"In such moments one feels pride with our country and regret over the course taken by United States -- a country betraying the principles it was once built on,"
Even Russians get it... Why don't more Americans get it?
Even Russians get it... Why don't more Americans get it?
Sorry guys, but not every one really believes the NSA should be disbanded. They have a real job to do. Certainly there needs to be limits, which we could of course discuss for years on end, but I don't see the point of doing it in a forum that really isn't suitable for the topic.
Ok, back to the echo chamber. 4 downvotes and this message disappears. Well, I do need to try occasionally. HN used to be a great site.
If 11 year old BBS-hacking NSA-conspiracy-fearing me had an opportunity to talk to and ask questions of former NSA analyst/programmer me, I would definitely have come up with a better discussion than the HN community.
At least my upvote will counter at least one close-minded person.
NSA AND Russia are bad.
There is nothing good in spying on people OR outlawing gays...
This isn't supposed to be reddit, where people downmod something because it is an opinion that they don't agree with.
Clearly, if he/she did, he would be poorly informed. Russia's crackdown on LGBT rights, their out-of-proportion prosecution of Pussy Riot and the oppression of opposition are recent markers of how free speech does not rule in Russia.
Russians never had a free speech culture, and never cared about it, yes there is some minority that care, but pools there for example.revealed that 78% of the population is very happy with the ban of LGBT speech.
Also if Russian government allowed pussy riot on the street, someone would volunteer to kill them for profaning the church. Their issue is not with their message, but with how they did it.
I'm sorry but this kind of comment is what makes HN worse. From the HN guidelines: "Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you."
There are plenty of places on the internet do discuss politics, this doesn't need to be one of them.
Besides, since pg has commented on a few of these posts approvingly, and since stories that would be [dead] within minutes previously now regularly top the front page, we have to assume he is OK with "Snowden News" at least for now.
I mean, I'm guilty of the same thing, too.
Really, I think the problem is that I (or you) click on these obvious political headlines. It's not like it's not obvious what they are from the headline, so they aren't hard to avoid. I'd compare this waste of time with being fat; the problem isn't the candy jar; the problem is that I /eat/ the candy in the candy jar.
To try and have a purely technical forum without any politics at all when dealing with the subject of computers, would be to ignore many of the main players and originators and also the motives that led to the existence of much of the technology.
The current news with the NSA is political, sure, but it is also as technical as it gets.
Suggestions?
I'm in favour of down voting and I think people should be doing it a lot more on HN, but it is frustrating when reasonable posts are downvoted.
No one said or implied this, simply that russian people were understanding there was something deeply wrong about the situation.
>Sorry guys, but not every one really believes the NSA should be disbanded. They have a real job to do. Certainly there needs to be limits, which we could of course discuss for years on end, but I don't see the point of doing it in a forum that really isn't suitable for the topic.
Nobody said this besides extreme and unthinking people and to suggest it is simply a strawman. Secondly, "I dont feel like talking about it", well then dont click the article and dont submit a comment.
>Ok, back to the echo chamber. 4 downvotes and this message disappears. Well, I do need to try occasionally. HN used to be a great site.
Asking for it.
I hope you can see where people would think this post adds very little to the discussion and in fact is inflammatory in some respects.
Yes, but it's a crap link so all the posts are worthless.
In the current situation Russians should be allowed to feel pride that it was their decrepit mafia state that opposed the United States on Snowden. That doesn't mean Russia did it for the right reasons, or that Russia is now a better place than it was before. A lot of Russians who feel pride in this action would probably still take the opportunity to live and work in the USA, the two are not mutually exclusive.
The problem I have with posts like yours is that they imply that because other places are a mess that exonerates the USA heading in that direction too.
I mean, off the top of my head: Gazprom/Rosneft, Anna Politkovskaya, Alexander Litvinenko... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_R...
And that's not to even just generally discuss the FSB, which is a proportionately larger and more corrupt version of the CIA and NSA combined. Just imagine if Bush or Obama were a former CIA officer, and had used a loophole in the Constitution to stay in power for more than a decade.
Russia's human rights and privacy rights are deplorable. Good for Snowden and his sense of realpolitik, but let's not pretend this is anything more than nation-state theater.
We are not saying we think the states should be more like Russia, well I aren't at least, we're pointing out the hypocrisy of the Powers That Be state-side.
They publicly chant "our way is better, what you are doing it wrong" but when their way doesn't work or otherwise becomes inconvenient they are perfectly happy to quietly use the techniques and policies they deride when others use them.
Russia doing many more bad things than the US is not justification for the US doing one thing we consider wrong.
I can't say I see anyone who is in the right in all this:
* I can see the national security argument having some validity so Snowden is culpable for releasing state secrets. He was trusted with information, he abused that trust (for reasons he and many others consider morally correct, but that morality issue does not mean it wasn't an abuse of trust).
* But what he released was details of the states doing something that they promised they were not doing, something that they deride oppressive states for. Whether Snowden's actions are right or wrong does not alter the fact the powers that be over there are both liars and hypocrites. They have abused the trust of their people.
* Russia is only taking part in this little game to wind up people it (or perhaps more specifically, Putin) feels the desire to wind up. They don't care one way or the other for Snowden specifically nor that the US is explicitly spying on its own people.
Slavery was introduced in America ~two centuries before the founding fathers had influence.
They were focused on the threat of authoritarianism/british rule, and failed to properly address their own complicit authoritarianism.
Very much like many people today who are all of a sudden concerned about the abuses of the "police state" aggressively targeting protesters and activists, when black communities have been harassed and targeted for decades (see the only domestic aerial bombing in US history targeting black activists in the 1980s [1] or recently "stop and frisk") with little public protest from white communities.
...or the difference in legal sentencing for crack cocaine vs powdered cocaine.
Racial hypocrisy is hardly a thing of the past in public discourse.
Unfortunately I know about Russia too much. I totally agree with you, but from my point of view and with information that I'm getting about Russia I can't see how to look at that country from positive perspective.
Edit: Actually, by visit, I mean go and live there for a while
Snowden didn't get asylum in Russia out of the goodness of their hearts but rather Putin wanting to annoy USA and score anti-USA points on home turf. It has nothing to do with "doing the right thing" It is a political game, nothing else.
It is naive to believe anything else. It did, however, benefit Snowden, it is probably better to sit in a Russian quasi-house-arrest than a trip to an American prison.
Get what?
A large group of the American people are upset that the NSA was spying on its own citizens. There's a healthy, and sometimes rancorous discussion going on over here. Lawmakers are trying to tighten up laws, the cabinet is defensive, and the populace is arguing amongst its self.
betraying the principles it was once built on...
No, "the country" is not. There seems to be this mythical belief that varies from country to country as to what it "means" to be the United States; even within the United States no one can agree as to what those principles actually are -- so how can someone outside of it be so sure? What have we learned in 200+ years of representative democracy? It hurts, it's hard, we can't always agree, we can't always make up our mind, we struggle to find balance, and when groups of people can make rules sometimes they make absolutely atrocious ones just like individuals do. Along the way, it will look terrible and horrible to outsiders who think they "see the obvious that no one inside of the system sees." Sorry, as an outsider you're not miraculously the only one aware of the truth - you're like that annoying other programmer who is always full of great ideas about how your code should be written, but always seems to gloss over the hard parts.
So, for those countries that romanticized about how utopian the United States must be for decades and decades of some other type of rule, and very recently have been given some semblance of democracy, it must be jarring to see there is no magic pill for the corruption and tyranny they may occasionally live under. But to think that "America has lost its way," it to act like a partisan here. I hear that every day from someone who is griping about some thing they don't like. It's trite at best.
The person who made the statement clearly has no idea as to what the principles of the United States actually are, and instead has idolized them into some inner picture of perfection that never existed.
Quote: even within the United States no one can agree as to what those principles actually are -- so how can someone outside of it be so sure
First of all - this is not indicative of Russia. This is just one Russian national giving him a job, and his stated reasons in the press may not be the real reasons why.
Second, Russia gave him asylum yes, but instead of echo chambering your preconceived beliefs about the NSA, why don't you apply the same critical skepticism to news coming out of Russia? Why don't you examine why Russia might want to grant asylum to an American refugee like Snowden instead of just saying, "Oh, they just get it man. They get it."
Third, there isn't anything concrete to get - the NSA isn't an evil, demonic institution sent here as a harbinger of the apocalypse. It's an institution whose abuses were wildly exaggerated and need to be corrected, not something to be burned to the ground. The country would not be better off without the agency in its entirety.
You're just applying this naive sense of cops and robbers to the entire dilemma and not critically examining all the evidence/stories. Your bias allows you to over-criticize one side and over-praise the other.
If you don't understand this, there is something severely wrong with your moral compass.
Now, to counter what you said - you're reaching by claiming the NSA "secretly stores and analyzes" the private communications of everyone on the planet. One interpretation of the materials originally leaked purports this, but there is also data contesting this view which is equally valid. Again - the echo chamber and bias allows you to just unilaterally suppose the NSA is capable of retrieving all data everywhere, but you're not examining counter evidence.
X-Keyscore allows email and web content surveillance, yes, but it isn't even practical to mine all data at once - it is much more practical (and probable) that this allows for finding and assembling an entry point to see where you should really begin looking in depth as an NSA analyst[1]. But, no, your traffic is not being viewed universally or entirely without someone at least believing there's a reason.
[1]: http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jul/31/nsa...
Objectivity is a logical illusion.
As to my feelings for whether or not the NSA should be preserved vs. destroyed entirely - yes, I could see how personal experience could skew this. I, thankfully, haven't had such interference in my life.
But I also want to point out I'm not protecting the NSA's PRISM et al. programs. I think they're too strong, and too obscured. But I do believe the NSA can replace them with more functional, transparent tools that will achieve the same goals. I also believe people are being swayed by big headlines and pathos arguments that prevent them from examining the NSA critically instead of passionately - I don't think it's as bad as everyone makes it seem.
You're assuming that I haven't actually done my homework and am making an off-the-cuff statement based upon media exposure, when the facts of this matter are that I have done my homework on this topic.
(Obama on domestic surveillance, 2007) http://youtu.be/ZVUwUCe1e-A
(Why we don't trust the government) https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/08/restoring_tru...
(The Terrorism Delusion) http://politicalscience.osu.edu/faculty/jmueller/absisfin.pd...
As the facts are, and looking at the situation objectively, the sustained reaction to the 9/11 incident is uncalled for, especially when the US has gone through previous decades which had seen exponentially more terrorist (lots of bombs) activity on US soil than any time since, yet back then the government didn't overreact and implement such excessive measures as we see today, in commercial airports where passengers are treated like criminals in a prison, in our electronic communications, and our financial records.
I, personally, have never called for the abolition of the NSA, but rather would like to see less intrusive measures employed instead of what they're doing now.
Where is the probable cause for the interception, collection, and storage of my electronic communications? Where is the probable cause showing that I might be a terrorist?
There are conditions which are supposed to be met when the government wants to violate my 4th Amendment rights, and to add an exception for "National Security," where no exception exists, equates to denial of civil rights, so when it's done on as massive a scale as we see case now it's a gross breach of the public trust and people have a right to voice their displeasure with the actions of their government.
To simply sweep this under the rug would be the most unpatriotic thing you could do, and justifying this obviously unpopular program by citing terrorism is disingenuous when viewed from a chronological perspective.
WHINES ABOUT BEING THE TARGET OF AN AD HOMINEM ATTACK
I said "ridiculous" because it was a narrow, misinformed comment that failed to properly encapsulate the entire subject at hand. It wasn't representative of what's really going on in the political theater between Russia and the United States right now, e.g. no consideration of Russia's motives, positive impact of the NSA, how Russia would be hypocritical to endorse press freedom and citizen privacy, etc. etc. etc.
In fact, nothing about his comment was obvious - if you continue on through the thread, you can clearly see how my rebuttal dissects the entire view that Russia "gets" anything very sufficiently.
Then you go on to confuse the sentiments of one Russian for the policies of an entire nation?
Who's being ridiculous here?
After reading the article on Crowdturfing [1], I can no longer assume that everyone posting here is acting in good faith.
If you find it difficult to see why this is morally abhorrent, I'm just not sure what to say you to you, as I think it would be quite apparent to the average 9 year old that deliberately spying on people who have done nothing to warrant suspicion is wrong.
Really...? Come on now, that's totally unbacked by any analysis of history. I agree with you on the immorality, but hyperbole like that doesn't advance your case very well.
I'll grant that if you include science fiction novels, there are a few contenders.
All totalitarian regimes used broad surveillance, but not all countries that have overly broad surveillance programs are totalitarian. What's missing is the desire for total control of many different aspects of life and political activity.
However, I think that there is a great danger that "total information awareness" leads to an ever greater desire for total control. That desire may even come from the people and have superficial democratic legitimacy. If everyone knows that the government knows everything, the people will demand control over many things that other people do.
An unabashedly totalitarian regime would spy on all its subjects, all the time, through every available channel. It would keep the details of its spying as secret as it can, while letting everyone know they're being watched. It looks like we have most of this, minus 'unabashedly': they claim they drop particular cases where they learn the people they're spying on are citizens within the borders who don't fit a long list of exceptions (crypto, etc.); and they're trying to hide the extent of spying. (On the other hand I don't consider secret courts to weigh much against the label 'totalitarian': the Soviets had that kind of thing, too.)
It could be unparalleled in either nature or extent. In nature, automated data mining is pretty new; in extent, the previous paradigm case, the Stasi, falls laughably short in some ways, while still far ahead in others (informers).
I think the quote isn't unreasonable, though it's loose.
1) Prevent people on the forum from using it as a buzzword to make points devoid of strong, reasoned arguments,
2) Prevent people from believing the NSA should be burned to the ground and disbanded entirely, when it does serve a very useful purpose.
Historically, there have been far worse totalitarian measures. To give one that is relevant to privacy and this particular issue: consider that in the KGB, the secret police could raid your home at any time without a warrant, and when you picked up the phone an operator immediately told you what you said would be recorded. Oh, sure you knew about it. That makes it so much better, I suppose, even though it was far more reaching than what the NSA is currently doing.
I want it very well understood that while the excesses of the agency should be corrected, and Americans should be entitled to privacy, we can't allow ourselves to just attack things passionately because the NSA scandal tells us to. That, and we should maintain a historical perspective so we understand how bad things are and we don't freak out as if it's the worst thing ever, when far worse things have happened in previous generations.
A level of outrage is appropriate - losing sensibility in debates is not.
-Milan Kundera
I think this form of societal corruption is one of the greatest and most insidious evils a government can undertake. You should read some accounts by people who have lived under similar monitoring regimes.
Durov's whole line about "betraying the principles it was once built on" is a reference to the usual quasi-religious nationalist founding mythologies.