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Comment by zenocon | Hacker News Reader

How can one not have a whole giant mountain of cynicism with all we've become aware of in the last few years? We could just as easily turn the tables and call you irresponsibly naive.

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While I get where you're coming from with cynicism, any deployment of chemical weapons by a belligerent is almost certainly a war crime under several international accords, most notably the Geneva Protocol[0]. As someone upthread pointed out, their production is also the subject of several more. All the NSA/CIA disclosures we've seen thus far are not, themselves, war crimes. The international community, with some exceptions, came to the consensus that chemical weapons are not a good thing about a century ago, while offensive hacking is a much more recent development (obviously) and basically the wild west right now. Comparing chemical weapons to offensive hacking simply because they're both big government naughties is disingenuous, to say the least.

My bar of cynicism is a little higher when you're talking about the United States discretely stockpiling mustard gas versus taking down a smartphone, you know? (Maybe I, too, am irresponsibly naive.)

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Protocol

Ah, yes, war crimes. The US definitely fears those, and would absolutely never shoot on POWs, rape civilians, commit mass murder, drop chemical weapons on fighters and civilians indiscriminately, use multiple atomic bombs on civilians, torture, etc. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes)

They are so terribly afraid of committing war crimes they do not recognize the International Crime Court and are reading to invade any country trying an american soldier.

Surely the US would never do that!

All I said was my cynicism bar is a little higher for war crimes as opposed to hacking a phone, or capturing email. That's it. Not trying to argue or state any position or claim beyond that.

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