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Comment by droopyEyelids | Hacker News Reader

I have a trick I feel would make a confrontation like this better.

Always speak under the assumption that the other person is 'good'. That means not calling them a liar. Instead, ask the questions that you feel would expose the inconsistency. That way they show everyone the point you're trying to make. Also it prevents personal animosity from obscuring the real content you might discover.

Furthermore, it allows a 3rd party who hears the discourse more freedom to make up their mind, whereas they might naturally go against your point of view because it's being pushed down their throat.

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According to one of the students involved[1], the confrontation wasn't premeditated so they probably weren't really considering how it might look to outside observers.

But there is value in making NSA employees feel bad about what their organization is doing and whether they are personally accountable for it. In fact, this seems like a spontaneous incident of "Haunting" officials from Gene Sharp's list of 198 methods of nonviolent action. I hope others learn from this example and make the jobs of all NSA recruiters difficult everywhere they go.

This incident reminded me of the scene from Good Will Hunting where Will explains why he might not want to work for the NSA after all[2]. Everyone who works for the NSA should be asking themselves that question every single day.

[1] http://mobandmultitude.com/2013/07/02/the-nsa-comes-recruiti...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrOZllbNarw

+1. It is very important always to keep in mind that the person you are talking to is a human being. And if you're talking to someone at a recruiting fair, they don't make policy. They're just trying to do their jobs so they don't get fired and they can continue to pay the mortgage and put food on the table.

Which is not to say that you should not call them out, just that you should do it respectfully and with compassion for a fellow human who might be in a very difficult position.

In a sanitized or controlled scenario, this makes sense. Passion and emotion, however, are impossible to strip from opinions in the context of the Snowden revelations that started all of this. Having the scab ripped off the NSA has altered the perspective of entire generations. Frankly I think the students handled themselves remarkably well.

They handled themselves pretty well for the first half of that conversation, with some intelligently phrased questions. Unfortunately, during the second half of the clip, the conversation degenerated into petty childishness.

This is very wise advice, and has served me well also. Always give the benefit of the doubt and let them show why there should be no doubt- either way.

I have a trick too, ask about a worst case scenario, in the case of the NSA spying it might go as follows-

Given that throughout history every intelligence organization has been penetrated by those hostile to it, having a system like PRISM means that the hostile agencies would be able to do more damage to the USA that they would otherwise. A hypothetical case would be a hostile agency gaining information to blackmail a guard at a nuclear weapons storage facility, allowing the USA to be decimated from the inside with its own nuclear weapons stockpile.

Then allow them to contemplate it, be completely silent. There are really only two responses to this, either it starts to dawn on them that what they are doing could harm many innocent people or they will BS, not want to talk about "hypotheticals" and generally evade the possibility just laid out. The former means they are human, the second, probably a sociopath.

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