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Comment by spodek | Hacker News Reader

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.)

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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.

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.

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