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Comment by RRRA | Hacker News Reader

If you fear signing this, _and don't_, you really don't understand long risk mitigation and are just preparing yourself to be scared even more in the long run.

Just like privacy doesn't exist without others, signing this will at least help by giving strength, and privacy, in numbers.

Leaving this resistance alone, as if they were some heroes you respect but won't stand by, is really a cowardly way of being anti society and skipping your citizen duty.

First they came for them, etc... You know how it ends.

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Morality is difficult to stand up for. Civil rights was tough to fight for (still is). The right to privacy and govt transparency in the face of tyranny is another of those difficult battles.

Let's be like the founders and stand up to our government [1].

[1] List of quotes:

- The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government." --Patrick Henry

- "Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." --George Washington

- "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves." --William Pitt in the House of Commons November 18, 1783

I don't know what long risk mitigation is, but I'm offended. /s

But seriously, nobody at the NSA is going to place* you on a watch list because you are part of a small vocal minority that raised support online for Snowden, a wanted traitor and saboteur of the USA.

*There is however a good chance that the money grubbing bastards at one of the third party contractors the NSA eats up reports and analytics from will profile you into something you are not (or lets face it, you are) and that will be ingested into our intelligence pipeline.

I'd be very surprised if the NSA doesn't collect these signatures for later matching. Doesn't mean that you'll have black vans following you around because of it - they have lots of lists for all kinds of things.

The most obvious application in this case is that you would be automatically disqualified for a security rating in the future. You'd never get to know the reason of course, you'd just be rejected.

EDIT: I still think people should sign of course. Let's not let them win by default by letting our fear control us. Do you really want that security rating if these are the requirements?

Pretty sure regularly visiting hacker news would also raise a flag... I mean seriously, they were flagging people who were on the Linux mailing list and what not.

In the end though, if they want you to work for them, security clearance will be granted.

>But seriously, nobody at the NSA is going to place* you on a watch list because you are part of a small vocal minority that raised support online for Snowden

I agree. They will not place you on a watch list because you support Snowden.

They will place you on a watch list because they can.

Good point. At some point in life you won't be able to run away from standing up for what you believe in (at perhaps small or medium risk to self) or else direr consequences may result.

If you believe he acted ethically, then sign the thing with me.

In addition, history is long and tech grows fast. I imagine at some future point and well within our lifetimes it will be trivial to infer our political attitudes and assign semi-anonymous screen names to real persons just by scrapping the web of 2016. Especially since absolute certainty of guilt is not the highest priority in these cases.

And since there's very real possibility of having a lunatic at the helm of government at some point, yes, one had better speak up now.

Thank you. Signed.

This is a great point which I completely agree with.

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