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Comment by angersock | Hacker News Reader

From the article:

NSA Director Keith Alexander disclosed in Senate testimony in October that the NSA had run a pilot project in 2010 and 2011 to collect “samples” of U.S. cellphone location data. The data collected were never available for intelligence analysis purposes, and the project was discontinued because it had no “operational value,” he said.

Alexander allowed that a broader collection of such data “may be something that is a future requirement for the country, but it is not right now.”

And for all this, I'm not going to lie--that'd be a fun dataset to hack on.

And that, folks, is why we as engineers and hackers have a moral duty to be very selective in the types of work we take on and for whom.

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> And that, folks, is why we as engineers and hackers have a moral duty to be very selective in the types of work we take on and for whom.

Computer yechnology work is still a wild west. Other fields which have similar ethical considerations - medicine, chemistry, engineering - have ethics courses which make it clear to the graduates that their professional decisions have consequences.

There is no such standard for computer people. It still baffles me that people would voluntarily work at implementing something like PRISM - I would literally quit my job over something like this; similar considerations have popped up in the research I do for my Masters thesis - but ethics is definitely something we would talk more about.

Yet there is no shortage of doctors willing to assist in torture of prisoners at Guantanamo, assist in executions of prisoners, or conduct non-consensual and medically unnecessary procedures (inserting catheters, rectal examinations, etc.) upon demand of the police. The problem isn't lack of ethics courses but a fundamental flaw in human nature, which is that people easily forget all their personal ethics when someone in authority (whether their boss or the police) tells them to do something.

> people easily forget all their personal ethics when someone in authority (whether their boss or the police) tells them to do something.

I don't know whether you're aware of this or not, but you just described a famous experiment which essentially arrived at the same conclusion. It's worth a read for those not familiar with it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

I know of no better or more accessible review of the psychology of evil than "The Lucifer effect" (2007) by Philip Zimbardo, a psychologist who, in spite of a long and illustrious career, probably is still best known for the infamous Stanford prison study. The companion website to the book is still up on http://www.lucifereffect.com/

Zimbardo has stated that he is still pained at the memories of the Stanford prison study, which had to be aborted prematurely because the vile characteristics it exposed in normal, healthy participants was going out of control. He reluctantly revisited the study in detail because he saw striking parallels to the torture and humiliation in the Abu Ghraib prison under US occupation. While he's at it he also reviews much other research into the psychology of authoritarianism, obedience, dehumanization and other facets of social psychology that add up to what may very reasonably be called Evil.

I might add that organizations like the CIA are well aware of these principles, and appears to have been working on ways of weaponizing them. It is my opinion that they are using them to corrupt individuals and whole social environments when that suits their ends. In fact, in spite of "The Lucifer Effect" being a fascinating read from beginning to end, one of the parts I found most interesting was the evidence indicating that US intelligence actively created the psychological conditions for the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Highly recommended reading, and very relevant for much of the potential consequences of mass surveillance.

An alternate view of Zimbardo's prison study: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=3025

That's mildly funny as a quip, but I hope you don't really base your opinion on that strip.

I haven't looked into it myself, but I did hear that there is an alternative interpretation of that experiment. Apparently the test subjects did as they were asked, up until the very last prompt used, which was the strongest. Less a request and more a demand. As soon as the prompts stopped appealing to the test subjects desire to further science or not fuck up the experiment, but began making demands, the test subjects almost universally balked.

This interpretation isn't really any less disturbing, since it suggests that people will commit atrocities and simultaneously believe that they are doing the right thing. Perhaps it also says something about the general public's trust of, not necessarily authority figures, but rather scientists.

Reading up on this has been on my back-burner for a while, this interpretation might be well considered and discarded, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

I believe this is related: http://www.is.wayne.edu/MNISSANI/PAGEPUB/Milgram.htm

I believe various states in the US have found it difficult to find staff and drugs for lethal injection.

Perhaps the difference is if the doctors/nurses/vendors think that they can get away with it, not attracting the public's attention.

> people easily forget all their personal ethics when someone in authority (whether their boss or the police) tells them to do something.

Now if we could get some prominent figures in tech with some authority to get more involved in these matters, but no - they're all a bit too comfortable in their well-paid, US-based jobs to risk anything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem#The_banal...

It's way more ambiguous.

PRISM people thought they were doing right. All NSA - based on all the official and unofficial responses - think they are doing right. That they help building a safer America. That they have to sacrifice privacy for safety. Etc, etc.

I don't think NSA people are evil. They believe that the things they do are for good.

I don't think NSA people are evil. They believe that the things they do are for good.

Evil like in the movies doesn't exist. In the real-world evil is simply a lack of perspective (some would call it empathy instead).

No one ever wakes up and decides they want to be a villain. They always have some sort of logic that rationalizes their actions as being reasonable if not outright good. The more they act on that lack of perspective the greater the evil they perpetrate.

Reminds me of the movie The Cube[1].

Some select quotes (minor spoiler alert):

"There is no conspiracy. Nobody is in charge. It's a headless blunder operating under the illusion of a master plan."

"It's all the same machine, right? The Pentagon, multinational corporations, the police. If you do one little job, you build a widget in Saskatoon, and the next thing you know, it's two miles under the desert, the essential component of a death machine."

Quentin: But why put people in it?

Worth: Because it's here. You have to use it, or you admit that it's pointless.

Quentin: But it is pointless.

Worth: Quentin... that's my point.

[1] https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the-cube/

These quotes are from the 1997 film Cube [1], not the 1969 The Cube [2] of your rotten tomatoes link.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_(film)

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cube_(film)

Ok, if ever there was a time to bring out this particularly good industrial/ebm album, it is right now. In particular, this track, which includes samples of the above quotes:

    DIN_FIV
    Escape To Reality
    Track #3 - "Conspiracy"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2ktuDmEAv8

I agree that normal people are generally not evil, but sociopaths can very much be indistinguishable from some particularly evil movie-characters.

I worked with a sociopath in the past and have studied it in literature, and a sociopath by definition sees meeting their own needs as a priority. Regardless of the effect on those around them.

A sociopath is willing to inflict suffering on others for even minor gains of their own. Sociopaths seek out high-power positions and often thrive in them, and those working with them often suffer as a consequence.

You know, people talk about sociopaths a lot, and I get why, but I have a problem with the definition. The idea is that a sociopath is someone who lacks empathy (or, so I've read, is able to switch off their empathy) and prioritises their own needs. The behaviour is characterised as selfish, as in putting themselves first. This doesn't really make sense to me, because there's an implicit assumption about what actually benefits the sociopath.

Taking a step back, as far as I can see, a sociopath is someone who (either by choice or by nature) prioritises certain social drives over other social drives. The drives to be empathic and obey social expectations, norms and rules get ignored. However, the drives for status, money and power are prioritised above all others. These drives are still social in nature. They don't actually convey a fundamental biological advantage.

I personally choose to aim to be a warm and caring human being, and, as a consequence of that, I have a really great relationship with my girlfriend. When we have kids, our kids will grow up in a loving supportive environment and so will have a good chance of growing up strong and well balanced. Being a sociopath would probably get me more material possessions, but I would have had to settle for an emotionally weaker partner (who I could dominate) and I would end up with messed up kids with a lower chance of success and survival.

From my own personal experience, people who fit the sociopathic archetype aren't really like evil villains. They're more like computer game addicts, fixated on goals that don't bring them happiness, and that get in the way of forming genuine connections with other human beings. I can see why people who are the victims of their behaviour characterise it as selfish, because they see the world as a competition for money, status and power and they think they are losing out. However, that competition is just a game, and the grand prize is not happiness.

I would be very curious to see a study of what you point out. Are some people exhibiting negative sociopathic traits simply because of their upbringing or social context?

Although I find these points interesting, it does seem to me like this leads us into the age-old philosophy discussion on ethics. It seems like ethics can be argued to be based on intention, effect, something else, or all. I have read about sociopaths that are experienced by others as good people. However, a sociopath seem to have a stunted emotional life and I am sure this disability will always have numerous subtle negative effects on people that have an emotional relationship with them (e.g wife, kids, friends).

That's not entirely true. Like 4% of people are sociopaths with an inability to feel empathy for others or feel guilt for their actions. There really are evil people who know what they are doing is wrong and just don't care.

You are the second person to bring up sociopaths as if they don't match the definition of evil I wrote above. The thing is, they are the very personification of lacking empathy. They believe that their own welfare is more important than anyone else's. They don't see that as evil, they see it as the way of the world.

The point is they don't rationalize or justify what they do, they simply don't care. They know it's wrong (by societies/normal people's) standards, but it doesn't violate their own.

This is what I consider evil, and I think it's important to separate it from people who think what they are doing is ok. I.e. "Someone else would have done it anyways", a thief who steals from a bank because "they have insurance" or "they are rich assholes who don't deserve it", or a dictator who tries to do what he thinks is best for the country even though his policies are bad.

They know it's wrong (by societies/normal people's) standards, but it doesn't violate their own.

Tou keep saying that, but it doesn't mean what you think it means.

Indeed. But also imagine that as an engineer on any secret NSA project, being shown real information regarding atrocities that have never been publicised and knowing that you can help to make the world a better place. You would have the passion and motivations to do these things and have meaning in your life and work.

Evil in this case is an aggregation of actions by many parties, not individuals and is rarely committed by the tool makers. However, it's always justified by the perpetrators.

imagine that as an engineer on any secret NSA project, being shown real information regarding atrocities that have never been publicised and knowing that you can help to make the world a better place.

Yep. Of course if that engineer had perspective he would have to wonder if there was more to the story than just what he was being shown. It is easy to doubt the people we already think are wrong, the hard thing is to doubt the people we agree with.

Thanks for pointing out "ambiguous". I believe it is very important to look at the situation and social pressures in addition to personal character. I also believe you are to significant extent wrong about the people at NSA believing they're doing good, however. Bill Binney, Jesselyn Radack and Thomas Drake all have personal experience with the matter, and here's what they had to say about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBp-1Br_OEs&t=1h37m59s

I would add that I think much of the material Ed Snowden released, to the extent that it shows personal expressions, to me points more to these people viewing the Intelligence organization as the new "we", and /everybody/ outside, US citizen or not, as a bit less than fully human. That cheeky smiley on the sketches detailing how they broke Google's SSL? "TOR Stinks" and similar flippant expressions in the documents about attacking the integrity of TOR? And so on. To me that isn't the look of someone who thinks they're making difficult, serious choices to protect the greater good. It's the look of someone who thinks they're better than everyone else out there and they can do whatever they want, including having "a little fun" toying with those other inferior creatures, because they think no one can touch them. That, I think, is the general mindset we're dealing with. Allow for a fair deal of individual variation of course.

I get a very icky feeling when I read academic papers that explore how to mine network traffic for information on how to discover terrorists. And sure enough, when reading the funding information, the money for the projects came straight from the DHS. This icky feeling was there long before I heard about Prism.

You don't need an ethical guidebook to consider the implications of the work you're doing. I don't think lack of explicit instructions is an excuse. I don't want to invoke Godwin just yet...but suffice to say, a lot of bad things have been done in the name of good. And there were people in the loop who had the ability to see what was going on.

"Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate — and quickly." -Heinlein

Indeed. There's also a huge spectrum of ethical issues in computing, from black hat hacking to mundane issues that many may not even recognize as having an ethical dimension. For example, I turned down an offer from a major company (won't name here) to work on analytics for their advertising platform. It was a difficult decision and involved multiple factors, but part of it had to do with my discomfort regarding the ethical issues of search-engine advertising. I found it hard to garner support for my viewpoint when discussing my decision with others, and it was striking to see how many people consider search advertising to be relatively benign and not worth turning down a job over. I learned an important lesson about how much moral views/priorities can differ, even amongst people whose worldviews largely overlap.

>They believe that the things they do are for good.

And so they walk a famously paved road.

IEEE Code of Ethics: http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html

ACM Code of Ethics: http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics

So, the standards exist but people choose to ignore them. Which, I guess since you're not forced to be a member of either professional society as a "computer person", isn't all that unreasonable. But personal ethics should win out in these situations without someone else having to tell you that it's wrong.

I took a look at the ACM Code of Ethics, and I don't see anything that would be violated by working on PRISM. Specifically:

1.7 Respect the privacy of others. ..

User data observed during the normal duties of system operation and maintenance must be treated with strictest confidentiality, except in cases where it is evidence for the violation of law, organizational regulations, or this Code. In these cases, the nature or contents of that information must be disclosed only to proper authorities.

That specifically allows the kind of work done by PRISM.

Maybe 2.7 or 3.1 of the ACM code?

2.7 Improve public understanding of computing and its consequences.

Computing professionals have a responsibility to share technical knowledge with the public by encouraging understanding of computing, including the impacts of computer systems and their limitations. This imperative implies an obligation to counter any false views related to computing.

3.1 Articulate social responsibilities of members of an organizational unit and encourage full acceptance of those responsibilities.

Because organizations of all kinds have impacts on the public, they must accept responsibilities to society. Organizational procedures and attitudes oriented toward quality and the welfare of society will reduce harm to members of the public, thereby serving public interest and fulfilling social responsibility. Therefore,organizational leaders must encourage full participation in meeting social responsibilities as well as quality performance.

Or number one on IEEE?

1. to accept responsibility in making decisions consistent with the safety, health, and welfare of the public, and to disclose promptly factors that might endanger the public or the environment;

Given, what's "best for the public" is up for debate (at least according to the people doing the collecting).

Prism may have been built by people holding their noses for the paycheck, but it could also have been built by people who genuinely believe that its social benefits outweigh its costs. Even if only 0.1% of software professionals believe this, it's enough to staff the project.

I agree. Just look at who Palantir hires. I imagine its a pretty small number of nose-holders and more often people who think they are doing good and people who think spying is a necessary evil so lets put fine grained controls on it.

I'm pretty sure there's also a good number of people who actually enjoy the craft. How many geeks do you know who wouldn't enjoy the power-trip? From LOVEINT to immature Googlers, there's an abundance of literature on the joys of doing evil.

Slightly OT, but I remember feeling QUITE shocked when I found that one of my favorite bloggers, Rands (aka Michael Lopp), was some sort of honcho over at Palantir. He's written some good stuff on management of 'geeks' and high-performance people in general, it was a sad day when I found out about his employer and removed him from my RSS feed.

While in school for Computer Engineering (2002-2007 or so), I actually had two ethics classes, one specifically for Engineering and one for Information ethics. I dont know how standard that is, but all the engineering disciplines had to take the Engineering one and computer scienc-y students had to take Info ethics.

Same here (2006-2011), and it was actually pretty fun to talk about the ethical issues that can arise in our profession(s).

The extent of computer ethics to me was "here is therac-25, you have an ethical responsibility to do your job well. here are various laws, don't break them." There was never talk of "consider the ramifications of your project, assuming it works".

Interesting. I'd never heard of this, but it makes sense. Whereabouts did you go to school?

I took a couple engineering ethics classes at the University of Virginia (class of '06), and found them valuable and thought-provoking. The curriculum was called "Science, Technology, and Society". More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science,_technology_and_society

Dayton, Ohio. We talked about a lot of interesting topics, like Whistleblowing (particularly relevant nowadays) and what sort of ethical obligations you have, in addition to stuff like "dont cut corners, dont be lazy, etc", the normal engineering things.

I graduated with a degree in Computer Science in 1997, and we also had to take an ethics class. However, it was more along the lines of knowingly creating software or hardware that would cause harm. To be honest, the majority of the tests we had were common sense..I didn't even have to even look over the material.

> There is no such standard for computer people.

That does not make our decisions inconsequential. And yes, we should talk a lot more about ethics in compsci courses.

As for people who work on things like PRISM, it often happen in small steps, one ethical shade of gray at a time. When you get to a PRISM, your worldview is so completely distorted, you think it's a natural thing to do.

I'll never forget when I was taking CS in high school and we were forced out of the lab for a week and had class in the library. Our teacher spent the week teaching computer programming ethics. We talked about a lot of stuff, as you can probably imagine, but I was glad to have someone show me what he believed a good path to take with development was. In the end we all had to write a paper that he graded pretty damn aggressively for a cs class. Thats the only time in all my cs education that computer programming ethics in this context came up. Definitely agree it deserves more conversation.

Is it possible that the development of these technologies is compartmentalized? And the single engineers only know the part that they are supposed to work on but don't really understand what is the larger project that their slice will be a part of? It would probably be hard to pull this development methodology off.

>It still baffles me that people would voluntarily work at implementing something like PRISM

It's almost like not everyone in the world shares your political views on privacy rights...

Seriously, you are baffled by this? The majority of the population doesn't value privacy at all.

And that, folks, is why we as engineers and hackers have a moral duty to be very selective in the types of work we take on and for whom.

Thank you. I was going to make the same point, you've done it well.

Moreover: this is why the Snowden, PRISM, NSA/FBI, surveillance, privacy, and other stories matter on HN.

Many of those working for startups are contributing directly (and occasionally indirectly) to the datastreams which are being harvested. I've never felt comfortable with Facebook and the ethics of its leadership, and I've been increasingly concerned about Google (I consider it to have lost rather than sold its soul). Both are far too actively carrying the NSA's water (as I've pointedly told Google multiple times).

How to answer the challenge ... I really don't know, I'm at a loss here.

I'm not sure how much you can really blame Facebook or Google here. My understanding is that a corporation is legally compelled to comply with a National Security Letter if it receives one, which is far from voluntary collusion.

Maybe I am missing something, but I don't see where your dissatisfaction is coming from.

I'm not sure how much you can really blame Facebook or Google

By creating an infrastructure in which the data are collected, centralized, individually identified, unencrypted, and specifically associated with vast trails of other nominally unassociated online information (search history, logins to other sites, analytics on other sites, etc.).

This is in the sense of Lawrence Lessig's Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. The architectures of Facebook, Google, and other social networks, advertising networks, mobile phone systems, phone apps, PC-based snooping (inclusive of Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, and other systems), etc., etc.

These systems are designed in ways which maximize their utility to a national surveillance network, despite alternative architectures being available. As an example of alternatives, Twitter and Reddit, at the very least, don't demand / promote "real names", or (mostly) track information across third-party sites, at least not to the extent Facebook and Google are doing.

Did anyone else read that and think of that scene in Enemy of the State? It's eerily equivalent.

"Treadstone! Ahh yes, Treadstone. Treadstone was a pilot project to <blah blah blah>. It's all but decomissioned at this point."

Treadstone is from The Bourne Identity isn't it?

Yeah. Enemy of the state is the one where one of the Gov. hackers wears computer/shooting glasses and looks like Dexter Holland from The Offspring. http://images.fanpop.com/images/image_uploads/Enemy-of-the-S...

Do those glasses have no benefit? They're marketed to gamers as reducing eye strain [0]. I step away from the monitor often enough that I don't get overly bothered by it, even if I'm programming for an extended period of time. I do also run f.lux as well, though.

[0] http://www.gunnars.com/

I can say I own two of those gunnars, but you're better off looking for a cheaper alternative.

What they provide is an f.lux experience, with a +1 magnification. their optics are quite clear, but no where near the marketing hype they claim.

When I compared a $10 pair of sunglasses to a pair of +$100 Oakley's I was like wowzered by the optics. It actually provided me with better contrast across the range, in all but rainy weather.

Always wanted to try one out after i saw that movie. So one day I got a tax benefit and could get them for free. They shipped out the wrong model first time, so I got two.

They seemed really overpriced to me, but do help. Keep them on long enough and you'll see blue. I had clear benefits when for a year long I was doing online poker zombie shifts. But on one without a frame, the legs came of fairly easily. They were plastic and glued into the glasses. I still have to re-glue them, but never bothered. I might fix them and give them another go.

But for $100+ I'm getting a solid yet lightweight frame from Oakley, and a crappy plastic frame holding not-so-impressive optics together.

Yes it is. Though technically I've never seen Enemy of the State, so I suppose they could theoretically share the dialogue...

Google Maps does this. The only difference is that Google informs you before you turn on location services.

It's not the only difference.

Other differences that come to mind: Google has yet to kill people with drones or send people to torture prisons in Egypt.

More accurate comment would be "google is not paid by those who kill people".

The NSA doesn't run operations, so they didn't do either of these things either.

It's a big government.

Yeah, and the soldiers don't make the orders, the generals don't make the politics, the politicians just try to keep the military industrial complex fat and snugly and the citizens happy, the citizens just crave security because that's what the media says is what citizens crave while the military industrial complex just seeks profit because it's required to by stockholders and everyone else involved, who are just trying to put food and/or yachts on their family.

"Just doing my job" has been deprecated in 1945. For a reason, and finding out why the hard way is considered harmful.

So why is that in polite company, even those that are opposed to our various wars are obliged to toe the line, "we support our troops"?

Even in 21st century America, we continue to fool ourselves, thinking that somehow soldiers can be noble, heroes even, all the while being engaged something that is immoral.

I have wondered the same thing privately numerous times. I believe it is a reflexive reaction because they can easily be killed doing their jobs, which they signed up for. It is some kind of bizarre "patriotic" requirement, likely borne of the significant derision heaped upon returning Vietnam veterans. Perhaps it is a generation of people who never want to see that happen again that have created this sacred cow?

Heaping derision on people who were victims themselves, drafted into a war they did not believe in, is one thing. I totally understand why people might recoil from that.

With an all-volunteer army though? No way, it is on them as much as it is on anybody. I don't care if they joined for the GI Bill (doing it for the [college] money is a pretty fucking flimsy ethical justification), I don't care if they joined the reserves before war broke out for the GI Bill (agreeing to the possibility of a war, before you know the circumstances of that war, for the [college] money, is still a flimsy argument).

The "support the troops [bring them home]" stuff seems like it is likely backlash against the derision that we gave Vietnam veterans, but it should be re-evaluated because the situations are not equivalent.

There is the issue though that as young people, they may well not have the maturity or information to fully understand and comprehend the decision they are making.

I was going to detail this as a possible excuse - but considering this reasoning and the consequences has made me reconsider: You've made a bad choice [morally / ethically]. Now you have to live with the consequences.

Can be seen as a tough stance, but then again, so's life. Didn't really mean to fall of that cliff? Oh, here's your life back again.

There is also the "smoothtalking recruiter managed to talk a teenager into doing something dumb" angle, but that only goes so far with me.

Still, I don't hate people who join or anything... call it a very strong disapprove. However I do find it hard to associate with people who try to assure me that they're one of the good ones because "Oh, I'm not really the patriotic type, I just joined so I could go to college" line. That impresses me far less than "I joined [for my country|it was the right thing to do|for the innocent civilians over there|war is a necessary evil|I was young and naive when the recruiter came to my school|911 HUURAH!]". I don't believe people when they say the former, but if I did, I don't think I could consider them anything but mercenaries.

I agree completely.

Here is a combat veteran discussing what it is actually like. This sentiment is basically echoed among the friends that I have who have served in the military.

http://www.mediumdifficulty.com/2012/03/01/call-of-apathy-vi...

http://warprayer.org

"No, I have told the whole truth in that, and only dead men can tell the truth in this world. It can be published after I am dead." -- Mark Twain

Perhaps because many of them are friends and family of said polite company who may have been persuaded to join with incomplete information, or lacked the economic resources to refuse to join when recruiters came calling.

It's a lie of diversion / distraction.

Noam Chomsky:

Anything that's totally vacuous and diverts, after all what does it mean to be in favor of .. suppose somebody asks, do you support the people in Iowa, can you say I support them or no I don't support them. It's not even a question it doesn't even mean anything. And that's the point of public relations slogans like support our troops is that they don't mean anything, they mean as much as whether you support the people in Iowa.

Of course there was an Issue -- the issue was do you support our policy but you don't want people to think about the issue that's the whole point of good propaganda, you want to create a slogan that nobody is gonna be against and I suppose everybody will be for because nobody knows what it means because it doesn't mean anything, but it's crucial value is it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something. Do you support our policy and that's the one you're not allowed to talk about.

http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/199201--.htm

http://fixyt.com/watch?v=G7DdWmWUa_8

Incidentally, this passage is within a larger context of public relations. A while back I was looking at terms and phrases on Google's Ngram viewer and noted something really odd: "democracy" wasn't a term in broad use until World War I, with a second major uptick during WWII.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=democracy&year...

I noted that and didn't think much more of it for a few months until I ran across a reference to Edward Louis Berneys, father of modern public relations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

Really interesting coot. Double nephew of Sigmund Freud (oh yeah: Berneys popularized Freud too -- and married advertising to psychology while he was at it), convinced women to smoke ("Torches of Freedom"), and though it's hard to believe it had to be sold, promoted bacon.

One of his first campaigns? A WWI "support the troops" message commissioned by the US government. To popularize democracy.

That's right: the principle American Value was brought to you as a marketing campaign.

(Ngram viewer is fascinating for studying the emergence / rise / fall in the popularity of words and phrases).

More on lies of diversion: https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/5zrCkbzR...

Thanks, that's really interesting.

The nonsense message of American democracy is another one that's always bothered me, so it's enlightening to see how these are connected.

FWIW, despite all the propaganda and even our school history books, democracy never was a core value of America. There is virtually nothing democratic about the design of the federal government, and even those aspects that are democratic were nothing new at the time the Constitution was written. America was not a bold experiment in democracy. That was old hat: the Dutch were already doing it, and heck, the Greeks did it a couple thousand years earlier. What was a bold experiment, seemingly entirely forgotten in today's discourse on Capitol Hill, was a limited government that wielded only a small set of powers that were explicitly ceded to it by the people.

The nonsense message of American democracy

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call it "nonsense", but it definitely wasn't emphasized prior to WWI. I'd have to do some more digging through history to see what issues were driving the nation prior to that. I do think that freedom and liberty were there. Initially it was just getting things off the ground and fighting off the Brits (1776, 1812), then westward expansion, then early industrialization, then slavery, them more industrialization.

By the time of WWI there'd been some big questions raised over equity and equality (railroads, robber barrons, oil trusts), and national cohesion was somewhat at stake, more so with the Great Depression and WWII.

My study of all of this is still pretty thin, but it's a fascinating period.

What immoral acts do you consider US troops to currently be engaged in?

My opinion isn't the question here. I'm observing first that there are many people who profess that one or more of our multiple wars are immoral; and second, that they simultaneously profess that the soldiers fighting deserve our support rather than scorn for supporting the putatively unjust war.

If you believe that the war is unjust, and you believe that it's the duty of a soldier (or any person) to refuse to perform immoral acts, then consistency dictates that you should condemn the soldiers fighting in those wars, not revere them.

That's a pretty black-and-white world you're trying to impose on folks.

I've spoken with a lot of Iraq war veterans. Every one of them has qualms with how the war was conducted, and many have doubts about the reasons for invading. But the things they have in common are an underlying desire to to "protect" their country in some sense, and the willingness to die for that cause.

There's plenty of room there for both disagreement and respect.

I think you're still misunderstanding. This doesn't have anything to do with the motivations of the soldiers.

I have friends who are absolutist peacenik liberals, who thing that GWB should burn in hell for all eternity for inveigling us in Iraq, because of "war for oil", "Halliburton will destroy the country", etc. From the point of view of one of these people, there is no moral authority to wage the war; to them, it IS black and white. Yet these very same people utter the "support our heroic troops" mantra.

Given that someone is such an extremist in their opposition to the war, it's impossible to square that person's professed beliefs with their support of the soldiers waging that war.

That is, unless we're willing to discard the idea that all people are morally bound to refuse to execute immoral commands.

Participation in unnecessary wars.

They may not have made the decision to start a war (that is on politicians), but they made the decision to participate.

Since the disclosure of the Downing Street Memorandum it has been clear that the war in Iraq was a war without a legitimate cause, where the US and UK acted as aggressors toward goals that were withheld from the public.

Aggressive wars and war profiteering (not saying US soldiers themselves benefit from it, but that's what they're being used for). The US is not alone in this, but it's in it, too.

CIA does directly run ops and targeting.

"The CIA's Silent War in Pakistan"

http://content.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1900248,00.html

"CIA drone attacks in Pakistan are responsible for unlawful killings, some of which could amount to war crimes, Amnesty International says."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24618701

"CIA Drone Strike Kills Pakistan Taliban Head Before Talks"

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-03/cia-drone-strike-ki...

The division between "intelligence" and "operations" has been breached.

Have they admitted to any of these?

Does the CIA admit to even owning drones? Or are these Army operations run by the CIA?

Not sure if you're just trolling, but I'll bite:

The CIA's drone program is not secret, and hasn't been for some time.

From http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/363199/obama-plan-shift...:

"Despite their overlapping “orbits” in Yemen, the CIA and JSOC employ different surveillance equipment on their drone fleets. They also rely on separate and sometimes incompatible communications networks to transmit video feeds and assemble intelligence from multiple streams in the moments before a strike."

From http://killerapps.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/11/05/cia_pen...:

"Keeping the drones with the CIA also offers legal cover for drone strikes, former officials argued. By law, the military is not supposed to conduct hostile actions outside a declared war zone, although special forces do so on occasion acting at the CIA's behest."

The first article is an anonymous source for a website's blog.

Some other choice headlines on the site's homepage:

    Birth-Control Battle - Liberals are the agressors

    Chait-Crime: Stop assuming conservatives are racist

    Corporations Are People: The idea goes back to the Founding.

    The Return of the Queue: O'care: just like any other liberal program.

    Five Food-Stamp Myths: Does the program even work?

    The Test-Score Gap: Race and class are not to blame.

Not exactly a fantastic citation, I think you'll agree. In any event, your quote specifically refers to intelligence drones, not strike drones. I'm not actually 100% sure about this, but I'm guessing they're different, just based on the different payloads required to perform each activity. In any event, the CIA here isn't admitting to anything. It's an anonymous inside source. Right. Hyperconservative blog has high-level inside source in the intelligence community in a post-Snowden world. Got it.

As for the second article, that's exactly what I'm saying. Special forces do so, "Acting at the CIA's behest". CIA provides intel, special forces conducts the operation. That's an important distinction.

Now you're just being lazy :) The articles above are simply the first that popped up. Look around a bit and I'm sure you can find the same stories on sites that better suit your particular political bent.

If you're intent on nitpicking, then I think the likely answer to your question is that the CIA openly runs a large and mature weaponized drone program using vehicles that are outfitted by the CIA but owned (in a procurement sense) by the USAF, with the weapon triggers actually pulled (per law) by USAF service members.

If the CIA wanted to keep this program secret then they're doing a shitty job. For example, look up the things that Lean Panetta has said about his program over the last few years.

I don't (in a brief search) find a specific CIA doc, but there are multiple references to CIA drone strikes within the .gov TLD:

http://mccollum.house.gov/press-release/mccollum-amendment-f...

http://unmannedsystemscaucus.mckeon.house.gov/in-the-news/20...

http://unmannedsystemscaucus.mckeon.house.gov/afghanistan/20...

http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/pdf/04-23-13BergenTestimony....

More to the point: there's no denial that these programs are run by the CIA.

It sure is and if you think they have no ops i dont know what to tell you.

And that Google isn't limited by the Constitution in the ways that the Federal government supposedly is.

>And that Google isn't limited by the Constitution

I'm pretty sure it is...

Not directly. Google is bound by the statutes enforced by the federal and state governments who are empowered by the Constitution to govern. That is why Google can censor its index to clear it of things it does not like, if it so desired. Additionally, it could establish that the official religion of Google is from here forth Pastafarianism and while that might run afoul of some workplace regulations in certain jurisdictions, there is nothing in the Constitution that prevents Google from doing so.

Nope.

If Google deletes your comments on a YouTube video, it's not a violation of the 1st Amendment. If Google employees take a good, long look at your email or the documents you have in Drive, it's not a violation of the Fourth.

Google is (modulo the corporation/person thingy) granted rights under the Constitution.

The Constitution only limits Google to the extent that it's the basis for the system of laws that do the limiting.

Further semantic hairsplitting, perhaps:

Not Google nor any other person is granted rights under the Constitution. Given the Natural Rights philosophy subscribed to by many of the founders, as described by John Locke and others, the rights of the people pre-exist, simply by virtue of their being people.

The Constitution comes later. It describes a set of enumerated powers that the people have decided to cede to the government that they're creating. The way you describe it is the other way around from this.

And therein lies the the big difference. I can opt out of Google's tracking in a number of ways. Secret tracking from the NSA? I will likely not even know it is happening, and if I do, opting out is likely to be slightly more difficult. This, of course, does not even touch upon what that tracking data may then be used for.

> I can opt out of Google's tracking in a number of ways.

At face value, yes. But with the news that companies are tracking web users via browser fingerprints and other methods (even when users have "do not track" enabled), it seems that it is difficult to avoid being secretly tracked by corporations.

Within GSM any interconnected network can query at least the country of any other network's customers' handsets. It's needed for routing roaming calls, but the data is generally quite easy accessible.

There are many commercial services offering lookups (google "HLR lookup")

Triangulation as a Service has been around for a couple of years too http://developer.verizon.com/content/vdc/en/verizon-tools-ap...

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