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Comment by ClumsyPilot | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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.

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