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"That's rather radical and unprofessional to say." In what sense is it unprofessional? "Any nsa contractor who depends on government contract to feed their fa

"That's rather radical and unprofessional to say." In what sense is it unprofessional? "Any nsa contractor who depends on government contract to feed their families - is it wrong? " in a moral sense? who knows. but from a practical sense it genuinely does mean I cannot trust you. hey, I understand what you are saying - and I sympathise, but at the end of the day there are clear, solid reasons why I cannot trust an ex NSA employee. "And people have different degree of tolerance and standard for patriotism. i don't endorse what they do, but that's exact false attitude we have toward NSA affiliations." working for the NSA is not patriotic. it is the opposite of patriotic. it is associating with sneaky people who deceive and lie.

yeukhon 13y ago
Unprofessional because we put the government's fault onto an employee's fault. Let's take a secretary. There is no technical skill she did. She was just a secretary under some general at NSA. Sure she could be a spy. So now every NSA employee is marked as "untrustworthy". If I may allowed to be radical in my own response, isn't this what the red scared is all about. You are a friend to X who is a known communist and now I cannot trust you. You were a secretary for this communist spy, I cannot trust you even though you didn't know. You just deal his daily accounting. There are simply people who work for NSA for reason like employment. > working for the NSA is not patriotic. Yes, I will agree that jeopardizing democracy and liberty is not patriotic. But I am saying from the guy who started out at age 20 and thought it was everything he could do for the country, and now he realized he was wrong. Now do you trust him? The ultimate issue is again, we are equating NSA is untrustworthy == employees are untrustworthy people.
- summerdown2 13y ago
  I'm not sure this is equivalent to the red scare. If you have a friend who is a known communist (assuming for the sake of argument that communism is bad here), then it might be you have tolerated that friend for the sake of other good qualities. However, if you work in a place, there is the Buddhist question of "right livelihood." I'm sorry that I don't know any better way to put it. Given that the NSA has been doing some things that seem objectionable, shouldn't everyone who contributes to that effort begin examining their conscience? And yes, a secretary does contribute to that effort. Now it might be that the latest report will make some well-needed changes. And heaven knows, countries need intelligence to combat things like terrorism. But still. If you were part of the NSA, two things would today be true: a) You knew what went on, and agreed with it. Well, maybe your ethics are not what we would all like. or b) You didn't know what went on, and aren't impressed now you do. I suggest it's now time for you to consider whether this is an enterprise you should contribute time and effort towards. And if that comes at odds to feeding your family, well, maybe you can't just resign. But you certainly can look for more ethical work, or take part in internal conversations about how the organisation can become more ethical.
  - yeukhon 13y ago
    > And if that comes at odds to feeding your family, well, maybe you can't just resign. But you certainly can look for more ethical work, or take part in internal conversations about how the organisation can become more ethical. And we continue to be scared because of their background, previous involvement. > a) You knew what went on, and agreed with it. Well, maybe your ethics are not what we would all like. Not everyone is a saint and some are utilitarian and some are not. People also change they way they perceive things.
- bandushrew 13y ago
  that is because the work that makes the NSA untrustworthy is done by its employees. why on earth should they get a free pass for that? have you seen the scope of the damage they have done?
  - yeukhon 13y ago
    And whose idea is it in the first place? A few people. The rest is what, following orders.
    - ucee_054 13y ago
      You lose. "Following orders" is not a defense. Established at Nuremberg trial of Nazis.
    - girvo 13y ago
      Following orders is the problem.
    - dlitz 13y ago
      I don't trust people who blindly follow orders.
- cheald 13y ago
  "The NSA" is a collection of people acting in a certain manner. It cannot be untrustworthy unless its members - its employees - are behaving in an untrustworthy manner. Associating with an entity that is known to be engaged in hostile behavior towards you should carry a reputational stain, even if it wasn't you that "pulled the trigger". That secretary is facilitating the erosion of our personal privacy and liberty by logistically supporting the people who are doing the actual dirty work, and now, she knows it. At this point, her choice is "Continue supporting people doing bad things and carry the stain that comes with it" or "Stop associating with people who are doing bad things". Persons who engage or support the kind of behavior that the NSA is engaged in are untrustworthy and should be treated as such. You don't have to be the actual guy tapping data lines to be complicit. Shoving it off of "the employees" and onto "the NSA" is a copout.
  - yeukhon 13y ago
    > Persons who engage or support the kind of behavior that the NSA is engaged in are untrustworthy and should be treated as such. You don't have to be the actual guy tapping data lines to be complicit. Shoving it off of "the employees" and onto "the NSA" is a copout. No, that is not. You are making the same mistake that "because I work for someone evil it means I must be evil too." You are assuming every single person who have or is currently working for NSA must be evil. Just because someone accepts that having a job is important than public good at some point does not make them less untrustworthy. You can have someone who donates to good causes all the time, does a lot of community work and yet when he quits his job because he is sick of NSA or because he just want a better job and now he can't because he was with NSA. This assumption is wrong; you are equating government to its workers. If so, should anit-war people look at our American soldiers evil too? Because people are following orders? If I work for a Mafia boss, you know, take care of his house so that he can be comfortable and safe at home, am I supporting to the cause? If a German citizen was supplying raw materials to Nazi is that citizen a Nazi and evil when he was just making a living for his family while he absolutely hate Hitler and Nazi?
    - sedev 13y ago
      But it's also wrong to say that an institution and its members are completely separate. They aren't and can't be. There is no institution without members, and there are no members without an institution to be a member of. You've got to deal with them as entangled, and treat them as such. There are varying degrees of responsibility for acts that we attribute to an institution, because generally we're talking about institutions with internal hierarchies. So for example General Keith Alexander is much more culpable than a random sysadmin. But because of the responsibility-diffusing nature of institutions, no, you can't completely let members off the hook without also letting the institution off the hook. By the way, about your Mafia/Nazi examples: a zealous prosecutor could easily charge the housekeeper, and the police and FBI would certainly lean on them a bit whilst investigating the boss. That's totally commonplace. Meantime, in the case of the literal Nazis, yes, there were in fact consequences for such people (leaving aside that you've constructed that scenario very poorly).
- sedev 13y ago
  That is how social reproach works! I feel like you're strongly missing the point. The institution of The National Security Agency is made up of people. The institution and its members are embedded in a social context. Institutions, among other things, are responsibility-diffusing machines. You can't reproach the institution without also reproaching its members, because otherwise the members don't feel any responsibility for whatever you disapprove of about the institution and carry on with business as usual. You can't make the disapproval stick without affecting the individual members. Or, to flip it around a little, when you scold the institution and let members off the hook because they're just following orders and trying to pay the rent, you are saying "those orders were okay to follow." I agree that it's not fully accurate to say "The NSA is untrustworthy, Bob worked for the NSA, therefore Bob is untrustworthy" - but because of how institutions work, if you want the institution to pay attention, then yes, there must be impact on its members. There is no way around this.
  - yeukhon 13y ago
    Maybe I was maybe others were. We are not saying NSA employees should not feel bad for what they did, for following orders. I am arguing that when someone is titled NSA employee, the first instinct is "I don't like this guy and I don't him near me" when all he wanted to do was to say Hi my name is Bob and I had this interesting problem I want to solve with you guys." And to those who left NSA either because they hate it or because they realize it was wrong. So if the solution is to be snowden, declare publicly that he does not endorse NSA, it is the equivalent to saying "you must face a public trial, you must tell the world you do not and will not endorse nsa anymore upon exit." Everyone ought to be a hero. I do understand the institutional constraint. If all NSA employees rage quit today, will we just forgive them? But that is not going to happen, for various reasons.
    - sedev 13y ago
      We might be talking past each other. I'm saying - yes, the burden should be on current and former NSA employees to explain why they're trustworthy. People can set their standard of "acceptable explanation" however they like - however, I feel strongly that someone who worked for a deeply compromised institution, should bear the burden of explaining. When Bob just wants to introduce himself and people say "You worked for the NSA? Go away, spy" -- that is a sign that effective social punishment of the NSA - the institution - is taking place. I see you worrying about the scenario where no amount of explanation Bob can give is enough to get him in the door. That's fine. But I'm arguing that Bob should have to do some explaining, and I'm arguing that if you do want the NSA - the institution - to suffer effective consequences, then you must accept that individual members will also face some gnarly consequence, because that's how institutions in a social context work. You cannot meaningfully punish the institution without also punishing its members. It does raise moral issues, yes - but if you have already decided, "we must punish the institution," then you fatally compromise that goal by adding a lily-livered "but let's not make things too hard for the members."
- exarch 13y ago
  >Unprofessional because we put the government's fault onto an employee's fault. Let's take a secretary. I suggest reading and considering Hannah Arendt's famous work, "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" for a different perspective on this. Our typical idea of a perpetrator of evil is this malicious, moustache-twirling, cackling super-villain. The reality of how very evil acts are perpetrated is typically much different, though. It has more in common with what we see with the Milgram experiment: lots of small cogs doing highly compartmentalized, abstract work that simply adds up to something ghastly. Paper-pushers who simply "do their jobs" without bothering to examine or take responsibility for the ethical implications of their work output, preferring instead to shift that ethical responsibility to the superiors/authorities who handed down their orders.
  - yeukhon 13y ago
    I probably will mark that as one of my to-read list. I enjoy works on ethics. But the issue people keep on missing, or not in sync with me, is practically, how do we minimize discrimination, how do we handle future employments? All I am hearing is "they are still morally responsible." If for the sake of discussion, assume yes they are morally responsible, my actual questions are still unresolved. And we just keep saying "yeah it sucks to be them, but what can we do?" That's the exact attitude we always have and won't eager to fix on;y because we dislike what the NSA has done.

yeukhon 13y ago

Unprofessional because we put the government's fault onto an employee's fault. Let's take a secretary. There is no technical skill she did. She was just a secretary under some general at NSA. Sure she could be a spy. So now every NSA employee is marked as "untrustworthy". If I may allowed to be radical in my own response, isn't this what the red scared is all about. You are a friend to X who is a known communist and now I cannot trust you. You were a secretary for this communist spy, I cannot trust you even though you didn't know. You just deal his daily accounting. There are simply people who work for NSA for reason like employment. > working for the NSA is not patriotic. Yes, I will agree that jeopardizing democracy and liberty is not patriotic. But I am saying from the guy who started out at age 20 and thought it was everything he could do for the country, and now he realized he was wrong. Now do you trust him? The ultimate issue is again, we are equating NSA is untrustworthy == employees are untrustworthy people.

summerdown2 13y ago
I'm not sure this is equivalent to the red scare. If you have a friend who is a known communist (assuming for the sake of argument that communism is bad here), then it might be you have tolerated that friend for the sake of other good qualities. However, if you work in a place, there is the Buddhist question of "right livelihood." I'm sorry that I don't know any better way to put it. Given that the NSA has been doing some things that seem objectionable, shouldn't everyone who contributes to that effort begin examining their conscience? And yes, a secretary does contribute to that effort. Now it might be that the latest report will make some well-needed changes. And heaven knows, countries need intelligence to combat things like terrorism. But still. If you were part of the NSA, two things would today be true: a) You knew what went on, and agreed with it. Well, maybe your ethics are not what we would all like. or b) You didn't know what went on, and aren't impressed now you do. I suggest it's now time for you to consider whether this is an enterprise you should contribute time and effort towards. And if that comes at odds to feeding your family, well, maybe you can't just resign. But you certainly can look for more ethical work, or take part in internal conversations about how the organisation can become more ethical.
- yeukhon 13y ago
  > And if that comes at odds to feeding your family, well, maybe you can't just resign. But you certainly can look for more ethical work, or take part in internal conversations about how the organisation can become more ethical. And we continue to be scared because of their background, previous involvement. > a) You knew what went on, and agreed with it. Well, maybe your ethics are not what we would all like. Not everyone is a saint and some are utilitarian and some are not. People also change they way they perceive things.
bandushrew 13y ago
that is because the work that makes the NSA untrustworthy is done by its employees. why on earth should they get a free pass for that? have you seen the scope of the damage they have done?
- yeukhon 13y ago
  And whose idea is it in the first place? A few people. The rest is what, following orders.
  - ucee_054 13y ago
    You lose. "Following orders" is not a defense. Established at Nuremberg trial of Nazis.
  - girvo 13y ago
    Following orders is the problem.
  - dlitz 13y ago
    I don't trust people who blindly follow orders.
cheald 13y ago
"The NSA" is a collection of people acting in a certain manner. It cannot be untrustworthy unless its members - its employees - are behaving in an untrustworthy manner. Associating with an entity that is known to be engaged in hostile behavior towards you should carry a reputational stain, even if it wasn't you that "pulled the trigger". That secretary is facilitating the erosion of our personal privacy and liberty by logistically supporting the people who are doing the actual dirty work, and now, she knows it. At this point, her choice is "Continue supporting people doing bad things and carry the stain that comes with it" or "Stop associating with people who are doing bad things". Persons who engage or support the kind of behavior that the NSA is engaged in are untrustworthy and should be treated as such. You don't have to be the actual guy tapping data lines to be complicit. Shoving it off of "the employees" and onto "the NSA" is a copout.
- yeukhon 13y ago
  > Persons who engage or support the kind of behavior that the NSA is engaged in are untrustworthy and should be treated as such. You don't have to be the actual guy tapping data lines to be complicit. Shoving it off of "the employees" and onto "the NSA" is a copout. No, that is not. You are making the same mistake that "because I work for someone evil it means I must be evil too." You are assuming every single person who have or is currently working for NSA must be evil. Just because someone accepts that having a job is important than public good at some point does not make them less untrustworthy. You can have someone who donates to good causes all the time, does a lot of community work and yet when he quits his job because he is sick of NSA or because he just want a better job and now he can't because he was with NSA. This assumption is wrong; you are equating government to its workers. If so, should anit-war people look at our American soldiers evil too? Because people are following orders? If I work for a Mafia boss, you know, take care of his house so that he can be comfortable and safe at home, am I supporting to the cause? If a German citizen was supplying raw materials to Nazi is that citizen a Nazi and evil when he was just making a living for his family while he absolutely hate Hitler and Nazi?
  - sedev 13y ago
    But it's also wrong to say that an institution and its members are completely separate. They aren't and can't be. There is no institution without members, and there are no members without an institution to be a member of. You've got to deal with them as entangled, and treat them as such. There are varying degrees of responsibility for acts that we attribute to an institution, because generally we're talking about institutions with internal hierarchies. So for example General Keith Alexander is much more culpable than a random sysadmin. But because of the responsibility-diffusing nature of institutions, no, you can't completely let members off the hook without also letting the institution off the hook. By the way, about your Mafia/Nazi examples: a zealous prosecutor could easily charge the housekeeper, and the police and FBI would certainly lean on them a bit whilst investigating the boss. That's totally commonplace. Meantime, in the case of the literal Nazis, yes, there were in fact consequences for such people (leaving aside that you've constructed that scenario very poorly).
sedev 13y ago
That is how social reproach works! I feel like you're strongly missing the point. The institution of The National Security Agency is made up of people. The institution and its members are embedded in a social context. Institutions, among other things, are responsibility-diffusing machines. You can't reproach the institution without also reproaching its members, because otherwise the members don't feel any responsibility for whatever you disapprove of about the institution and carry on with business as usual. You can't make the disapproval stick without affecting the individual members. Or, to flip it around a little, when you scold the institution and let members off the hook because they're just following orders and trying to pay the rent, you are saying "those orders were okay to follow." I agree that it's not fully accurate to say "The NSA is untrustworthy, Bob worked for the NSA, therefore Bob is untrustworthy" - but because of how institutions work, if you want the institution to pay attention, then yes, there must be impact on its members. There is no way around this.
- yeukhon 13y ago
  Maybe I was maybe others were. We are not saying NSA employees should not feel bad for what they did, for following orders. I am arguing that when someone is titled NSA employee, the first instinct is "I don't like this guy and I don't him near me" when all he wanted to do was to say Hi my name is Bob and I had this interesting problem I want to solve with you guys." And to those who left NSA either because they hate it or because they realize it was wrong. So if the solution is to be snowden, declare publicly that he does not endorse NSA, it is the equivalent to saying "you must face a public trial, you must tell the world you do not and will not endorse nsa anymore upon exit." Everyone ought to be a hero. I do understand the institutional constraint. If all NSA employees rage quit today, will we just forgive them? But that is not going to happen, for various reasons.
  - sedev 13y ago
    We might be talking past each other. I'm saying - yes, the burden should be on current and former NSA employees to explain why they're trustworthy. People can set their standard of "acceptable explanation" however they like - however, I feel strongly that someone who worked for a deeply compromised institution, should bear the burden of explaining. When Bob just wants to introduce himself and people say "You worked for the NSA? Go away, spy" -- that is a sign that effective social punishment of the NSA - the institution - is taking place. I see you worrying about the scenario where no amount of explanation Bob can give is enough to get him in the door. That's fine. But I'm arguing that Bob should have to do some explaining, and I'm arguing that if you do want the NSA - the institution - to suffer effective consequences, then you must accept that individual members will also face some gnarly consequence, because that's how institutions in a social context work. You cannot meaningfully punish the institution without also punishing its members. It does raise moral issues, yes - but if you have already decided, "we must punish the institution," then you fatally compromise that goal by adding a lily-livered "but let's not make things too hard for the members."
exarch 13y ago
>Unprofessional because we put the government's fault onto an employee's fault. Let's take a secretary. I suggest reading and considering Hannah Arendt's famous work, "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" for a different perspective on this. Our typical idea of a perpetrator of evil is this malicious, moustache-twirling, cackling super-villain. The reality of how very evil acts are perpetrated is typically much different, though. It has more in common with what we see with the Milgram experiment: lots of small cogs doing highly compartmentalized, abstract work that simply adds up to something ghastly. Paper-pushers who simply "do their jobs" without bothering to examine or take responsibility for the ethical implications of their work output, preferring instead to shift that ethical responsibility to the superiors/authorities who handed down their orders.
- yeukhon 13y ago
  I probably will mark that as one of my to-read list. I enjoy works on ethics. But the issue people keep on missing, or not in sync with me, is practically, how do we minimize discrimination, how do we handle future employments? All I am hearing is "they are still morally responsible." If for the sake of discussion, assume yes they are morally responsible, my actual questions are still unresolved. And we just keep saying "yeah it sucks to be them, but what can we do?" That's the exact attitude we always have and won't eager to fix on;y because we dislike what the NSA has done.