NSA admits rare willful surveillance violations | Hacker News Reader

NSA admits rare willful surveillance violations

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58 pointsnaterator7 comments

We have reached a point where, no matter how few violations occur and no matter how innocuous they may be, the average person will always believe the NSA is doing things that are much more extreme than what is reported. The secret nature of the NSA (and all intelligence gathering) simply means rational people will always be able to justify fears of conspiracy, tyranny, and Big Brother (now that the Snowden revelations have come to light).

What would it take for people to stop fearing an encroaching surveillance state? The complete dismantling of NSA and the government-intelligence complex? Even then, intelligent people would have reason to doubt that secret facilities did not exist somewhere.

I cannot see how any of this can be resolved.

EDIT: I'd like to add another "meta" remark about NSA discussion on the internet.

Anyone who frequents HN, or reddit's r/technology, or similar boards, will be familiar with the universal bashing of NSA and rampant speculation of what they may be doing. Invariably, snarky and profoundly cynical comments are at the top: these do not help. Instead, they react to the new sensationalist headline about how "NSA has done something else!!" by bashing the NSA, American government, Obama, or all three. In effect, every thread about the NSA is our version of the daily "Two Minutes of Hate", the ritual from Orwell's 1984 where workers get up and scream, releasing their ire and accomplishing nothing but self-pacifying catharsis.

We do not need that. Instead of beating the dead horse to make ourselves feel better and go back to "normal" life, we need to do something productive. Let's say something new and thoughtful, rather than cynical witticisms.

You constantly defend authority and yell at anyone who speculates negatively, and yet here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5870726) you rather cynically jumped on the "Snowden is a Chinese spy" bandwagon, when really the spying accusations make no logical sense, and of course, there's no evidence of that at all. That makes you a hypocrite.

I'm not sure what else you expect other than blind cynicism - the NSA constantly does pedantic backflips, lies or invokes "national security" to prevent from telling anyone what they're doing, even when it's clear they're violating any sensible ethical guideline. What should we talk about, and what's wrong with speculation?

Also, the idea that we need to "see the good" in the NSA is fallacious. The NSA is a party made of volunteers who work for a government who have chosen to not only exercise authority authority over me, but to abuse it gratuitously, all while the tax dollars of myself and others fund them to do so, when most of us never asked them to. Under what moral philosophy do I have to live to ignore that context to have a peaceful discussion about the merits of a completely-broken system? On a personal note, foreign intelligence is great, which the NSA has clearly not limited themselves to in any capacity, based on the information that we actually do have.

If there's a direction the discussion should move in, perhaps you could start by leading that discussion, instead of sitting on the sidelines and complaining about other people and trying to control their thoughts and minds. As I'm sure you know, actions, intuition and insight are better teachers than whining and exercising authority.

I do agree that more critical thought (and less blind cynicism) is a good thing.

Finally, I can't help but note that your role reversal of the 1984 example is an extremely-ironic case of "Doublethink", since under no circumstance are the masses hating on the government blindly remotely applicable to the novel.

> We have reached a point where, no matter how few violations occur and no matter how innocuous they may be, the average person will always believe the NSA is doing things that are much more extreme than what is reported.

This goes both ways: no matter how many violations occur and no matter how harmful they may be, the average NSA defender will always believe the NSA is doing things that are much less extreme than what is reported, often with legalist distractions from the appropriateness of the NSA's actions.

> The secret nature of the NSA (and all intelligence gathering) simply means rational people will always be able to justify fears of conspiracy, tyranny, and Big Brother (now that the Snowden revelations have come to light).

Rational people who happen to have no protection from the USG's overreach—foreigners, journalists, whistleblowers, tech companies, foreigner business owners, and the relatives, friends, coworkers, employees of those people—would like to not have to be afraid of the NSA and the USG. As it stands, it's easy to not be afraid of the NSA when you're not in the line of fire; when you're an unknown American citizen with no practical political influence, who does not run a business, who is not employed by or owns a company targeted for industrial espionage, who is not a relative or acquaintance of someone being investigated, who is not in a NSA employee's bad side, etc.

"What would it take for people to stop fearing an encroaching surveillance state?"

A trustworthy government? A government that does not consider secret courts and secret bodies of law to be acceptable? Prosecuting men like James Clapper who lie to Congress (perjury, obstruction of Congress, making false statements -- these are crimes)? There are a lot of reasons people are upset about what the government is doing and it is hardly surprising that people assume the worst.

If the Obama administration has even the most remote interest in restoring the public's trust, they should just come clean, now, about what they have been doing. With each new revelation we discover more lies about the nature and scope of the NSA's work.

Didn't Alexander just state to BlackHat in no uncertain terms that there have been zero incidents, and that's a fact? Looks like the heckler who shouted bullshit was right.

"You know, and I think you can hear it from some of the comments that we’ve gotten here. (Inaudible) – see, think about people who are willing to go forward to Iraq and Afghanistan to help insure our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, so they can get the intelligence that they need. I believe these are the most noble people that we have this country. They are willing to put their lives on the line for their fellow – their fellow soldiers and fellow Americans, and other countries. And 20 of them lost their lives. And when you think about that, the issue is these same people who take that same oath to uphold and defend the Constitution (are?) the ones that run these programs. And we get all these allegations of what they could be doing. But when people check, like the intelligence committee, they found zero times that’s happened. That’s no bullshit. Those are facts." - General Alexander, 31 July 2013, Blackhat 2013

http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/speeches_testimonies/T...

"That guy's a fuckin' liar" - ioerror, 29c3, "Not My Department" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl5OQz0Ko8c&t=24m15s

The mere existence of PRISM et al are the real violations. These admissions are an attempt at misdirection.

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