However I understand that the story fits the political narrative of the forums here, and will therefore be upvoted despite any lack of sense or evidence.
With secret courts, secret interpretations of laws, gag orders etc. How does one obtain hard 'evidence' of anything (beyond whistleblowers)?
And what exactly do you mean by lack of sense? That we apply our limited knowledge to the scenarios described and then discard anything that doesn't neatly fit? That leads to cargo cult thinking.
Current employees who are happy and fulfilled in their work in the security services don't tend to say all that much to the press.
From there, wild speculation then goes on to breathlessly exclaim about what this really proves, while failing to actually support any of the assertions.
For good measure toss in some wilful blindness about the point of surveillance, mechanics of law enforcement, collective action problems or the fundamental differences between one's own government and a foreign government (hint: foreign governments don't have a monopoly of violence over the citizens of foreign countries).
The people who keep yelling about how nobody cares enough need to consider that just maybe they're not very good at arguing their point.
Cue downvotes.
This story however has quotes and documents from many different people, including John Tye, Edward Snowden, Jesselyn Radack, William Binney, Melvin Goodman, Loch Johnson, Kenneth Mayer, Christopher Dodd, Ed Loomis and Thomas Drake.
Were you perhaps reading a different article?
edit - I am all for encouraging critical thinking, but you are hardly going to achieve that through complete misrepresentation.
Hysterical speculation is to be expected when dealing with the doings of an arm of the government that is willfully shrouded in secrecy. The leaks so far have only confirmed what was being called "tin-foil hattery" until pre-Snowden.
If you are so concerned about subduing rampant speculation, how about showing up with proofs to the contrary instead of ad hominems and downvote baiting?
Doesn't much matter what the content or argument or tone is or was.
Though I do chuckle at "disprove the speculation".
not trusting aspects of textsecure
keeping encryption on all the time
argument about billing bad reviews on yelp
not liking lighttable
ok, whether there is a need to hide political speech from the NSA.
I don't think your claim stands up of it being the only topic.
edit - why are you bothering making claims like this in a medium where the source material is immediately available?
This kind of tactic may work in spoken discussion, but here it just seems absurd.
I would question why you think this is a "gotcha" given that I know how far back my post history goes (further then the initial Snowden disclosures for example), and more or less gave up on these topic-threads for exactly this reason.
Which circles around to my original point: these threads turn into echo chambers because who wants to spend karma on that?
People are instead ironically aggressive in silencing dissent.
Next five before that are:
turning off power in nuclear plant
bitcoin funds transfer
advice on drinking water
theories on OSS
encryption of metadata
This isn't a 'gotcha', just pointing out that you are repeatedly bullshitting about things that are easily verifiable.
And idly wondering why.
edit - Hang on.
After all your fucking winging about how fucking oppressed you feel, on the two things you cited (NSA/Snowden) you get far more upvotes than downvotes on your comments.
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=xornot+snowden#!/comment/forever/0...
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=xornot+nsa#!/comment/forever/0/xor...
I call Shenanigans.
Which would you choose, if you were forced to rationalize yourself rather than change your behavior?
It isn't and you know it.
EDIT: And that search engine definitely isn't fully indexed. But a search for me and points<0 gives nothing but NSA threads. <1 less so, but it's still a sizable portion.
EDIT 2: Though to spin this around for a moment, that is handy utility - thanks!
Indeed, I got -40 karma on this story. Dissenting opinions are not tolerated on NSA stories.
Therefore people who do not agree with the HN consensus "self-censor", and a vicious circle is created, with only a single narrative displayed.
edit - well ok, 4 :) but it didn't get hammered down
Tell me about it. Plus all my proofs for perpetual motion machines and the flat earth get downvoted too.
The article cites statements from and interviews with 9-10 separate sources, quoting several of them at length, and combines that with additional quotes from government source materials.
Yeah, we should all wait until they hand over the evidence in a golden plate, like secret agencies usually do.