Comment by dmfdmf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dmfdmf | Hacker News Reader

Translation: Trust us, we are the good guys.

This blog post does nothing to answer the fundamental questions that the Snowden leaks have raised. This man basically argues that, with few exceptions, everyone that works for the NSA is a true American and a patriot who only has your interests at heart and what is a little spying amongst friends anyway. Follow that with some scary hints about cyber war with nuclear responses to further raise the stakes (and the fear) to justify their dragnet surveillance police state. This man is a moron if he can't see that constitutional protections were not created to protect us from good people but bad people who can gain control of such a system in the future.

Moreover, if what he says is true that we are facing real dangers then the government has the obligation, in a free society, to reveal these threats and explain what they are doing about it. The method of using such secret threats as a basis for increase police powers and (implicit) suspension of constitutional rights is not proper for a free society.

If the result of the so called "war on terror" is a gutted and shredded constitution then I'd say the terrorists have won.

Edit: Apparently Loren is a man, Sorry.

"Moreover, if what he says is true that we are facing real dangers then the government has the obligation, in a free society, to reveal these threats and explain what they are doing about it. "

Could not agree more. To make good decisions as a nation, we need good information. When everything's classified TS/SCI or above, most Americans are denied an accurate description of reality on which to base their decisions and their votes.

Bad guys may do bad things to us regardless of whether their conduct and methods are revealed to all or classified into invisibility. If the NSA revealed everything it knows and does, it would in the near term, wreak embarrassment and economic damage on some parties, but in the longer term would help us craft a better country.

By analogy, nobody would keep money at a bank that couldn't be audited. Why would you entrust your society's core values of privacy to a completely opaque government entity having no independent oversight?

I think that giving credit to the terrorist, and saying that they have won, is wrong. The kind of paranoia that defense forces have operated under has always been there since WWII. The only thing different now it that people are a lot aware of what could be/is happening.

If we commit suicide by destroying the constitution and the freedoms it embodies then the terrorist goal of destroying America is achieved. I see your point though, they would not deserve credit for our failure to stand up to an internal threat, so consider it poetic license to dramatize my point.

Actually, it's a man, but otherwise you're right.

"I'd say the terrorists have won."

There is no such thing as 'terrorists'. It is wrong to imagine that there is a group of evil doers [I am an ESL and this expression always cracks me open:)] that is (1) organized and (2) focused on an agenda to harm United States. If you think so then you fell victim of the greatest fallacy pulled by the government.

The deterioration of your way of life is not due to some struggle with imaginary bad people, but due to the evolution of your government, which is becoming more fat, arrogant, detached from reality and self-centric. NSA is a natural spin in such evolution, where you transform from Huxley's Brave New World to an outright 1984.

The author is a man.

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