It seems to me like a great way for the government to really start keeping close tabs on you would be to have any sort of tech job for them and quit -- especially after Snowden.
NSA revelations could hurt collaboration with 'betrayed' hackers
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Re: NSA revelations could hurt collaboration with 'betrayed' hackers
#12We really need to out and shame any engineer or contracting agency working for the NSA. If they can't hire anyone they can't spy on anyone.
Re: NSA revelations could hurt collaboration with 'betrayed' hackers
#13Contrary to the article's inflammatory title, software engineers haven't quit their jobs at the USG en masse. As for the "with the government" vs the "for the government" rebuttals: surveillance and research contractors haven't stopped working with the USG either.
They just write stories like this so it will make it to HN and drives traffic. Nothing has changed. There are just more people running on that gerbil wheel on HN.
Re: NSA revelations could hurt collaboration with 'betrayed' hackers
#14There have always been reasons to object to working in national defense. During the Cold War quite a few physicists and engineers chose not to go into defense work because they did not want to feel like they were hastening nuclear Armageddon.
And yet, the U.S. government developed effective new defense and energy technologies during this time.
There are reasons to work for the government that are attractive to top tech talent: access to information and tools that no one in private enterprise has; gigantic budgets, with no demand for profitability; a great mission: protecting the American people.
And if the issue is privacy, there are objections to made at most top tech companies now as well--most of their product development treads on or over the privacy line of their customers.
I'm not advocating for defense work BTW, just expressing skepticism that the Snowden affair will substantially harm the government's ability to attract tech talent.
It probably will scare off the most innovative, forward thinking hackers...but they've never been a crowd that works for the government anyway. Too slow and bureaucratic.
Re: NSA revelations could hurt collaboration with 'betrayed' hackers
#15We really need to out and shame any engineer or contracting agency working for the NSA. If they can't hire anyone they can't spy on anyone.
Once you have done this outing and shaming, what do you expect to do? Burn the engineer or contracting agency at the center of the town hall? Have a fifties style whisper campaign where you refuse to go to their cocktail party?
Apart from the fact that it vaguely sounds discriminatory, I don't see what you could achieve on a practical level.
Re: NSA revelations could hurt collaboration with 'betrayed' hackers
#16"it's significant that the NSA's massive XKeyscore program runs on a Linux cluster."
Is there an option in Creative Commons or GPL to exclude government use?
Re: NSA revelations could hurt collaboration with 'betrayed' hackers
#17We really need to out and shame any engineer or contracting agency working for the NSA. If they can't hire anyone they can't spy on anyone.
What happens when the people you're trying to shame simply do not care about your opinion, or the opinions of anyone else?
Re: NSA revelations could hurt collaboration with 'betrayed' hackers
#18"it's significant that the NSA's massive XKeyscore program runs on a Linux cluster." Is there an option in Creative Commons or GPL to exclude government use?
If they modified GPL code, maybe they can be sued to release changes.
Re: NSA revelations could hurt collaboration with 'betrayed' hackers
#19"it's significant that the NSA's massive XKeyscore program runs on a Linux cluster." Is there an option in Creative Commons or GPL to exclude government use?
Such an exclusion would be incompatible with the GPL. There are other licenses that do have such an exclusion.
Re: NSA revelations could hurt collaboration with 'betrayed' hackers
#20There have always been reasons to object to working in national defense. During the Cold War quite a few physicists and engineers chose not to go into defense work because they did not want to feel like they were hastening nuclear Armageddon. And yet, the U.S. government developed effective new defense and energy technologies during this time. There are reasons to work for the government that are attractive to top te…
> most of their product development treads on or over the privacy line of their customers.
I think most people now understand and have well-embraced the idea of "if you don't pay for a product you are the product." Given the relative odds of being injured or killed by a terrorist attack, it's debatable if any utility is gained from giving up your privacy to government.