4 ms·

i'm stunned by the fact that people here seem to think that working for a national security agency seems to be the worst thing to do moraly. i remember a time w

by bsaul 12y ago

i'm stunned by the fact that people here seem to think that working for a national security agency seems to be the worst thing to do moraly. i remember a time when being a spy was probably the coolest thing ever. one could argue that "spying" on people for the sake of saving lives is a much more noble cause than doing it purely for commercial purposes. ps : i am not naive,and i am aware of the recent privacy issues raised by the snowden case. And i am a lover of private liberties. i'm just stunned to see such a large conscensus.

atom-morgan 12y ago
> one could argue that "spying" on people for the sake of saving lives is a much more noble cause than doing it purely for commercial purposes. I guess that's why people don't buy it. The surveillance state is not for 'saving lives'.
- iamwithnail 12y ago
  Exactly. Although you can never (for fairly obvious reasons) see a full cost-benefit analysis of these things, the sheer volume of cash, resources and legislative power being shovelled towards the Surveillance-Industrial Complex (it's actually a thing) is astonishing, and it's not about dealing with those edge cases; it's mainly about the expansion of 'oh, that's useful, maybe we should let another agency lower down the intelligence chain have it just in case', and on it goes. It's about control, not saving lives, and hasn't been for a long time.
  - bsaul 12y ago
    Come on... Has anyone in the US been arrested for political views after being wired or spied on the internet ?? Ever ? I'm sorry to be blunt, but all the americans that think they're living under a surveillance state should truly get their ass in any non-western country in the world before claiming such BS. People here are so spoiled it makes me sick sometimes.
    - tehwebguy 12y ago
      Just because some countries have it more wrong doesn't mean criticisms of US policy are invalid, it's really a silly argument.
      - bsaul 12y ago
        Yes it absolutely does. Qualifying the US as a "surveillance state" ( and not as something-that-could-one-day-become-as-such-if-people-don't-pay-attention) , means you think you have no freedom of speech ( at least on the internet). This is outrageous, not only compared to countries were you can actually be arrested for a tweet, but also because it means you actually have no clue as to what kind of country you live in. As a young french adult, i tried to protest once against a government law i found revolting, by sitting peacefuly and quietly in front of the Elysee ( the white house equivalent) with a sign. I immediatly got arrested, my ID card was taken for a check, and i was told to move on. I said i found it surprising they did that, and the french policemen told me "well, you've seen people doing that on TV but this isn't the US here". And yet, i am very able to make the difference between france and china, where people would face actual prison for that. Because i have a god damn sense of proportion. There isn't an absolutely "free" country. A nation means laws and regulations, it is a compromise. You compromise a little bit on your personnal freedom for the sake of general interest. It's a complex matter, not a binary switch. So all qualification of a country has to be done in comparison with other countries, facing the same kind of threat, and see how they deal with the situation. If you find a western country that doesn't "spy" the net, just tell me. They do it for child porn, drug traffic, and terrorisms. And to me that's absolutely great, as long as it remains for those purposes.
        iamwithnail 12y ago
        Freedom of speech and surveillance are very different things. The crucial part of surveillance is that you're being monitored on what you say, fairly routinely. Whether or not the authorities take exception to what you say/who you speak to in private communications is another matter, which qualifies only the nature of the surveillance society, not whether it exists.
    - 12y ago
bellerocky 12y ago
> one could argue that "spying" on people for the sake of saving lives And what lives do you think we are saving? When in the last 20 years has anything we've done saved any lives? You shouldn't be stunned. People might tolerate our military-security industrial complex because they have resigned themselves to be powerless to do anything about it, but that doesn't mean they want to join it. I would never work for Palantir, just like I would never work for the NSA, or Raytheon, or any of these horrible, destructive organizations. I wouldn't fit in anyway, the people that work at these places come from a different political and ideological spectrum than I do.
atmosx 12y ago
Being a spy was "the coolest thing ever" in TV series and Bond movies where the bad/good guys are easily spotted (they even make grimaces), the spy gets all the flashy cars, pretty girls and never dies... Try talking to a real spy, see how "cool" their life's are, watching their back constantly, being sent to slaughter at any time, etc. doesn't look like a good bargain to me.
- bsaul 12y ago
  Just like working in a startup today barely looks like anything that's displayed on TV or movies. I was talking about the fantasmatic images surrounding the field.
freehunter 12y ago
Working for a national security agency does not make you a spy. Yes, Archer is cool, James Bond is cool, Austin Powers is cool, but a developer isn't out there sipping martinis and shooting people. Being a developer at a spy agency is the same as being a developer anywhere else, except that your projects enable others to kill people and ruin lives. I can see why some people don't want to do that when given the choice.
snowwrestler 12y ago
I'm guessing that you are over 30. People who are young professionals now do not remember the Cold War at all, and have grown up considering the U.S. to be essentially invulnerable on the international stage. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 were the worst thing they've experienced. But while those were terrible, they were clearly not an existential threat to the entire country, the way that the Soviet Union was for 50 years, or Germany or Japan before that. Thus, many young people see international espionage primarily as a means of corrupting lesser states for our own benefit--an abuse of our considerable power.
- DanBC 12y ago
  How much of that existential threat was really real though? Apart from the Cuban missile crisis was there ever any real threat to the US from Russia? This is a genuine question, I really don't know the answer. I do know that Americans spent a lot of time with "Duck and Cover" exercises. the UK equivalent was "Protect and Survive" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_and_Survive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_and_Survive
  - snowwrestler 12y ago
    I think there are really two questions here. 1) How much of an existential threat really existed? This question can be answered by looking through the vast archives of Soviet-era information which has now been made publicly available. I'm not an expert, but I'd say it's a mixed answer--the capability for total destruction really did exist, and there were some close calls [1]. But the USSR was a lot less interested in killing everyone than folks in the U.S. thought. Which brings me to the second question: 2) How much did people in the U.S. feel that they faced an existential threat? Note that this is not the same thing as what the threat actually objectively was. I lived through the end of the Cold War (born in the mid-1970s), and I can tell you that most Americans did in fact feel deep unease and fear. More importantly, they felt that the USSR was an equal opponent--a powerful nation that the U.S. did not and could not dominate. Following the end of the Cold War, that feeling went away. Once the USSR dissolved, and Russia went through hard economic times, the self-perception of American citizens was that we were the "last superpower" or "sole superpower"--a nation that could not be seriously threatened by anything on Earth. This self-perception persists today. In fact I think it has become a serious source of angst, as many Americans perceive we are "slipping" because we can't dominate every situation we want to (examples: Syria, Lybia, Ukraine, China). But IMO the reality is that our dominant position has simply been a temporary blip in our long history as one of several equal international powers. [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/05/the-ussr-and-us-came-closer-to-nuclear-war-than-we-thought/276290/ http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/05/the...

by bsaul 12y ago

atom-morgan 12y ago

> one could argue that "spying" on people for the sake of saving lives is a much more noble cause than doing it purely for commercial purposes. I guess that's why people don't buy it. The surveillance state is not for 'saving lives'.

iamwithnail 12y ago
Exactly. Although you can never (for fairly obvious reasons) see a full cost-benefit analysis of these things, the sheer volume of cash, resources and legislative power being shovelled towards the Surveillance-Industrial Complex (it's actually a thing) is astonishing, and it's not about dealing with those edge cases; it's mainly about the expansion of 'oh, that's useful, maybe we should let another agency lower down the intelligence chain have it just in case', and on it goes. It's about control, not saving lives, and hasn't been for a long time.
- bsaul 12y ago
  Come on... Has anyone in the US been arrested for political views after being wired or spied on the internet ?? Ever ? I'm sorry to be blunt, but all the americans that think they're living under a surveillance state should truly get their ass in any non-western country in the world before claiming such BS. People here are so spoiled it makes me sick sometimes.
  - tehwebguy 12y ago
    Just because some countries have it more wrong doesn't mean criticisms of US policy are invalid, it's really a silly argument.
    - bsaul 12y ago
      Yes it absolutely does. Qualifying the US as a "surveillance state" ( and not as something-that-could-one-day-become-as-such-if-people-don't-pay-attention) , means you think you have no freedom of speech ( at least on the internet). This is outrageous, not only compared to countries were you can actually be arrested for a tweet, but also because it means you actually have no clue as to what kind of country you live in. As a young french adult, i tried to protest once against a government law i found revolting, by sitting peacefuly and quietly in front of the Elysee ( the white house equivalent) with a sign. I immediatly got arrested, my ID card was taken for a check, and i was told to move on. I said i found it surprising they did that, and the french policemen told me "well, you've seen people doing that on TV but this isn't the US here". And yet, i am very able to make the difference between france and china, where people would face actual prison for that. Because i have a god damn sense of proportion. There isn't an absolutely "free" country. A nation means laws and regulations, it is a compromise. You compromise a little bit on your personnal freedom for the sake of general interest. It's a complex matter, not a binary switch. So all qualification of a country has to be done in comparison with other countries, facing the same kind of threat, and see how they deal with the situation. If you find a western country that doesn't "spy" the net, just tell me. They do it for child porn, drug traffic, and terrorisms. And to me that's absolutely great, as long as it remains for those purposes.
      - iamwithnail 12y ago
        Freedom of speech and surveillance are very different things. The crucial part of surveillance is that you're being monitored on what you say, fairly routinely. Whether or not the authorities take exception to what you say/who you speak to in private communications is another matter, which qualifies only the nature of the surveillance society, not whether it exists.
  - 12y ago

bellerocky 12y ago

> one could argue that "spying" on people for the sake of saving lives And what lives do you think we are saving? When in the last 20 years has anything we've done saved any lives? You shouldn't be stunned. People might tolerate our military-security industrial complex because they have resigned themselves to be powerless to do anything about it, but that doesn't mean they want to join it. I would never work for Palantir, just like I would never work for the NSA, or Raytheon, or any of these horrible, destructive organizations. I wouldn't fit in anyway, the people that work at these places come from a different political and ideological spectrum than I do.

atmosx 12y ago

Being a spy was "the coolest thing ever" in TV series and Bond movies where the bad/good guys are easily spotted (they even make grimaces), the spy gets all the flashy cars, pretty girls and never dies... Try talking to a real spy, see how "cool" their life's are, watching their back constantly, being sent to slaughter at any time, etc. doesn't look like a good bargain to me.

bsaul 12y ago
Just like working in a startup today barely looks like anything that's displayed on TV or movies. I was talking about the fantasmatic images surrounding the field.

freehunter 12y ago

Working for a national security agency does not make you a spy. Yes, Archer is cool, James Bond is cool, Austin Powers is cool, but a developer isn't out there sipping martinis and shooting people. Being a developer at a spy agency is the same as being a developer anywhere else, except that your projects enable others to kill people and ruin lives. I can see why some people don't want to do that when given the choice.

snowwrestler 12y ago

I'm guessing that you are over 30. People who are young professionals now do not remember the Cold War at all, and have grown up considering the U.S. to be essentially invulnerable on the international stage. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 were the worst thing they've experienced. But while those were terrible, they were clearly not an existential threat to the entire country, the way that the Soviet Union was for 50 years, or Germany or Japan before that. Thus, many young people see international espionage primarily as a means of corrupting lesser states for our own benefit--an abuse of our considerable power.

DanBC 12y ago
How much of that existential threat was really real though? Apart from the Cuban missile crisis was there ever any real threat to the US from Russia? This is a genuine question, I really don't know the answer. I do know that Americans spent a lot of time with "Duck and Cover" exercises. the UK equivalent was "Protect and Survive" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_and_Survive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_and_Survive
- snowwrestler 12y ago
  I think there are really two questions here. 1) How much of an existential threat really existed? This question can be answered by looking through the vast archives of Soviet-era information which has now been made publicly available. I'm not an expert, but I'd say it's a mixed answer--the capability for total destruction really did exist, and there were some close calls [1]. But the USSR was a lot less interested in killing everyone than folks in the U.S. thought. Which brings me to the second question: 2) How much did people in the U.S. feel that they faced an existential threat? Note that this is not the same thing as what the threat actually objectively was. I lived through the end of the Cold War (born in the mid-1970s), and I can tell you that most Americans did in fact feel deep unease and fear. More importantly, they felt that the USSR was an equal opponent--a powerful nation that the U.S. did not and could not dominate. Following the end of the Cold War, that feeling went away. Once the USSR dissolved, and Russia went through hard economic times, the self-perception of American citizens was that we were the "last superpower" or "sole superpower"--a nation that could not be seriously threatened by anything on Earth. This self-perception persists today. In fact I think it has become a serious source of angst, as many Americans perceive we are "slipping" because we can't dominate every situation we want to (examples: Syria, Lybia, Ukraine, China). But IMO the reality is that our dominant position has simply been a temporary blip in our long history as one of several equal international powers. [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/05/the-ussr-and-us-came-closer-to-nuclear-war-than-we-thought/276290/ http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/05/the...