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It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

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Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

#161

Post by tedunangst »

duairc wrote: post #95
tptacek wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There's no possible reason for people to support these programs", the preceding comment says, "and so it is pointless and even harmful for us to talk about possible reasons".

> There's no possible reason for people to support these programs and so it is pointless and even harmful for us to talk about possible reasons. I almost agree with this, were it not equivocating two different senses of the phrase “possible reason”. There's no legitimate reason for people to support these programs and so it is pointless and even harmful for us to talk about possible reasons. There are possible reason…

Who decides what's legitimate and what's not?

Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

#162

Post by Zigurd »

1031throwaway wrote: post #109
sharkweek wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No condescension intended, I am honestly just more curious -- I'd love to read some honest, uncensored interviews from people working on these things, mostly to just get their side of things. I totally agree that people have varying beliefs on this stuff and for some this might be just as noble as any other way of serving their country.

Read this guy's tweets: https://twitter.com/justinschuh I'm certainly not a fan of his ideology, but he gives an insight from someone who came from the NSA and is supportive of the executive branch's behavior.

Holy crap. He's exactly the type the government could recruit inside a company like Google.

Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

#163

Post by gcv »

sharkweek wrote: post #19

I have an honest and serious question -- who are the developers and designers who put these systems into place for the NSA? Are they aware of what they're doing or is it all classified and contracted out? Are they proud of their work? Is it just a paycheck? Surely someone with such a high aptitude could easily get a job elsewhere -- I guess I'm just unable to make the connection on who willingly builds this kind of s…

A blog post which writes about someone who interviewed with the NSA: http://mathbabe.org/2012/08/25/nsa-mathematicians/

Choice quote: ‘Out of the 6 or 7 people I met, everyone but one person responded along the lines, “I believe everything the United States Government does is good.”’

Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

#164

Post by jthrowaway11 »

sharkweek wrote: post #19

I have an honest and serious question -- who are the developers and designers who put these systems into place for the NSA? Are they aware of what they're doing or is it all classified and contracted out? Are they proud of their work? Is it just a paycheck? Surely someone with such a high aptitude could easily get a job elsewhere -- I guess I'm just unable to make the connection on who willingly builds this kind of s…

I am a long-time HNer who created a throwaway account to answer your question.

I have firsthand knowledge of engineers who work at the NSA, although I have no affiliation with any government agency.

What I can tell you is that these engineers believe that the NSA does not intentionally spy on Americans. This is something that the NSA constantly tells itself. They have various controls and procedures to minimize the data of US persons. They go to meetings about how not to spy on US persons.

I am not saying that these controls are effective. I am just saying that they exist, and they are very visible to NSA personnel. This creates the impression that the NSA takes the matter seriously.

As for non-US persons--they tend to view the US in some kind of infowar with various other countries. What you do in wars is things that aren't very nice. Since they are all adversaries, they act adversarially. So it is A-OK to spy on Germany or whatever, since everybody spies on everybody. The US is just better at it than most.

As for being "just a paycheck"--I think some of them feel very patriotic about it. In their mind, they are assisting their country in a warzone. They are under the impression that their actions save lives.

I gather that the whole thing is very compartmentalized and there are many who found out about PRISM and all these other programs at the same time as the rest of us. However there is a tendency to give your coworkers the benefit of the doubt when potentially harmful allegations come to light.

Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

#165

Post by AndrewKemendo »

Phlarp wrote: post #78
nashequilibrium wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 Reason: http://willyloman.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/boston-9.jpg (NSFW) Sometimes you need try and understand both points of view.

This is a terrible reason. These men were the definition of the type of thing a system like this should catch. intelligence agencies had been warned about one of them multiple times and they were both using the internet to self radicalize. The fact that the Boston bombings still happened should be proof enough that these systems either A) Do not work or B) are not being used against this type of threat. If it isn't i…

>If it isn't in defense of incidents of domestic terror, what the fuck is it for?

Terrorism is a small subset of what the intelligence community supports. The majority of intelligence collection is used for strategic military planning and political decision making. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Comm...

Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

#166

Post by tptacek »

Zigurd wrote: post #142
tptacek wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EXTERMINATE ALL RATIONAL THOUGHT. Questions are not allowed. Consideration is not allowed. Context is not allowed. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

So, let's hear your defense of this. EDIT: Well since you have the power to channel the mind of the beltway security gnome, let's hear their defense of it.

You really can't discern between someone who can imagine NSA employees who believe in what they're doing, and someone who supports the NSA?

Oh, wait. This is an Internet message board. Of course you can't.

Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

#167

Post by vasilipupkin »

duairc wrote: post #95
tptacek wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There's no possible reason for people to support these programs", the preceding comment says, "and so it is pointless and even harmful for us to talk about possible reasons".

> There's no possible reason for people to support these programs and so it is pointless and even harmful for us to talk about possible reasons. I almost agree with this, were it not equivocating two different senses of the phrase “possible reason”. There's no legitimate reason for people to support these programs and so it is pointless and even harmful for us to talk about possible reasons. There are possible reason…

So I agree with the article and I agree that NSA has gone too far. But your comment feels like you have bought a jump to conclusions mat from "office space". If, for example, during the process of obtaining clearance, you were to receive certain information that you don't have now, perhaps that would change your opinion of legitimacy of these programs from a binary 0 or 1 to a more nuanced probability distribution

Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

#168

Post by zenocon »

sharkweek wrote: post #19

I have an honest and serious question -- who are the developers and designers who put these systems into place for the NSA? Are they aware of what they're doing or is it all classified and contracted out? Are they proud of their work? Is it just a paycheck? Surely someone with such a high aptitude could easily get a job elsewhere -- I guess I'm just unable to make the connection on who willingly builds this kind of s…

If the govt. will spend $600M+ on the steaming pile of dog poo that is healthcare.gov, I am sure they are successful in finding able-bodied hackers worth their salt that can build data mining infrastructure and router firmware hacks that lead to this mess we are in.

Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

#169

Post by tptacek »

mindcrime wrote: post #135
dasil003 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're trampling over his legitimate point, which is that gears of the US government PR machine are massive, and the well-fed targets of their propaganda are well-fed and cozy, and yet the dangers of government overreach are bigger than ever. Are there potentially reasons why "terrorism" might in fact be a greater threat to our ideals and way of life then government power? Sure! Anything's possible. But such threats…

Are there potentially reasons why "terrorism" might in fact be a greater threat to our ideals and way of life then government power? Sure! Anything's possible. But such threats would need to be justified publicly, they can not be justified behind closed doors with classified documents. This is, to me, the core point. Government exists to serve US, the People, not the other way around. And to maintain that order of th…

If by some horrible miracle --- a "horribilicle" --- we had upon us a series of public referenda on a Constitutional amendment enabling foreign intelligence services to ignore the 4th Amendment in the service of any reasonable pursuit of Islamic terrorists, how do you think "WE" would vote on it?

I know how I'd vote ("fuck no"), but I don't think I could predict whether the amendment would pass.

It's worth keeping in mind that the government exists to serve all of us, not just us noisy nerds on Hacker News, and that we don't all agree on things that everyone on Hacker News believes we agree about.

Re: It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

#170

Post by minor_nitwit »

MisterWebz wrote: post #98
derefr wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or... the system catches things like this all the time, this is just one that slipped through, and if the system wasn't in place, there would be many, many more incidents of this type. Maybe. (This is normally "bear-repellent amulet" type thinking, but I think there's a specific exemption in this case, in that there are good reasons why you'd see no evidence of the system's effectiveness: the government doesn't like…

So if the system catches things like this all the time, how come they only stopped 54 (no wait, that's the old figure, the new figure is 1 or 2) terror plots?

*Perhaps 1 or 2. Perhaps not.
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