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Snowden: Hack of an NSA server is not unprecedented, publication of the take is

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Re: Snowden: Hack of an NSA server is not unprecedented, publication of the take is

#221

Post by jimmersim »

audeyisaacs wrote: post #168
benmcnelly wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I think its a bit far fetched the US would meddle in the foreign affairs of an ally. We have a long documented history of staying out of civil wars, guerrilla warfare, and aiding the "right" people to come to leadership as it suits us.

Right now though the average person can still say "Where's your tinfoil hat, stop being ridiculous". If it were confirmed, they'd have to switch to "Well if they weren't doing anything wrong they wouldn't have to worry about being interfered with, stop being ridiculous". -- FWIW, I personally would be relatively shocked if that(election tampering) did turn out to be legit. I suppose there's motive and means, but it j…

The CIA has used torture and overthrown governments. Since the NSA is another secretive US government agency, I have no reason to believe that there is such a thing as going too far for them in an ethical sense, although of course there are practical limits on what they can accomplish.

Also, like any organization, the NSA is not monolithic. It must have various strata, various different groups making it up. It is possible, for example, that 95% of the NSA operates in ways that are relatively ethical, but that there is also a more-or-less secret pipeline of information and control built into the organization's architecture that enables important figures both inside and outside of the organization to use its databases and tools and to coordinate its operations without the knowledge of most of its employees.

Re: Snowden: Hack of an NSA server is not unprecedented, publication of the take is

#222

Post by dpark »

geggam wrote: post #143
dpark wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is a democracy. When you democratically elect representatives, it's a democracy. If you elect incompetent, or corrupt, or evil representatives, it's still a democracy.

The law of the land is the constitution. A Republic is a land of laws. A democracy is a land of majority rule. Democracy is a tyranny of majority. The founders did NOT want a democracy.

You don't get to narrowly define democracy to mean "mob rule" and expect people to use your meaningless definition. This is not the original nor the currently accepted definition and pretending that everyone should use your personal definition will not make it true.

Re: Snowden: Hack of an NSA server is not unprecedented, publication of the take is

#223

Post by dpark »

anf wrote: post #135
dpark wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is a democracy. When you democratically elect representatives, it's a democracy. If you elect incompetent, or corrupt, or evil representatives, it's still a democracy.

Doesn't that depend what the representatives then do? Also, what about federal judges? None of those are democratically elected, and they get to interpret all the laws in ways that have great consequence. Hence, America's government is a little more complicated than "democracy", although some parts of it are surely "democratic" (e.g. the house of reps).

> Doesn't that depend what the representatives then do?

No. If you democratically elect terrible representatives who eat puppies, it's still democratic.

> Also, what about federal judges? None of those are democratically elected, and they get to interpret all the laws in ways that have great consequence.

You don't have to elect every government official for it to be a representative democracy. Democracy means that the ultimate power is vested in the people. If you elect representatives who appoint judges, the judges are still appointed by the power of the people.

> Hence, America's government is a little more complicated than "democracy", although some parts of it are surely "democratic" (e.g. the house of reps).

No government is simple. America is very clearly not a direct democracy, nor are all officials elected, but it is still a democracy.

Re: Snowden: Hack of an NSA server is not unprecedented, publication of the take is

#224

Post by dpark »

geggam wrote: post #175
dragonwriter wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A Republic is a land of laws. A republic is a land where political authority isn't formally heritable personal property (e.g., basically a not-monarchy), a republic can also (like the US) be a representative democracy. It can also be an authoritarian dictatorship. It can also be a direct democracy.

A republic bound by a constitution cannot be a democracy of any sort. The laws bind it. I suppose since the constitution is completely ignored you might have valid points.

Even accepting your personal definition of "democracy" to mean "pure majority rule", constitutions typically have provisions for modifications by majority vote. So a being "bound by a constitution" does not eliminate majority rule.

Re: Snowden: Hack of an NSA server is not unprecedented, publication of the take is

#225

Post by woodman »

matt4077 wrote: post #131
jdimov10 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I don't. Because when you say "act ethical" you mean "do what pleases me". This is why you can't put forth a definition, because if you did, it would expose your hypocrisy. And I'm not one bit interested in doing what pleases you. I'm only interested in doing what pleases ME (as is every other person on Earth, although most will never admit it out of cowardice). So no, I don't have ANY obligation at all towards…

That's pseudo-intellectual hobbelgoggle. "Pleasing" deals with emotions, so we can drop the facade of hyper-rationality right there. Cooperation is beneficial for an itdividuums' survival, as you rightfully state. It is indeed of such importance that the standards of cooperation have been internalized long ago – for non-sociopaths, altruism is an end in itself and creates positive feelings. And if you insist on your…

Calculated actions that take emotions into consideration seem pretty "hyper-rational" - you acknowledged as much with examples.

> ... but that can change if the other person is you daughter ... old age ...

It isn't as complicated as you're making it out to be, the decision made by the individual depends on the maximization of their goals. So that depends on the weight they assign to the importance of genetic immortality, reproductive years remaining, justice in an afterlife, etc. Sure, not everybody is a perfectly rational actor applying game theory in their daily interactions, but individuals are much more self interested than you're describing - even with family.

Re: Snowden: Hack of an NSA server is not unprecedented, publication of the take is

#226

Post by josephb »

majewsky wrote: post #83
cloverich wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but that's not just being lazy, its also a learned habit. There's a great deal of blog posts (like most writing in general) that is 5% information and 95% fluff. Sometimes you want the art, sometimes (esp. the engineering mindset) you just want the information. Skipping to comments frequently yields this, often with bonus comments like "I'm an actual expert and that post is very innaccurate".

This. I frequently find myself skimming over HN comments on a submission before reading the article, because it provides a hint at whether reading the submission is actually worth my time.

Or in this case, the HN comments actually provide a more complete article/summary :-)

Re: Snowden: Hack of an NSA server is not unprecedented, publication of the take is

#228

Post by matt4077 »

woodman wrote: post #225
matt4077 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pseudo-intellectual hobbelgoggle. "Pleasing" deals with emotions, so we can drop the facade of hyper-rationality right there. Cooperation is beneficial for an itdividuums' survival, as you rightfully state. It is indeed of such importance that the standards of cooperation have been internalized long ago – for non-sociopaths, altruism is an end in itself and creates positive feelings. And if you insist on your…

Calculated actions that take emotions into consideration seem pretty "hyper-rational" - you acknowledged as much with examples. > ... but that can change if the other person is you daughter ... old age ... It isn't as complicated as you're making it out to be, the decision made by the individual depends on the maximization of their goals. So that depends on the weight they assign to the importance of genetic immortal…

I don't really disagree that all human actions have self-interest as the core motive. I'm just saying that in an interdependent social environment, a phenomenon best described as altruism naturally emerges, either because instincts initially developed for self-serving purposes develop a life of their own, or because the still-existing individual benefits are obscured (i. e. a sort of game-theoretic justification for a middle class person to support welfare).

I'm mostly taking offense with the characterization of such "feelings" as "not real" or of lesser value than the "pure" thought of rational egoism:

1. If we take altruism as a highly developed extension of egoism, it's worth to consider it an invaluable heuristic trained over thousands of generations to intuitively make good decisions. Where a cold analysis may tell you that giving money to a poor person is wasteful, I'd say that the warm fuzzy feeling we get from giving is an encoding of results gained over millennia of experience.

This also touches another point: I'd suspect that most altruistic behaviors are actually net-negative for the individual but, when practiced by large parts of the population are beneficial for everyone. Here, emotions serve as a prehistoric solution to the tragedy of the commons. It's an idée fixe in some circles, most notably libertarians and the Ayn Rand crowd to replace this with a system of contracts or simply force but that disregards (amongst other things) that almost no idea in psychology has more empirical support than the beneficial effects of helping.

2. If we consider altruism as an emergent behavior, a sort of instinctual moral code, it should be revered as one of the highest achievements of humanity on a level with art or science.

Re: Snowden: Hack of an NSA server is not unprecedented, publication of the take is

#229

Post by samwyse »

eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #26
imglorp wrote: post #10

His complete post (just in case) original 4:40 AM - 16 Aug 2016 from @Snowden: The hack of an NSA malware staging server is not unprecedented, but the publication of the take is. Here's what you need to know: (1/x) 1) NSA traces and targets malware C2 servers in a practice called Counter Computer Network Exploitation, or CCNE. So do our rivals. 2) NSA is often lurking undetected for years on the C2 and ORBs (proxy ho…

Thank you for summarizing that. As others have commented, I wish Snowden would simply blog about this sort of thing. Twitter is frustrating to digest for any insightful commentary that is on the longer side.

Given the way that people like to pull quotes out of context, writing something as a series of tweets forces you to look at each piece and see if it can stand alone.

Re: Snowden: Hack of an NSA server is not unprecedented, publication of the take is

#230

Post by vintermann »

geggam wrote: post #143
dpark wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is a democracy. When you democratically elect representatives, it's a democracy. If you elect incompetent, or corrupt, or evil representatives, it's still a democracy.

The law of the land is the constitution. A Republic is a land of laws. A democracy is a land of majority rule. Democracy is a tyranny of majority. The founders did NOT want a democracy.

"A democracy is a land of majority rule"

That's where you're wrong. A democracy is a state where people have (or nominally should have) equal power to affect society's collective decisions. Not all implementations of "majority rule" meet this criterion.

Political decisions affect everyone, thus everyone should have an equal share in determining which ones we take - at least a priori.

We can cede some power if we decide that a certain class of questions are none of our business (for instance, delegate some decisions to a local level, or give Sharia courts jurisdiction over their adherents to take an uglier example). Or declare that some questions are non-political in nature, and should be decided by some sort of experts. But the decision about what is our own business must always be our own business.

Another way of saying the same is that all legitimate government comes from the people - as opposed to e.g. the divine right of kings, or a "natural" aristocracy.

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