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Comment by themckman | Hacker News Reader

Why shouldn't they exist?

The primary point of my comment was to remind people that most HN readers are very against cyber capabilities/surveillance/etc - so when someone calls for those agencies to do something, it is important to remember that people are against those agencies even existing, having any capabilities at all.

Now as for providing you the argument for why they should or shouldn't exist, I think it's political and I like HN's move away from political discussion so let's not have it. But I think it's not going too far to ask people to be explicit about some of the contradictions. If you look at the comment phrasing I "suggested", you'll see it's a contradiction. I don't mean to resolve that contradiction but we shouldn't ignore it - my point was to write the contradiction explicitly.

One possible way to address your question briefly would be with reference to some films and books. but we don't need to answer your question in order to acknowledge the contradiction and I wouldn't like to answer it (one way or another - why they should, why they shouldn't exist.) it's good for HN to step back from politics a bit so let's leave it at that.

That was quite a long-winded way of saying that you don't really have any argument against such agencies.

Hiding this behind the 'no politics discussion' experiment was a bit odd though.

1984; the film "Brazil" (1985); "The Lives of Others" (about the Stasi); Snowden's film and revelations; the history of dictatorships and surveillance, etc; I could also make many specific arguments.

But my point wasn't any of this: just that most of HN strongly feels against surveillance and the capabilities mentioned.

I don't want to take a side I just want the contradiction to be put front and center in these cases. It will lead to everyone on HN having a better position, when they do eventually take one. I still think we don't need to have that argument here (or in most cases where it comes up).

I'm not against these agencies if the are actively targeting criminals with a clearly defined scope. Drag net surveillance of innocent people is a different matter.

I don't think most HN user oppose the use intelligence capabilities in various three letter organizations, just that those orgs should be constrained by the rule of law in some meaningful way.

Most HN users are quite upset in the comments under any story about any capabilities, by any organization anywhere in the world, and regardless of their cooperation with America (where the three letter organizations I quoted are from) and regardless of their legality.

I put in "backdoor found" as a search query here https://hn.algolia.com/ after modifying it to search the last year.

The first article I clicked had this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10889008

which says:

>myth_buster 333 days ago [-]

>Please don't give away ideas. You be surprised how well these things would resonate with layperson.

Isn't it clear that they don't want these agencies to be able to have the support of populations?

I don't think I overstate the case that most HN users are against surveillance and related capabilities by anyone.

I like HN's move away from political discussion

I'm not sure if you're referring to attention paid to political discussions in general or the Political Detox Week. If the latter, the week-long experiment was terminated early. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251

the whole purpose of the detox week was to move conversation away from too many politics - so while the experiment is over, the improvement everyone saw leaves lessons we can remember. HN was just better.

Gotcha. I thought that might be the case from your phrasing. There have quite a few people who weren't aware it had been rescinded or assumed that it was a permanent thing. I appreciate your desire and efforts to focus the discussion.

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