People need to start accepting that government != country; such people as such being called as "terrorists" or "communists" or other words that were bandied about as the bogeyman of the time are perceived as threats to the government by those most poised to profit from that government.
A government that no longer represents the people, but corporations and those that benefit by it, will threaten those that question its legitimacy as that is only obvious. The word "terrorist" is only the latest in a long string.
>A government that no longer represents the people, but corporations and those that benefit by it
I guess it would surprise a lot of people that we have far more common "interests" with corporations and their success then we have opposing "interests". In other words, in most cases, the things that benefit corporations benefit the people (not everyone, always, and equally, of course).
Corporations are owned by people like you and me, composed of people like you and me, run by people like you and me, and paid by people like you and me.
The problem is most of the time companies aren't there to benefit us. Chief Exec's will give themselves massive bonuses while cutting the wages on the lower tiers. Corporations will readily use dirty tactics and lobbying to drive smaller companies out of business without any thought of the people who depend upon that business. And so on and so forth.
Corporations are not there to serve our interest, they're there to serve their shareholders interest. And unless you've got a direct dependence on said corporation (eg you work for them), then our interests aren't the same.
Corporations should never be allowed to influence on politics. Particularly not on the scale that they already do.
> Most of the time, huh? Look at the Forbes 500 list and point to all the companies that aren't there to benefit us.
Companies that aren't out to serve the public are few and far between, and go out of business. What a ridiculous argument.
Providing shit services at inflated prices while pocketing all the money for yourself isn't the same as service the public interest. But for the most part - I'm ok with that. Companies are not charities. However what I'm not ok with is companies influencing politics because there's a clear conflict of interest there.
You don't grow to the size of an international corporation by being nice. It takes a degree of ruthlessness that flies in the face of the general public's best interest.
> And who are the shareholders? Some unknown entity? How is it that you separate "our" and "shareholder"? I'm a shareholder, and you probably are to.
So you're a shareholder of every single company that you are impacted by? I very much doubt you are. You'd have shares in Disney, Sony and all the other conglomerates that's crippling copyright law. You'd need shares in Apple, Samsung, Microsoft and all the other companies who abuse patent laws. Including companies who's shares are dropping because their business is failing and patents are their last stand. You'd also need shares in tobacco companies, drugs companies and every other business that lobbies with the government. For your argument that we have shares in companies as an excuse for immoral business practices benefiting the population, you'd also need shares in patent trolls.
The fact is, you get screwed over by more business than you profit from. And that's with someone like you who does have shares; most of the developed world's population don't play the stock market.
> Corporations don't; the people within them do. Don't believe me? Try the following thought experiment:
That's a dumb argument because the two are the one and the same in the context of this discussion. You can't run a company without having people within them to run it. So it's quite blatantly obvious that we're talking about the tiny minority of the population who are heading those companies (and I even categorically stated that previously). Since their position is vastly different from the average person, it's perfectly reasonable to discuss them separately - which is why they're referred to in the general sense as "companies" and "shareholders" (note that with the latter definition when used in this context it's generally used to refer to those with more than just a tiny percentage of a share)
That all said, it should be noted that individuals do perform actions they wouldn't normally agree with but do so because it's part of the companies strategy / policy. Sometimes a persons principles are sidelined by their desire to stay employed. Which is why it often makes sense to talk about a 'company' as a culture rather than a group of individuals.
> Once they get on this "corporations are evil, government is evil, everything is evil!" tangent, there's no talking to them.
Nice way to dismiss my post in the most condescending way possible and without even bother to think about the point I made.
I'm not saying corporations nor governments are evil. All I said was that corporations are not interested in the well being of the average person; which they're not. The average person only matter so far as a potential source of income - and it's been proven time and time again that you don't need to respect your customers to earn their business (Sony are a great example of this - just look at the number of times they've screwed over their customers and yet how little impact it's made on their business). This doesn't make corporations 'evil', it just makes their priorities different (and anyone with even the slightest idea of how businesses work shouldn't need to be told that the priority of a business differs from the priority of an individual)
Hence my point; that since the priority of businesses are not that of the people, businesses shouldn't be allowed to influence law.
As for the government being 'evil', I'd probably say they're more a mixture of business men making decisions that are most profitable for themselves (normally an acceptable trait, but in this instance we're back at the conflict of interests argument) and the less intelligent officials who honestly believe anyone they don't understand is a dangerous threat to the United States - so they go completely overboard in their mission to protect the nation against Linux system administrators, other religions and kids who post memes on social networks. Heaven forbid they ever meet an 18 year old social network addict Muslim who works as a sysadmin; I bet some officials would probably have a heart attack.
>"and anyone with even the slightest idea of how businesses work shouldn't need to be told that the priority of a business differs from the priority of an individual"
I understand how businesses work, because I run one. We're not JP Morgan, but we do have 150 employees. How about you? We're in the health care field, we're a corporation, and we actually care about the average person. It's also how I know, through interaction, that business owners are just ordinary people, even at levels far beyond my own. Our businesses are reflections of ourselves. If you're an asshole, you'll run an unethical business. Most people aren't assholes.
You can keep your theories, I'll go with experience.
That's great, but you completely missed my point about how you don't become a multi-billion dollar CEO of an international corporation by playing nice. And since I'm talking about companies that influence politics through lobbying and what not, the need the finance and influence of companies of that scale - so I'm clearly not talking about companies as small as yourselves.
> Corporations are owned by people like you and me, composed of people like you and me, run by people like you and me, and paid by people like you and me.
That's really sunshiny happy and everything, but corporations and I have entirely different motives and values. I could just as easily point out that murderers, pedophiles, and (yes) Nazis are people like you and me.
We own the shares, we work for them, we manage them, and we support them by buying their products. If we cease doing any of that, they no longer exist.
This idea that "corporations" are one thing and people are another is preposterous.
> A government that no longer represents the people, but corporations and those that benefit by it, will threaten those that question its legitimacy as that is only obvious.
A government elected with a reasonable majority arguably represents the people who elected them.
Not represents as in "represents their interests", implying that they act on their behalf in their best interest. No, represents as in "they are the image of what those who elected them want". This is the government of people who invented playdates for their children, political corectness and consumer-driven everything. It's in line with their wishes. Government officials don't just spring out from the ground.
Unless we see a mass boycott of the next election that forces both parties to radically change their approach -- a boycott so massive that the legitimacy of the expressed vote is in question -- the elected government will really be one made in the image of its electors and, arguably, government != country will eval to false.
What is this post supposed to be? An junior high school Civics lesson? There was never any opportunity to "elect" anything to do with NSA. The NSA is a huge military-ish state security organization that was secretly and massively built up in the Cold War. It at least seems to outsiders that it served its purpose well[1]. But there is no more great enemy, and the whole lot are now struggling to remain relevant.
People have been boycotting elections for years. That only makes it easier for the radical fringes to their their crap on the agenda and for politicians to focus on those low-hanging fruits.
[1] I've been reading a lot about NSA lately and it seems they could've got us all killed with some very provocative missions pentesting Soviet air defenses. They did manage to get dozens of pilots and air-crew killed.
The NSA did not spring out of the ground, either, and the Cold War has arguably been over since 1991 or so.
Indirect democracy makes it very easy to eschew responsibility in terms of "I had a choice between candidate X and candidate Y; they both supported decision D. I didn't support it, but since I had to vote between either X and Y, I didn't have a choice, did I?".
If the actions of the NSA were seen by American citizens as such a major concern that they would not vote for a candidate who supported it, then we'd see major votes against one of them. If all the candidates were to represent interests opposite to those of their voters, then we'd see no votes for any.
The fact that we keep seeing these votes is simply a proof of the fact that most people don't really care about it. The handful of us who hang out on HackerNews aren't representative of the general populace. Ask the audience of Toddlers and Tiaras, who are probably an order of magnitude more than we are, what they think about it, and 90% of them would probably tell you something similar to "NSA? Is that like, UUUUUUUM, some football league or something?"
> People have been boycotting elections for years. That only makes it easier for the radical fringes to their their crap on the agenda and for politicians to focus on those low-hanging fruits.
People have been boycotting elections for years -- they're only valuable when they bring the turnout below the threshold of validity, which has happened in some countries.
If US citizens feel their political or electoral system is biased, whining about it won't help -- and it looks particularly hypocritical after readily applauding the Arab spring.
> The fact that we keep seeing these votes is simply a proof of the fact that most people don't really care about it.
Allow me to introduce you to two voters, A and B. Also two representatives, X and Y.
There are two issues in this campaign, D and E.
Support matrix:
DE
Xyn
Yny
Now, A may care about both D and E, but feel more strongly about D. B may care about both D and E, but feel a bit more strongly about E. So A votes for X and B votes for Y.
You can't meaningfully infer that B "doesn't care about" D in this situation, they had to make a tough choice and preferred the other. But this binary makes it seem like they voted anti-D.
Expand to a zillion candidates and a zillion issues. You can't really get a meaningful inference, and this is assuming that everyone is 100% rational!
I'm curious how much of the perceived benefit of republic-based democracy is based in logical fallacies and myth.
Voters are irrational and on a long-term scale, growth in state power eventually leads to the circumvention of public involvement, counter to the very definition of a republic: "A republic is a form of government in which affairs of state are a 'public matter', not the private concern of the rulers".
Constitutions were the obvious solution to this problem but they are very rarely considered absolute law in modern times, which almost defeats their purpose. Their influence worn down over decades of tinkering and executive-branch expansions in power.
Constitutions were not the solution to the problem. An educated and engaged electorate was the solution. The Constitution was a framework for that electorate to use as a tool, but several of the founders were very clear that the essential requirement of effective government was the engaged and educated electorate.
James Madison:
* The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the
only guardian of true liberty.
* Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people
who mean to be their own governors, must arm
themselves with the power knowledge gives.
* Learned institutions ought to be favorite objects with
every free people. They throw that light over the
public mind which is the best security against crafty
and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.
Thomas Jefferson:
* Every government degenerates when trusted to the
rulers of the people alone. The people themselves,
therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to
render them safe, their minds must be improved to a
certain degree.
* Above all things I hope the education of the common
people will be attended to ; convinced that on their
good sense we may rely with the most security for the
preservation of a due degree of liberty.
* I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of
the society, but the people themselves: and if we
think them not enlightened enough to exercise their
controul with a wholsome discretion, the remedy is,
not to take it from them, but to inform their
discretion by education. this is the true corrective
of abuses of constitutional power.
>If the actions of the NSA were seen by American citizens as such a major concern that they would not vote for a candidate who supported it, then we'd see major votes against one of them. If all the candidates were to represent interests opposite to those of their voters, then we'd see no votes for any.
You've simplified this way too much, as if each voter only has one issue that they care about. Political strategists are experts at game theory. They build political platforms based on how to get the most people off their couches per dollar. It is a multi-dimensional problem.
>The fact that we keep seeing these votes is simply a proof of the fact that most people don't really care about it.
It is proof of no such thing. Most people are happy to leave well enough alone when they don't see a problem. NSA surveillance has never been a serious issue in a national campaign. Until recently, anyone who expressed too much interest in domestic surveillance of citizens was a tinfoil hat wearing crackpot.
> The handful of us who hang out on HackerNews aren't representative of the general populace.
So? The populace is a composite of many factions. Some people even have mixed political philosophies.
> Ask the audience of Toddlers and Tiaras, who are probably an order of magnitude more than we are, what they think about it, and 90% of them would probably tell you something similar to "NSA? Is that like, UUUUUUUM, some football league or something?"
The media is the reason for this. I wish I had some good idea that wasn't completely at odds with democratic principles.
>> People have been boycotting elections for years. That only makes it easier for the radical fringes to their their crap on the agenda and for politicians to focus on those low-hanging fruits.
>People have been boycotting elections for years -- they're only valuable when they bring the turnout below the threshold of validity, which has happened in some countries.
Well, that isn't going to happen, ever, or at least until the "Toddlers and Tiaras" crowd has some political motivation other than ["ZOMG Abortion", "ZOMG Teh Gays", "ZOMG Illegal Mexicans in our jerbs"]
>If US citizens feel their political or electoral system is biased, whining about it won't help -- and it looks particularly hypocritical after readily applauding the Arab spring.
Whining about politics is as great an American tradition as Apple Pie.
I don't quite follow. It's not like there is some naturally occurring flow of newspapers, radio and television broadcasts that discuss with the correct, important issues in an intelligent way, and some sort of cabal (the media) has come in and suppressed all that so they could force toddlers and tiaras down their throats.
There are plenty of news outlets that are spending their money to broadcast the details of the NSA scandal as accurately as possible, and if people happen to find those outlets on their TVs, they change the channel to toddlers and tiaras as quickly as possible. Which goes back to the original (I think correct) point that most people don't find this particular issue as dire as many people think they should.
I knew that comment would open a can of worms. One might also argue that the shabby quality of education has a bit to do with it as well.
>I don't quite follow. It's not like there is some naturally occurring flow of newspapers, radio and television broadcasts that discuss with the correct, important issues in an intelligent way,
The ownership of media in the US is not as diverse as you might think. The content is also not (at least IMO) as diverse as it would be absent improper influence.
>and some sort of cabal (the media) has come in and suppressed all that
Would you believe Carl Bernstein if he told you that the CIA had operatives at all levels of major news media outlets within the US, and a history of manipulating the news? http://carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php
If not him, have a look at the Church Committee reports on intelligence activities along the same theme.
Neither is proof that the activities were continued after being caught red-handed, but, it is enough that I would consider naive the notion that the gov't/intel community had completely ceased such activities, as opposed to just being more careful. As far as I am concerned, given the past (the part that is public record) the possibility that the gov't/intel community aren't still successfully manipulating domestic media coverage can't be dismissed without a credible investigation, or credible oversight, or something to that effect. To put it another way, public exposure of NSA activities is being treated by NSA as a threat to their continued operations; and they will use the tools in their arsenal to fight that threat.
> so they could force toddlers and tiaras down their throats.
If you have a monopoly/oligopoly/cartel in a market, you can feed your customers pretty much anything, and still make a living.
> You've simplified this way too much, as if each voter only has one issue that they care about. Political strategists are experts at game theory. They build political platforms based on how to get the most people off their couches per dollar. It is a multi-dimensional problem.
I don't think I have. Blatant breaches of something that voters perceive to be a fundamental right of theirs should be a dealbreaker; I am fairly sure that a candidate whose otherwise great agenda would include items like stoping state financing of any educational institution, explicitly forbidding any kind of health care for patients over fifty (you can pick any criteria here), explicitly introducing media censorship or punishing adherence to Catholicism with jail wouldn't get too many votes from mentally-sane voters.
It sounds fairly logical to assume that most American citizens are ignorant enough about their dignity, the meaning of being human or about who they are voting for that they don't perceive acts of support for such breaches of their rights to be a dealbreaker.
I'm not saying this is good or bad -- Americans seem to be happy enough not to do much about it, so if it floats their boat, it's awesome -- I'm just arguing that it is representative for them.
>The media is the reason for this. I wish I had some good idea that wasn't completely at odds with democratic principles.
Perhaps one of the problems with America today is that the right to broadcast whatever nonsense across the airwaves is considered a democratic principle.
Seems to me that those of us who worry about the likes of NSA data slurping are the "radical fringe". That uniformed Muppet certainly seems to think so.
Writing off minorities as radicals is their game, not mine. You just played right in to the hands of the likes of Hayden. See how divide and rule works?
>You just played right in to the hands of the likes of Hayden. See how divide and rule works?
Aww come on, can't we have a little debate with our coffee? Maybe we'll eventually converge on some action that gets an optimal level of support within our cohort.
I did vote for a candidate in 2008 who opposed the Bush administration's massive build-up of surveillance infrastructure: Obama. By 2012, it was clear he wasn't following through, but the other candidate on offer would almost certainly have been, on balance, a whole lot worse --- and a bad choice is still a choice.
When, in office, has Obama been representing what I want, in this regard, and when do you think I had an opportunity to change that through the ballot box?
Who did you vote for in the 2008 and 2012 primaries?
Your complaint here is a false dichotomy. We have many more choices than vote for candidate R or vote for candidate D, especially when you consider that each party had at least one fairly close primary in the last eight years.
People elect representatives that were supposed to represent them, these representatives are, in reality, puppets fabricated and promoted by the corporate and elite's money, and once elected, the power and influence obtained are not being used to defend the common but the interest of those already in power.
So in practice Democracy has a backdoor that allows it to be hijacked and until it is fixed we will keep being represented by no one.
Maybe democracy would be "more real" if we forbid the corporate money in political campaigns and also limit the amount of money each individual can donate, bringing everybody to the same level could result in no masters of puppets.
Voting for the "lesser evil" is only a good idea when the "greater evil" is so great that they will destroy the country. That has never been the case.
Voting for the "lesser evil" is actually worse than not voting at all because it tells the parties that being evil still gets them votes.
The only way political parties in the US change is through threat of losing enough votes. If you want change that the duopoly does not offer then you must vote your conscience even if it means that this "greater evil" person will win. Because in the long run the party that lost will have to incorporate the policies of the 3rd parties that are "stealing" their votes the next time around.
>The only way political parties in the US change is through threat of losing enough votes. If you want change that the duopoly does not offer then you must vote your conscience even if it means that this "greater evil" person will win. Because in the long run the party that lost will have to incorporate the policies of the 3rd parties that are "stealing" their votes the next time around.
A person gets a chance to vote in ~14-15 elections, realistically fewer than that. A person also has to coordinate their non-standard voting plan with others. I just don't think there are enough iterations for that to happen. Communication via the internet might change that, but I am skeptical.
Coordination between voters is unnecessary. The job of the 3rd parties is to communicate their issues - that plus vote tallies is enough to make it pretty clear what issues the duopoly need to incorporate into their platforms.
Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil. I am also skeptical about the claim that Obama is a better president than McCain or Romney would have been. We still have soldiers doing police work. We still have suspensions of civil rights. We still have powerful corporations running the show. We still have the military industrial complex. We also have some new twists, like the crack-downs on whistleblowers, the assassination of US citizens, etc.
Voting for a third party candidate who does not have a chance of winning also increases their voter base, which in turn increases their funding for subsequent years.
We might not be able to elect a libertarian, green, constitution, or whig president in 2016, but just as the erosion of our freedoms has taken decades, we'll have to rebuild everything just as slowly. Vote for your preferred candidate this primary. You may not be on "the winning team" today, but you're sending a message that the status quo is not what we want.
To see how incorrect that statement is, look at every other democracy in the world. Only two two-party democracies. Every other democratic country but like Jamaica is 3 parties or greater.
I am an Indian so I wasn't referring to the US in particular although my bad that I didn't make it clear.
Well, the voting system is not necessarily perfect, at least not here. In my country there are sects where people sell their votes for alcohol.
I stand by my assertion that government != country on a philosophical level if not a practical one.
This whole idea is largely broken, depending on your perspective. IF we had proportional representation in the US, I might agree that at least a handful of elected federal level reps can legitimately claim to "represent" me, but as of today, I will claim that not a single member of the federal government represents me... certainly there isn't a single member serving in congress or any other federal office, that I voted for, or would claim as my representative.
> Unless we see a mass boycott of the next election that forces both parties to radically change their approach
A mass boycott would do nothing in terms of change. It is the political equivalent of letting a child eat as much ice cream it wants because you think it'll somehow think "too much" for you is "too much" to them.
Completely off-topic but I've this a few times now in different places. I'll come to the end of what I'm reading and there'll be a tl;dr at the frickin' _end_ of it! Isn't it supposed to be right up front so that if I am incredibly lazy and trusting I can just slurp the tl;dr and move on? When placed at the end is its meaning changed to something like "to summarize" or "in summation" ???
It used to be an insult. You would post it, and it alone underneath someone's 2500 word paragraphless wall of text as a way of saying "your verbosity is massively out of proportion to the significance of your thoughts, and in general you are so uninteresting that I can't even be bothered to use entire words."
It was often to be seen on SA under some teenaged nerds verbose essay about how much the people at their high school sucked. In that way, it was the original "cool story bro."
This original meaning is why the following image is funny: http://c.cslacker.com/3910l.jpg The joke doesn't work with the new usage.
At some point it flipped around and became a way of expressing one's tiny attention span.
"tl;dr" goes at the end; that's just the way it is. The "d" is for "didn't", not, for example, "won't".
I first noticed it on reddit years ago, appended to a lengthy comment. However, it seems that it may have originated in Wikipedia article discussions (according to Wikipedia...) as a shorthand _response_ to a lengthy comment. Perhaps, there was a transition period where someone wrote a lot of text, realized that the response would be a "tl;dr", and then just added it themselves instead.
Only on HN would you get a bunch of hackers going off on a tangent about the proper use of tl;dr right in the middle of a discussion about whether hackers and activists should be considered potential terrorists. :-)
"who haven't talked to the opposite sex in five or six years."
This is the scariest aspect of the data collection. People like this have the data to identify homosexuals. Hell, I suspect that a lot of the rationale for the data collection was tracking Muslims.
The potential this information has to facilitate genocide is astronomical and homophobes are in positions of power.
The FBI used to track homosexuals because they were suspected communists. This is my fear with these programs exactly.
I don't expect the current government to round up homosexuals or hackers, but here's the thing. Let's say we have a big economic depression, and a politically extremist party gets into office. Now we've got a complete database for them to dig through to purge their idea of "undesirables".
Think that's insane? Did you know that they put Kevin Mitnick in solitary confinement because they thought he was a Russian spy, and that he could whistle nuclear missile commands into a computer? Yes, your government is -that- fucking stupid.
We're making the machines of scary future government, all they'll have to do is turn the key. Let's destroy this data and this program before it gets really out of control.
The premises upon which you have concluded that the statement is not homophobia are:
() It is an insult targeted at the named groups.
() It is targeted at men.
() Not trying to bed women is an insult to men.
All three premises are dubious.
Insults are directed at the person to be insulted. In so far as it is an insult, it was almost certainly targeted at members of the audience sympathetic to transparency and privacy. Which is not to say that there probably weren't any nerds among the policy wonks at the Bi-Partisan Security Center where Hayden's remarks were delivered
It is really your second premise that begins to illuminate why the remarks are homophobic - the premise of the insult has been entangled with not gender in general [despite reading that way] but masculinity in particular.
Once entangled, we get to the intended essence of the insult - implying that someone is unsuccessful under the model of heterosexual masculinity. The essence of the insult is that it feminizes its intended targets. I think we both agree, he is saying that those who favor government transparency and the privacy of citizens aren't fully realized as men.
The premises upon which the insult is based are rather self-contradictory on their face when it comes to women - they contain the implication that it's ok for women to be soft. Deeper down of course, the model of "real men" contains a rubric for determining success which applies to all the ambitious regardless of gender.
I cannot prove that his remark is homophobic, but entanglement of insult with a lack of conformance to a purely heterosexual model of human relations and the connotation of heterosexual masculinity in particular certainly are meta-data consistent with homophobia.
It's quite obvious that he was referring to the societal stereotype that 'nerds' (of either sex) are socially inept and incapable of having anything other than an awkward conversation with the opposite sex (despite their desire for 'normal,' sexual relationships).
If you don't believe that stereotype exists, go watch _any_ episode of The Big Bang Theory.
Your parent is not disputing that; they're saying that the _reason_ that being 'incapable of having anything other than an awkward conversation' is negative is due to attitudes relating to masculinity.
You're talking about the symptom, they're talking about the cause.
Agreed - it is interesting that the phrasing in the article was deliberately gender agnostic. What is the relevance of political correctness in the context of a boorish and petty insult?
For now, maybe, but that's not much better. Stigmatization has to begin somewhere, alienating his audience from "hackers" who obviously aren't very human.
Wow. Huge reading comprehension fail on your part. That sentence was obviously referring to socially inept heterosexual men, the stereotypical "neckbeards". Get over your homophobia hysteria already.
Nevertheless, as shown in the Abu Grahib scandal and the blind eye turned to sexual abuse in domestic prisons, sexual humiliation as a form of punishment is alive and well in the US.
If you believe that, you've already accepted it, and to some extent justified it. Beware that cynicism is only one form of ideology that relies on the thought it's based on facts.
There are probably more than a few ex-marine-corps types, very well placed in the defence-industrial establishment that would not say "no" if asked to do such a thing.
If you are a homosexual it is not about killing you from NSA/CIA perspective. It is rather a way to blackmail you to report on your friends if you are involved in hacktivism, OWS, devoted Muslim, etc. If they know your secrets they own you. They might not need you now, but they may in 5-10-15 years. They'll knock your door and tell you: you are married have 3 kids and are gay. If you don't want your family to find out here is what you do. That's why they need it brother. Because google knows more about us than probably anybody else in the world. To know and store this data regarding all Americans. There is no better deal in the world if you are the nsa/cia.
Members of the intelligence community are patient. Very very patient indeed.
They will build up a dossier of all of your dirty little secrets over a period of years; decades even. They will wait as long as it takes for you to get into a position of power; until they really need something from you, and then, why then they have a nice big fat file waiting for them in the archives, they will come to you and ask you for a "favour".
It could be to hand over some information, perhaps your organization's "red lines" in a negotiation; or the price your company is willing to pay in a takeover bid. It could be to do somebody else a favour, help them out with some insider information, or give them a job. Perhaps, they will ask you to screw somebody over, deny them a job, block them from a position, and so on. Easy for you to do, no skin off your nose; particularly in comparison to the alternative: the awkward conversations you could be having with your spouse that evening, or the IRS later in the week.
In this way, positions of influence get filled with puppets and cronies, and their network of influence and power grows and grows. Who needs money when you have all these little bits of leverage, all these people who will do things for you, individually inconsequential, but collectively ... world changing.
Indeed, the financial services sector .. so dependent on (and so vulnerable to) hard-to-trace insider information, I would not be totally surprised if that sector is completely in thrall to the organization that is dominant in the information-warfare arena.
An addiction to information? No. An addiction to power, fuelled by information. That is why they gotta collect it all.
Surely you have concrete proof that illegal blackmail occurs within the US Government, right?
Wrong. If this were the case, Congress would've defunded US IC years and years ago. You underestimate the determination of US Congressmen to investigate and get their name in the spotlight.
There is nobody in the world of politics whom they can't blackmail in 5 nanoseconds. As long as you are good tool they won't say a thing. But once you get too independent...
that's how democracies work from US to Germany. They are ran by secret services. In some places it is more visible and obvious - Russia, Poland, France, Israel - in some less. However, when you think about, that's the problem with all democracies. That the intelligence communities are running them from the shadow.
Why do you think in the US all the Nazis were so cooperative with the State? Because the CIA had them by the balls - we're going to ignore your past as long as you cooperate. The minute you don't the public finds out about the war crimes you committed. Have you noticed how all politicians have their careers ended once they become troublesome to the current state of affairs. Somehow, somebody tells the media some dark secret about lovers, cocaine, money, whatever, bam! You are history!
So expressing support for Snowden is suggested to be a sign I might be a threat to a country. Way to accelerate the self-censorship (and the subsequent censorship of thought) that this whole surveillance disaster creates.
I don't know exactly who Hayden was talking about, but various people on the Internet have done a lot more than "express support". Calls for "revolution" and "rioting in the streets" seem to pop up in comments on these stories on a pretty regular basis on various sites. But there have also been suggestions of more specific action, including shooting FISA court judges and others and one guy on Reddit speculating about blowing up parts of the power grid.
Now I'm sure most of that is pointless Internet talk. But it certainly goes way beyond expressions of support or discussion of changing policy or laws through democratic means.
All over it has been established that per-se democracy does not exist anymore. Meaning that wealthy and powerful have more democracy allotted to them than to the rest.
Actually what is seems is that government is putting screws real tight on the lid because if whole FIAT dollar thing fails - there will be no more democracy and only Militarized police and thorough monitoring of the people will stop an extraordinary event such as Civil war or revolution from happening.
One wacko on Reddit and a few hyperbolic calls for protest hardly warrants a heavy handed response.
What about the constant over-reaction you hear from gun rights activists? You hear far louder and more violent statements directly from national TV pundits anytime the topic of gun reform comes up.
I don't understand why as a country we are okay with heavily armed, self-appointed militias spouting paranoid delusions about "the Feds," but somehow challenging the NSA in discussions on Internet forums is being considered dangerously close to terrorism.
Various sites? Can you confirm? I don't read reddit because it really is lowest common denominator (it's the tabloid of the forums). But I haven't seen the comments you're referring to anywhere that I'd consider reputable.
Unfortunately I do think there is a grain of truth in what he is saying--citizens have more power to affect change individually via the Internet than they ever have before. That's gotta be scary as shit for people comfortably in power.
Interesting quote further down where he begs the question, Betteridge's-law-of-headlines-style:
Hayden: "But certainly Mr Snowden has created quite a stir among those folks who are very committed to transparency and global transparency and the global web, kind of ungoverned and free. And I don't know that there's a logic between trying to [punish] America or American institutions for his arrest, but I hold out the possibility. I can sit here and imagine circumstances and scenarios, but they're nothing more than imaginative."
Yeah, the Salon article is thinly veiled editorial. It extrapolates quite a bit from what Hayden actually said which was pretty reasonable. He is not saying hackers=terrorists, but rather some hackers may turn to terrorism-style attacks and he is probably correct.
Yup. Though Hayden is engaged in politicking. Salon is engaged in politicking while reporting on Hayden's politicking.
When I'm feeling extra rational, I really dislike this, even when I agree with views like Salon's. It's bad if we fight dumb politicking with more dumb politicking from the other direction.
We live in a world doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. This sounds like an old transcript saying that if you disagree with the government / military you must instantly be a communist. Feels like we are only a step away from public service announcements on how to spot if your child is a terrorist because they spend a lot of time on their computer.
> We live in a world doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past.
But now, we have storage and much faster circulation of information. Which means we can track these "mistakes", dig them up easily whenever they're about to be repeated and discuss them again (better yet, "fork" the old discussion and adapt it to the current issue).
Maybe somebody should build the perfect tool to do just this. (I feel it doesn't exist yet, but the need is now clearly here.)
What's the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter? Which side of the argument you're stood on.
It's completely ridiculous in many ways, but it's often been the case that people who are passionate activists willing to stand up against perceived injustices are viewed as a menace. It just means that they now think hackers are a serious threat.
Michael Hayden is being provocative -- attempting to provoke debate. This is an excellent, laudable act, and should be warmly welcomed.
So, here is my response:-
There is an element of truth to what Michael Hayden is saying, although his analysis of the situation is enormously telling, and reveals a lot about the culture that prevails in the corridors of power.
It is true that the internet is creating communities and groups that do not fit into the old hierarchies of power and control. New communications technologies forge new arenas of discourse; they bring together new communities and interest groups, largely unconstrained by geography, culture, religion or (increasingly) language. These groups are beginning to find common cause, recognize their political power, and flex their (political) muscles.
It is natural and proper that those who benefit from the status-quo should feel nervous. This technological watershed (and the movement of movements that it has triggered) does indeed pose an existential threat to many organisations that predicate their existence on the primacy and sovereignty of the Nation State.
To labor the point: Notions of sovereignty and the plenipotentiary power of the state are weakened and undermined when individuals discover that their shared humanity cuts across international boundaries, and that the "tribe" to which they pledge allegiance is neither best defined nor best constrained in terms of militarily defensible contiguous geographical regions.
So, political and economic elites that are strongly aligned with the interests and primacy of the nation state really do face an existential threat, albeit a distributed, generally non-violent, tides-of-history type threat, rather than one that is focused around a particular "enemy" posing a specific and identifiable physical threat.
As I mentioned previously, Hayden's response to this threat is telling, and reveals much about his (and the Agency's) predispositions and cognitive biases.
Firstly, he thinks immediately of a physical threat - of hostile groups seeking revenge. He sees the world in terms of "friends" and "enemies", in terms of coherent and organised groups that can be treated as atomic units, and imbued with anthropomorphic characteristics: "anger", "revenge" and so on.
Secondly, he seeks to (at the same time) elevate and exaggerate the threat posed by this (notional) group, to make it relevant to the political mainstream, by speculating about attacks on civilian infrastructure - exactly what he would have needed to do during the inevitable internecine budgetary battles that he would have fought during his tenure with the NSA. As a former department head, this is necessarily his area of expertise, and the home turf on which he feels most comfortable.
This second aspect is particularly dangerous in that he seeks to incite and provoke the very threat that he spends so much effort warning us about. He ruthlessly exploits our tribalistic, pack-animal ancestry, conjuring up hostile groups where none exist; engineering conflict in a callous game of divide-and-conquer.
So, we have two threads in his speculation:-
The latter thread being part of a persistent and habitual strategy of scaremongering and conflict creation -- the better to secure a bigger slice of the budgetary pie for "the boys", is rather more transparent (and consequentially less interesting) than the former - the expectation that his foes will always form coherent and organised groups, capable of "making demands", and of acting in a manner amenable to anthropomorphic analysis. This contrasts rather well with one competing view -- that sees the world as a collection of ad-hoc networks of ideas and social mechanisms, some forming, others dissolving -- clearly structured, but not at all hierarchical.
I think you are entirely correct and that you have delineated the deep structure of the scenario we find ourselves in.
Are you familiar with the work of Ken Wilber who, standing on the shoulders of giants, popularised the ideas of Developmental Psychology that support your claim?
Hayden uses language in a specific way that indicates the centre of gravity of his consciousness is located in a very Conventional / Conformist / Concrete-operational place. He speaks in terms of heroic status, power, glory, rage, revenge; take what you need, power over others, force. The downside to all of this is anxiety, depression, phobias, bullying, terrorism etc etc.
This stage of development sees anything that isn't at the same stage as a threat, and tends to respond to everything with escalating violence / force / arrest.
It is the nature of this stage of psychological development to create threats where none exist, because it defines itself in terms of what occurs when those threats are push against.
Ultimately, what we most pressingly need is to work out how to move the world through this developmental stage before we manage to work ourselves in to some really atrocious place.
Each new development in technology represents a new development in consciousness, it brings with it new ways to connect and create together as a nation of people ever so less fixed to any one geographical area. I've seen Earth from space, didn't see any boarders. As well as all new and terrifying ways to annihilate ourselves.
Perceived through the framework of Developmental Psychology, as it was progressed by the above authors, and with an eye to the greater historical context this is all occurring in, it's all very predictable.
The "competing view", as you put it, that sees the world as a "collection of ad-hoc networks of ideas and social mechanisms, some forming, others dissolving -- clearly structured, but not at all hierarchical" is located at a stage of psychological development that is a full four stages above the one Hayden is speaking from.
To further support this refer to the works of Ken Wilber, particularly Integral Psychology it's end notes and references. Also, Jane Loevinger, Susan Cook-Greuter, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Abraham Maslow.
I am afraid that I am almost entirely ignorant of psychological literature, and I shall seek to remedy my deficiency in the directions that you have mentioned, with my grateful thanks for your suggestions.
You can give it a shot at [0]. I think it's well thought out written theory of how psychology develops. The core of their theory divides evolution of "holons" (simultaneous parts&wholes) on 2 axies: internal vs outer processes and individual vs society
Problems arise when a node stretches too far in a particular direction, or fuses to tightly with its current "holon" level and refuses to synthesize its axis to evolve.
I encourage you to read the first chapter or two before making a value judgement on the book.
>This second aspect is particularly dangerous in that he seeks to incite and provoke the very threat that he spends so much effort warning us about. He ruthlessly exploits our tribalistic, pack-animal ancestry, conjuring up hostile groups where none exist; engineering conflict in a callous game of divide-and-conquer.
I don't understand. In one breath, you're saying such a provocative statement is welcome and even "laudable," but in the next, you're saying it's dangerous.
> although his analysis of the situation is enormously telling
Also, when one is truly "being provocative," you're not allowed to use their statements as evidence to their opinions.
Can we just call a spade a spade and allow his xenophobic, terrified speculations to reflect him, a vestige of the boomer plight that's systematically eating away at the core of this nation?
Hey ... I don't (and didn't) run a massive government agency. Probably never will. (At least, not after writing this sort of specious crap).
That fact gives me a certain degree of latitude to (a) be inconsistent and (b) spout bullshit.
Asymmetric information warfare, (like guerilla warfare) offers the weaker party far more freedom to manoeuvre than the stronger party enjoys. In other words, it does not matter too much if I am rude, if I exaggerate, plain make stuff up, deploy dodgy humour and plainly bitter and twisted sarcasm (the lowest form of wit, to wit). Not that I would want to characterise all this guff as information warfare. I am just writing things down as I see them. Speak truth to power and all that. Plus, I get to be as ugly as I damn well like, whilst the "Elmer Fudd" comments never stop rolling for poor old Michael Hayden.
Indeed, I would be more inclined to see NSA bods as mates than enemies (the low-level techie ones, at least) -- and despite the many many many provocative statements that I have made in the past, I still feel like we are all, fundamentally, on the same team, working towards the same goals. Put me in the same position as Snowden, and I probably would not have made the decision to leak. I may have bitched about it a bit by the coffee machine though.
It is a pity that these leaks have occurred ... in the sense that they should never have had to happen in the first place. Of course the security services are going to spy on people. It is their job. ... but the fact that even one of their number felt anything less than rock-solid certainty in their mission and their methods speaks volumes about the way that they are going about their task.
Secondly, the villain of the piece isn't really the NSA -- or, indeed, any of the agencies from any given nation-state: It is the tidal-wave of technological change that is upsetting the status quo ... not the agencies who suddenly find their powers vastly enhanced by the past half-decade of progress.
When, in the past, I used to worry about that phenomenon of accelerating technological change which we glibly term "the singularity", I focused, along with everybody else, on the economic disruption that would come from the inevitable concentration of wealth
... never for one second did I consider that privacy and surveillance would roll along as a sort of bow wave, heralding the magnitude of the technological shocks still to come.
Ha! I like the whimsical philosophy. Next time a pedant tries to bowl over my point by enumerating my inconsistencies, I think I might just hold up my "poetic justice" card.
Greywolf Borealis in the Salon comments section put it better than I ever could:
> Hackers may be the terrorists of the future, but the real terrorist of today is the NSA. They are employing the same tools used by hackers to spy on United States citizens without probable cause or warrant. That is pretty scary.
Here's the thing about McCarthy, Communists were fucking everywhere. I don't mean ideological communists, I mean Soviet secret agents. They were in every level of government. They helped funnel the most secret of information to the USSR.
And that's not all, the Soviets were erecting a police state to control hundreds of millions of people in Eastern Europe. They had a tremendous military force with millions of soldiers. They were cranking out more tanks than had ever been in any war in history. And bombers. And they had nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to US cities in short order.
But none of that justified Senator McCarthy's abuses of power and violations of the rights of American citizens.
Here we are now faced with the threat of terrorism. Or to be more broad about it, the threat of jihadist radical Islamist fundamentalists (both in al qaeda and elsewhere). We know that these forces pose a serious threat to the US, just as the Soviets did. But is this danger on the same scale as the Cold War? Not even close. Does it justify abrogation of our cherished liberty and privacy? Never.
I frankly don't believe for an instance "terrorists" pose any substantial threat to the US. Even 911 is chump change on the scale of how much terror our own government had brought down on foreigners, and the idea that they used 3000 dead to justify a seize of power is just disgusting.
Look, I'm not comfortable with the NSA program but...
This is the second Salon article in 2 days that is way over sensationalized. I get that this is interesting to people on HN, but I think we could wait for better articles to upvote.
I feel there is a fundamental mismatch of what constitutes a matter of national security.
All (?) nation states have a right to prevent their own destruction, but I think the triggers that set off the immune system reaction are important - I, and I think a lot of HN, would say there is a minimum level of expected harm before a matter is consider national security level - lets say for arguments sake a loss of 2% GDP or 1,000 dead. And the motivation of the persons is irrelevant - so the banking crisis of 2008 would be considered a national security matter by me, but two maniacs hacking a soldier to death on the streets of the UK would not (a crime yes, murder, yes, possibly politically motivated yes - but not a matter that threatens our nationstate)
However Hayden seems to be the reverse - there is no minimum level of harm (one life is too many, one defaced website is too much) but the political motivations of the people is important - so his views in the banking crisis and murders on the street seem reversed.
Sometimes I wish that "Little brother" was a completely made up story. But lately many parts of it read like a script for what's happening at the moment. What is published by news lately makes me wonder what would happen the next time some big event in the US happens... the first "conspiracy theory" will be - NSA/FBI/... organised it (wouldn't be hard, people were given "support" before so that they can be arrested - just skip the arrest part) to prove more monitoring and control is needed. And could anyone really disagree at that point?
Some of that was already seen after the news about closing the embassies. There were many comments saying it's only a show, put on to "prove" that there really is a danger of something happening.
As long as we are going to try to be provocative: Hayden is responsible for most of the technical and policy changes at NSA (and presumably the same at CIA) which "caused" both Snowden and Manning, or at least turned then from minor discontents to 1) motivated leakers 2) with the means to leak massive amounts.
I personally support Snowden, but think Manning was indiscriminate and motivated mainly by personal issues, using public interest as a fig leaf.
Were I to hang Manning for treason, there would be a gallows to the left for Hayden. Arguably being much more senior and invested in the system, and presumed to be trustworthy and competent, his crimes were worse, even if less direct.
Didn't the CIA use cocaine trafficking to fund some black type ops?
Yes, and if the number of bankers recently convicted of widely exposed and very large money laundering operations (Wachovia, HSBC, etc) is any indication, they continue to do so. See also:
# Air America
# The Iran Contra affair.
# Mena Arkansas (CIA investigated itself and found no wrongdoing)
# BCCI (CIA money laundering)
# The Politics of Heroin - McCoy (book with lots of source citations)
# Crop spraying in Central America[1], (the policy efforts have directly[2] and indirectly[3] increases cocaine production, yet they continue.)
First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.
Michael Hayden was NSA director from 1999 to 2005. Michael Hayden literally was being paid a big salary to stop 9/11 from happening. How'd that go for him? Not so good.
Look at ALL THE TOOLS we now know the NSA Director really had at his disposal to prevent a foreign terrorist from hitting the US on 9/11. Micheal Hayden name's should down in along side infamous names like the Admiral who commanded the Pacific Fleet the day of Pearl Harbor.
Michael Hayden is the textbook definition of "the man who can't find his ass with two hands and an assmap." Hayden's picture should appear next to it in Famous Quotation books.
What will they do about the person or persons who disclosed the provenance of the information leading to the closing of multiple designated sites in countries in MENA?
Should we not protect the sources and methods involved in obtaining communications (not chatter, but actual intelligence) of such high valued targets as the head of the group we are most interested in, and a local organization with similar goals and growing scale?
I assume that whoever this person was is on the run, or at least not speaking from an official podium or floor of an illustrious deliberative body, right?
IIRC Bruce Schneier has made an excellent point too: "nothing to hide" becomes destructive the moment those in power get to decide what is the current definition of "illegal" or "dangerous". Just find all occurrences and shows of support of the $new_threat in the available personal histories and persecute at will.
For a glimpse at one possible future of U.S. democracy, I highly recommend this longform nonfiction article about Turkey [1]. It goes into detail about "...the resistance of what is commonly referred to as derin devlet, the 'deep state.'" Later on: "The deep state, historians say, has functioned as a kind of shadow government, disseminating propaganda to whip up public fear or destabilizing civilian governments not to its liking."
The indifference with which our intelligence apparatus treats foreigners could easily be (or already has?) turned on U.S. citizens if a similar "deep state" narrative develops in the U.S. All it would take are a couple loosely linked plots successfully pulled off by American citizens to construct a narrative (i.e. rationale) for turning the full forces of the intelligence apparatus onto all U.S. citizens.
The thing is, Hayden has a point. Geesh, never thought I'd be saying that!
Terrorism is an act of politics, not warfare. It's the use of stealth to deliberately attack civilian targets in order to affect political change. (My working definition only). The goal of terrorism isn't dead people, and you don't weigh a terrorist campaign by how many bodies it creates. Terrorism is all about striking fear into the heart of the population in order to get them to vote or behave differently. That's why the tactic of terrorism is so effective against modern democracies. With the help of mass media, a few crazy people can inflict fear on millions.
So sure, in response to the United States' government implementing draconian surveillance technology, some 20-somethings that live in their parent's basement and have no life (notice how quickly the stereotypes come?) will strike out stealthily in order to inflict fear on the population, to be noticed.
But what he's missing is what military leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan have learned: you don't put out fires by dumping gasoline on them. In other words, the asshole that approved of this idiotic idea to store everything possible and then search later is the last person in the world you want defending it. He's gone off the reservation and somebody should shut him up before he makes things worse.
If the establishment starts circling the wagons on this issue, and it looks like that's what is happening, it's going to drive a wedge between the people and the government. This is not a good thing for them to be doing, terrorist threat or not.
All these political and agency leaders are betting that the next time there's a terrorist attack -- and there will be -- that anybody who supported killing this program will be rounded up and laughed at. I'm not so sure about that. I wouldn't bet on it.
Terrorism has not been used in any well-defined way for years and is a demagoguery technique. The government has been throwing fuel on the "let's exploit our ability to terrify our citizens" since 9/11.
The next major "terrorist" movement will come from transparency groups, but not for the reasons you think. Actually, most of you would probably be against such groups.
Instead of focusing on government transparency, they will seek total transparency. They will track everything, everywhere. They will collect information about you and me. They will install cameras and trackers everywhere (in a decentralised fashion). They will link your online profiles together. They will make your address and phone number public.
The next major "terrorist" movement will force societal transparency. They won't be personally motivated. They will do it for the well-being of society as a whole. Privacy is evil, and we should get rid of it before it's too late. Information should flow freely, and it will.
I predict that transparency will be forced upon us all, not just the government. But most of you can't see it.
>“They may want to come after the US government, but frankly, you know, the dot-mil stuff is about the hardest target in the United States,” Hayden said
Is he trying to get .mil sites targeted? Does he understand psychology at all?
People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people.
As true today as ever... And unfortunately for us, at the moment, the balance is way to far in favor of "the people are scared of their government". People like Snowden and Manning risk moving the balance the other way, so of course high-ranking government official types will spazz out over this stuff. Transparency is anathema to corruption and abuse of power.
This is the next move. Criminalizing the opposition not because of their actions, but simply because they are the opposition. And it's not a response to Snowden, it has been decades in the making by slowly making everything that could potentially pose a threat a criminal offense.
It's only a matter of time before the question will be asked: "Are you now or have you ever been a hacker?"
It comes at 500 karma. You'll have to wait a while. And if you mean the article, then you'll never get downvote. There is no downvoting articles. Only flagging.
I will probably never get to 500 because the only way I can "downvote" is to post a challenging, dismissive, or otherwise negative comment. Which people don't really like. Since I don't care at all about karma, I also cannot be bothered to carefully craft intelligent-seeming pedagogery, to humble-brag, to spam, or any other form of whoring, subtle or blatant.
Oh well.
Karma-whoring will be counterproductive if the community doesn't solicit/reward such behaviour. And this attitude of the community has more or less thwarted karma-whoring till now. We'll see how this works out in future.
Really? How do you realise it is carma whoring on such a high niveau portal? I see many comments stating the obvious getting their upvotes, not contributing anything useful to a topic. It is still carma whoring, just on a high niveau. This is what such a system creates and it forces you to scroll more to find the really useful comment. I know it works, I did it too ;)
Removing the system completly while integrating a clever report-system would have been more useful here imho.
Generally formulas with no application or truth to them are avoided. What I think you mean is "With great power, comes great responsibility" It's subtly different, but "the devil is in the details."
tl;dr government != country.