I have no sympathy. They willingly represent the organization. Nobody is forcing them to stay. They could leave, but they don't, thus implicitly accepting it.
Everybody dies. Few people live.
Hell, I would even consider having "NSA xxxx - summer of 2013" on your resume to be an indicator that you are a person with backbone and a sense of morality. Bonus points right there.
I don't believe for one instant that these are people just desperately trying to feed their starving family. They have options, they choose to stay on.
As general rule: if you could say it in defense of being a member of the Waffen-SS, it's probably not a very solid argument. Everybody has their sob story, but long after those people are dead others will STILL have to deal with the messy, fucked up and stupid structures cowards erected. And with that in mind, my sympathy kinda fades.
And that your friends would do it is no argument either, people always seem to have this idea that they themselves (or their friends) are special and ought to not be criticized. Everybody is so fucking magical when it's about them. Contrast this with how we talk and think about people of the past, of other countries or other social groups.
Also there are the people blown up by drones, or the ones threatened with it http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/will-nsa-whistleblower-edwa... (because who needs trials when you have "intelligence") Those don't even get to the point of worry about job security, and they don't seem to even figure into any of this.
2. The "ethics" of the NSA can be changed by Congress at any time. Why direct your energy at relatively low-level employees when you (assuming you're a US citizen) have the power to effect change top-down?
3. Vice is not a reputable source. It's actually comical that you'd use them of all publications as a source considering that their claim to fame is conspiring with one of the most totalitarian regimes in history (NK) for press and pageviews.
P.S. a tip for PavlovsCat if you're still reading this thread, quote less. It's an implicit appeal to authority (a fallacy) and it makes you sound like you don't have your own ideas.
Thanks, I know it's meant well, but I disagree that it implies appeal to authority; simply ignore the author name and source and notice how the words stand on their own... anything else is a strawman, not any appeal I am actually making. I'm just a quote geek and like tipping my hat that way, when I remember someone having said what I'm getting at in a beautiful or precise fashion. How that seems doesn't really bother me too much: if someone is open to the point I'm making, they will hardly mind a quote; if they're not, even my nickname might be an excuse, or the time of day.
I just love quotes, I even collect the from perfectly "normal" people including HN. Like finding shells on the beach and going "look! someone said this! :D". I also collected quotes them mostly because they fit to what I was thinking (at the time), instead of, say, adapting what I'm thinking to random stuff random people said throughout history. Things aren't this or that way because Chomsky says so, but rather Chomsky is a genius for some of the things he says, and what ultimately matters are those things.
Having own ideas is nice, but noticing that your own ideas are similar with stuff that's been said a million times before, or is currently being said by others, is also nice. Many, if not most ideas aren't really new anyway, they get rediscovered and rephrased all the time.. what matters is if and how we implement them. I think Goethe said something about that :D
Wanna know my favourite quote?
"I saw a human pyramid once. It was totally unnecessary." -- Mitch Hedberg
You can put that on my tombstone, to date I found no better summary of my experience on Earth.
When evaluating alternatives, it can be challenging to identify employers that have and will continue to maintain a flawless moral track record, not only for their own organization but also for the customers and vendors they support.
If asked to name such an organization on the fly, one might be hard pressed to pick one that would hold up to HN scrutiny.
Convenience over principles is what got us here.
I'll buy that argument for people doing menial customer service work. I don't buy it for people with jobs like these - these sorts of people have all kinds of options available to them. At the very least they probably have TS clearances which is going to open a ton of other doors (maybe just as tainted, but maybe not).
I'm really disappointed with the actions and arguments.
I don't want to live in a surveillance state, but nobody is even discussing realistic actions. It's all just expressions of disgust and anti-us sentiment.
We do have evidence that they conduct massive surveillance could be unconstitutional.
We do not have evidence that they are abusing this, and more importantly we don't know whether they have been able to save lives.
It could be that the people who work there know about positive life-saving results from the work they do and that's why they continue to do it.
(Edit: downvotes are fine, but it would be nice to also see a single link to evidence that the intelligence itself is being misused as opposed to protecting people)
It's not at all obvious that all the NSA staff should just walk away from their jobs. If the NSA is actually protecting people, that would be just as irresponsible.
Basically, what do you think the immune system in somebody with a bee allergy is actually doing when that person gets stung by a bee? It's only trying to help, of course. But that doesn't change the fact that 1) a bee sting can be ignored and 2) the massive allergic reaction threatens the person's life.
Also, don't underestimate terrorism. Over decades, the IRA did a lot to disrupt the UK, including killing cabinet ministers, and two nearly successful assassination attempts against the prime minister. Ultimately the UK conceded and the new Irish government contained ministers who had been leaders of the terrorist movement.
As far your IRA example, the US doesn't face anything like that, and shows no prospect of doing so. Even if it did, I'm not convinced that efforts like the NSA's would be very helpful in combating it, and given the example of the last 12 years, I'm quite sure that the US government's reactions as a whole would be far more damaging than the terrorism itself.
edit:
http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/05/24/what-not-specifically-t...
In other words, it sounds like some in the Administration suspect that someone within the targeting chain of command may have invented the Ibrahim al-Banna presence as a way to get at Awlaki’s son.
If this doesn't make you throw up, what will?
Or is this a reason to bring down the entire US?
For someone in the third world who may have little to lose and becomes witness to such senseless slaughter? Maybe.
But then again I'm not quite sure what you're even asking, maybe elaborate. Do you think maybe cutting down on the nazi stuff a liiiittle bit would endanger the US in any meaningful way?
I'm pretty sure that's not how drones work. They're not autonomous, self-aware predators that can smell a Muslim from a mile away, and make their own decisions about when and how and who to kill. I'm pretty sure there's always a pilot with a joystick watching a camera and pulling a trigger.
Not that that makes it any better, but unless you can provide some proof what you're describing seems like science fiction.
I'm pretty sure there's always a pilot with a joystick watching a camera and pulling a trigger.
Just like there is always a president near the top signing the order, in some shape or other. And: people collecting intelligence about whoever they are asked to collect intelligence about, because that's just the "requirements handed down to them". Which was the point I hid under my sarcasm.
I do believe that there should be consequences for a lot of these actions. I'd just rather people were discussing what we actually know and how things could realistically be improved (by individuals, corporations, and'the government) than just jeering like an angry mob.
I'm not sure what you mean by "real world statecraft", but when I hear that I have to think of Larkin's "This Be The Verse":
fools in old-style hats and coats, / Who half the time were soppy-stern / And half at one another's throats.
Feel free to respond to either, but spare me transparent excuses for not doing so and how that is somehow my fault.
But what if that makes the problem worse rather than better, by removing from the agency those people most able to sense and push-back against secret abuses?
You seem to be assuming that every person joining the NSA makes it worse, and that's not clear to me. In particular, a small, cohesive, monocultural institution will be more likely to commit abuses and more able to keep them secret.
So a good guy joins the NSA and tries to effect change. What happens? They tell him "no". If he refuses to carry out his job, they replace him and get somebody else. If he shuts up and works within the system and eventually reaches a position of real power, then refuses to abuse... the people with power over the NSA as a whole replace him and get somebody else.
If the armchair-ethicist standard is: "if you have any qualms, you'll quit" – then the type of people doing recruiting, and being recruited, and staying in the agency, all become even more self-selected for total devotion to total surveillance than may already exist. Whatever oversight or shame might remain as an internal check would decay. Whatever hints/leaks we get would dry up even further.
That isn't necessarily any better of a result for us. It doesn't necessarily bring reform/correction any sooner.
I'm just saying the simplistic "you must quit if you have qualms" standard shouldn't have an automatic presumption of either effectiveness or righteousness.
This is especially true about an old, powerful, and sovereignty-claiming institution like the USG and its security organs. They are beyond easy influence through either simple boycotts or idealistic infiltrations, and you can't easily ignore them or wait-them-out.
I'd like to think the no-fly-zoning of Bolivia's president is an example of that sort of thinking exposing itself for public embarrassment/criticism. Here's hoping they keep digging their own hole deeper and deeper.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/11/197...
http://www.parsarts.com/2010/11/29/tehran-wikileaks-1979-cab...
http://wikileaks.org/cable/1979/08/79TEHRAN8980.html
No wonder even Cyrus Vance couldn't save the State Dept. from becoming a giant noodly appendage after Carter.
I doubt the NSA/FBI/DoD/etc are going away anytime soon, so a simplistic strategy of "try to deny them good people, force them to get worse so they eventually collapse" is unlikely to result in either marginal improvements in their behavior, or their wholesale replacement by better institutions. This 'talent boycott' could just mean more acrimony, abuse, and even violence without ultimate remedy.
Some diseases don't get worse before they get better. They get worse before they get fatal.