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Comment by java-man | Hacker News Reader

we could elect sane leaders...

And that's a novel idea when they are on the campaign trail... until they start getting daily national security briefings and learn about the attempted attacks supposedly foiled by good SIGINT. No one wants to be the president who turns that firehose off and "causes the next 9/11". I believe that is what happened with Obama.

It's more naive than novel, because it assumes that everyone who came before were acting in bad faith.

Given the bumbling numbskulls who still manage to set off bombs, are we really that sure they're stopping anyone?

Yeah, we're pretty sure.

Like Obama? I remember how the NSA was shut down entirely during his tenure, man that was great.

physicist for president! elect Lisa Randall, or Sean Carroll.

provided, of course, that they agree.

Merkel is a physicist. She's great.

But then again many physicists were also convinced Nazi officers.

you mean Heisenberg?

The name that springs to mind is von Braun.

Von Braun was an engineer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun

> But then again many physicists were also convinced Nazi officers.

If the Germans would have won the war, we'd probably celebrate those officers :/ All the torture and killing would be spun as "necessary evil" (if it even came to light), and further investigations would be blocked by the government. How we perceive the past is...complicated.

Where is this love for NSA coming from?

Or how he shutdown the drones gaming unit, and his constant efforts towards peace in the middle east by refusing to destabilize countries, etc. Great man.

I also remember his campaign to reign in 'bush era spying' over the next 8 years the knob was turned to 11.

I don't expect much from a person that won a Noble piece prize then proceeded to drop 26,000 bombs in 2016 a bomb every 20 minutes.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/americ...

As a matter of interest, do you believe that the sane option is to shut down the NSA entirely?

That's a pretty outrageous claim. Do you have any evidence this is possible?

leaders are well insulated from such knowledge for their (legal) safety.

The president is immune from legal liability.

I was including all leaders. The president is just one of them. None of them have nearly the level of knowledge we give them credit for.

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