The winning engineer is currently doing an AMA on Reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1j6qo4/i_am_joseph_bon...
Google Engineer Wins NSA Award, Then Says NSA Should Be “Abolished”
31–40 of 44 posts
Re: Google Engineer Wins NSA Award, Then Says NSA Should Be “Abolished”
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
It'd be more to the point to remember that we survived the cold war, an era where good intelligence was even more necessary and the dangers to the country were bigger and more immediate, with tighter controls on what intelligence services could do.
Did we have tighter controls, or were they just better at keeping their work out of the news?
We had tighter controls. It wasn't really an issue of "their work," it was an issue of what they were allowed to do with it under the law.
For example, one of the fake controversies after 9/11 involved NSA and domestic intelligence not sharing as much information as some believed might have been valuable in preventing the attacks, in retrospect. This sharing was prevented - very deliberately - by statute. Those statutes have been weakened since, in the name of security and with little consideration of why they existed in the first place.
edit: I was really only thinking of statutory control of intelligence gathering with my comments. Philwelch brings up an interesting point regarding (largely illegal) espionage, but I think the points still stand.
Re: Google Engineer Wins NSA Award, Then Says NSA Should Be “Abolished”
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
It'd be more to the point to remember that we survived the cold war, an era where good intelligence was even more necessary and the dangers to the country were bigger and more immediate, with tighter controls on what intelligence services could do.
Did we have tighter controls, or were they just better at keeping their work out of the news?
Research the United Fruit Company, MKULTRA, COINTELPRO, J. Edgar Hoover, the School of the Americas, the 1953 Iranian coup, and it doesn't stop there.
Re: Google Engineer Wins NSA Award, Then Says NSA Should Be “Abolished”
#34Is World War II so far away that everyone forgets how fucked up the entire world can become - and it doesn't take long for it all to go to hell either. The NSA has to get their shit together, but we still need real strategical/tactical intelligence inside and outside of the US. So when it does happen (and it will eventually happen) we're prepared not to lose our country, or even the world to the super nuclear powered…
First, total warfare like WW2, in the sense that the majority of the global economy is directed towards people conquering each other, will not happen again. Nuclear deterrence works. Though I and I'm sure many others find this repulsive, it is reality. That means, realistically future armed conflicts are going to be regional border disputes fought with conventional weapons, increasingly delivered via drones.
It is clearly not the case that the NSA, in it's current form, is the lynchpin keeping global warfare at bay. There are strong arguments that it is in fact adding fuel to the ongoing smoldering economic and diplomatic conflicts. There clearly is a whole range of possible forms for the NSA between "no security" and "total global surveillance."
You also act like human conflicts are exogenous, that they just happen to us like natural disasters. Behind this is the idea that there will always be some other force or enemy that is beyond reason, engagement and diplomacy. That is a particularly ugly and simpleminded view.
Re: Google Engineer Wins NSA Award, Then Says NSA Should Be “Abolished”
#35Is World War II so far away that everyone forgets how fucked up the entire world can become - and it doesn't take long for it all to go to hell either. The NSA has to get their shit together, but we still need real strategical/tactical intelligence inside and outside of the US. So when it does happen (and it will eventually happen) we're prepared not to lose our country, or even the world to the super nuclear powered…
A country starts a war, fundamentally, when they see a resource (land; oil; people) that they think they can claim without destroying its value in the process. However, all the technologies we've developed since WWII that make us more efficient at mass-killing (chemical/biological weapons et al) are politically-blind; Anthrax will infect the conqueror as much as the conquered. The only real advance we've made in the…
Take a look at how interconnected the economies of the major combatants in WW1 were. You might be surprised. Even rational actors can be propelled into conflict that seems easily avoidable.
And if you don't think small countries can drag larger ones into war, take a good look at the Korean peninsula. If that goes pear shaped, it could easily drag the US into a war with China.
Re: Google Engineer Wins NSA Award, Then Says NSA Should Be “Abolished”
#36How do you abolish something that the entirety of the federal and state governments rely upon? Intelligence resources are being pooled to the NSA, and cyber-intelligence reports are being sourced wholly from the NSA. They're the single most powerful intelligence agency in the US, and there's absolutely no sign of it slowing down. If there's anything that Obama shall be remembered for, it's that under his administrati…
If you are wondering if its possible to dismantle something large and bureaucratic...there is evidence for it in the shutting down of the German nuclear sector. 17 multi billion dollar reactors, 350k employees, 50-250$ billion in shutdown costs.
"Under Control" is a short documentary about it.
Re: Google Engineer Wins NSA Award, Then Says NSA Should Be “Abolished”
#37Is World War II so far away that everyone forgets how fucked up the entire world can become - and it doesn't take long for it all to go to hell either. The NSA has to get their shit together, but we still need real strategical/tactical intelligence inside and outside of the US. So when it does happen (and it will eventually happen) we're prepared not to lose our country, or even the world to the super nuclear powered…
A country starts a war, fundamentally, when they see a resource (land; oil; people) that they think they can claim without destroying its value in the process. However, all the technologies we've developed since WWII that make us more efficient at mass-killing (chemical/biological weapons et al) are politically-blind; Anthrax will infect the conqueror as much as the conquered. The only real advance we've made in the…
> I think this logic is pretty common to people who don't have a dystopian view of the future. Do you see some major flaw in it?
Hypothesis: Wars are starteted out of emotion.
Re: Google Engineer Wins NSA Award, Then Says NSA Should Be “Abolished”
#38Is World War II so far away that everyone forgets how fucked up the entire world can become - and it doesn't take long for it all to go to hell either. The NSA has to get their shit together, but we still need real strategical/tactical intelligence inside and outside of the US. So when it does happen (and it will eventually happen) we're prepared not to lose our country, or even the world to the super nuclear powered…
I scanned your comment and read it wrong the first time. I thought you were saying that the NSA is a sign of things becoming fucked up again. That I can agree with.
The thought that what the NSA is doing (especially if we limit the discussion to what they are doing inside America) contributes even a little bit to preventing another WWII blows my mind. I don't even know how to argue with that. It seems so obvious that that couldn't be further from the truth.
Re: Google Engineer Wins NSA Award, Then Says NSA Should Be “Abolished”
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was about to make the same point, that the list of things that have existed for 65 or fewer years includes a number of things I couldn't live without (e.g. my own existence, for one). I agree that the NSA needs to stop wholesale data gathering and needs public transparency, but the age of the NSA is not a useful argument that we can live without it, since we can't live without other things that are younger.
Category error: the topic is the federal and state governments, not the age of things you personally require for existence.
Just replying to what you said:
rhizome 7 hours ago | link | parent | flag
*something that the entirety of the federal and state
governments rely upon?*
This is not the case at all. The NSA has only existed for
65 years, we can do just fine without it.Re: Google Engineer Wins NSA Award, Then Says NSA Should Be “Abolished”
#40Is World War II so far away that everyone forgets how fucked up the entire world can become - and it doesn't take long for it all to go to hell either. The NSA has to get their shit together, but we still need real strategical/tactical intelligence inside and outside of the US. So when it does happen (and it will eventually happen) we're prepared not to lose our country, or even the world to the super nuclear powered…
First, total warfare like WW2, in the sense that the majority of the global economy is directed towards people conquering each other, will not happen again. Nuclear deterrence works. Though I and I'm sure many others find this repulsive, it is reality. That means, realistically future armed conflicts are going to be regional border disputes fought with conventional weapons, increasingly delivered via drones. It is cl…
> It is clearly not the case that the NSA, in it's current form, is the lynchpin keeping global warfare at bay.
I don't think it's all that clear.