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Comment by scrumption | Hacker News Reader

>Like what? I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about here.

Uh, the constant mass shootings that have occurred over the past year wherein, 100% of the time, the perp was already known to police and FBI and had a very public troubling online presence detailing their years of mental instability and virulent racism?

>intelligence agencies don't talk about their activities, even their successes, for very good reason.

The hell are you talking about? The FBI is constantly publicly congratulating themselves when they "foil" a "plot" their agent provocateurs have cooked up.

https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/ep-31-fake-isis-plots-and...

The NSA doesn't like to brag as much as the FBI does but they're clearly just as responsible for dropping the ball on domestic terrorism every other week when yet another mass shooting happens...

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> The hell are you talking about?

Crossing into incivility like this isn't ok on HN and will eventually get you banned, so please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do this. Please don't do political flamewars on HN either.

So you're saying the NSA isn't spying on Americans effectively enough?

They have not justified the existence of these programs -- if they were efficacious they would still be wrong, in my opinion, but luckily for me my opinion never has to enter into it because as it stands it's just a double whammy of a 1) massively unethical 2) giant waste of money.

So yeah, even if #2 wasn't in play I'd still be against it.

> Uh, the constant mass shootings

I think your point is sound, but I'm not sure this is the best example. Regular shootings are causing a lot more deaths, although I doubt the NSA has any interest in stopping either one (and of course, their official charge doesn't include either one).

Right, but what else is the NSA ostensibly carrying out all this domestic espionage for if not to preempt domestic terrorism (which by and large has been dominated by mass shootings in recent years, it's been a bit since we had e.g. a bombing), which by all accounts is at its highest point in recent memory?

>but what else is the NSA ostensibly carrying out all this domestic espionage for if not to preempt domestic terrorism

Yeah... foreign terrorism only occurs when foreign entities stand at the border and throw things into our country. LMAO.

Is there a reason you're being so intentionally mean throughout this thread? Take a deep breath, maybe a quick walk around the block. Your points are being lost because your vitriol is so overpowering.

It's funny watching what is essentially the equivalent of the Yankees getting criticized for not scoring enough touchdowns this season by people who are dead serious and consider this topic of grave concern. If these people aren't even able to Google the NSA before venturing their opinion on something so complicated, then it seems unlikely just giving them the basic facts is actually going to do something. People should feel bad about this level of willful ignorance.

Hmmm. Well, to utilize your metaphor, maybe it's more like people asking the 1919 White Sox aren't scoring enough touchdowns.

On one hand, scoring touchdowns (in this metaphor, preventing domestic crime) isn't their charge.

But on the other, they are also engaged primarily in self-serving funny business instead of hitting home runs (ie, protecting people from foreign aggression and securing the telecommunications systems of the USA).

>they are also engaged primarily in self-serving funny business

Such as?

Yeah, I mean I'm with you, but again: the NSA is not charged with preventing domestic crimes. It's a foreign intelligence agency.

You two are talking past each other. Yes, the NSA is a foreign intelligence agency. But then why is it spying on citizens? Ostensibly to prevent bad things from happening. Yet bad things are happening, that could presumably be stopped with information gained from said spying. But no one is using the information that way. So why should we let them continue spying?

I think that sums it up.

I think there's another sliver to be added, though, because the NSA can still give the excuse that the answer to

> why is it spying on citizens

...is that it's doing that to prevent foreign attacks, not eg. mass shootings.

Furthermore, even if it were doing anything useful with its domestic spying, such as preventing domestic crime, obviously we'd all rather address plain ole' shootings, which take many more lives than mass shootings.

> NSA [is] just as responsible for dropping the ball on domestic terrorism every other week

Domestic terrorism isn't the NSA's purview. Their job is signals intelligence against the rest of the world.

Ummmmm. How do they achieve that by tapping 500 million local calls? Let me guess, the locals call rest of the world.

Their claim is that it's in order to listen to the conversations where a foreign person of interest is the other party. :)

Don't get me wrong, I don't like the surveillance either, but domestic terrorism isn't their job. Sure, if they notice something, they will pass it along, but it's not what they are looking for (I believe). If there's been a proverbial ball dropped, it's probably more accurate to blame the FBI than the NSA.

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