Hacker News Reader

>I knew we were in trouble when the author started listing associates of people. (This is when you see a sentence constructed as so: "John went to work for Company X which uses the same lawyers as the mafia". A sure sign extra spin is trying to be added)

It is quite relevant that all of the players running these governmental departments, companies and quasi-governmental entities (In-Q-tel) all know each other well and seem to be doing each other favors.

>"...government contractors were attempting to undermine Americans’ free speech—with the apparent blessing of the DOJ..." Slow down a freaking minute. Free speech means just that. I can lie to you, plant disinformation, do all kinds of things. I am free to speak.

Sure, you are free to speak as a private citizen but the government should not be allowed to quell citizen's political speech through their own governmental mechanisms (including intimidation) or through private agents under their employ. That is the heart of the right to free speech. They should also not quell legitimate journalism through these mechanisms as that tramples all of the right to free press.

>Those guys talking about the options to do some kind of crazy op isn't a scandal, it's their job.

Fair enough. But it is troubling that these guys are paid to know what is feasible from an operational standpoint and they are suggesting illegal assassinations. Therefore, they must have reason to believe that illegal assassinations are feasible. That is disturbing.

>In short, the author overreaches with his thesis, asking the audience to give up NSA paranoia for his version of the military-industrial complex paranoia.

I think it is valid to say that the government has been shown to be willing to engage in unsavory activity and, by the way, here is some more.

>You either understand that good people are working in bad systems, or you live in a world where there's good guys and bad guys.

But somebody sets up the system. Systems do not form in a vacuum. And, if the system becomes corrupted over time, it is our duty as citizens in a democracy to suss that out and eliminate it. Beyond that, it is our duty to figure out what allowed the corruption in the first place and at least try to make sure it cannot happen again.

I don't know, your reading of this is a lot different than mine. I never felt like it crossed into "the scary bad guys" territory.

The good-people-in-bad-systems thing reminds me of the HBGary story generally. I don't know that I would describe Aaron Barr as a "good" guy at all--I certainly would not wish to ever associate with him--but his motivations throughout seemed pretty banal. Ambition, desire to take down the "bad hackers" in a showy way, desire to defend institutions he sees as basically okay.

Furthermore it does not always have to be the case that good people are working in rotten systems. Some people are genuinely terrible. And even in the case of basically good people who actions are warped by a rotten system - I think any basic idea of moral responsibility prevents us from excusing them for that. And at a certain level I'm not sure what the usefulness is in continuing to call them "good people." It instills empathy and prevents us from constructing cartoon-images of these people in our heads, but it can cross over into becoming an exercise in glossing over worthwhile anxiety . . . "Things aren't really -that- bad, it's just a case of good people stuck in a rotten system . . . "

Finally, the feds coming down this hard on any journalist--it shouldn't matter that he's independent, and possibly kind of hackish--is an alarming compromise of free speech.

Stratfor: I just don't see how you can dismiss this as "just their job." This isn't even a potential op. It's the case of a private company openly toying with the idea of illegally executing some dude for personal reasons. That seems reprehensible in any context, and certainly worthy of whatever scandal it generates.

> You either understand that good people are working in bad systems

Bad systems can turn good people into bad people and they'll still believe themselves to be "good".

And then we have the current situation: the bad systems have been at work long enough they've attracted and/or manufactured people bad enough to make the systems worse.

"Could some of this security state, zero-day-exploits and such already be available on the open market? My money says it will eventually, but right now, based on this piece, this still looks like a lot of hand-wavy speculation."

Purchase and sale of zero-day exploits is already common: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/03/23/shoppin...

Also: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/03/21/meet-th...