Eh. It would be better not to make people feel afraid for expressing those views. I held them once, before NSA’s bad behavior came to light. In many ways I still do.
The argument goes like this: any student of war will tell you that the most important factor in warfare is intelligence. Strength is of course a requirement, but it’s secondary. It was why Japan was defeated at Midway, for example — that situation arose only because we knew for a fact what their plans were, thanks to breaking their comms.
In that light, since humans seem no different from a hundred years ago till now, it seems rather better to be top dog than to be someone else’s dog. And that makes it my duty to keep my country firmly in that place.
... at least, that’s how I felt growing up. Those feelings have translated more into “we have to be in this for each other, not for governments.” It feels like the Internet is one of the last bastions of true freedom — free from employers, free from identity. You can even make a fortune if you’re sufficiently lucky and talented.
It feels hollow, though. Part of the reason for the feelings I expressed above was that it fulfills a deep primal desire to be a part of something greater than yourself, to be aligned to a common goal, something more than just chasing a paycheck.
I wrote this mainly to give some context about how someone might be ok with the idea of building surveillance software, but feelings are always a complex and multifaceted thing. And we’re all still learning what it means to be human and to contextualize our place in the world. Is this really the best way to spend our time? And yet we’re forced to, if someone else has a club they want to club you with.
One closing point: the best way to change an organization is from the inside. If someone was truly worried about the NSA, joining them seems like one of the most effective things you could do. Because you truly believe it could be a tool of good, rather than a dystopaian weapon. There’s a reason idealists like Snowden were attracted to the job.
I hope this wasn’t too philosophical. Mostly it’s just hard to determine what you should even do with your life. It feels like no matter what you do, there will be people who hate it. So why bother defending your own point of view? Yet that feels like a cheap way out.