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Comment by csandreasen | Hacker News Reader

> Anyone who intends subversive action can be targetted. They can be approached and manipulated by an agent who knows everything about them. The would-be-subversive can be nudged, sabotaged or flat out blackmailed.

You've just highlighted why the average American is scared of terrorists but not the NSA: 3000 people did die on 9/11. There is no evidence of the NSA targeting Americans, or nudging/sabotaging/blackmailing them.

The military could easily storm Washington DC, topple the government, execute every Congressman, impose martial law and announce the start of a new regime under the sole authority of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. You'd have to be pretty nuts to worry that's actually going to happen.

Also, referring to people who disagree with you as ignorant isn't generally the best way to change their minds.

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Our government has done exactly those things. The FBI compelled Martin Luther King Jr to kill himself [1]. You are ignorant. Ignorance is the inescapable reality of a mind that is more finite than the world. It's not an insult unless you're ignorant of that reality. Otherwise it's just the feedback necessary to remedy the relevant ignorance for the problem at hand.

1: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/20/martin-luther-king-...

First off, Martin Luthor King didn't kill himself, so you can't really say that the FBI compelled him to do so.

Secondly, you're using the actions taken by a domestic law enforcement agency more than half a century ago as evidence that a foreign intelligence agency is going to blackmail Americans, neglecting the difference in missions between the two agencies, the changes in legal authorities since the 60s, the fact that multiple generations of Americans with differing cultural values have come into and left government service, etc.

Thirdly, calling someone ignorant is an insult. I'd suggest consulting the forum guidelines linked at the bottom of the page.

Calling you anything you wish not to be called is an insult. You just called me ignorant without using the word. Does that make it less insulting? Do the forum guidelines say: don't call people ignorant? I can write "person who doesn't know relevant information" in that case. But soon that too will be an insult. I'm not seeing this avoidance of potentially insulting statements going anywhere useful. It just leads to the continual recycling of words for any idea that could possibly accumulate a negative connotation.

I only gave you one example. There are plenty but I don't think it's important. The motivation is there, for the protection of national security, to manipulate anyone who opposes the status quo. To thwart their efforts.

Martin Luther King Jr was pressured to kill himself. That he resisted this pressure doesn't mean that he wasn't pressured. We can quibble about definitions but I think a charitable reader is more than capable of understanding what I meant.

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