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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

#231

Post by vintermann »

thinkdevcode wrote: post #130
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.

While I see what you are saying, the OP to your post has it correct. You can say a republic is a bastardized form of democracy, but the reverse is not true. You can look at one of the few true democracies that has ever existed as an example - ancient Greece. Every citizen[1] could vote and put forward changes to laws or even create new laws (obviously with a majority vote). [1] A citizen was considered to be any pers…

First, it was Athens, not Greece as a whole. It was free, male descendants of Athenians who were allowed to participate - their degree of whiteness was not an issue independent of that. They had a large class of immigrants and descendants of immigrants who were not allowed to participate.

Most importantly, while there were a few questions settled by referendum where all citizens could vote, most were settled by randomly allotted juries. This meant there was little advantage to forming political parties around popular demagogues, or run well-funded propaganda campaigns.

Athenian democracy got knocked down many times and came back every time, except the last. The second-to-last time, a bunch of immigrants had fought for the liberation and restoration of democracy, and some leaders argued forcefully that they should be awarded citizenship for this. But they didn't get it, the existing citizens voted against.

The reason democracy finally failed was probably this. The Athenians knew (especially the poor) just how unusual and lucky they were to have political freedom, so they were fiercely protective of it - and didn't want to dilute it by sharing it. Eventually a large part of their society had so little stake in democracy that they didn't bother to restore it.

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

#232

Post by shard972 »

chatmasta wrote: post #40
jordigh wrote: post #28

Ed was a Booz Allen Hamilton employee only for a couple of months. He wasn't even out of his probation period as an employee. It's really amazing that in such a short time he was able to siphon all this information out of the NSA. I wonder what more information could he have collected if he had spent a longer time contracting for the NSA. I wonder how much more about the NSA we could know if people who have dedicated…

If you want to put on your tinfoil hat for a second, consider the fact that Snowden started his career in the military, then moved to CIA, then moved to Booz Allen. It's entirely possible that Snowden is an ongoing CIA op to discredit their rival NSA as part of a turf war.

> It's entirely possible that Snowden is an ongoing CIA op to discredit their rival NSA as part of a turf war.

It's a shame that snowden's CIA background isn't talked about very often.

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

#233

Post by woodman »

matt4077 wrote: post #228
woodman wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> ... "feelings" as "not real" or of lesser value ...

Well without getting into value judgement, you seem to be on board with the idea that emotions are a much higher level of abstraction above the cold logic of genetic survival. I'd welcome an emotional appeal in a public policy discussion as much as I'd welcome a javascript based boot loader. There is a time and place for everything, but emotion is given far too much weight.

Altruism is by definition a net negative for the individual, and I agree that it is very likely deeply rooted in our gene pool. But I certainly wouldn't hold it up as any kind of great achievement, especially considering how frequently it is exploited as a weakness by those in power ("think of the children"). I don't know if we'll ever get to the point where it can be considered a vestigial adaptation, in the same way we have unused muscles for controlling the orientation of our ears, but I hope that one day we'll be able to survive without the genetic compulsion to self-sacrifice.

It has been a long time since I gave Ayn Rand any thought, but your characterization seems pretty far off the mark to me. Have you read her books? She hated libertarians, the use of force, and she didn't want to replace altruism - she wanted it gone. Her reasoning is pretty well founded, as history is full of well intended and ill-conceived calls for sacrifice - the road to hell is paved with good intentions, etc. As far as contracts... I'd love for the world to have that level of clarity. That is why the US is such an attractive setting for business vs many other well developed economies (Mexico for instance), businesses hate uncertainty.

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

#234

Post by vibrio »

sctb wrote: post #227
vibrio wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YOU NEED ME ON THAT WALL!!!

Please comment civilly and substantively on HN or not at all.

Please pardon if my comment came off as uncivil. My intent was to illustrate the potential ambiguity of ethics in national security issues by quoting a speech of Col. Jessup (Jack Nicholson) from a "A Few Good Men". I saw the message of Jessup's tirade as parallel to the discussion topic and as illustritive commentary on the ethical boundaries of the NSA. Who defines those boundaries and in what context? Military, intelligence, or civilian? Peacetime or a time or threat? While the emerging activities and powers of the NSA concern me, I do not believe the agency is inhabited by evil people, but rather by people that believe (correctly or not) that they are playing a key role in protecting our nation. Their ethical boundaries are likely defined by the context of the threats that they encounter during their work. Some may believe that the critique by some nerd at a computer(me), who is ignorant to many of those threats, is ironic and a demonstration of the freedom that they protect. I did not intend to disrespect HN or it's users as this a informative and entertaining forum which is a daily stop for me. In retrospect, I probably should not have used all Caps, and I should have placed an explanation along with the quote.-Respectfully, Vibrio

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

#235

Post by irishcoffee »

onetwotree wrote: post #187
Someone1234 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A year ago you said you don't work for the NSA or DoD but know one person who does: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9297990 Are you seriously expecting us to believe that your friend is telling you how the NSA is internally structured and how sensitive foreign operation intelligence programs work? Plus in another comment of yours you claimed to know how General Atomics MQ-1C Gray Eagle worked behind the scenes b…

I think his username explains the driving force behind this inconsistency. I posted a lot of BS on the internet while drinking in the morning.

You must be young. It's generally an after-dinner dessert drink.

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

#236

Post by jessaustin »

linkregister wrote: post #216
jessaustin wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been a couple of years since I read @War , but ISTR it described interactions between public officials and private industry that were explicitly more about politics and marketing than they were about security or risk management. E.g., NSA set up public-private dialogues with tiered access, then tantalized executives with off-the-record-but-in-a-meeting-also-attended-by-other-companies reports of server pwnage, t…

Thanks! It appears that the real problem is in the supremely suboptimal execution of a potentially acceptable vision.

I'm not sure how much explanatory power your summary has: couldn't that be a description of any government fuck-up? b^)

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

#237

Post by khattam »

dpark wrote: post #224
geggam wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That definition is anything but personal and carries the history of the democratic system prevalent at the time the term was coined. Just because you decide to use the same term for everything now doesn't mean that the original definition is "personal".

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

#238

Post by dpark »

khattam wrote: post #237
dpark wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That definition is anything but personal and carries the history of the democratic system prevalent at the time the term was coined. Just because you decide to use the same term for everything now doesn't mean that the original definition is "personal".

Democracy never meant "mob rule". Even in Athenian democracy, few things were decided by actual majority rule. Never in history has there been a democracy where pure majority rule was the typical case.

So yes, it is a personal definition. Scholars don't use this definition. Pundits don't use this definition. The common man doesn't use this definition. It's a BS definition, and if it weren't, it would be pointless and redundant because "majority rule" captures this already.

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

#239

Post by pelasaco »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #177
pjc50 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the question is the basic mechanics of democracy: does everyone actually get a vote, and does the count accurately reflect votes cast? "Fixing" that should be less controversial than it is. Far too many voting machines are still insecure, and one of the candidates is pre-accusing the other of fixing the election.

>Far too many voting machines are still insecure And they always will be. It's impossible to have a secure voting machine.

well, paper doesn't make it secure either..

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

#240

Post by balabaster »

DigitalJack wrote: post #170
balabaster wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes Russia pointing this out to make us lose trust in the U.S.? I think the U.S. has done this all on their own. Snowden was just the latest whistleblower showing the world they can't be trusted. There were others before him, but it got swept under the rug. We all know the U.S. election system is flawed to a point of being broken and thus democracy as we like to believe it's supposed to work doesn't even exist.…

"The Puzzle Palace" was written in 1982. It's by an insider, James Bamford, and about his discovering by happenstance that people at the NSA listening post he was stationed at were listening in on american conversations illegally. He also discovered that the Carter administration's justice department had opened a criminal investigation on the NSA, and through FOIA managed to get a copy of the file. It was pretty damn…

That article was incredibly enlightening - thank you for posting the link!
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