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Comment by elliekelly | Hacker News Reader

Cybersecurity can be critical for the nation and the agency tasked with national cybersecurity can also do atrocious things. The two are not mutually exclusive.

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What is the most atrocious thing that the NSA has done?

That's classified and don't go looking too hard otherwise your smart-car might decide to uncontrollably accelerate into a tree one day

That's not an answer.

Your question is trolling and not worth answering.

How do you figure?

You asked a question, people attempted to reply, ALL of your responses was adversarial:

"Please cite a reputable source that supports this conspiracy theory. "

"That's not an answer."

"What is the definition of atrocious or atrocity? "

"Atrocity - an extremely wicked or cruel act, typically one involving physical violence or injury. "

Lying to Congress is up there, it means we don't know the real answer to your question.

What is the definition of atrocious or atrocity?

Neglected and even actively undermined the right to privacy is an act against the society. Some would consider that being an atrocity - contributing to a dystopia with oveareaching control of unchecked guardians ;)

Atrocity - an extremely wicked or cruel act, typically one involving physical violence or injury.

Undermining the right to privacy is wicked, especially when you consider incorporated methods.

Atracious: extremely wicked, brutal, or cruel - after Merriam-Webster. The key word here is "or".

Mind, that ovearreaching control has a great potential of abuse, including physical violence. Also notice, that the right to privacy is often recognized as a human right.

"Most" is tricky, but using things like sim card and IP tracking to approve drone strikes that end up killing scores of civilians is pretty atrocious.

Oh, or the false Gulf of Tonkin report probably led to millions of deaths.

> Oh, or the false Gulf of Tonkin report probably led to millions of deaths.

Please cite a reputable source that supports this conspiracy theory.

What? We passed this resolution that led to an increased US presence in southeast Asia in response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident that later evidence has shown never happened. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_Resolution

The NSA itself later admitted they lied about the report, ignoring any sigint that contradicted what they believed happened.

> The National Security Agency (NSA) had broken North Vietnam's codes, and McNamara emphasized to Johnson that certain decrypts conveyed that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had been damaged by American destroyers, thus proving that the second incident happened. However, several intelligence analyses at the time accused McNamara of having either misinterpreted, either intentionally or by mistake, decrypts referring to the first incident of August 2 and presenting them as referring to the second alleged incident of August 4.

I don't understand why you think this quote is relevant, maybe you think that was the only part used so the entire thing was an honest mistake that still killed many?

Here's some others parts from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident

>In the 2003 documentary The Fog of War, the former United States Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara admitted that an attack on the USS Maddox happened on August 2, but the August 4 attack, for which Washington authorized retaliation, never happened.

>As the evening progressed, further signals intelligence (SIGINT) did not support any such ambush, but the NSA personnel were apparently so convinced of an attack that they ignored the 90% of SIGINT that did not support that conclusion, and that was also excluded from any reports they produced for the consumption by the president.

McNamara admits of didn't happen, the NSA admits they intentionally doctored the report.

What is the atrocity though? This spawned a whole subthread and my only point was that the word "atrocious" was a bit extreme.

First, ordering the attack of homes with no regard for civilians nearby and no concrete proof that someone "bad" is inside is fairly unequivocally atrocious. I think if your loved ones died because the NSA assumed a bad guy lived next door, you'd consider it an atrocity.

Second, I consider lying to spread more warfare and all the horrors that entails atrocious.

The Vietnam War.

That's preposterous.

You think My Lai was justified and not an atrocious war crime? How about Agent Orange?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes#Vie...

What is the most atrocious thing that the NSA has done?

No idea, but the thread above is about the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Snowden revealed quite a bit of execrable behavior, and quite a bit of historical bad behavior has been revealed over time. They are certainly not paragons of righteousness and purity.

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