12 ms·

More like "USA morale down after Edward Snowden revelations, much of U.S. population says," I'd say. That happens when you do something most people would feel

by spodek 13y ago

More like "USA morale down after Edward Snowden revelations, much of U.S. population says," I'd say. That happens when you do something most people would feel shame for. A major difference between NSA employees and the rest of us is that they can easily stop what they're doing. Let's hope their pitiful loss of morale leads them to develop a conscience, respect for the law, or whatever it takes to stop doing things that lead to feeling so bad. > “They feel they’ve been hung out to dry, and they’re right.” Bullshit. They're adults who chose to do what they did and work where they work. We have emotions to guide our behavior. If they feel bad for the environment they chose to work in and the work they chose to do, maybe they should look in the mirror and ask if they ought to reconsider their choices and do something that doesn't draw shame and contempt from the rest of the world while undermining their county's interests.

JPKab 13y ago
I was in a Hadoop course with a person who had just left the NSA in mid-June (right when the Snowden bomb dropped). She was in complete denial about his allegations, and was outright hostile to the rest of the room for "actually believing he was telling the truth". A key quote: "Do you really think they just let people access these systems without rules? You really believe that?" (the tone was beyond condescending, implying that we were all naive and ignorant) My argument to her was that my experience dealing with intelligence agencies is that they build stuff very quickly, focusing on capabilities. Anytime systems are built like this, safeguards are an afterthought. As it turns out, we were all right, and she was all wrong. I would love to talk to her today and wipe that smug look off her face by pointing out that the "safeguards" were nothing more than policy and rules with zero enforcement mechanisms. Hence the guy who spied on his ex for years without being caught. The fact that, on a personality level, she was one of the more awful people I've been stuck sitting next to in a class, makes me question who the NSA hires. She was hired straight out of college, so I guess the culture was sucked right into her. And man does that culture suck.
- wcummings 13y ago
  >"Do you really think they just let people access these systems without rules? You really believe that?" Saying this while discussing material leaked from the NSA is beyond ironic
  - ceejayoz 13y ago
    Especially when the NSA has admitted they don't know which documents were taken.
    - bediger4000 13y ago
      Wait, should I believe that the NSA doesn't know what documents were taken? Because I hold the belief that they do know, down to the PowerPoint slide, what resides in Snowden's Cache. I believe that the NSA is either incapable of telling the truth, or believes that lying about what they know is an advantage somehow. Is there some way to decide this quandry logically?
      - nl 13y ago
        Because I hold the belief that they do know, down to the PowerPoint slide, what resides in Snowden's Cache. Why? When it happened, they almost certainly didn't. By now they may have restored all their backups to that point of time, and recreated their network to see exactly what he could have possibly taken, but beyond that it seems likely they don't know.. I'd imagine they are slowly working out what documents he has. Everytime a new one appears they go "oh, shit" and look at what other docs were nearby. They have probably checked multiple times a few critical documents to see if he had access to them.
  - walshemj 13y ago
    and even post employment saying that you had worked for the NSA you can see the crap attitude to protective security that let snowden happen.
    - keithpeter 13y ago
- neuralk 13y ago
  >Hence the guy who spied on his ex for years without being caught. Can I get a link to that story?
  - andrewcooke 13y ago
    http://lmgtfy.com/?q=nsa+employee+spying+on+ex http://lmgtfy.com/?q=nsa+employee+spying+on+ex
    - neuralk 13y ago
      Funny, that doesn't answer my question. I was already aware of the letter released by Senator Grassley[1] and none of the stories in that letter match those referenced by the GP. So, again, can I get a link to that story? [1] http://www.grassley.senate.gov/judiciary/upload/NSA-Surveillance-09-11-13-response-from-IG-to-intentional-misuse-of-NSA-authority.pdf http://www.grassley.senate.gov/judiciary/upload/NSA-Surveill...
      - andrewcooke 13y ago
        so you're linking to a letter with TWELVE different cases of NSA employees spying on people for "romantic" reasons and that doesn't answer your question? are you playing some kind of semantic game where you narrowly select the meanings of words to exclude the piles and piles of evidence and so "win" some pointless argument? because if so, i'm thinking you might be keith alexander?
        neuralk 13y ago
        I just thought he was referencing something I was not familiar with, not paraphrasing something I was. > are you playing some kind of semantic game ... because if so, i'm thinking you might be keith alexander? You are reading too much into my question. Sometimes a question is just a question and there's no need to pitch a battle over it.
        philwelch 13y ago
        Is it really necessary for you to be so nasty?
- alextingle 13y ago
  Furthermore, whatever safeguards they might put on the data are completely irrelevant. They shouldn't be mass collecting data without a warrant in any case. You were just arguing about whether their lawbreaking was competently executed or not.
  - growupkids 13y ago
    Let's not be naive. Spying doesn't involve warrants. It's called spying because that's what it is, spying, not building a legal case to take to court. Warrants aren't ever going to figure into spying. You can bound the scope of what spy agencies spy on, but expecting them to spy and to get a warrant to spy before they do it, that's not going to happen. If you truly want warrant based searches for everyone, everywhere, then you have to ban spy agencies world wide and make this all a law enforcement function.
    - sanderjd 13y ago
      There's this nice dividing line - you don't spy on your own citizens which means you need warrants to gather information on them.
      - marvin 13y ago
        Actually, warrantless surveillance goes beyond that. I'm a Norwegian citizen, and I take issue with the NSA having instant access to all the homemade porn me and my girlfriend exchange. So this concern really goes beyond the borders of the US. Saying that this would be all fine and dandy if it was restricted to the 95% of the people who are not in the US is a very good way to piss off all your allies and trading partners.
        sanderjd 13y ago
        Interesting, are you using the word "warrantless" as a synonym for "baseless" or as meaning "without a warrant granted by a court of law"? If it's the first, I agree wholeheartedly - it's both unethical and just plain stupid for my government to spend time, money, political capital, and the ability to look itself in the mirror without cringing on being able to access the pornography of private citizens of ally countries. If it's the latter, I disagree - I don't think countries (the U.S., Norway, whoever) should be required or require themselves to get warrants to surveil citizens of other countries. You should be pissed, and it pisses me off that my government is pissing you off, but that doesn't mean I think it needs to get warrants to spy on other countries.
- ams6110 13y ago
  She was probably right about the systems she used. I clearly remember be stunned, and initially not believing, that any one person, even a sysadmin, would have such broad access to systems at the NSA. It goes against everything that intelligence agencies have learned about compartmentalization of information and "need to know" access controls.
  - CamperBob2 13y ago
    "Need to know" apparently is no longer in fashion in either the civil or military intelligence communities, in any way whatsoever. Bradley Manning convinced me of that. As a low-level private, he was able to download megabytes of sensitive material completely unrelated to his job, and that he couldn't possibly have had any need to access. Regardless of whether you think he (she) did the right thing, it's just insane that it was even possible. It speaks of outrageous incompetence at the highest levels of the organization, incompetence that's likely to be a greater security threat than anything else under discussion. Same story with Snowden, a low-level contractor who was apparently able to walk away with the whole store. Love him or hate him, he's not the Agency's real problem.
    - jfoutz 13y ago
      Much much more amusing to see how random college drop outs can so deeply compromise national security. Imagine what trouble we'd be in if a motivated nation state tried to get the USA's secrets?
      - Peaker 13y ago
        He sounds like quite a competent, intelligent "college dropout". Do you think him being a "dropout" means much?
        jfoutz 13y ago
        Yeah, it's hyperbolic. I was trying to emphasize the difference between a random guy and nation state. Dropout was also convenient because it applied to both Manning and Snowden.
- mariuolo 13y ago
  > "Do you really think they just let people access these systems without rules? You really believe that?" Perhaps she was still doing damage control for them?
- brown9-2 13y ago
  My argument to her was that my experience dealing with intelligence agencies Just curious - what experience is that?
- niels_olson 13y ago
  One tends to realize only in retrospect that it's a very curious experience to go from normal life to the military before having any other real responsibilities in life. One very much gets the feeling of being a Platonic "guardian" and the access to information only heightens that experience. It is likely quite similar to the way some folks in IT talk perceive "sheeple" and doctors sometimes perceive patients, and even the UPS guy perceives your package as he congratulates himself for the hard work even as he drop kicks your computer into your screen door. Couldn't I fairly easily replace "military" with "profession"? I think going to medical school and being indoctrinated into a second professional culture is what gave me an opportunity to see the experience for what it is. The striving, the late nights, the urgency, the aspirations, the sense of responsibility, they all play in to a larger story of self where one paradoxically may not appreciate their own larger role at the time. I also submit your immediate seniors also may not appreciate their own roles. I submit any differences you saw in her were side effects of the history of the institutions, the policies that govern them, the nature of the work, and the point in time at which your paths crossed. Look at General Petraeus, compare him to Lincoln's string of generals, or just the number of military officers who will never make general, fired one after the other, and consider, how many months or years of conflict did Petreaus save after the civilian leadership made the decision to go to war? How many soldiers and civilians were killed or saved? How many lives has his work touched? Look at Drew Houston. Compare him to the many careers burned out in failed startups, the customer data lost in security breaches. How many lives has his work touched? Look at Paul Farmer. Compare him to the many careers burned out in medicine, the patients who died in clinical trials while they took sugar pills, the failure of relief agencies to effectively coordinate supply chains. How may lives has his work touched? Look at Fred Smith. Compare him to the many careers burned out in aviation and business. The pilots of passengers who have died in flight, or been affected by the failure of a supply chain to deliver the right item to the right place. How many lives has his work touched? Now think about the soldiers, the code monkeys, the nurse's aids, the FedEx delivery drivers, living in the shadows of these names. What cultural influences are the same? If you started on any one of these paths at 18 or 22, are you so certain that you would be mentally and emotionally prepared to resist the onslaught of cultural decisions you would be expected to participate in on a daily basis? Are you so sure that you so reliably see the forest for the trees?
- ridgeguy 13y ago
  As a matter of interest about whether and how people change their views in light of revealed facts, have you any means of following up with her to see how she new views the matters on which she opined then? I would find this exercise informative and interesting. Tnx.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
kenjackson 13y ago
Bullshit. They're adults who chose to do what they did and work where they work. They did, but that presumes they knew all that was going on. I suspect that very few people did. Ask people at Microsoft and Google if they were servicing these FISA requests from the govt and I bet very few had any knowledge about it until the stories broke. Or ask someone in the Air Force if they know about random secret op anywhere in the world and they probably don't know. Now you might say, "they should have known". I don't know if they should have. Someone later in the thread mentioned a female that thought the systems would be better locked down -- and I suspect they are for most employees. But there probably are some people for whom needed the system for their day job, but it wasn't properly locked down so they couldn't check on their 'ex'. At the end of the day how much more to blame is a Chinese language translator at the NSA than someone who does crypto at DIA, or a FISA judge, or a US citizen who continues to pay taxes, rather than change residence...
- bediger4000 13y ago
  They did, but that presumes they knew all that was going on. I suspect that very few people did. I agree, but doesnt't that just imply that the "compartmentalization" system can be used for more than limiting damage due to disclosure? A compartmentalized organization can be led down the proverbial primrose path, responsibility is so diffuse that accountability and even ethical behavior is impossible. I think it also implies an ethical duty not to work in a compartmentalized organization. You can't know if you're doing ethical work if you can't know all that's going on, even theortically.
  - kenjackson 13y ago
    How do you avoid thus when it comes to national security? Not every single person in the Army needs to know that Bin Laden is getting rolled on tonight. I think what happened is the citizenry picked security over privacy. And our elected officials who oversee these organizations thought they were making the right tradeoff.
    - bediger4000 13y ago
tokenadult 13y ago
More like "USA morale down after Edward Snowden revelations, much of U.S. population says," I'd say. I suppose you and I meet different subsets of the United States population in our daily lives. I am on record here on HN as having participated in the Take Back the Fourth protest in Minneapolis about overreaching NSA surveillance. I was not afraid to go out in public in view of TV cameras and the police (the protest location was a plaza across the street from the headquarters of the Minneapolis police deparment, and I saw officers with cameras overlooking the protest location) to indicate that I think governmental surveillance, if it occurs at all, should be according to law, and strictly limited by law. That said, I don't treat Snowden as a hero, and I hope no one else in the United States emulates him, ever. He would have done a lot more good for humankind by increasing the NSA's ability to conduct surveillance in China and in Russia (the two countries that have protected him so far) and in central Asia in general. And what has most struck me as I have conversations with American adults of approximately my age (birth years in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s) who remember more history is that they are mostly very eager to see Snowden prosecuted to the full extent of the law, which would probably mean spending the rest of his life in prison. Yes, people choose where they work. And some people remember not to stab their co-workers in the back when they go to work. I have never chosen to work for NSA, and I would be glad to see NSA have more effective oversight from Congress and a more limited role in data-gathering. But the United States (like every other country in the world) needs some intelligence-gathering capabilities, and I seem to be joined in my daily activities by a lot of Americans who think that Snowden didn't help anyone by revealing official secrets and that he has a very misguided set of priorities about which governments to oppose. My morale decreases to know that anyone who was contracting for NSA wasn't checked out well enough to detect that tendency to treachery in advance. The day the news broke that Edward Snowden had left Hong Kong, I was out of town at a soccer tournament with my daughter. The parents of her teammates, mostly younger than I am, heard me announce that news, and when one parent asked, what Snowden's destination was, another said, "Gitmo?" with a smile that indicated that he thought Snowden belongs there. I find that reaction quite commonplace among Americans I know. AFTER EDIT: I see the downvotes indicating disagreement are already coming here, and that is not a surprise here on Hacker News, but do we have strong evidence that the general opinion of the American public is united in supporting the HN community view of Snowden's conduct as an NSA contractor? That's one factual question worthy of factual discussion here, whether you agree with my opinion or not. AFTER FURTHER EDITS: I appreciate the replies to my comment, practicing free speech to help me understand other people's perspectives. I would say that it's quite possible to be a genuine whistleblower without disclosing the degree of operational information that Snowden disclosed. And it is possible--it has been done--to decry current NSA practice and still stay in the United States, as some NSA officials have done in the last few years. I'll check the polling data kindly shared in one reply. I'll note that Americans my age and older (well above the modal or median age of HN participants) have multiple sources of information through which to form opinions on this issue, and don't rely solely on governmental statements or influence from political leaders to make up our minds on these issues.
increment_i 13y ago
The last 50 years of U.S. public administration has truly been a master course in how to completely destroy public faith in large government. As of right now, it seems the U.S. government has two paths it can take -- a) Begin the long and difficult process of restoring faith in the system, or b) tighten their stranglehold on power. Somehow I doubt we'll see the latter.

by spodek 13y ago

JPKab 13y ago

I was in a Hadoop course with a person who had just left the NSA in mid-June (right when the Snowden bomb dropped). She was in complete denial about his allegations, and was outright hostile to the rest of the room for "actually believing he was telling the truth". A key quote: "Do you really think they just let people access these systems without rules? You really believe that?" (the tone was beyond condescending, implying that we were all naive and ignorant) My argument to her was that my experience dealing with intelligence agencies is that they build stuff very quickly, focusing on capabilities. Anytime systems are built like this, safeguards are an afterthought. As it turns out, we were all right, and she was all wrong. I would love to talk to her today and wipe that smug look off her face by pointing out that the "safeguards" were nothing more than policy and rules with zero enforcement mechanisms. Hence the guy who spied on his ex for years without being caught. The fact that, on a personality level, she was one of the more awful people I've been stuck sitting next to in a class, makes me question who the NSA hires. She was hired straight out of college, so I guess the culture was sucked right into her. And man does that culture suck.

wcummings 13y ago
>"Do you really think they just let people access these systems without rules? You really believe that?" Saying this while discussing material leaked from the NSA is beyond ironic
- ceejayoz 13y ago
  Especially when the NSA has admitted they don't know which documents were taken.
  - bediger4000 13y ago
    Wait, should I believe that the NSA doesn't know what documents were taken? Because I hold the belief that they do know, down to the PowerPoint slide, what resides in Snowden's Cache. I believe that the NSA is either incapable of telling the truth, or believes that lying about what they know is an advantage somehow. Is there some way to decide this quandry logically?
    - nl 13y ago
      Because I hold the belief that they do know, down to the PowerPoint slide, what resides in Snowden's Cache. Why? When it happened, they almost certainly didn't. By now they may have restored all their backups to that point of time, and recreated their network to see exactly what he could have possibly taken, but beyond that it seems likely they don't know.. I'd imagine they are slowly working out what documents he has. Everytime a new one appears they go "oh, shit" and look at what other docs were nearby. They have probably checked multiple times a few critical documents to see if he had access to them.
- walshemj 13y ago
  and even post employment saying that you had worked for the NSA you can see the crap attitude to protective security that let snowden happen.
  - keithpeter 13y ago
neuralk 13y ago
>Hence the guy who spied on his ex for years without being caught. Can I get a link to that story?
- andrewcooke 13y ago
  http://lmgtfy.com/?q=nsa+employee+spying+on+ex http://lmgtfy.com/?q=nsa+employee+spying+on+ex
  - neuralk 13y ago
    Funny, that doesn't answer my question. I was already aware of the letter released by Senator Grassley[1] and none of the stories in that letter match those referenced by the GP. So, again, can I get a link to that story? [1] http://www.grassley.senate.gov/judiciary/upload/NSA-Surveillance-09-11-13-response-from-IG-to-intentional-misuse-of-NSA-authority.pdf http://www.grassley.senate.gov/judiciary/upload/NSA-Surveill...
    - andrewcooke 13y ago
      so you're linking to a letter with TWELVE different cases of NSA employees spying on people for "romantic" reasons and that doesn't answer your question? are you playing some kind of semantic game where you narrowly select the meanings of words to exclude the piles and piles of evidence and so "win" some pointless argument? because if so, i'm thinking you might be keith alexander?
      - neuralk 13y ago
        I just thought he was referencing something I was not familiar with, not paraphrasing something I was. > are you playing some kind of semantic game ... because if so, i'm thinking you might be keith alexander? You are reading too much into my question. Sometimes a question is just a question and there's no need to pitch a battle over it.
      - philwelch 13y ago
        Is it really necessary for you to be so nasty?
alextingle 13y ago
Furthermore, whatever safeguards they might put on the data are completely irrelevant. They shouldn't be mass collecting data without a warrant in any case. You were just arguing about whether their lawbreaking was competently executed or not.
- growupkids 13y ago
  Let's not be naive. Spying doesn't involve warrants. It's called spying because that's what it is, spying, not building a legal case to take to court. Warrants aren't ever going to figure into spying. You can bound the scope of what spy agencies spy on, but expecting them to spy and to get a warrant to spy before they do it, that's not going to happen. If you truly want warrant based searches for everyone, everywhere, then you have to ban spy agencies world wide and make this all a law enforcement function.
  - sanderjd 13y ago
    There's this nice dividing line - you don't spy on your own citizens which means you need warrants to gather information on them.
    - marvin 13y ago
      Actually, warrantless surveillance goes beyond that. I'm a Norwegian citizen, and I take issue with the NSA having instant access to all the homemade porn me and my girlfriend exchange. So this concern really goes beyond the borders of the US. Saying that this would be all fine and dandy if it was restricted to the 95% of the people who are not in the US is a very good way to piss off all your allies and trading partners.
      - sanderjd 13y ago
        Interesting, are you using the word "warrantless" as a synonym for "baseless" or as meaning "without a warrant granted by a court of law"? If it's the first, I agree wholeheartedly - it's both unethical and just plain stupid for my government to spend time, money, political capital, and the ability to look itself in the mirror without cringing on being able to access the pornography of private citizens of ally countries. If it's the latter, I disagree - I don't think countries (the U.S., Norway, whoever) should be required or require themselves to get warrants to surveil citizens of other countries. You should be pissed, and it pisses me off that my government is pissing you off, but that doesn't mean I think it needs to get warrants to spy on other countries.
ams6110 13y ago
She was probably right about the systems she used. I clearly remember be stunned, and initially not believing, that any one person, even a sysadmin, would have such broad access to systems at the NSA. It goes against everything that intelligence agencies have learned about compartmentalization of information and "need to know" access controls.
- CamperBob2 13y ago
  "Need to know" apparently is no longer in fashion in either the civil or military intelligence communities, in any way whatsoever. Bradley Manning convinced me of that. As a low-level private, he was able to download megabytes of sensitive material completely unrelated to his job, and that he couldn't possibly have had any need to access. Regardless of whether you think he (she) did the right thing, it's just insane that it was even possible. It speaks of outrageous incompetence at the highest levels of the organization, incompetence that's likely to be a greater security threat than anything else under discussion. Same story with Snowden, a low-level contractor who was apparently able to walk away with the whole store. Love him or hate him, he's not the Agency's real problem.
  - jfoutz 13y ago
    Much much more amusing to see how random college drop outs can so deeply compromise national security. Imagine what trouble we'd be in if a motivated nation state tried to get the USA's secrets?
    - Peaker 13y ago
      He sounds like quite a competent, intelligent "college dropout". Do you think him being a "dropout" means much?
      - jfoutz 13y ago
        Yeah, it's hyperbolic. I was trying to emphasize the difference between a random guy and nation state. Dropout was also convenient because it applied to both Manning and Snowden.
mariuolo 13y ago
> "Do you really think they just let people access these systems without rules? You really believe that?" Perhaps she was still doing damage control for them?
brown9-2 13y ago
My argument to her was that my experience dealing with intelligence agencies Just curious - what experience is that?
niels_olson 13y ago
One tends to realize only in retrospect that it's a very curious experience to go from normal life to the military before having any other real responsibilities in life. One very much gets the feeling of being a Platonic "guardian" and the access to information only heightens that experience. It is likely quite similar to the way some folks in IT talk perceive "sheeple" and doctors sometimes perceive patients, and even the UPS guy perceives your package as he congratulates himself for the hard work even as he drop kicks your computer into your screen door. Couldn't I fairly easily replace "military" with "profession"? I think going to medical school and being indoctrinated into a second professional culture is what gave me an opportunity to see the experience for what it is. The striving, the late nights, the urgency, the aspirations, the sense of responsibility, they all play in to a larger story of self where one paradoxically may not appreciate their own larger role at the time. I also submit your immediate seniors also may not appreciate their own roles. I submit any differences you saw in her were side effects of the history of the institutions, the policies that govern them, the nature of the work, and the point in time at which your paths crossed. Look at General Petraeus, compare him to Lincoln's string of generals, or just the number of military officers who will never make general, fired one after the other, and consider, how many months or years of conflict did Petreaus save after the civilian leadership made the decision to go to war? How many soldiers and civilians were killed or saved? How many lives has his work touched? Look at Drew Houston. Compare him to the many careers burned out in failed startups, the customer data lost in security breaches. How many lives has his work touched? Look at Paul Farmer. Compare him to the many careers burned out in medicine, the patients who died in clinical trials while they took sugar pills, the failure of relief agencies to effectively coordinate supply chains. How may lives has his work touched? Look at Fred Smith. Compare him to the many careers burned out in aviation and business. The pilots of passengers who have died in flight, or been affected by the failure of a supply chain to deliver the right item to the right place. How many lives has his work touched? Now think about the soldiers, the code monkeys, the nurse's aids, the FedEx delivery drivers, living in the shadows of these names. What cultural influences are the same? If you started on any one of these paths at 18 or 22, are you so certain that you would be mentally and emotionally prepared to resist the onslaught of cultural decisions you would be expected to participate in on a daily basis? Are you so sure that you so reliably see the forest for the trees?
ridgeguy 13y ago
As a matter of interest about whether and how people change their views in light of revealed facts, have you any means of following up with her to see how she new views the matters on which she opined then? I would find this exercise informative and interesting. Tnx.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

kenjackson 13y ago

Bullshit. They're adults who chose to do what they did and work where they work. They did, but that presumes they knew all that was going on. I suspect that very few people did. Ask people at Microsoft and Google if they were servicing these FISA requests from the govt and I bet very few had any knowledge about it until the stories broke. Or ask someone in the Air Force if they know about random secret op anywhere in the world and they probably don't know. Now you might say, "they should have known". I don't know if they should have. Someone later in the thread mentioned a female that thought the systems would be better locked down -- and I suspect they are for most employees. But there probably are some people for whom needed the system for their day job, but it wasn't properly locked down so they couldn't check on their 'ex'. At the end of the day how much more to blame is a Chinese language translator at the NSA than someone who does crypto at DIA, or a FISA judge, or a US citizen who continues to pay taxes, rather than change residence...

bediger4000 13y ago
They did, but that presumes they knew all that was going on. I suspect that very few people did. I agree, but doesnt't that just imply that the "compartmentalization" system can be used for more than limiting damage due to disclosure? A compartmentalized organization can be led down the proverbial primrose path, responsibility is so diffuse that accountability and even ethical behavior is impossible. I think it also implies an ethical duty not to work in a compartmentalized organization. You can't know if you're doing ethical work if you can't know all that's going on, even theortically.
- kenjackson 13y ago
  How do you avoid thus when it comes to national security? Not every single person in the Army needs to know that Bin Laden is getting rolled on tonight. I think what happened is the citizenry picked security over privacy. And our elected officials who oversee these organizations thought they were making the right tradeoff.
  - bediger4000 13y ago

tokenadult 13y ago

More like "USA morale down after Edward Snowden revelations, much of U.S. population says," I'd say. I suppose you and I meet different subsets of the United States population in our daily lives. I am on record here on HN as having participated in the Take Back the Fourth protest in Minneapolis about overreaching NSA surveillance. I was not afraid to go out in public in view of TV cameras and the police (the protest location was a plaza across the street from the headquarters of the Minneapolis police deparment, and I saw officers with cameras overlooking the protest location) to indicate that I think governmental surveillance, if it occurs at all, should be according to law, and strictly limited by law. That said, I don't treat Snowden as a hero, and I hope no one else in the United States emulates him, ever. He would have done a lot more good for humankind by increasing the NSA's ability to conduct surveillance in China and in Russia (the two countries that have protected him so far) and in central Asia in general. And what has most struck me as I have conversations with American adults of approximately my age (birth years in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s) who remember more history is that they are mostly very eager to see Snowden prosecuted to the full extent of the law, which would probably mean spending the rest of his life in prison. Yes, people choose where they work. And some people remember not to stab their co-workers in the back when they go to work. I have never chosen to work for NSA, and I would be glad to see NSA have more effective oversight from Congress and a more limited role in data-gathering. But the United States (like every other country in the world) needs some intelligence-gathering capabilities, and I seem to be joined in my daily activities by a lot of Americans who think that Snowden didn't help anyone by revealing official secrets and that he has a very misguided set of priorities about which governments to oppose. My morale decreases to know that anyone who was contracting for NSA wasn't checked out well enough to detect that tendency to treachery in advance. The day the news broke that Edward Snowden had left Hong Kong, I was out of town at a soccer tournament with my daughter. The parents of her teammates, mostly younger than I am, heard me announce that news, and when one parent asked, what Snowden's destination was, another said, "Gitmo?" with a smile that indicated that he thought Snowden belongs there. I find that reaction quite commonplace among Americans I know. AFTER EDIT: I see the downvotes indicating disagreement are already coming here, and that is not a surprise here on Hacker News, but do we have strong evidence that the general opinion of the American public is united in supporting the HN community view of Snowden's conduct as an NSA contractor? That's one factual question worthy of factual discussion here, whether you agree with my opinion or not. AFTER FURTHER EDITS: I appreciate the replies to my comment, practicing free speech to help me understand other people's perspectives. I would say that it's quite possible to be a genuine whistleblower without disclosing the degree of operational information that Snowden disclosed. And it is possible--it has been done--to decry current NSA practice and still stay in the United States, as some NSA officials have done in the last few years. I'll check the polling data kindly shared in one reply. I'll note that Americans my age and older (well above the modal or median age of HN participants) have multiple sources of information through which to form opinions on this issue, and don't rely solely on governmental statements or influence from political leaders to make up our minds on these issues.

increment_i 13y ago

The last 50 years of U.S. public administration has truly been a master course in how to completely destroy public faith in large government. As of right now, it seems the U.S. government has two paths it can take -- a) Begin the long and difficult process of restoring faith in the system, or b) tighten their stranglehold on power. Somehow I doubt we'll see the latter.