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Comment by rdl | Hacker News Reader

Moderately competent security/developer/etc. people do not have to work for the government to make $150-200k/yr.

I personally have no problem working for the government in certain roles, and am actually proud of the stuff I did to help the medical/etc. people in Iraq/Afghanistan. There are plenty of civilian agencies who have missions I fully support -- keeping medical records, nuclear power plants, consumer financial records, etc. safe is totally legit. I'd even do it for GS-wages instead of the 3x more I can make in the private world.

Fuck spying, though.

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Fuck war, too? Right?

Infinitive wars that never end? Wars built on insubstantial concepts about who the enemy is and why they need to be fought? Wars without any specific goals or purpose?

Yes, fuck those wars. Everyone with honest thought can see how wars with those characteristics are bad, should not exist, and should booo at any politician who active contribute for its continuation.

I guess my point is this: until there is world peace, there will be spying. So if you are against spying you should work for world peace. Actually, come to think of it, even if there is world peace there will probably still be spying.

During the cold war, spying actually helped prevent war. I am absolutely fine with the USG spying on foreign governments, militaries, and to a lesser extent, specific war-related businesses (arms manufacturers, potentially energy and logistics companies, etc.) -- the spying on civilian firms should be firewalled off from any potential commercial utility, and should be purely passive and primarily through open sources, but even that seems potentially legitimate.

Spying on purely private people through blanket collection is wrong, both of US citizens and foreign citizens.

I'd be comfortable with foreign intelligence services operating under the same rules.

War is sometimes much better than the alternative. Illegal spying on masses of civilians, not so much.

This is the very bullshit the NSA wants you to eat. This is not a one-or-the-other situation.

Intelligence != spying (covert human intelligence gathering) != surveillance

We can re-balance and go without some aspects of each and retain security. The US faces no existential military threats apart from the Russian strategic nuclear force.

As we saw in 2008, the greatest threat the US faces is economic collapse due to not accounting for some financial "black swan" event in a financial sector that continues to become a larger share of GDP. That, or gradual decline due to our education system.

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