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Comment by wmeredith | Hacker News Reader

"Rules for thee, but not for me" may actually be the oldest trick in the book. Google's hypocrisy here is disappointing, but not surprising in the least.

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Also, the CIA destroyed the torture video tapes to prevent embarrassment and further prosecutions of it's employees. So it kinda goes both ways.

You are demonstrating scary level of Moral Confusion.

CIA operates in the National interest, at least hypothetically. Google can operate against national interest to make money, or 'whoever pays most' interest.

The people of USA have granted CIA privileges of secrecy and legal protections explicitly to do ShadyShit. No-one ever gave Google permission to do ShadyShit.

CIA employees go through background checks, US Gov can fire head of CIA for being a dick. Google hires whoever the fuck they want and US government can't fire head of Google no matter what he does.

If Google is ever found doing 1% of what CIA does legally (and there ain't much!), they need to be in jail real fast.

> US Gov can fire head of CIA for being a dick.

Just don't go driving around Dallas in an open top limo if you do.

Even on your own terms, why is this a "scary" moral confusion? If its just a matter of being in a different country with the wrong economics to end up being surveiled and harrased and ultimately dead in the jungle with the rest of my family, out of as you say U.S. "National interest", that's much more arbritrary than it is moral. Not everyone is American.

But I guess, those countries "shouldn't have been doing it in the first place" right?

No. Destruction of evidence of wrongdoing is illegal whether the government does it or Google. CIA is not exempt from US laws.

Otherwise they would be more like the Iranian Republican Guard -- where raping their own citizens apparently is okay.

Do you support that? I don't.

Governments have other ways of removing people. Capitalists and corporations are supper easy to get along with, all they care about is money. Bits of paper with powerful geometry, well known faces and numbers on them. The bigger the number the better! No need to assassinate or accident the capitalist. Any vision for the future of mankind, even the most modest of ideals, they come after profit. The slightest nudge from law makers could shake the biggest corporations. The CEO would quit himself to prevent further disruption of the cosy relationship.

Morality and legality are the same, when you consider yourself to be on the same side as the law.

How much do your morals swing as you travel different countries or even states? Age of consent being an example of morality - the legal age varies by country but it would be sociopathetic if someone were to “shop around.” Morality is not legality; the law _aspires_ to codify the spirit of a society’s morals - therefore it is morality that dictates to law, and law aims to catch up to morality when zeitgeists change. Equating the two things would be a poor understanding of sociology and civic politics.

Black and white thinking doesn't work in the real world.

that doesn't male either right.

My point is that I have a hard time see the Justice Department bring charges for destroying evidence when they didn't do a darn thing against those that did do evil things under the name of the US.

Justice for nobody then! What a great philosophy.

More like people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

They should prioritize prosecuting other parts of the government for known offenses. Then when those high level officials are serving long prison sentences they can take the same action against private entities without looking like hypocrites.

If they're the good guys.

Given the blacklists of google leak[1], I am betting they don't want a congressional subpoena to find out the boatloads of ridiculously politicized censorship they do either.

[1]https://www.zachvorhies.com/blacklists/

What do you think about the assertion that these blacklists are for ads?

From the linked internal discussion on the shooting: "changes to ad serving and changes to search ranking are done completely independently, and by different teams". Isn't it a good idea not to serve ads on sites that are discussing a recent national trauma? Or at the very least not really related to politics?

> Isn't it a good idea not to serve ads on sites that are discussing a recent national trauma? Or at the very least not really related to politics?

I say no, because that devalues truthful reporting on real and important events, in favour of safe pablum that will pass the censors. Real news is important, but who is paying for news if it's not funded by ads?

I mean bad as in “the people paying for the ad slots wouldn’t want it” not “it’s better for society”. Obviously the only morally good answer here is to abolish capitalist profit-seeking organizations altogether, but I’m Assuming I’m preaching to the choir. If you have a company that’s bound by law to seek as much profit as possible, can you really get mad at them for not wanting to show their dumb mobile game ads next to stories about a recent massacre?

Power is basically dictated by the ability to make an exception to the rule.

As Carl Schmitt wrote in 1922, "Sovereign is he who decides on the exception." Schmitt is somewhat out of favor, but his protege Leo Strauss basically created the times we now suffer.

Power makes it easy to do the wrong thing, and harder to do the right thing.

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