I hope that eventually all the technical papers eventually are available out of nerdy curiosity, but I’d prefer that be through declassification and not espionage.
NYT is not only pro-war, they're very conservative.
The NSA might in fact be occasionally helping to stop relatively small-scale attacks. However, as Prigozhin's march on Moscow in Russia and the 10/7 attacks in Israel show, even running an authoritarian surveillance state or a heavily militarized state with top-notch intelligence services can only do so much to prevent attacks. I think that adding more and more surveillance has diminishing returns in preventing attacks, meanwhile its existence is a threat to free society both directly, in that it could theoretically be used against political dissidents, and indirectly, in that it encourages a culture of self-censorship that is antithetical to political freedom.
If no amount of risk is acceptable, then any amount of surveillance is justified. To have a free society some level of risk must be accepted.
You are saying that because if anyone attacks us with conventional forces we will nuke them/invade them then we have no nation security interest concerning anything in classified documents compiled by our espionage services?
Is this a correct interpretation and if so do you stand by it? If not can you please clarify what you meant?
I can imagine there being classified documents that pose an actual significant national security risk. Perhaps some details about how nuclear plants are secured, or the details of the mechanisms by which authorization to fire nuclear missiles is given. Stuff like that. But there should be nothing like that in the NSA documents. Maybe there is something in there that would tip people off about the NSA's encryption-cracking capabilities. But no system that is actually critical for national security should be vulnerable to such information being revealed. And if there is some system that is vulnerable because of it, more surveillance is not the answer anyway.
You are wildly incorrect. NSA does lots to help secure the homeland.
https://www.nsa.gov/Cybersecurity/Overview/
Whether or not that justifies mass surveillance is a different question. I don’t think so. The NSA is a really, really big place. You could work there for a lifetime and not engage in illegal surveillance. I think getting rid of the bad parts shouldn’t require us to get rid of the good as well.
Your comfort is one thing. Noted. But do you know enough about the NYT, what would their job be exactly?
They don't have a stellar track record. Iraq-War, Judith Miller.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/reporter-judith-...
It's actually the opposite
National security of least powerfull countries, like Korea, is most complicated. They are most at risk and least likely to harm others.
The most powerfull nation on earth is the opposite, it is not really in danger, its very secure, and presents the most danger to others - whether through ignorance or stupidity or malice.
So we should actually be publishing almost everything from US/Russia/China because they often ruin millions of lives, but in practice ofcourse we do the opposite.
"Truth" and "lies" mean something different than "things that emotionally resonate with me based on my a-priori beliefs" and "things that make me angry". It's weird that it's so easy for us humans to forget that. Or perhaps it's "things the correct people say" vs. "things those other people say"? Not sure which definitions you're using here.