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Comment by ck2 | Hacker News Reader

The head of the NSA branded them as "the next terrorists".

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/06/cyberscare_ex_nsa_chief_call...

Former head, and he was talking about the extremists who might attack Google or Microsoft, not lobbying groups like the EFF.

He's using the same logic that's used against extremists: if they're disenfranchised then they're a threat, and if we're disenfranchising them then they're a threat to us.

Why does the military have indefinite detention? It's simple: as a matter of policy they torture suspects, but since they were tortured then it stands to reason that they will become radicalized upon release, so they're held indefinitely.

Let me spell it out again in simpler terms: the military holds them because the military tortured them.

Not torturing them isn't even an considered an option despite the dollar cost of maintaining an off-shore super-maximum-security prison for hundreds of people guarded by a large military presence.

No, he's saying that there are groups on the Internet known for lashing out at companies for various politically motivated reasons, and this Snowden story is going to be one such reason.

His choice to call them terrorists isn't something I'm going to really defend, but if it makes you feel any better, he hasn't been in charge of anything for 4 years.

He may not have been in charge of anything for four years, but it would be nice to see General Alexander condemning such specious reasoning and fear-mongering.

Is it fear-mongering? Sites actually do get hacked and defaced all the time for political advocacy (e.g. LulzSec). I've long been more afraid, in general, of computer hackers than government.

> " I've long been more afraid, in general, of computer hackers than government."

Seriously?

Yes, seriously. People like to think that computer hackers have some perfect sense of morality, I have real-life experience that they don't.

The government, though occasionally surreal, has not once been a serious impediment to anything I've wanted to do, and in fact has occasionally been an exceptional aid in what I've wanted to do.

I find it amazing that anyone can still justify what the government is doing. Every line has been crossed. To the DEA, to the IRS. And, still, you are okie dokie. I am amazed.

Read what I wrote. Did I justify what the government is doing? Or did I say that relative to non-governmental threats that the government has not yet reached the top of the list?

If those like you were in charge of invention shops in the 19th century the light bulb would never have been invented. "Ugh, look, this piece of shit failed for the 20th time, this will never work, we should just give up entirely."

Luckily we have had innovators throughout history who are not afraid to see the future as it should be and to iterate, iterate, iterate and iterate some more to bring the world closer to that ideal reality.

Does the government still have work to go? Absolutely, but it can be made better, which is not something I can say for everyone.

I see. So we can have a more perfect surveillance state. And then it will be OK.

It'd be nice to see Obama pardon Snowden, too.

Pretty sure we are going to be into at least two or three presidents trying to hang Snowden from the flagpole. They will never pardon him because of their fear of the next sysadmin exposing crimes of the state.

Do you blame them for that fear? This time it's spying, next time what if it's troop deployments? What if CI names get leaked by someone who finds the CIs to be scumbags?

> “nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twentysomethings who haven’t talked to the opposite sex in five or six years”

Now that's a generalization if I ever heard one.

These people are in for another rude awakening.[1]

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_activists

The following is a bit of a stretch, but the quoted abusive language from Hayden brings it to mind, as the movie "Eastern Promises" just came up in conversation the other day.

There is a scene in "Eastern Promises" where the protagonist, a "deep cover" police officer infiltrating the Russian / Eastern European mob in London, is compelled to have sex with an enslaved woman in order to prove that he isn't gay. (Because, up to this point, he has not shown interest in these "usual" activities.)

The quote from Hayden, after raising my ire, quickly made me think of this. So, Hayden is more or less saying that, um... "lack of demonstrated sexual prowess" is tantamount to being a misanthrope -- and worse, from the criminal justice perspective, a "criminal" (I'll refrain from using the t-word, including because it probably bumps the ranking of a post in today's data collection systems).

Of course, one might presume to take it as implied also, that if you're gay, you belong to this group.

That such a figure of authority can and does so loosely -- or perhaps purposefully -- bandy about such prejudiced language...

These are not consummate professionals. They are... apparatchiks.

>"twentysomethings who haven’t talked to the opposite sex in five or six years"

guess one of the patterns coded into their dragnet.

Note to geeks - get out and talk to girls or your file will be moved into "next terrorists" folder :)

He's not the head of NSA. He's the former head of NSA.

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