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I can see sympathy up to when they discover their work wasn't what they thought it was, for those that were caught off-guard. After all, if their boss was willing to lie to Congress on the record, who knows what lies he and the rest of the organization was willing to spew to them?

Once the revelations broke, they alone have responsibility for their actions. I can see giving them a month or two to figure out how to react and to make sure of the leaks' authenticity.

At this point I don't see how to see them as anything but complicit out of willful choice.

They can choose any moment to leave.

Or to blow the whistle and leak more information useful to the citizenry.

(Edit to nrmilstein's response: Choosing is simple. As I mentioned, I can see taking months to act.)

You make leaving a job seem simple. Not everyone can just "choose any moment to leave." People have careers and families.

This argument is a variant of the Yuppie Nuremberg Defense, courtesy of Thank You For Smoking.

1; You know what you're doing is wrong. 2; Everybody has a mortgage to pay. 1; Ah, the yuppie nuremberg defense.

what ever a NSA employee has done or not done saying that is the same as a war crime for example the Srebrenica massacre is just childish hyperbole.

You misread the parent comment as comparing the crimes, when in fact it was comparing the excuses for continuing to commit them, using a quote from a movie.

and your point is what exactly.

Two points:

1. The comment to which you replied wasn't comparing violent war crimes to privacy violations, so your indignation was unnecessary.

2. Whether you're discussing war crimes, selling cancer-causing tobacco products, or spying on innocent civilians, the "just doing my job" and "I have a family and a mortgage" excuses are inadequate justification.

It's not so black and white. People can believe they are doing good. You are helping take down terrorists after all. The majority of the population is ok with this stuff, you don't think the people who work there are?

> The majority of the population is ok with this stuff

Not according to polls since the Snowden leaks came out.

Also, I've yet to see real evidence of the mass surveillance over the past decade helping stop terrorist plots. They said it was 50 "terror events". They lied even about those. It was more like 1, and even that wasn't a big deal.

it's hard to measure deterrence. this is the moral conundrum. (I still think the NSA has stepped well over the line)

deterrence doesn't work when what you're doing is secret.

> I feel a lot of sympathy for these people. At the very least, they honestly believe they're protecting this country and their friends/loved ones. It's not their fault the higher-ups have botched the national security apparatus and turned it into something disgusting and unamerican. Most of them were/are likely unaware of the vast majority of what the agency does, and they had trust in their government that they worked at a trustworthy institution.

Funny. I'd expect that if I was working for an organization supposedly doing "good", which turned out to use extremely questionable methods, I would not feel depressed due to the public reaction. I would feel incensed at the thought of having been lied to and betrayed by my hierarchy. The reactions expressed in the article are more along the line of "politicians should come to the bat for us".

I can understand the feeling. Let me extend to them the same sympathy I have for former Stasi personnel, other Five Eyes SIGINT members and all the other people who think 1984 is an instruction manual. Because next year, you'll lobby for installing cameras in all private homes, in case the owner is a terrorist. And why not? You're already playing digital peeping Tom, might as well go all the way. Think of the terrorists. War is peace. Freedom is slavery.

If there are good cops(or in this case NSA personnel), why don't they protect us from the bad ones?

Although Snowden may be included in the former category.

That's the beauty of no-independent-oversight organizations.

I, too, personally believe that many of the people who are proponents of greater government surveillance really are trying to protect the country. The problem is that there is no safety exception rule built into the Constitution and it should be the people, not the government, who gets to decide if we should trade freedom for safety.

I also find it disturbing that we would ask those who serve in the military to risk life and limb to protect our freedoms, only to have those freedoms given away by the civilians at home in the name of safety. Freedom is dangerous and carries inherent risks, which should be shared by all.

Is it okay to supposedly protect the country at the expense of non-US citizens such as myself? It feels weird that some people think that indeed, it is.

I am being spied upon because of what I am not. I have no vote or political way to address this, I have no say about it. I must accept it, again, because of what I am not.

It is impossible to reason about this without relying on saying that "my rights are more important than yours", which of course, is about the same as arguing that "it is just the way it is. Tough cookies.".

A country's top concern will almost always be towards its own citizens first. I believe that is why you see even friendly countries spying on one another.

If your own government spies on you, it is a tool of tyranny, and easily destroys democracy.

If some foreign government spies on you, it is unpleasant to think about, but it holds little to no power over you, so it's much less of an issue.