum yes, but instead of echo chambering your preconceived beliefs about the NSA, why don't you apply the same critical skepticism to news coming out of Russia? Why don't you examine why Russia might want to grant asylum to an American refugee like Snowden instead of just saying, "Oh, they just get it man. They get it." Third, there isn't anything concrete to get - the NSA isn't an evil, demonic institution sent here as a harbinger of the apocalypse. It's an institution whose abuses were wildly exaggerated and need to be corrected, not something to be burned to the ground. The country would not be better off without the agency in its entirety. You're just applying this naive sense of cops and robbers to the entire dilemma and not critically examining all the evidence/stories. Your bias allows you to over-criticize one side and over-praise the other.
  • danenania 13y ago
    Sorry, secretly storing and analyzing the private communications and browsing history of everyone on the planet absolutely is evil. Doesn't matter what the reason is. If you don't understand this, there is something severely wrong with your moral compass.
    • dylangs1030 13y ago
      This is one of the few times I've seen a genuine ad hominem on Hacker News...thank you for attacking my "moral compass" instead of the substance of my argument. Now, to counter what you said - you're reaching by claiming the NSA "secretly stores and analyzes" the private communications of everyone on the planet. One interpretation of the materials originally leaked purports this, but there is also data contesting this view which is equally valid. Again - the echo chamber and bias allows you to just unilaterally suppose the NSA is capable of retrieving all data everywhere, but you're not examining counter evidence. X-Keyscore allows email and web content surveillance, yes, but it isn't even practical to mine all data at once - it is much more practical (and probable) that this allows for finding and assembling an entry point to see where you should really begin looking in depth as an NSA analyst[1]. But, no, your traffic is not being viewed universally or entirely without someone at least believing there's a reason. [1]: http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jul/31/nsa-xkeyscore-program-full-presentation http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jul/31/nsa...