NSA Looking to Exploit Internet of Things, Including Biomedical Devices

That answer would work if NSA was created after 9/11 or as part of the PATRIOT act or whatever. What was the NSA doing before? And don't you think NSA would still be doing that? My point is that NSA doesn't need terrorism to legitimize their operations. The reasons NSA came in to existence in the first place is still relevant and enough to legitimize itself.

This argument has been dispatched so thoroughly, for so many centuries that what you really did there was establish that you haven't been doing your reading. But rather than just refer you to Plato, let me address your exact situation, and we'll do it with a nice particular-general-particular teaching strategy.

The US military could lay down its arms. Likely we would need all of the peoples of the earth to lay down their arms. I assure you, no one wants peace more than a professional soldier. Lets assume it happens. But there will still be people able to rally the masses with nationalistic messages. Even if we burned every book on the making of guns, arrows, missiles, guidance systems, deleted all the information from the collective conciousness, we would still have these bad actors. And their followers would be incentivized to develop means of carrying out their nationalistic ambitions. And then there will be war. Even if it's with stones, they will make spears, arrows, crossbows, grenades, muskets, rifles, rockets, guided missiles and drones.

This generally comes down to simple engineering at a world scale: a prestressed sysem is more predictable than an unstressed system and often requires fewer resources to maintain. The threat of violence is more persuasive than violence itself.

So, onto the closing particular: the NSA. Someone will collect signals intelligence. Are you seriously asserting your government alone should abstain? Do you assert that the Germans, French, Chinese, or Pakistanis, Indians, Russians, Brazilians, or Laotians aren't clever enough to do sigint or don't have the incentives to engage in it, given the insane gradients of wealth and power across national borders?

So, yes, regulation is key. And the social outcry sends a strong signal itself. The regulations are merely an attempt to condense the social consensus to paper. The people who work at the NSA read the headlines. They read blogs. They read a lot. right? They're in sigint. They read a lot. I'm fairly certain there's are many very active debates within the NSA, at every level, about just exactly what is it that they should be doing.

Does that mean society should give them a pass? No, of course not. Holler loud. But next time, before you holler, maybe read up on Plato or Epicurus or Kant or Bertrand Russell, or somebody. And holler something new.

What brobinson is suggesting is that a hypothetical hacker, thousands of miles away in front of a console, could accomplish a murder with no other physical agents involved. i.e. no drones, hitmen, etc. just remotely commandeering existing systems already in everyday use.