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Cyberscare: Ex-NSA chief calls transparency groups, hackers next terrorists

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Re: Cyberscare: Ex-NSA chief calls transparency groups, hackers next terrorists

#51

Post by JonnieCache »

igravious wrote: post #12
kshatrea wrote: post #5

People need to start accepting that government != country; such people as such being called as "terrorists" or "communists" or other words that were bandied about as the bogeyman of the time are perceived as threats to the government by those most poised to profit from that government. A government that no longer represents the people, but corporations and those that benefit by it, will threaten those that question i…

Completely off-topic but I've this a few times now in different places. I'll come to the end of what I'm reading and there'll be a tl;dr at the frickin' _end_ of it! Isn't it supposed to be right up front so that if I am incredibly lazy and trusting I can just slurp the tl;dr and move on? When placed at the end is its meaning changed to something like "to summarize" or "in summation" ???

It used to be an insult. You would post it, and it alone underneath someone's 2500 word paragraphless wall of text as a way of saying "your verbosity is massively out of proportion to the significance of your thoughts, and in general you are so uninteresting that I can't even be bothered to use entire words."

It was often to be seen on SA under some teenaged nerds verbose essay about how much the people at their high school sucked. In that way, it was the original "cool story bro."

This original meaning is why the following image is funny: http://c.cslacker.com/3910l.jpg The joke doesn't work with the new usage.

At some point it flipped around and became a way of expressing one's tiny attention span.

Re: Cyberscare: Ex-NSA chief calls transparency groups, hackers next terrorists

#52

Post by oinksoft »

threeseed wrote: post #39
brudgers wrote: post #19

"who haven't talked to the opposite sex in five or six years." This is the scariest aspect of the data collection. People like this have the data to identify homosexuals. Hell, I suspect that a lot of the rationale for the data collection was tracking Muslims. The potential this information has to facilitate genocide is astronomical and homophobes are in positions of power.

Can we all please just take a deep breath and stop with the hyperbole. The US government is not planning to commit genocide against gay people or whatever ridiculous premise you're insinuating.

Nevertheless, as shown in the Abu Grahib scandal and the blind eye turned to sexual abuse in domestic prisons, sexual humiliation as a form of punishment is alive and well in the US.

Re: Cyberscare: Ex-NSA chief calls transparency groups, hackers next terrorists

#54

Post by weland »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #37
weland wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A government that no longer represents the people, but corporations and those that benefit by it, will threaten those that question its legitimacy as that is only obvious. A government elected with a reasonable majority arguably represents the people who elected them. Not represents as in "represents their interests", implying that they act on their behalf in their best interest. No, represents as in "they are the…

What is this post supposed to be? An junior high school Civics lesson? There was never any opportunity to "elect" anything to do with NSA. The NSA is a huge military-ish state security organization that was secretly and massively built up in the Cold War. It at least seems to outsiders that it served its purpose well[1]. But there is no more great enemy, and the whole lot are now struggling to remain relevant. People…

The NSA did not spring out of the ground, either, and the Cold War has arguably been over since 1991 or so.

Indirect democracy makes it very easy to eschew responsibility in terms of "I had a choice between candidate X and candidate Y; they both supported decision D. I didn't support it, but since I had to vote between either X and Y, I didn't have a choice, did I?".

If the actions of the NSA were seen by American citizens as such a major concern that they would not vote for a candidate who supported it, then we'd see major votes against one of them. If all the candidates were to represent interests opposite to those of their voters, then we'd see no votes for any.

The fact that we keep seeing these votes is simply a proof of the fact that most people don't really care about it. The handful of us who hang out on HackerNews aren't representative of the general populace. Ask the audience of Toddlers and Tiaras, who are probably an order of magnitude more than we are, what they think about it, and 90% of them would probably tell you something similar to "NSA? Is that like, UUUUUUUM, some football league or something?"

> People have been boycotting elections for years. That only makes it easier for the radical fringes to their their crap on the agenda and for politicians to focus on those low-hanging fruits.

People have been boycotting elections for years -- they're only valuable when they bring the turnout below the threshold of validity, which has happened in some countries.

If US citizens feel their political or electoral system is biased, whining about it won't help -- and it looks particularly hypocritical after readily applauding the Arab spring.

Re: Cyberscare: Ex-NSA chief calls transparency groups, hackers next terrorists

#55

Post by alan_cx »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #37
weland wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A government that no longer represents the people, but corporations and those that benefit by it, will threaten those that question its legitimacy as that is only obvious. A government elected with a reasonable majority arguably represents the people who elected them. Not represents as in "represents their interests", implying that they act on their behalf in their best interest. No, represents as in "they are the…

What is this post supposed to be? An junior high school Civics lesson? There was never any opportunity to "elect" anything to do with NSA. The NSA is a huge military-ish state security organization that was secretly and massively built up in the Cold War. It at least seems to outsiders that it served its purpose well[1]. But there is no more great enemy, and the whole lot are now struggling to remain relevant. People…

Seems to me that those of us who worry about the likes of NSA data slurping are the "radical fringe". That uniformed Muppet certainly seems to think so.

Writing off minorities as radicals is their game, not mine. You just played right in to the hands of the likes of Hayden. See how divide and rule works?

Re: Cyberscare: Ex-NSA chief calls transparency groups, hackers next terrorists

#56

Post by retro_gamer »

brudgers wrote: post #19

"who haven't talked to the opposite sex in five or six years." This is the scariest aspect of the data collection. People like this have the data to identify homosexuals. Hell, I suspect that a lot of the rationale for the data collection was tracking Muslims. The potential this information has to facilitate genocide is astronomical and homophobes are in positions of power.

Wow. Huge reading comprehension fail on your part. That sentence was obviously referring to socially inept heterosexual men, the stereotypical "neckbeards". Get over your homophobia hysteria already.

Re: Cyberscare: Ex-NSA chief calls transparency groups, hackers next terrorists

#58

Post by alan_cx »

threeseed wrote: post #39
brudgers wrote: post #19

"who haven't talked to the opposite sex in five or six years." This is the scariest aspect of the data collection. People like this have the data to identify homosexuals. Hell, I suspect that a lot of the rationale for the data collection was tracking Muslims. The potential this information has to facilitate genocide is astronomical and homophobes are in positions of power.

Can we all please just take a deep breath and stop with the hyperbole. The US government is not planning to commit genocide against gay people or whatever ridiculous premise you're insinuating.

And that's not a hyperbolic reaction to the post?

Or are you indulging in some very clever subtle irony?

Re: Cyberscare: Ex-NSA chief calls transparency groups, hackers next terrorists

#59

Post by brudgers »

stablepeak wrote: post #26
brudgers wrote: post #19

"who haven't talked to the opposite sex in five or six years." This is the scariest aspect of the data collection. People like this have the data to identify homosexuals. Hell, I suspect that a lot of the rationale for the data collection was tracking Muslims. The potential this information has to facilitate genocide is astronomical and homophobes are in positions of power.

I understood the quote as an insult to nerds who are afraid to talk to women and not as homophobia.

The premises upon which you have concluded that the statement is not homophobia are:

  () It is an insult targeted at the named groups.

  () It is targeted at men.

  () Not trying to bed women is an insult to men.
All three premises are dubious.

Insults are directed at the person to be insulted. In so far as it is an insult, it was almost certainly targeted at members of the audience sympathetic to transparency and privacy. Which is not to say that there probably weren't any nerds among the policy wonks at the Bi-Partisan Security Center where Hayden's remarks were delivered

It is really your second premise that begins to illuminate why the remarks are homophobic - the premise of the insult has been entangled with not gender in general [despite reading that way] but masculinity in particular.

Once entangled, we get to the intended essence of the insult - implying that someone is unsuccessful under the model of heterosexual masculinity. The essence of the insult is that it feminizes its intended targets. I think we both agree, he is saying that those who favor government transparency and the privacy of citizens aren't fully realized as men.

The premises upon which the insult is based are rather self-contradictory on their face when it comes to women - they contain the implication that it's ok for women to be soft. Deeper down of course, the model of "real men" contains a rubric for determining success which applies to all the ambitious regardless of gender.

I cannot prove that his remark is homophobic, but entanglement of insult with a lack of conformance to a purely heterosexual model of human relations and the connotation of heterosexual masculinity in particular certainly are meta-data consistent with homophobia.

Re: Cyberscare: Ex-NSA chief calls transparency groups, hackers next terrorists

#60

Post by MisterWebz »

threeseed wrote: post #39
brudgers wrote: post #19

"who haven't talked to the opposite sex in five or six years." This is the scariest aspect of the data collection. People like this have the data to identify homosexuals. Hell, I suspect that a lot of the rationale for the data collection was tracking Muslims. The potential this information has to facilitate genocide is astronomical and homophobes are in positions of power.

Can we all please just take a deep breath and stop with the hyperbole. The US government is not planning to commit genocide against gay people or whatever ridiculous premise you're insinuating.

First they came for the terrorists, then they came after the drug dealers...

You're right though, it is a ridiculous premise. There's no profit to be made from genocide.

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