The first congressman to battle the NSA has died | Hacker News Reader

The first congressman to battle the NSA has died

pando.com

255 pointsgrovulent32 comments

A bunch of people posting here seem to be misreading the point of the article. The point is not that he died old but that he died in obscurity in the midst of issues that came to light in part following his work decades ago.

The article suggests he was ahead of his time in finding and exposing problems with the NSA (and CIA, FBI, etc), which seem egregious then and poignant now. The article suggests the NSA worked against him, contributing to his obscurity.

I found the article interesting, informative, and relevant.

The headline itself lays out why he was relegated to obscurity: The first congressman to battle the NSA is dead. No-one noticed, no-one cares.

The echo chamber that is HN and Reddit /r/politics does not make the USA as a whole. No matter how egregious the things you think Snowden reveals over the next year: the majority of the USA doesn't give a damn.

... lots of people who were in Congress 30 years ago die, and almost never is it "important news". Just because it hits some popular current buzzwords shouldn't really change this.

That's just a communications problem.

The Washington Post and The New York Times both carried fair-sized obituaries, for what that's worth. I'd bet that quite a few papers got it from AP.

While I agree, I have to point out that all former congressmen die in obscurity, unless they went on to a cabinet post or the Senate.

Before everyone rushes to the flag button because the author is biased (he is), consider that this article discusses a historical context I've seen missing from a lot of the NSA analysis. I find this article, even in its breathless hyperbole, more informative than the latest "what the NSA is capable of" version. It shows a historical continuity with the actions intelligence agencies pursue, and what happened when people tried to stop them (right or wrong). No, this article is not the rational enquiry I wish it were. But as someone who is conflicted about NSA activities, I found it shaped my perspective more than most submissions I've read.

Yes, everyone mentions that telegraphs entering and exiting the country were tapped, but I was unaware that in the 70s they were already mining for keywords, not calling it eavesdropping, and refusing to show up for Congressional inquiries.

When I saw Clapper's now infamous testimony, I assumed it was a new, emboldened post-9/11 intelligence community that surpassed the Cold War era. I'm not sure that's the case now.

There's also an argument to be made by those in favor of NSA activities: we've managed to have an NSA with extraordinary power that defies Congress for a long time, but we still haven't seen too many secret police.

Ultimately, it focuses the debate to some degree not on NSA goals (which have historically been to collect as much relevant information as possible, and resist Congressional oversight with vigor), but on how much easier it now is to collect that information.

It is disheartening to know that multiple people fought hard against a system, lost, and were knowingly, maliciously attacked, rendering their careers over. This sort of obvious corruption and immorality in character present in a group that has so much power with very little oversight is repugnant. To arms...seriously.

Dead at 92. The NSA sure got him good. I'm not sure why it took them 40 years though. Probably to deflect suspicion.

Or you know, they could have just killed his career. Or that of others. A scandal with some extra marital affair leaked to the press or something, and there goes the path to the whitehouse for those deemed "unfit".

What I do know is:

a) it's idiotic to demand hard proof of such things, instead of using the best of what information is available to deduce if it's possible or not

b) As Gore Vidal put it: "Americans have been trained by media to go into Pavlovian giggles at the mention of 'conspiracy,' because for an American to believe in a conspiracy he must also believe in flying saucers or, craziest of all, that more than one person was involved in the JFK murder."

c) After something comes to light, be it Enron, the financial deregulated party going on pre-2008, the revelations about mass surveillance of American citizens, etc, idiots -- who previously was all jokes about "that's absurd" -- come out saying "of course, we knew all that all along"...

The article isn't suggesting that he was assassinated. It's just remarking on the relative obscurity of his death.

RTFA before making snarky comments. Nowhere does it suggest he was assasinated.

Hehe. Of course NSA employees would never kill or conspire.

"and no one seemed to notice or care."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/nyregion/otis-pike-congres...

The fact that the Times ran a piece on it really has no bearing on the sprawl of the news or event itself. The assertion is that they are one and the same, that of which they are not.

Regardless of how much play or the "spin" it's still another piece that is well written and justifies his hard work in uncovering the injustices that the NSA uses to it's advantage both with tax dollars and seemingly boundless ethical quandaries.

The point is Steve Jobs took over the entire page of HN - and yes, he was instrumental in changing and entire industry. However someone instrumental in defending the public from it's government fields comments equivalent to "See, the Times ran a piece so there".

RIP Otis Pike and thanks.

I'm guessing that's Pando's ham-fisted attempt at Upworthy clickbait.

Not that they care what anybody thinks while they're insulting people, the Pando/TC/Arrington crowd has always cultivated their inner bullies.

I wish your comment had something informative to share in support of what you are asserting. Instead it comes across as something in line with the spirit of clickbait; devoid of substance with generous dose of bullying.

Edit: I'm not sure if you're suggesting that I'm rude by holding a standard that dislikes these type of comments on HN that come across as empty hating.

Or if the author of the piece is being rude for some reason, which I am not seeing myself.

If there is a valid reason behind your comment, then why leave that out or not respond with additional insight?

I suppose it is generally rude to point out rudeness, but there you go.

No, it's not rude to point out rudeness. Rude is about HOW you do something, not what you do. Even scratching your balls is not rude -- if you do it in the privacy of your own bathroom.

Opinions may differ, but I don't really see scratching my balls as a public service.

I have often wondered why a country like USA still continues to have lots of freedom compared to many other democracies, couple that with the fact that USA is probably one of the oldest and largest democracy with extreme diversity.

No doubt that USA seems to become more and more of a police state but this process is very different from a country like India. In case of a country like India, there is a huge mistrust between individuals/private parties which leads to more demands for government intervention and policing despite the fact that government is known to be corrupt. [1]

In case of US I think it is more of a top down. I still see that fair amount of trust between private individuals in US which keeps the "small government" voices loud enough despite all the attempts from government. This is something that Americans must protect. This trust will get destroyed as the government adopts more and more "steal from peter and give it to paul" approach.

[1] http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/politics-in...

The USA is not a democracy. Stop thinking it is.

Switzerland is a democracy. India is a democracy. The USA is a representative Republic. As such, it is liable to a man-in-the-middle attack - as we have seen, time and again.

This article was incredible. Deeply against the good guys win narrative.

There is some serious fucking forum sliding and astro turfing carried out by feds on this site. Holy fuck.

Disappointing that the articles does not use the word "sheeple" at least once. /s

Didn't need to, they got their knee-jerk reaction from your comment just fine /s.

lolwut?

Snark at the articles about forgetting to use the word "sheeple" seems ironic to me.

It's a kind of knee-jerk reaction ("oh, conspirasists!, people who like to use words like sheeple, tin foil hat wearers, hahahaha") that is indeed sheeplish.

You know, as opposed to reading, understanding and rationally discussing TFA.

#2brave4me

Why is this even voted up here?

Because it was a man who did something to help make a few millions people lives more free, especially in the areas of privacy that you know, hacker people care about.

I know, it's not some minor Node.js release.

New leaks point to the NSA's sinister waiting-for-decades-until-they-die-of-old-age to eliminate its enemies...

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