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> traitor to the hacker culture I don't understand the weird disconnect between HN and the intelligence community. It's almost the perfect job for a 'hacker' t
by grkvlt 11y ago
> traitor to the hacker culture
I don't understand the weird disconnect between HN and the intelligence community. It's almost the perfect job for a 'hacker' type: work with cutting edge technology and thousands of other incredibly intelligent people to try and out-think adversaries to gain access to their resources. You get to build defensive and offensive software to attack computer systems, and actually use it, something that would get you arrested if you did it personally. This was why I loved penetration testing, and an obvious extension of financial security would be working in national security. Yet somehow, these guys are 'evil' now, notwithstanding the IRA and otehrs in the UK, the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks, and so on - those were all perpetrated by _actual_ evil people, who deserved to be investigated and followed and found. And, looking at the leaked documents, there is a huge amount of auditing and checking - don't do this, because it's illegal, don't search for that because it's against the law - not the wild west free-for-all that people seem to imagine.
Anyway, if I could get a clearance, I'm sure I'd love working for GCHQ or SIS in the infosec arena, as would most hackers. The cognitive diasonance is strong in many people!
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoI love working as a NK scientist. We get to work with some of the smartest people pushing the bounds of science to help good people. Any harm is only done to bad people who deserve it (and we are sure because we are the good guys and they are the bad guys). Who would be against it? (Note: not actually a NK scientist doing human experimentation.)
- RRRA 11y agoThis one sided view of their marketing pitch is exactly what's wrong with them and, to some extent HN in general, in it's Californian money & tech bubble... Seen from the outside, this kind of tech-trip-before-thinking-globally, or solutionism, is why people are upset, and rightly so. Snowden has shown, as many others have before and after, that they spy for economic and political gain against ally, they don't even respect local American's laws and could hardly be described as democratic or even accountable. I'm not saying there isn't a need for law enforcement or surveillance, but it has to be accountable, targeted and justified. Not simply a secret digital war machine disguised under the "omg, everything is now terrorism! Save the children! --fox" and cool marketing to entrap the young mind and throw them away once their time has passed... I wish I would want to work there, IF and only IF, they would fix all those issues. In the mean time, yes, they are an enemy of democracy, and a very hypocritical one at that. The public servants that work there deserve to be put to work for the greater good.
- caskance 11y agoCriticising the NSA for spying on the wrong targets makes as little sense as criticising soldiers because your country is at war with the wrong enemy.
- JupiterMoon 11y agoThe army doesn't normally go off and attack another country in secret without even telling their own government.
- caskance 11y agoheh.
- gorgak 11y agoyou dont understand because you work in their PR dept. i wont go into the evidence of intelligence agencies involvement in false flag terrorist incidents. you can look it up for yourself. try 'gladio'
- grkvlt 11y agoI know what Gladio was, the NATO stay-behind operation in Italy. However the argument that something happened once therefore it is happening all the time is pretty flawed. Nobody would ever suggest that the existence of Gladio means that flase-flag operations are standard practice or the default mdoe of operation for the IC.
- emergentcypher 11y agoBut without any sort of oversight, accountability, or really any of the sort of mechanisms that should be in place for this to be considered an agency of a functional democracy, we have to assume that if they have the ability to do it with a very low chance of getting caught, and they've already done it in the past, there's a fairly good chance they're doing it again. We won't assume they are 100% still doing it, but there is a significant non-trivial probability that they are, and in what we like to call a democracy, this is very very wrong.
- gorgak 11y agoyou dont know what gladio was. it wasnt confined to italy. and. isnt.
- golergka 11y ago> you work in their PR dept Do you make this assumption about everyone who disagrees with you?
- gorgak 11y agoits hardly an assumption, the thing was an advert mate.
- 11y ago
- witty_username 11y agoHacker has two meanings: person who breaks into computer systems (legally or illegally) person who codes or generally experiments/tinkers with computers Now the 2nd meaning is quite common on HN, though only OP could tell you the exact meaning.
- ryandrake 11y agoThe NSA peed in their own pool. At one point in my life I would have found it really cool to do security work for the NSA or a defense contractor, but as their despicable behavior comes into light more and more, I can no longer say I'd have been proud to have worked there. Its gotten to the point where if I saw "worked for the NSA" on someone's resume as a recent employer, I'd have serious questions about their ethical compass and why they chose to work for such a notorious organization. There are plenty of other more reputable opportunities to do security research and ops.
- Nadya 11y agoStrange - I'd ask why they left - as I get the opposite impression than what you have. "Worked for the NSA" is past-tense and they may have left after the immoral workings came to light and that didn't jive with their ethical compass.