Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team

> I know there's large chunks of our population that would welcome some other countries stepping up >t would certainly save us thousands of military personnel that have been lost

The US spends more on its military than the next 30+ countries combined of which only one is not a NATO ally.

We in Europe seem quite content with the situation. We get the fruits of the american sacrifice, but not the economic and cultural burden. We spend all that money on social issues in our little paradise. Then we either point our fingers at the US and naively assume our freedom & security comes from us being such darn nice people. Not realizing it is the United States who are walking the perimeter of our little paradise of moral superiority.

But outside of Europe, there are lots of countries who definitely want more power and standing in the world (China, Russia, India). And the economic imbalance from our history is wearing off.

So financially, the military budgets are going to look more similar. The West will only keep its dominance in terms of culture and values, if we (Europe) and the other NATO allies start contributing our fair share. As a side-bonus: this would give us more influence in the more questionable aspects of the US military strategy. But like the spoiled child of rich parents, i doubt we will figure that out in time. The US might end up in a situation not that different from Germany after WWI or WWII.

I'm not arguing it's fair. But i don't have to explain to an American that everyone always roots for the underdog. And the US hasn't been the underdog for a long long time.

problem is, that's the excuse that's always going to be given by the intelligence community for even the most obviously unconstitutional intrusive privacy invading stuff, like the NSA's "opticnerve" program.

Ans: Tens of thousands of NSLs and other secret actions make it really improbable that a small set of refusals to cooperate will result in great harm. Or that the game the government is playing is really about "bad guys" most of the time.

"No really, this is about an actual bad guy this time!"

The government has lied repeatedly about this stuff. It has covered up the fact that it performs unlawful surveillance on its "sovereign people". If this is about a bad guy this time, rather than all the other times when it has been lies or cover-ups, then that's just too damned bad, isn't it? See also: The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

I have a fundamental disgust with arguments that attempt to appeal to blind loyalty. That "sovereignty of the people" you wrote about has been invoked too many times by scoundrels to be respected.

Sure, there are indeed bad guys who are trying to kill us. But that doesn't justify a wholesale surveillance state, or tens of thousands of NSLs, or secret courts. That's just stuff the powers-that-be want, and have used the bad guys as an excuse to get.

We have warrants for that. Subpoena Yahoo for specific records. I'm not willing to trade the freedom of an entire country for a single investigation. This isn't an episode of 24 and there is no Jack Bauer.

The fourth amendment was sold as follows:

> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

I'm not a constitutional lawyer. I'm sure the actual amendment can be interpreted to mean whatever George W and Co want it to mean. But that's not how it was sold, and this government is not legitimate as far as I'm concerned. Not as long as it runs dragnet surveillance over the American people. Snowden is a patriot and the U.S gov't is betraying the public.

The judiciary is not meaningfully overseeing the parts of the state where law enforcement and national security intelligence mix. The FISC is a great example: it pisses off the agents and attorneys who have to deal with it, because it imposes an unholy amount of drag: they're trying to do their jobs, catch bad guys, etc.---and a FISC submission takes weeks of full-time work. But the FISC only exercises drag, not control. It can't steer---we see this because it never refuses a request. I suspect that's all one-sided proceedings can do, given the way we train our lawyers and judges. So it fails the needs of the citizens, and it doesn't protect liberty.

The FISC, and NSLs, will someday be looked at with the same light as Adams' Alien & Sedition Acts: as fundamental betrayals of the American promise by an executive too scared of what might go wrong to trust the country to go right.

Look, there's a lay assault on their legal and democratic authority: NSLs are not obviously a legitimate exercise of Federal authority. And for all that, if I were at the FBI and chasing a terrorist cell on American soil, I'd use one in an instant.

It's difficult to reconcile this idea of democratic sovereignty with the utter secrecy in which the operations under discussion are performed.

This is imho the untold truth about why most communist / socialist regimes failed: people at all levels of society started doing their work gradually worse and worse, pissed off and stressed out by the lack of freedom and constant interference from state organs, until everything collapsed, and people now live in better economies and freer because they've destroyed their previous systems. Yeah, most of the people who performed such "low level sabotage" will not even recognize to themselves that they did it. And yeah, bad governments were also helped to fail by external interference and external sabotage, but imho a "socialist regime where the people would truly believe in socialism/communism" could have worked out and had good economic performance, problem is that when "good economic performance" can only be had at too high of a cost of "individual personal freedom", people will start, even subcounsciously motivated, without admitting even to themselves what they are doing, and with insect-like non-communicative coordination, to slowly and methodically weaken the system they live in from within, until it crumbles, even at the cost of their own lives sometimes.

This was America's secret weapon that helped "win the cold war" - people's inner "instinct for freedom or death" - thank god we all have it and a race of subhumans lacking it has not yet been engineered! It might also be the reason why so many Americans "voted for Trump", though this was probably engineered by some really smart "puppet masters" - the guy is clearly a "man of the establishment" despite it's clown persona...

Of course, there is no "monument to the lazy and drunk soviet worker that helped take down communism". And there will be no monument for the Google employee that writes a subtle bug in the "government reporting module XYZ" :) Of course, if the gov doesn't abuse its power and asks for too much, that poor programmer might not be so "overwhelmed" by it's duties so as to make stupid "mistakes" with dire consequences...

There absolutely should be mechanisms to challenge or appeal against any action of government, and when there isn't as seemed to be the case with NSLs that's a very good indication that the system is being grossly abused by government agencies.

Don't do it in an obtuse manner; let them know in advance that you will be sending it following the meeting, maybe even get them to suggest the wording of it if you aren't convinced of the security of internal mail.

It's easy for either side to forget the exact points raised during a conversation like that, so good for everyone to have a written record.

In the event that you are asked to do something illegal, it may be illegal or inadmissible to mention that you were ordered to do so by the government (Matrix-Churchill trial passim)

Edit: But seriously, I'd take the job loss in a heart beat if my company was doing this crap.

This is why I've given it some thought. This is something that you probably need to spend a little time thinking about if you're in a similar situation, because things are not going to get better.

It's a personal decision. I can't tell you it's worthwhile to quit your job or risk legal action. But if you're responsible for the privacy and rights of millions of people, you should consider what your actions will be.

Let me guess, you believe all government actions are lawful. All lawful actions are righteous and justified. The only permissible way to change the system is through the system. Did I get the gist of your morality?

In which case, keep voting and I'm sure you will see the changes you want reflected in legislation just so they can be ignored in by secret courts and intelligence services.

In the real world, people respond to threats (e.g prison). That's what the government uses. Why are we expected to behave differently?

"I just did what the authority figure told me to" is one the oldest excuses in the book.

2/ In any case "the law" is only the result of a very imperfect process; it's not the word of God: it can be changed (it often is) and it doesn't have any special moral value. Your moral code is yours, it's dictated by your conscience and should not be taken whole from texts written by other people.

In the 20th century, many crimes have been committed by people following the law, and not just in Nazi Germany. French Jews were arrested and delivered to the German authorities by members of the French police who were simply following orders. The ones giving the orders have indeed been tried after the war, but not the ones following them; in fact they never had to suffer any consequence for their actions. But the truth is, had there been no cops willing to participate, there would have been no deportations.

"I'm just doing my job" or "I was just following orders" is NOT a valid excuse. It's a cop out (pun intended).

"Privilege" doesn't enter into it. Everybody has the option to do the right thing, if they're willing to accept the consequences. Not everybody will of course, but there's nothing truly preventing one from doing so.

There, fixed that for you. That small detail is why your attractive idea wouldn't work in real life. How many years it took for the car industry scandal about tampering with emission tests to be revealed? And it only got to ruin the the reputations of the few engineers involved in the forgery.

I fear you may be making a potentially dangerous assumption about how engineering works in a compartmentalized environment. Engineers do not always know the purpose of the systems on which they work.

Once upon a time in Texas I spent several years working on a system to run a binary sample through a series of plugins that produced analysis of the binary sample. I was told that this was to help detect malware - and it could certainly do that.

Did I know that for certain? No. Were there other possible uses, such as to determine how detectable a given piece of experimental malware was? Yes. Did I have any way, shape, form, manner, or means of finding out what 100% of uses were? No.

A lot of software has more than one possible use.

Similarly for surveillance, if you're only able to implement crude solutions people will be disgusted. "So you're saying Yahoo was compromised because no good engineers wanted to work there due to government interference?" We don't know whether it's true, but the assumption is already damning.

Plenty of HN posts laud people for working for the government, the entity which engages in war crimes, torture, and mass surveillance.

Seems you're assuming the white hat hacker is from USA. I'm not so sure the NSA is going to be able to silence a white hat hacker from say Russia, or anywhere out of USA for that matter.

He doenn't live in the US. Once he realizes this is going on, he'll disclose.

That's part of the beauty of open source - once the cat is out of the bag, there is no getting it back in.