6 ms·

The problem with most of these examples is that all of these "NSA contractors" are just giant multi-billion dollar revenue companies. I'm sure MSFT is an NSA co

by rtpg 11y ago

The problem with most of these examples is that all of these "NSA contractors" are just giant multi-billion dollar revenue companies. I'm sure MSFT is an NSA contractor on one level, but most people would find it weird to classify Microsoft as "A NSA contractor". This is just a consequence of powerful people happening to have a lot of money to invest and thus becoming board members for companies in domains in which they have expertise (policy).

higherpurpose 11y ago
So what you're saying is that they just "happen to support the NSA" while getting donations from those companies for other reasons? I think America has gone too far with its "political correctness". This is why these days media people can't even say that politicians are lying anymore. They have to say words such as "misinterpreting the truth" or "made an error", and why people like Clapper or other law enforcement agents get away with committing "errors", as opposed to calling them what they really are - crimes.
iwwr 11y ago
Government contracting is a very large and lucrative business. The surveillance programs are large data pipelines that require datacenters, computing, storage and state-of-the-art analysis. Then, given the secret nature of the program, the bidding process is less strict as a matter of cost and hence more profitable.
- logicallee 11y ago
  if we were serious about the social benefit to having a failsafe black box that we can sometimes under extraordinary conditions retrieve intelligence from, then companies should be required to operate these programs (send data to that black box) without benefit, and over their protests, by law. they shouldn't be paid for it. it should be a burden. It should be like taxes - companies should hate the burden, and try to avoid it, but in the end do what it takes because society has said that it's necessary. companies should certainly not receive transfer payments from the public in exchange for spying on them. I mean think about it, this means you are LITERALLY paying taxes, to be transferred over to a company and returned to shareholders of a company, where that company has received the transfer... so that it can operate a special level of secrecy... in order not to tell you... that they are spying on you. Which you paid for. I mean I get that you're covering the cost of the equipment, but this is about EXTRA payment. I mean that is a level of absurdity that is beyond the pale. It is like handing a waitress a tip and saying, "this is for not telling me that you were spying on me." I mean, regardless of whether this creates a puzzled or a guilty look on her face, it is a pretty absurd transfer payment!! "Wait, what...you're paying me extra...NOT to tell you...that I'm spying on you?" - "Yep!! In my book, that's how you earn the big profit." Pretty absurd. You don't give companies profit for these programs. It's some burden they do out of civil responsibility and legal obligation, if at all. It's also why a for-profit police force is a pretty bad idea. Some things are best left to a minimal government mandate, and not these artificial market forces.
  - LLWM 11y ago
    By the same reasoning, criminals literally pay the police to lock them up or shoot at them. Isn't that crazy????? No, that's how taxes work. You don't get to pick and choose which government functions to pay for.
    - tehwebguy 11y ago
      These examples are missing the point. A clearer example than the server / tip is jury duty. It's not profitable for almost anyone with a job but for the most part we are forced to participate.
      - logicallee 11y ago
        Yes, that's a good analogy. Most adults can see why being tried by a jury of your peers is an amazing difference between a modern democracy and fascism, so we "force" each other (ourselves) to participate, even though it isn't profitable, and we create a great public good as a result (a fairer system of laws, even if it isn't perfect. it's hard to want an alternative to a jury of your peers if you are being tried for some crime by the state.) So in the analogy, the companies that are spying for the NSA are like the people participating in jury duty - and (if we agree that there is a social good toward having the black box of intelligence available under extraordinary circumstances) should be "forced" to (or compensated extremely minimally for it), like jury duty. Being paid a windfall profit to do so would be as though people went out of their way to participate in jury duty, for personal profit. Obviously that would be a horrendous set of incentives for society. (i.e. creating legal cases just so people can participate in jury duty.) having it be a chore and "forced" on people (by the social contract) and to a minimal extent, is much better. (this is just assuming there is some social good to having this stuff be available at all, under extraordinary circumstances.)
    - logicallee 11y ago
      It would be crazy, if criminals obeyed all the other laws and paid their taxes responsibly, as well as voted and participated in representative democracy. Which is why they don't. Plus, to complete the analogy with our subject (which I mention explicitly) the police would have to be for-profit, which would be a terrible idea. But to answer your question, yes, it would absurd for criminals to vote in for-profit police that they choose to finance, and have shoot at them for profit. The difference is that the public aren't criminals, and are protected by minimum sane levels of black-box surveillance for their protection, which they pay for via taxes. It's not supposed to be some profit-making activity. it's not "against" the public. the public aren't criminals.
glesica 11y ago
> This is just a consequence of powerful people happening to have a lot of money to invest... Hehe, as though these things just happen to go hand-in-hand.
us0r 11y ago
SAIC, CSC, CACI, Booz, Leidos? These are multi-billion dollar government welfare recipients.
- ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
  I'd add Palantir.
- MadManE 11y ago
  Is corporate welfare somehow worse than individual welfare? I gather from the tone of your comment that you think it is, but this being the internet, tone is easy to confuse.
  - AngrySkillzz 11y ago
    Individual welfare at least supports the more vulnerable and less well-off elements of our society. Large defense contractors have revenues in the billions of dollars, high level managers are likely millionaires, and they employ an entire army of upper-middle class workers. The defense sector is mostly about providing welfare to the already rich and privileged.
    - MadManE 11y ago
      Ok, but let's take it to a different industry. Are corporate farmers more or less deserving of government money than individuals? Also, I'm not convinced that individual welfare accomplishes what you think it does. I don't think that just supporting the "more vulnerable ... elements of our society" is good at all. If we want to improve anything, they need to advance in society instead of merely being supported in it.
      - fineman 11y ago
        The "corporate" or the "farmer" part. One is a corporation, the other is a person working for and/or owning the corporation. Once you realize that corporate farmer isn't some magical combination the question is uninteresting. But, for the record - the farmer is an individual and is just as deserving (however much that is) as anyone else regardless of his profession. But we don't owe him that livelihood and aren't under and obligation to support his enterprises in that area. As to "advance in society", it's pretty easy for (most of) us to take a two-day course in some flavor of the week and have a piece of paper that helps to do so. For someone working a subsistence job it's not so trivial. Many people may waste it but it only has to help create a few productive taxpayers to be a net win to all of us.
CWuestefeld 11y ago
I agree completely. It seems that the most powerful tool most people have in their debate toolbox is "you have a financial interest in X, so your opinion on X must be invalid". But this is a logical fallacy. It's incorrect dismiss a study on the Widget industry just because it was performed by scientists from Widgets-R-Us. Who else is going to do the study? Who has more understanding of widgets than those very scientists? And in particular, why should we believe that the study done by Widgets-R-Evil is somehow more pure and worthy of consideration?
- jeffmcjunkin 11y ago
  Phrased more broadly - everyone has biases in their opinions. Make sure you know what their bias is and take it into account when listening to them. Widgets-R-Us has a strong financial incentive to make their Widgets study as advantageous to them as possible. Widgets-R-Evil has a strong incentive to blast Widgets-R-Us's study as invalid and make their own study as negative as possible, since their reason for existence (assumedly) is convincing people that Widgets are evil. The truth is A) usually without a direct incentive of its own and B) usually somewhere in the middle.
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  No, you are wrong. We don't live in a perfect boolean world, and "you have a financial interest on X" is a completely valid reason to dismiss everything you have to say about X. And what's even more valid is the rationale implied at this article, that since only people with financial interest on X are defending it, it follows that X is bad and you should be against it.

by rtpg 11y ago

higherpurpose 11y ago

So what you're saying is that they just "happen to support the NSA" while getting donations from those companies for other reasons? I think America has gone too far with its "political correctness". This is why these days media people can't even say that politicians are lying anymore. They have to say words such as "misinterpreting the truth" or "made an error", and why people like Clapper or other law enforcement agents get away with committing "errors", as opposed to calling them what they really are - crimes.

iwwr 11y ago

Government contracting is a very large and lucrative business. The surveillance programs are large data pipelines that require datacenters, computing, storage and state-of-the-art analysis. Then, given the secret nature of the program, the bidding process is less strict as a matter of cost and hence more profitable.

logicallee 11y ago
if we were serious about the social benefit to having a failsafe black box that we can sometimes under extraordinary conditions retrieve intelligence from, then companies should be required to operate these programs (send data to that black box) without benefit, and over their protests, by law. they shouldn't be paid for it. it should be a burden. It should be like taxes - companies should hate the burden, and try to avoid it, but in the end do what it takes because society has said that it's necessary. companies should certainly not receive transfer payments from the public in exchange for spying on them. I mean think about it, this means you are LITERALLY paying taxes, to be transferred over to a company and returned to shareholders of a company, where that company has received the transfer... so that it can operate a special level of secrecy... in order not to tell you... that they are spying on you. Which you paid for. I mean I get that you're covering the cost of the equipment, but this is about EXTRA payment. I mean that is a level of absurdity that is beyond the pale. It is like handing a waitress a tip and saying, "this is for not telling me that you were spying on me." I mean, regardless of whether this creates a puzzled or a guilty look on her face, it is a pretty absurd transfer payment!! "Wait, what...you're paying me extra...NOT to tell you...that I'm spying on you?" - "Yep!! In my book, that's how you earn the big profit." Pretty absurd. You don't give companies profit for these programs. It's some burden they do out of civil responsibility and legal obligation, if at all. It's also why a for-profit police force is a pretty bad idea. Some things are best left to a minimal government mandate, and not these artificial market forces.
- LLWM 11y ago
  By the same reasoning, criminals literally pay the police to lock them up or shoot at them. Isn't that crazy????? No, that's how taxes work. You don't get to pick and choose which government functions to pay for.
  - tehwebguy 11y ago
    These examples are missing the point. A clearer example than the server / tip is jury duty. It's not profitable for almost anyone with a job but for the most part we are forced to participate.
    - logicallee 11y ago
      Yes, that's a good analogy. Most adults can see why being tried by a jury of your peers is an amazing difference between a modern democracy and fascism, so we "force" each other (ourselves) to participate, even though it isn't profitable, and we create a great public good as a result (a fairer system of laws, even if it isn't perfect. it's hard to want an alternative to a jury of your peers if you are being tried for some crime by the state.) So in the analogy, the companies that are spying for the NSA are like the people participating in jury duty - and (if we agree that there is a social good toward having the black box of intelligence available under extraordinary circumstances) should be "forced" to (or compensated extremely minimally for it), like jury duty. Being paid a windfall profit to do so would be as though people went out of their way to participate in jury duty, for personal profit. Obviously that would be a horrendous set of incentives for society. (i.e. creating legal cases just so people can participate in jury duty.) having it be a chore and "forced" on people (by the social contract) and to a minimal extent, is much better. (this is just assuming there is some social good to having this stuff be available at all, under extraordinary circumstances.)
  - logicallee 11y ago
    It would be crazy, if criminals obeyed all the other laws and paid their taxes responsibly, as well as voted and participated in representative democracy. Which is why they don't. Plus, to complete the analogy with our subject (which I mention explicitly) the police would have to be for-profit, which would be a terrible idea. But to answer your question, yes, it would absurd for criminals to vote in for-profit police that they choose to finance, and have shoot at them for profit. The difference is that the public aren't criminals, and are protected by minimum sane levels of black-box surveillance for their protection, which they pay for via taxes. It's not supposed to be some profit-making activity. it's not "against" the public. the public aren't criminals.

glesica 11y ago

> This is just a consequence of powerful people happening to have a lot of money to invest... Hehe, as though these things just happen to go hand-in-hand.

us0r 11y ago

SAIC, CSC, CACI, Booz, Leidos? These are multi-billion dollar government welfare recipients.

ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
I'd add Palantir.
MadManE 11y ago
Is corporate welfare somehow worse than individual welfare? I gather from the tone of your comment that you think it is, but this being the internet, tone is easy to confuse.
- AngrySkillzz 11y ago
  Individual welfare at least supports the more vulnerable and less well-off elements of our society. Large defense contractors have revenues in the billions of dollars, high level managers are likely millionaires, and they employ an entire army of upper-middle class workers. The defense sector is mostly about providing welfare to the already rich and privileged.
  - MadManE 11y ago
    Ok, but let's take it to a different industry. Are corporate farmers more or less deserving of government money than individuals? Also, I'm not convinced that individual welfare accomplishes what you think it does. I don't think that just supporting the "more vulnerable ... elements of our society" is good at all. If we want to improve anything, they need to advance in society instead of merely being supported in it.
    - fineman 11y ago
      The "corporate" or the "farmer" part. One is a corporation, the other is a person working for and/or owning the corporation. Once you realize that corporate farmer isn't some magical combination the question is uninteresting. But, for the record - the farmer is an individual and is just as deserving (however much that is) as anyone else regardless of his profession. But we don't owe him that livelihood and aren't under and obligation to support his enterprises in that area. As to "advance in society", it's pretty easy for (most of) us to take a two-day course in some flavor of the week and have a piece of paper that helps to do so. For someone working a subsistence job it's not so trivial. Many people may waste it but it only has to help create a few productive taxpayers to be a net win to all of us.

CWuestefeld 11y ago

I agree completely. It seems that the most powerful tool most people have in their debate toolbox is "you have a financial interest in X, so your opinion on X must be invalid". But this is a logical fallacy. It's incorrect dismiss a study on the Widget industry just because it was performed by scientists from Widgets-R-Us. Who else is going to do the study? Who has more understanding of widgets than those very scientists? And in particular, why should we believe that the study done by Widgets-R-Evil is somehow more pure and worthy of consideration?

jeffmcjunkin 11y ago
Phrased more broadly - everyone has biases in their opinions. Make sure you know what their bias is and take it into account when listening to them. Widgets-R-Us has a strong financial incentive to make their Widgets study as advantageous to them as possible. Widgets-R-Evil has a strong incentive to blast Widgets-R-Us's study as invalid and make their own study as negative as possible, since their reason for existence (assumedly) is convincing people that Widgets are evil. The truth is A) usually without a direct incentive of its own and B) usually somewhere in the middle.
marcosdumay 11y ago
No, you are wrong. We don't live in a perfect boolean world, and "you have a financial interest on X" is a completely valid reason to dismiss everything you have to say about X. And what's even more valid is the rationale implied at this article, that since only people with financial interest on X are defending it, it follows that X is bad and you should be against it.