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Comment by auctiontheory | Hacker News Reader

I think its reasonable that as a US citizen you're okay with the NSA being able to break crypto

I think you have forgotten the phrase "absolute power corrupts absolutely." Humans with unchecked access to information (=power) will NEVER be completely trustworthy. Never. It is by definition. That's why we have checks and balances. That's why we had democracy. No one should be absolutely above democracy. But that's what today's NSA is.

You realize these guys (in the NSA) have been using intelligence resources to spy on their girlfriends and neighbors? How much more human and fallible does it get than that?

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True. Even if NSA publicly shuts down mass surveillance, I wouldn't still be okay with knowing that someone can still invade my privacy without me getting even a hint. If they still get to keep their crypto powers, how can we be sure that they won't just keep doing it in secret. Just how can people trust these guys when they have already lied on the face of whole world. I feel so helpless and hopeless.

The same can be said for every method of communication in history. Security agencies have the technical capabilities to record your telephone conversations, read your mail, and listen to your private conversations. Yet we manage.

There are so many frightening powers out there, trying to prevent them from existing is a complete waste of effort. You simply cannot make it technologically impossible to shoot you with a bullet, or snoop in your house, or track your car. This is why gov't is regulated, and answers to the people. You simply cannot prevent everyone from having the technical capabilities to take the advantage of you.

So, IMO, forget about whether they can or they cannot. Even if you manage to prevent them from breaking strong crypto, if it can be done someone will do it. Focus on controlling what they do with it.

The thing that is fundamentally different about modern surveillance is how automated it can be. Governments have always been able to listen in on phone calls and physical mail, but the limitations of needing a person to actually do these things kept a check on the scope.

When every phone call can go through a voice recognition system and a set of filters to detect anyone talking about Topic X, that's a very different world. The NSA can't hire half the country to spy on the other half, but they can hire a few thousand people to build a computer system to spy on everyone.

Of course. My point is that cat's out of the bag. You can't prevent them from being able to, so worry about whether they are allowed to.

> You realize these guys (in the NSA) have been using intelligence resources to spy on their girlfriends and neighbors? How much more human and fallible does it get than that?

And they get caught and fired for it. Such stories even made the WaPo pages pre-Snowden.

Are you saying that any government agency which ever has any civil servant misuse their position should be shutdown?

> Humans with unchecked access to information (=power) will NEVER be completely trustworthy.

Hey, look. The Internet. Whoops.

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