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Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

I suspect it's out of an honest attempt at doing the right thing. NSA spooks aren't evil trolls out to crush the free world under their boots. They're regular people, with typical moral compasses. And they have a difficult job. Unfettered access to information pretty clearly makes their job easier, so it's something they push for.

But they likewise understand that this kind of thing is controversial, and so (either out of an attempt to limit the impact or deflect blame) they want to make sure that everyone internally knows what they're doing and that it's not quite kosher.

Lots of folks here are programmers: occasionally you need to commit some horrible design affront in the name of expedience, right? Do you hide it or do you call it out in comments and commit messages with a big "HACK HERE" message? I know I do. It's the same impulse.

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>I suspect it's out of an honest attempt at doing the right thing.

no. It is to cover their asses. Like in the case of torture - if they just go and torture it would be one thing, instead they have been doing it according to the rules reviewed and approved by government lawyers, who declared the torture is legal. Thus people have been tortured, yet nobody can be punished for performing it. Nor people who only wrote the [illegal] rules, nor people who only followed the [illegal] rules. Using such responsibility deflection schema government can do anything as long as it follows "the rules" [which it wrote itself] and even the people with moral compass can look in the mirror easy because they only doing their job and follow the rules.

(another example - recent public outcry about drone killing of Americans was easily put down by switching attention to the alleged fact of existence of the "strict designation and targeting rules" the government follows without even publishing the rules, just a mere statement of their existence)

Seriously. Let's be honest. We used to torture people in extreme cases, but the person doing it knew that (a) it was illegal, and (b) if they were exposed they would be disavowed. (Of course, they might get away with it if they had some really good dirt on their boss, but that requires "using" a "card").

So the person doing the torturing had to be really fucking sure that this person was "guilty" and further that torturing would actually work (which is "not often"). The kind of operative doing this work was strongly personally committed to our country and extremely aware of their own personal investment.

Instead, we now have state-sponsored, legalized torture, and so any and all sociopaths can happily try their hand at torture just for the jolies, at no personal risk.

Spying must be illegal. A nation still needs to do it, but the brave few who do it, are braver still for doing it at personal risk.

> (another example - recent public outcry about drone killing of Americans was easily put down by switching attention to the alleged fact of existence of the "strict designation and targeting rules" the government follows without even publishing the rules, just a mere statement of their existence)

As a technical U.S. citizen, Anwar_al-Awlaki had due process rights. Therefore, the relevant inquiry was: what process is "due" (M-W: "owed," "capable of satisfying [an]... obligation," "required or expected...")? It's a foundational principle of Constitutional law that "due process" does not necessarily require a jury trial. So the legality of al-Awlaki's targeted killing depends entirely on the issues you dismiss out of hand. The fundamental question is whether the designation and targeting rules are sufficient "process" (meaning "legal procedure") in context.

Far from being a "responsibility deflection schema" it is a good faith attempt to stay within the bounds of the law while still following through with an important governmental objective: bringing to justice an enemy of the United States. It's no different than when any person or company asks their lawyer "can we do this?"

Because here is the thing: not everybody agrees with you (you, VladRussian2 personally). Lots of people think your ideals are stupid and dangerous.[1] Outside the echo-chamber of this website, lots of people have no problem with torture in the course of war, lots of people think supposed "Americans" who take up arms against the U.S. can't claim the protection of their Constitution. Is the government just supposed to go by principles? If so, why your principles instead of other people's principles? It's not a workable system. That's why we instead follow rules, rules we all agreed to. In the course of following those rules, we often have to make judgment calls about exactly what those rules do and do not allow us to do. And sometimes, we're on the edge of that boundary and make good faith attempts to stay on the right side.

[1] I remember as an undergraduate in Atlanta in the lead-up to the Iraq war, lots of people seriously suggested turning the middle east into a "glass parking lot" as a solution to the problems in the region. You may not like those people (and I personally found those comments tasteless), but they are as much a part of our body politic as you, and their principles carry just as much weight as yours.

Their moral compass may not be in line with the rest of the country. Some people when afforded the power to eavesdrop on anyone can and will focus on what they percieve to be existential threats. Existential is the key word. When Hoover focused on Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, he viewed them as existential threats to the United States. We today viewed that as extremely misguided, but at the time he and many others in power agreed that we should monitor and debase those "existential threads". The industrial food lobby considers animal rights activists existential threats. The administration views journalists as existential threats to their ability to defend against existential threats. Defense spending proponents think people that are anti-defense spending to be existential threats. The fact that the NSA is heavily Mormon, means that many people in the NSA may hold the same opinions about existential threats as the Mormon church. Many fundamentalist churchgoing folk consider gay marriage to be an existential threat. It is precisely because every individual has different views on what are and are not existential threats to the United States that we created a Bill of Rights that protect against the prosecution of existential threats that are merely the opinion of one individual and not the collectively opinion of the citizens of the United States.

The entire system of checks and balances was created because of this distrust of the "moral compass" of any single individual or signle in-group. When an individual or in-group can unilaterally monitor the communications of other individuals or in-groups with out due process, it all starts to fall apart.

There should be no secret court. There should be due process. There should be court appointed warrants not rubber stamps. This is all more important than what any one individual thinks is necessary for them to do what they think is their job. Their job isn't to catch terrorists. Their job is to catch terrorists without violating that principles of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. If they are doing the former at the cost of the latter they are failing at their job.

The NSA is heavily Mormon? Where did you get that information? I've been looking around online, and the only thing I'm coming across is conspiracy theory websites about the new Utah compound they're building.

anecdotal, but I witnessed many of my BYU classmates working for three-letter agencies post-graduation.

Marines and Mormons, two groups that the military and paramilitary agencies of the US love as potential recruits because of unusually high levels of patriotism and acceptance of hierarchy.

Mormonism is the only major (ish) religion that's homegrown and culturally they're mostly WASPs or close to it. Above average chance of getting clearance and of wanting a career in a TLA. The NSA is not special in this way. The DEA, FBI etc. will show the same pattern. Difficult to prove seeing as I doubt US agencies keep records on employees' religion though.

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