Off-topic but I wish there was a way to filter out all these NSA stories. It has really destroyed Hacker News for me and I hope it doesn't go on for too long.
For many of us, data information and national security stories inspired our early devops years. For example, The Cuckoo's Egg:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo's_Egg
This NSA story and all the discussions around its implications go to the heart of thinking around access to the world's information and how all humans relate to it, our work, and each other as global citizens.
I can think of nothing of more compelling interest than who has custody of our future, whether as info entrepreneurs, devops hackers, or "end users" growing up in this apprehensive new world.
Sorry for the fuzzy expression there, nothing better jumped to mind.
Sure, just like the decade before that was an "anomaly" because of the threat of terrorism that became a concern with the first Gulf War made safety trump those concerns, and the 5 decades prior to that were an "anomaly" because of the threats associated, first, the second World War, and immediately following that Second Red Scare the Cold War, made safety trump those concerns.
And just a couple decades before that there was the "anomaly" produced by the First Red Scare. (The increasing intrusion of which, based on safety concerns, wasn't actually reversed when the immediate impetus faded, just as the vast majority of the increasing intrusion motivated by the Cold War, the First Gulf War, or 9/11 wasn't -- as well as some of that motivated by the Second World War, though some of the biggest intrusions motivated by the Second World War were, and you can probably view the continuation of the rest as a 'silent reenactment' motivated by the Cold War.)
Or, maybe the intrusion-ratcheting-upward thing isn't a temporary anomaly, but the norm.
I don't think there is much evidence of that. Its true that over time some of the expansions of power are clawed back, but the overall trend isn't neutral with a pendulum swinging back and forth with a stationary midpoint of degree of government intrusion.
> You write as if the American Civil Liberties Union has done no good at all and it a hopeless cause.
The ACLU has certainly done some good, and I've never said anything about hopelessness (or even about what is desirable). What I've pointed to is the facts that call into question your presentation of a norm of non-intrusive government that is subject only to occasional "anomalies" followed by reversion to the pre-anomaly "normal" state.
Hope, in terms of realizing political objectives -- whether that's non-intrusive government or something else -- starts with recognizing the realities of the status quo, because without that, you can't tell what the problems are you need to address.
This is about the revealing of a surveillance state that the Stasi and Gestapo would have wet the bed over.
I'm glad that people on Hacker News have their priorities straight and these NSA stories are rising to the top rather than some banal discussion over the color of iOS 7 icons.