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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

That's true and that's unfortunate. At the same time, how do you balance national security versus avoiding situations like this one? One of my takeaways from studying the McCarthy era was that there really were a lot of spies and communist sympathizers in America at the time. It wasn't some figment of someone's imagination. Likewise, I think we have good reason to proceed under the assumption that China is trying to infiltrate our institutions. Because they are.

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[Impact per unit of spying] X [number of spies caught] - [impact per unit of innocent person being impacted] X [number of innocent people falsely accused] = net impact to society

Typically, the first part of the equation is wildly overestimated because by stopping spies in 1 area, they just find another way to do what they want to do and the impact happens anyways. Or the threat evolves over time but the policies do not resulting in negative side-effects and very little benefit anymore (e.g. the TSA)

This was my thought as well. The comparison isn't exact, but this feels like a War on Drugs situation: you're never going to stamp out all spying, and as you try, a lot of innocent (or at least non-harmful) people will get swept up in the process and their lives destroyed.

Now, I think policing espionage is more valuable than policing drugs, and the dynamics certainly all aren't the same. But I think the bar for making espionage accusations -- just the accusations themselves -- needs to be much higher than it is.

The “impact per unit of spying” buries a big term in there. It effects 330 million Americans, while a wrongful accusation affects just a few.

If you are really that concerned about “national security” you can just start employing American nationals only. If that is not enough and anyone looking a bit Asian can look suspicious to you then start employing only white christian americans.

This what overt nationalism and fear of losing supremacy can lead to.

But we know that this didn’t work before so that’s why America has become the place where talents from all over the world come. If we go back to how it was in 1920s then why shouldn’t go back even further and start burning witches again?

Im pretty sure Chen is naturalized, otherwise i dont think he would have been allowed back in the country. TLDR, he applied for gov grant money, and failed to disclose foreign offiliations(in China). He refused to unlock his laptop to agents after taking it on a trip to China, and later when he was offered a plea deal so he could return to work, he refused to cooperate. Subsequently charges were dropped(and Chen returned to work) because we as Americans value the right to privacy over finding out what was on Mr. Chen's laptop. It's not racist, and it's ironic you paint it that way given the modern day holocaust happening in China right now.

I’m not sure that is the right takeaway. The US espouses freedom. Unless someone is actually spying, their personal beliefs and political affiliations shouldn’t be subject to government scrutiny.

That statement is nigh ungrammatical, anyway illogical. "is actually spying" is a present tense. "shouldn't [unless]" is either a past tense, thus an illogical consequent to the present tense, or it is a hypothetical, irrealis or desiderative subjunctive in which case it merely implies that someone should not be "spying", in effect. This offers no objective criterion for the government's scrutiny, and the article does not point out what has gone wrong.

Clearly they conducted a background check and disagreed with the expert whether their findings were valid (fun fact, valid translates German valide or gültig, the latter somehow akin to guilty).

This may be well within their rights, eg. if they tried to impose harder interpretation of regulations. It can be criminal if they basicly ignored the expert for wanting to win, or it could be at least negligent if they have fundamentally misinterpreted the law. This is not strictly decidable and rests on the shoulders of the arbiters of truth.

(Another fun fact, gain say could be akin to German Gegenrede, as in against, or to French gagner as in win, German Gewinn. See also: Einrede, a legal terminus; sich etwas einreden "to ellude oneself"; -say in that sense must be akin to sake, forsaken, compare Widersacher "antagonist", akin to adv. wither, "contra")

> "shouldn't [unless]" is either a past tense, thus an illogical consequent to the present tense, or it is a hypothetical, irrealis or desiderative subjunctive in which case it merely implies that someone should not be "spying", in effect.

Could you explain this a bit more to a non-native speaker like me? I'm assuming it's not a past tense for certain. From the second definition in [1] (used in auxiliary function to express obligation, propriety, or expediency) and the examples, it seems to me "shouldn't" here could mean that "be subject to government scrutiny" is the opposite of "obligation, propriety, or expediency". I understand the sentence as: if someone is not spying, subjecting their personal beliefs and political affiliations to government scrutiny is not the correct thing to do. Then why would it

> implies that someone should not be "spying"?

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/should

There still are spies all over the place, so I don't know what's all that probative about the fact that there really were Soviet spies in the McCarthy era.

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