Hacker News Reader

Comment by buttcoin | Hacker News Reader

Would they? Acknowledging attacks could give clue to operations in play. They're certainly not going to risk sources and or collection that's proven valuable. And to be fair there have been a good amount of publicly acknowledged plot disruptions.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/09/05/german-police-arrest...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsuccessful_terrorist...

View on HN

Except for this German one, I haven't found another story on that Wiki page that wasn't clearly some other source.

Except you can't prove that. Are they going to directly say, Satelite XYZ in geostationary orbit was monitoring data link 111322, during which we captured intelligence on platform 2342342 which resulted in a lead then passed on to domestic intelligence agencies. Nope, not going to happen. Everyone here likes to talk about the government and their parallel construction when it supports a negative notion, yet forget that it's also a legitimate tool to protect origination sources.

There is no need to prove someone's claim false, they must prove it true.

eg: Except that the government has claimed that they have foiled attacks and those claims have been shown to be bullshit.

So, given that they have made these claims and they are false, what conclusions should we draw?

A. The government gave us false information to reassure us that their blanket information gathering programs work, they cant tell us operational details or made some other mistake(even though operation details of various programs leak like a sieve.)

B. Their argument is specious, and someone made a list to prop up a program they do not have evidence for.

Should by your own logic of There is no need to prove someone's claim false, they must prove it true." apply to their comment to?

Just trying to understand as Point A and B lack the same evidence.

All claims need evidence to support them, its just that the poster said that the government is doing great work, too bad we cant show or prove that they are(citation needed, big time.)

There is no need to argue for balance in the discussion to protect our government, they clearly can operate these programs without our approval or understanding.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com