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Comment by pm90 | Hacker News Reader

> Of course the exact boundaries of what is acceptable and what is not should be fiercely debated.

What makes most people uneasy, and especially those of us who work in tech, is that many police departments and 3 letter agencies have routinely abused the trust that people put in them. If you want the citizenry to have trust and faith in law enforcement, they have to demonstrate a desire to not break constitutional rights when they deem fit to do so.

I genuinely don't understand why these agencies wouldn't try to build a good relationship with the citizenry they are supposed to be protecting. It often seems like we live in a very dangerous society and everything we say or do is being monitored by someone and may be used maliciously. That itself is a very terrible thing to live with.

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I think it's important to distinguish between individual abuse and systemic abuse.

Every one of those agencies has had, in their history, at least some cases of individual abuse (e.g. one particular individual abusing their power). This is unavoidable (because these agencies employ humans, and humans are assholes sometimes) but as long as the situation is appropriately handled at the organizational level (the responsible party is reprimanded in an appropriate way, e.g. let go, tried, ... and practices and protocols are put into place to deal with and prevent these kind of situations) this is OK, because the agency operating is still a net win for humanity.

Most people who are paranoid about these kind of things are so because the media loves to pick up these stories and hype them up and spread fear -- but I don't think it's that much of a problem.

The thing that's really a worry (and that media usually does not report on) is when abuse happens in a systemic fashion, e.g. agencies bending the interpretation of the law to extend their reach. Incidentally, this is exactly what palantirs software is designed to help with, because it can actually enforce these rules.

That is an excellent point. Its much more sensational when you have a few bad apples but exposing a rot within an organization isn't as "newsworthy". Besides, if the corruption spreads far enough, it might be able to actively silence its critics (e.g. Nixon's shenanigans).

Perhaps a systemic fear of Government overreach is embedded in the DNA of the American people. I would argue that a healthy criticism is very important; but paranoia can be dangerous and unproductive.

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