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Comment by GordonS | Hacker News Reader

It's a nice thought, but it'll never happen. It'll be a 'matter of national security', supporters will be branded 'terrorists' or other such nonsense.

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Don't let them control the narrative. The discourse they have is absurd.

Their system not only doesn't work but creates haystacks so big that needles get deeply hidden and no real intelligence happens.

The rationale for the spy-everyone story is such an implausible fantasy. We have to stop letting people get away with saying it without being challenged.

This needs to stop.

It is even worse. The amount of data NSA stores makes them an even juicer target for infiltration, subversion and otherwise gaining access to data they have collected.

Exactly. If I was in charge of Chinese or Russian intelligence, I'd have whole buildings full of people dedicated to how to tap the Bluffdale data centre: It'd be fantastic - get all the data without the political risk of trying to gather it yourself and possibly the ability to alter data at will.

This is such a scary side to consider. Most people who are just fine with their own government building dossiers right off the wire, and potentially losing said dossiers in haystacks, don't consider that foreign double-agents will become quite adept at searching the haystacks loyal agents have neglected.

It becomes even more bizarre when you consider that the NSA has been caught tapping foreign nationals and diplomats.

Two countries in conflict may hack the US as a proxy to get at the others communications - with no direct interest in the US at all.

This is a factually possible scenario. It's the unchecked blank check bureaucratic process. This the natural output given such input parameters.

We need a way to make this more real to people:

Dysfunctional projects of grandeur is how organized people respond to no oversight and unlimited funding. They will invent justifications to perpetuate their purpose. This happens through an utter failure of discretion in governments, startups, not-for-profits, wars, corporations... everything.

Preventing it is Our Job to make a functional society.

"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

-Hermann Göring at the Nuremberg trials

You don't even need that. Publishing the number of redundancies created by closing down the data centre is more than enough.

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