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The NSA Is Looking For a Few Good Geeks
itwbennett writes "Dan Tynan noticed something curious when he was reading a TechCrunch story (about Google's mystery barges, as it happens). There was a banner ad promoting careers at the NSA — and this was no ad-serving network fluke. Tynan visited the TechCrunch site on three different machines, and saw an NSA ad every time. In one version of the ad, a male voice says, 'There are activities that I've worked on that make, you know, front page headlines. And I can say, I know all about that, I had a hand in that. The things that happen here at NSA really have national and world ramifications.'"
"The things that happen here at NSA really have national and world ramifications."
Like making the rest of the world distrust and hate the USA.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Enough advertising overcomes any negative consequences of your actions.
They fire everyone, and now they have to hire people? Imagine that.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
why the NSA would need to seek out new team members, you would think they already know who the brightest and best are from the data collected!
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
At this point, no "good" geek would work for the NSA.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Given that the NSA is recording everything, and probably has broken all your encryption keys, you would think the NSA would already know who to target for employment. Thus the obvious conclusion is that these ads are fakes or honeypots.
I looked into the NSA and the CIA. neither pay anywhere near what the private sector pays. Both want to pump you up on "Doing your national duty", "Serving your country", and/or "Protecting your fellow Americans"
If they want IT talent, they need to pony up the cash.
New Positions Available!
Location: Hawaii
Sometimes we will flesh these immoral or illegal business plans out a little bit, realize just what is involved in the process, and then sigh, "I could be rich if I didn't have any ethics."
Many people make the news every day. Most often these include major scams and crimes or immoral behavior.
Yes, there is work to be had and money to be found in those activities, and you can make global news from them. If you don't have any ethics.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Have gnu, will travel.
So, they are recruiting experts in a community that almost exclusively supports Snowden and despises the NSA's various mass-spying-on-civilians programs?
The NSA advertises jobs all the time in a variety of formats. They have recruitment booths at technical conferences, internships, etc.. They have a whole web site and all. What is particularly newsworthy about this?
I know this former SysAdmin in Russia who had to resort to tech support FFS. Already has clearance. He'd be just what you deserve.
The NSA should be in search of a new population to fool instead.
Looks like Big Brother has finally gotten around to noticing that You Can't Hire Mr. Perfect.
If you want to apply for a job at the NSA, just pick up the phone. Any phone.
There's an American dude named Edward, currently hanging out in Russia, who's currently looking.
Table-ized A.I.
Post WWII the NSA/CIA and intelligence agencies of the free world have been vital for keeping the peace. I don't see that changing anytime soon. We are all likely alive at least in part due to their actions.
...I know all about that, I had a hand in that."
Umm, I'm pretty sure you can't say anything. Unless you want to spend a few weeks in the Moscow airport.
Seriously? Improving it as in finding holes that they can exploit and tell no one else about? Or spending millions on research into how to create holes they can hope to get included as encryption standards?
From the link above:
The N.S.A.'s Sigint Enabling Project is a $250 million-a-year program that works with Internet companies to weaken privacy by inserting back doors into encryption products. This excerpt from a 2013 budget proposal outlines some methods the agency uses to undermine encryption used by the public.
Working for the NSA or any of their ilk is probably like any other job: day-to-day routine stuff and some really cool shit. With, of course, the proviso that you can never breathe a word of it to anybody, and they'd rather you not discuss the fact that you even work there.
The MI5 recruiting web site discusses some of this. If you want the approval of others on what a neat job you have, think again. This certainly limits the pool of available candidates. I wonder what it means for the intelligence community in general.
Hang on a sec...there's somebody at the door. GIDYW*(YW*DHNDW
NO CARRIER
'There are activities that I've worked on that make, you know, front page headlines. And I can say, I know all about that, I had a hand in that. The things that happen here at NSA really have national and world ramifications.'
Become a member of the inner party today.
In the meantime, let me get started on my application for asylum in Russia.
I want to know what exactly they are paying in exchange for being able to look at yourself in the mirror.
Does an employment contract come with the perk of war crimes indemnification in writing? Just curious.
2) the NSA is spying on everybody and recruiting by injecting banner ads into TCP streams to recruit TechCrunch readers?
3) a banner ad company (unnamed) is serving NSA ads to anybody that searches or surfs pages where NSA occurs more than 5 times, then uses cookies, flash cookies, unique browser characteristics, and any other form of persistent storage and leaked information to continue to serve these ads across browsing sessions?
4) That Dan Tynan, a TechCrunch writer and O'Reilly author, doesn't understand how ad distributors do business?
I would definitely work for them. I wouldn't do any actual work though, which is good for everybody.
I'd imagine at least some of the NSA employees hired before the Snowden leaks actually cared about defending American freedom. Now that the NSA's agenda is public information, only the lowest of the low will accept an offer.
That means it will continue along this course, with even more ideological solidarity, until shut down completely.
Snowden worked for a company that the NSA had subcontracted IT support to. Having seen this blow up in their face, they are dumping all those contracts and bringing it in house. Now this will mean that it is under very heavy security clearance and surveillance, but they need to do it quickly hence the need for direct advertising.
For some reason my mind replaced Geeks with Leaks. It caused me to do a double take!
Our country has many losers that will snap up the jobs to violate their fellow countryman's constitutional rights.
'There are activities that I've worked on that make, you know, front page headlines. And I can say, I know all about that, I had a hand in that.
That's silly/ There are not many headlines in the last few years that the NSA is proud of. And if you work at the NSA and had a hand in something that made front page headlines, you probably aren't allowed to talk about it anyway.
My friends who work at the NSA hate when the NSA comes up as a topic, because it is never good news. They just have to hide their heads and walk out of the room. Sometimes that is because they are not allowed to talk about it. Other times it is because they are sick of hearing the flak.
...to join the Dark Side of The Force.
I was at a friend's wedding in the vicinity of Electric Boat & there was a guy who did something DOD/submarine related (non-specific but enough to infer that) who took a strange interest in me. my friend (groom) introduced us, told him abridged version of my background and he started asking a lot of questions about my technical background, how I'd design/harden different things for sub applications, etc. he seemed to like my technical answers but every 4th or 5th question he'd ask me: "who do you work for?". the 2nd time he asked it I assumed he hadn't paid attention b/c the tech talk was more interesting but by the 4th time I realized it was some sort of psych test thing and said: "well, obviously you're looking for a specific specific answer I've not given you - am I supposed to say USA, you now or something to that effect?" to which he smiled, shook his head and said something to the effect "man, that's too bad..." I left with mixed feelings b/c while one the one hand I have no desire to support "the complex" I'm sure the problem space is fascinating/challenging & the resources effectively unlimited (kind of like a buddy of mine who was an AE on the F-22). I'm sure working for the NSA is that x100 - they may be evil but they do what they do better & on a scale bigger than any organization has ever done anything else in the history of the world so I could see the appeal of being part of that.
that's one of the inherent problems w/being a geek - we're driven by the need to solve hard/interesting problems b/c we can! why did someone like Robert Oppenheimer build the bomb? yes, we needed to beat the Nazis but not kid ourselves - part of it was b/c he didn't have enough time/resources to build a death star...
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
And you certainly can't beat them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We all know that so called ad targeting works by building up profiles on people intended to categorize their interests -- very much like the NSA's own automated profiling and analysis systems. But the profiling system can't tell the difference between a favorable interest and a disgusted interest (much like they can't tell if you've already bought those shoes you were searching for two weeks ago and so keep showing you ads for shoes).
That they've decided to show the guy recruiting ads because he's been reading articles about how the NSA is a bunch of nationalistic spying assholes is the cherry on top, a perfect demonstration how pervasive surveillance can't actually understand the intent of people and thus will have an overwhelming percentage of false positives.
If real people at the FBI can't even tell the different between someone reporting a threat against themselves and a threat against the FBI profiling systems can only automate keystone cop level of surveillance effectiveness.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I think a true "geek" would probably enjoy working there. If nothing else, the problems to solve would be a lot more interesting than typical corporate IT/dev positions. The people who actually work for NSA, not for a contractor like Snowden did, are sure not doing it for the money. They're doing it for job security, maybe better benefits, but probably also because they feel like they're doing something important. The contractors will always be hired guns, as they are in any organization, and not as invested in the core mission. Also, NSA isn't just about spying -- any cryptography or communications nerd would probably have an interesting set of tasks to pick from that didn't involve actually collecting and sifting through data.
It's not an exact parallel, but I work for an organization that provides a quasi-public service. We're not quite private, not quite public, owned by our customers, and provide vital services -- kind of a "captive service provider". The stuff I work on is used around the world, and is much more interesting (to me) than building the latest executive dashboard or accounting system for a company. There are trade offs -- the pay is lower than what I could get doing executive dashboard work, and it's not a hot sexy industry we work for. But for the right type of person, it's a good fit. (We have issues retaining people because of this -- the mercenaries can get much better pay working somewhere else and don't have to deal with some of our unique problems. Those who do stay tend to be long-tenured folks who share the same interests I was talking about.)
In my opinion, a lot of the hand-wringing around Snowden and the NSA communications surveillance needs to be put into perspective. We share an immense amount of data about our personal lives online, and then wonder why this open source intelligence is collected and analyzed. I think most reasonable individuals had some inclination that something like this was happening, similar to the Cold War era. Intelligence organizations are a necessary evil to protect a country's interests, and every country spies on every other country. It just came out a couple of days ago that Brazil has an active domestic surveillance program, which would seem strange if you heard Brazil's president railing against the US version.
I think the big problem now is that people feel NSA collects too much data and has a much easier time finding patterns in it than they did with pre-Internet and analog communications channels in the past. After all, you could only have so many analysts sorting through international phone records and listening to the interesting ones. Many of the people complaining don't have the perspective of living with the Soviet Union and the US staring each other down for decades -- I barely remember it myself. But a lot of those same people post-9/11 basically said to their elected officials, "Don't ever let this happen again, no matter what it takes." I'm inclined to believe that a program like this is what it takes. Look how much damage two US residents did in Boston, and that wasn't even a large-scale or particularly well planned attack.
Do we really have proof we can verify that the NSA is actually worth having around?
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
from the summary: "The things that happen here at NSA really have national and world ramifications."
Yep, he's right. Things like destroying the United States Constitution. Nice work, NSA.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Apparently NSA does not learn. Geeks go wild. They're not domestic. They bite the hand that feeds them. The NSA has been burnt before yet they don't seem to be learning...
There was a time 2000-2006 where I would have considered, but after learning more, Never. I will not be a traitor to the American People by working for your East German style intelligence agency.
latest by Patrick Chappelle on cagle.com... multi-medalled muckety-muck in uniform in front of an endless form of servers, telling some hapless geek at a console, "We have all the phone calls. You sort out the threats."
that's what they need. plodders to wade through the muck.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
"'There are activities that I've worked on that make, you know, front page headlines."
Though not always in a positive light. Come join us and be part of the problem!
Their employment ad slogan should be: We know you want to... we really do know this.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
At the moment, they are more likely to get Actively Malevolent.
woudl be a start but thats not very much to ask maybe hiring experienced players and not hiring subs would be another or just subcontract it to GCHQ who seem to be the ones doing the heavy lifting.
See figure one.
Davo -- Free speech, free software, AND free beer.
They realized they need all of those SysAdmins they fired months ago.
At this point, you could say the same about any large gang, or mafia that gets caught.
Making headlines in a downright terrible way is still making headlines.
m.imdb.com/title/tt0119217/quotes?qt=qt0408102
Why shouldn't I work for the N.S.A.? That's a tough one, but I'll take a shot.
Say I'm working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break.
Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well.
But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East.
Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never met, never had no problem with, get killed.
Now the politicians are sayin', "Oh, send in the Marines to secure the area" 'cause they don't give a
shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot.
Just like it wasn't them when their number got called, 'cause they were pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southie takin' shrapnel in the ass.
And he comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile, he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price.
And, of course, the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little
ancillary benefit for them, but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And they're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, of course,
and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin' play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic.
So now my buddy's out of work and he can't afford to drive, so he's got to walk to the fuckin' job interviews, which sucks 'cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorrhoids.
And meanwhile he's starvin', 'cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat, the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State.
So what did I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better.
I figure fuck it, while I'm at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the
hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.
For what it's worth, I'm seeing the NSA recruiting advertisement here on /. at the moment.
My only reason for not wanting to work for the NSA is their location. I'll take the thin, dry air of Colorado over the thick, humid stuff in northern Virginia, thank you very much.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Why shouldn't I work for the N.S.A.? That's a tough one, but I'll take a shot. Say I'm working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never met, never had no problem with, get killed. Now the politicians are sayin', "Oh, send in the Marines to secure the area" 'cause they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number got called, 'cause they were pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southie takin' shrapnel in the ass. And he comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile, he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And, of course, the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them, but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And they're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, of course, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin' play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy's out of work and he can't afford to drive, so he's got to walk to the fuckin' job interviews, which sucks 'cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he's starvin', 'cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat, the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure fuck it, while I'm at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.
Really, that job search area is bad. Right click does not work in places, the search sucks, and really popping up your own window so I can search.
lololololol
What do you mean "open source intelligence"? Much of what the NSA is collecting is data that nearly everyone has an expectation of privacy over, i.e. that it is either restricted to whom they shared the data with or that the data is kept private with their provider/phone company/etc. In fact, in one of the most recent Snowden leaks, it has been revealed that the NSA has been spying on data travelling between the data centers of Google and Yahoo (meaning that they likely spliced into a fiber link somewhere, illegally). So I'm sorry but trying to color this as the gathering of open source information is total bullshit.
I do believe that everyone spies on everyone else, but the NSA is certainly the most advanced and most funded intelligence agency with capabilities far beyond everyone else's. We're likely able to penetrate several orders of magnitude deeper than what our adversaries can do.
Regarding the claims of the NSA helping to thwart attacks: recent claims made have been debunked (some examples given were actually thwarted entirely be police work and the intelligence gathered was not essential to that), other claims have not had any supporting evidence given, despite promises from the Obama administration that such information would be declassified and made public.
Worked out great for Wernher von Braun...
I am a skilled analyst with social engineering skills. currently residing in russia, but willing to work remotely. previously have worked for contractors related to NSA work.
I thought the NHTSA data ultimately showed that the incidence of "run-away vehicles" was pretty much entirely mappable to the incidence of "old or confused person stomping on the wrong pedal", and that this incidence rate was in line with the average for all passenger cars?
Okay, this prompted me to poke around again on the NHTSA page for Additional Information on Toyota Recalls and Investigations. Of particular note on the NHTSA-NASA Study of Unintended Acceleration in Toyota Vehicles page and the executive summary of the report linked from there:
Those "other causes" appear to be primarily related to floor mats blocking free motion of the accelerator pedal. There was a recall related to this, to replace the driver's floor mat with a new mat cut differently to avoid the possibility of getting stuck under or behind the pedal. It sounds like Toyota were asshats about that, and they paid sizable fines for failing to tell the authorities about the problems. But a lot of the bad press about runaway cars turned out to be BS, such as these two incidents covered by CBS News.
This is mostly a divergence from icebike's point about PR, which I think is mostly valid. I simply wanted to address what sounded a bit like misinformation about runaway cars. I happen to own a Prius, so I followed up on the stories and investigations in an effort to better understand my own risk.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
But, but North Korea!??
There are versions of this defense for Taiwan, and of course that contested island west of Greenland where the tender Canadians really need some sigint help against the Danish Viking descendents.
I'm certain they have a wide variety of white collar criminals to choose from after all the U.S. tops the charts on percentage of population that are incarcerated.
Which is precisely the problem. We who have forgotten the history of the USSR and East Germany, two surveillance states that collapsed under the institutional paranoia and economic deadweight of their own security bureaucracies, have condemned ourselves to repeat it.
For what it's worth (Cold War kid here), I'll make the tradeoffs as follows:
1) If it saves a region from devastation or prevents the collapse of human civilization, surveil away.
2) If it saves a city or prevents something that takes more than 1M lives, meh, OK, that might be worth giving up freedom. Because we sure as shit won't have freedom under martial law afterwards.
3) If it saves us from 9/11: I'll take the billion dollars and month's worth of automobile accidents any day over the trillions we've wasted since.
4) "Look at how much damage" Boston did? Dude, watch the six o'clock news every friggin' day. If that's the price of freedom, so be it. I'm not scared of terrorists. I'm scared shitless over people who can't do risk assessment.
Everyone's entitled to make their own mental tradeoffs for themselves. Growing up with an armed and capable adversary that could (even if it didn't particularly want to) end civilization with the push of a button, and reading stories of my parents/grandparents wars (in which millions died and any individual battle cost thousands of lives) gave my tolerance for risk-of-death-at-the-hands-of-wartime-enemy vs risk-of-death-due-to-ones-own-totalitarian-government what it is.
I'm not dissing "Kids these days...." -- if you grew up in the '90s, you grew up in an age in which "going to war" meant a few weeks of conflict and fewer than 300 US casuaties, (half of whom died from accidents or hardware malfunction vs. enemy fire!) If that's your idea of war, and if OKC or the Beirut Barracks Bombing was your idea of terrorism, I can't really blame you for saying "never again, even at the cost of our freedom" against 9/11. You just saw something that killed 10 times more Americans than Gulf War I, or any terrorist attack you saw in your lifetime. And it's easy to lose sight of what "our freedoms" mean when you don't have things like the USSR / Iron Curtain / rest of the Warsaw Pact for contrast them against.
I suppose it's a little easier to appreciate our freedoms now that we're gone and we're living in a surveillance state whose capabilities exceed Stalin's wildest dreams. When those who have that power start to abuse it -- and even if it hasn't happened yet, history is pretty clear that it's a when, not an if, and it doesn't matter who -- it's too late.
The NSA is a *military* org. Run from the pentagon, part of the armed forces. It is mandated to spy on foreign nations. Our enemies for and our friends are fair game there. Any outside group that could militarily affect the U.S.A.
But dragnetting civilian communications? No. Ignoring the constitution - ignoring the fact that we DO NOT ALLOW the States military forces to operate against it's people - in order to accept this spying as part of the NSA brief requires us to accept that the people of the U.S.A are potentially foreign allies who may consider an act of war against the United States.
Bullshit.
*We* are the United States.
Or is it that the real U.S of A is actually a few thousand people working for the Government, and everybody else is actually, officially, and truly the enemy.
This ****es me off, almost as much as the idea that our Police forces are somehow not Civilians anymore.
For'reals...
Alternative definition of "NSA" == Network Storage Attachment
Carter had the foresight to see how employing Bin Laden type characters could possibly backfire. The whole "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" bull shit ... what goes around comes around. We (citizens of the United States, and the world for that matter) have greatly suffered because of our elected officials only giving a damn about short term political and economic gains. I'll never understand all this Carter bashing. Seems to me he was one of the few to actually "get it."
goodie-goodie geek
good at looking like a geek
good geek references from approved patriots
good clean and healthy geek image
good carreer oriented geek job history
good social media corretness and contacts
good christian church going and voulunteering history
good at following technical direction
needs expensive govt drugs to work more than 8 hours a day
technically superior geek
smelly unhealthy basement dwelling creature
multiple social media imposter/prankster profiles
been fired from many jobs
can work multiple drug free 36 hour sessions with only a 2 hour nap inbetween
(performance improvement obtained with cheap street drugs)
codes - doesn't hack
capable of original thinking
mentally, physically and emotionally appears to be a heroin addict when
removed from super-active multi-tasked online environment
you've got to ask youself
are you going to win with 100 80 IQ's
or one 200 IQ
Maybe if the Federal Government would end its campaign of arresting and prosecuting geeks they would have an easier time getting geeks to work for them. Just a thought.
like cold fjord & others.
A long time ago, I read a science fiction book: "The Cool War", by Frederick Pohl, about those spy-vs-spy scenarios. And two of the characters in the book, the Reddy brothers, just were basically cheap thugs for hire, their phone number in every intelligence agency's phonebook. I wondered then, if this would be how it really works. Whose side are the Reddy brothers on? "well, until next tuesday we're working for the Americans, but hide yourself until next month, because we'll probably get a contract from the Finns to take you out after wednesday. Have a nice day!".
That must be even more difficult in countries like Afghanistan, where some war reporter said: "You can't bribe an Afghan leader. You can only lease him for a while."
you're not a good geek.
Also why is Slashdot advertising NSA jobs as stories now?
An old joke nearly served. The NSA is not a place where God coddles his minions.
Uh they don't have enough money to hire me. Wait. With the state of the economy they might literally not have enough money to hire me. And with all the fire that they are coming under worldwide for their more then underhanded tactics, not much job security there. Nevermind.
I'm old, not dead. Well that's my 2 cents worth, your mileage may vary. I say what I think, not what you want to hear.
Unfortunately they tend not to be able to hire "the brightest and best" because those folks tend not to always be on the up and up for the requisite 100% of the time... A little moral ambiguity or tarnished classified file => no bueno.
Is it not messed up that two marines can now go blow each other but can't puff a joint? Even in the states that have declared it "not illegal"... wtf have we come to.
Agreed that conflicts have far fewer casualties than the WW 2 and even the Vietnam era. There's light years of difference between losing 1,000 men taking over a square mile of battlefield and pushing a button to wipe out your enemy from remote. In fact, the likelihood that we will never need to use the draft again will probably make interventions more palatable in the future, unfortunately. There's a huge difference in public opinion between a volunteer army which most see as a jobs program for the poor and forced conscription that may mean you or your offspring not coming back home.
I also agree that terrorism isn't anything compared to the huge armed conflicts of the past, or even small scale stuff in the grand scheme of things. I wasn't one of the people I mentioned who wanted to prevent another 9/11 no matter what. But, there were plenty of other people who did.
I'm not quite sure I agree with you and many others who feel the government is going to swoop in and become the Stasi or KGB. First, the US population is too fractured as it is -- there would be no way for anyone to agree on one particular platform to rally around. Anti-religion people hate the religious people. Liberals hate conservatives. Budget hawks hate progressives. Gun nuts hate non-gun nuts. Good luck getting anyone to agree on anything. Second, the government itself has too many internal issues to make anything like that happen. The only reason there was any cooperation on defense in the past was because there was, as you say, a well-armed and capable adversary that was at least making noises about our destruction. Even then, there was still a huge debate about the policy of containment, especially since Korea and Vietnam were such total wastes of life and money for, arguably, no gain.
I'm not trying to generalize or rip down your view of things, but all the arguments I've seen about this have boiled down to "OMG, the evil government is out to get me personally, lock me up and take away my guns. It's like the Soviet Union all over again!" People give away so much more data to Facebook, Google, Apple, other big retailers and the various payment processing companies -- why aren't they paranoid about that? I'd be a lot more worried about Google and other private companies abusing their power. Not in a "send you off for re-education" sense, but in a forcing you to give them increasing amounts of money for essential services sense. There's a lot of this "defending my homestead" mentality that just makes people sound like they live on a 20-acre compound in the mountains with barbed wire fence and a private security force 24/7 just in case the government decides to try something. It just doesn't make sense in this modern era.
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