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Is that an official document with an actual smiley face? What ever happened to the admins / programmers standing up for what is right, or do they just gobble d

• mhurron 13y ago
  >Is that an official document with an actual smiley face? It's only HN that pretends there is no feeling in professional work.
  • emilsedgh 13y ago
    Apparently those guys felt good about what they did. That's what's upsetting people.
    • mhurron 13y ago
      No one sees themselves as a bad guy. Most working at the NSA probably do believe they are protecting the nation. Everyone is happy having done a job well. It's just human nature. /except on HN, where we are all expected to act like robots.
  • jMyles 13y ago
    It's the "professional" designation that's the problem. Once you say someone is a "professional," that means that they are part of a "profession," and that they answer to the ethical standards of that profession. Sadly, we have doctors force-feeding people at Gitmo, so it's not terribly surprising that there are counter-professionals at the NSA.
• dombili 13y ago
  It's not just that either. They seem to enjoy it and think that this is a game. If you're going to violate our basic rights, at least take it seriously, guys.
  • roc 13y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised if it's just a coping mechanism.
  • brown9-2 13y ago
    This presumes that those developers are building these systems to go after "our basic rights", instead of believing that they are helping to target terrorists and enemy states. What gets lost in a lot of the (justifiable) NSA outrage is the fact that they want all of this technology to enable surveillance of terrorists who use the Internet just like ordinary Americans do. There is really no evidence so far that this massive surveillance apparatus is being used in a widespread way to abusively target Americans. Being able to intercept online communication between terrorists and foreign governments in a way that collects zero communications of Americans seems like a really, really hard task.
    • swalkergibson 13y ago
      The terrorism threat is simply a convenient bogeyman. The probabilities of dying in a random terrorist attack are so infinitesimally small that it is not even worth considering. Ordinary Americans are simply too stupid to really comprehend exactly what is happening here and subscribe to the "well, I don't have anything to hide" type logic. The fact is that the terrorists have won. The American public, due to indifference, is so irrationally afraid of dying in a terrorist attack that our own government is watching our every move under the guise of protecting us from that threat.
      • brown9-2 13y ago
        So, what types of widespread abusive things is the government doing to American citizens with all this surveillance? When you say "convenient bogeyman" it implies that all of this surveillance was built with the express purpose of spying on Americans. I personally believe that to be false, and instead that the massive and overbearing surveillance was built because public officials are so afraid of another massive terrorist attack because the voters are so afraid. In other words I agree with your basic observations but not the malicious motives.
• burntsushi 13y ago
  This question implies they know what they're doing is wrong. If they think they're protecting their country---including their families and friends---then it's easy to imagine how they wouldn't have a problem with this.
• maurits 13y ago
  Because people compartmentalise and so for engineers this is most probably not a political thing but just an interesting difficult problem that is fun to work hard on.
• eli 13y ago
  Privacy issues aside, getting paid to hack into big important systems sounds like it could be a job many people would enjoy.
• frozenport 13y ago
  `cat /dev/internet0 | grep -i 'Terrorists'` and then it doesn't sound so bad.