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Comment by scythe | Hacker News Reader

You don't have to support the leaker to oppose expanded social media monitoring back-channels for the intelligence services.

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I think ICs are already in all the major social media back-ends that a nation hosts. I think that allies (like Israel and the US) regularly trade access to circumvent laws preventing surveillance of own citizens. Meanwhile LEOs of all stripes are already in social media, through the front-door.

The former is abhorrent and should be a big scandal, but it won't be. Snowden showed that Americans simply don't care. Given that signal, why stop?

The latter is actually good, in general. LEOs doing actual police work, joining groups that might be extremist...that's the online equivalent of undercover work, and I think it's good when it's human work.

So, basically I agree that proactive, general IC infiltration of back-ends is wrong, but I think its already happening and won't stop without change of sentiment. LEOs can and should do more human investigation, join groups, get involved, see what they are about - and then leave them alone if they aren't a physical threat. Obviously this can be super problematic (e.g. the FBI vs MLK) but the only alternative is to just sit there and wait for an attack. That's no bueno, either.

If ICs were already all over major social media like Discord, then how did these leaks sit spread around unnoticed for almost half a year? I swear every time this comes up people's critical thinking just vanishes into thin air. Mythologizing intelligence agencies as these omniscient entities only benefits them.

Having access, using access, using access to detect threats, and using access to detect leaks are 4 different capabilities. If I was NSA chief I personally would rank "proactive leak detection" far below "proactive threat detection".

As an aside, if lack of critical thinking skills sets you off easily, you are in for a rough ride. It's particularly dangerous because directed at others, it gives you clout in with the wrong people, and directed at yourself contempt can lead to self-loathing and depression.

Parent post doesn't distinguish between those. It just annoys to see people always talking about governmental or corporate bureaucracy but when it comes to intelligence agencies suddenly it's like they're immune to it and become perfect panopticons of information gathering and analysis.

Sorry for the offtopicness but could you please email me at hn@ycombinator.com?

I want to send you a repost invite for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34556378.

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