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Comment by bb88 | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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

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

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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