Slashdot Mirror
The NSA's Philosopher
An anonymous reader writes: In 2012, the NSA decided it needed an in-house ethicist to write about the philosophy of surveillance. They searched within the organization for a candidate, finally giving the job to an analyst who had abandoned a writing career that hadn't worked out. The Intercept got its hands on some of his work: "The columns answer a sociological curiosity: How does working at an intelligence agency turn a privacy hawk into a prophet of eavesdropping?" At one point, the analyst wrote, "We probably all have something we know a lot about that is being handled at a higher level in a manner we're not entirely happy about. This can cause great cognitive dissonance for us, because we may feel our work is being used to help the government follow a policy we feel is bad." The article analyzes this man in detail, including his life history and his personal blog — it's a strange coupling of invasiveness and anonymization, for they take steps to avoid revealing his identity. The article's author correctly notes (while the NSA does not) that surveilling somebody doesn't mean you really know them.
I love this story.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
It's called rationalizing, and anyone can do it. First, do whatever you want. Next, come up with a justification. As long as you act first and justify second, you're doing it right! Under no circumstances should you reverse the order of operations, you you may end up actually behaving ethically.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Eat it neckbeard cocksuckers
I can't believe it man !
Those of us who are familiar with Slashdot knows that our resident NSA fanboi the famous Mr. Cold Fjord is perfect for the job. Why the hell NSA didn't give Mr. Cold Fjord a call??
Captha: indexed
Years of reports for the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board show NSA analysts were caught mishandling surveillance data and spying on people through their job. Analysts with the National Security Agency have been abusing surveillance data to spy on significant others and spouses for more than a decade, heavily redacted government documents show.
And now they want to convince us they are "ethical"? Never mind the legality of it.
If you assume the people watching are in fact the good guys and bear you no ill will and will never misuse their knowledge or incompetently leak it to others.
If, on the other hand, they happen to be human beings, who will inevitably abuse their power, then maybe not so much.
surveilling somebody doesn't mean you really know them.
and fucking somebody doesn't mean you love them.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
There is a rule in politics that I always agreed with. You don't bring the other guys sexuality into it, unless it makes him an actual hypocrite by his policy. So you don't mention a man is gay, even if he is, unless he comes out and gives a speech about how gays belong in prison. Makes sense right?
well.... This man argues everyone should be transparent.... I feel the author made a mistake in not doxing him completely and releasing his full name and phone number.
I hate this man, but maybe its just because I don't know EVERYTHING about him. Clearly he needs to be helped by releasing that information so I can come to understand him as a real human and not a threat to my privacy.
This is one of the few cases where doxing is not only justified, but, the moral imperative!
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
66 Since all are guilty before YHWH of sin, it stands to reason that all are guilty before the state of one or more crimes. 99
Anyone who is regarded in our time as modern, educated and enlightened has no choice but to dismiss a priori the first part. Nowadays, some other justification is supplied to support the second part.
When the Transcendent is dismissed, man becomes deity, body becomes soul, time becomes eternity. All higher dimensions collapse to eleven or perhaps only four. STEMC (space, time, matter, energy and chance) come to define reality. Now, you college graduates, get out there and slaughter tens of millions more. You can't disappoint your inspirations, such as Marx, Darwin, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Hit[GODWIN! GODWIN! WHOOP! WHOOP!...]
A fascinating read. Thanks for sharing.
:)
I do believe that having more information will allow for a more accurate analysis of why people behave the way they do, that is, their motivations.
However, I am not sure that all of the observable facts in the universe about an individual will be sufficient to completely predict motivation and behavior. People are complicated - the older I get, the more introspective I get, the more I pick at and analyze and assess my own actions, the more frequently I find that I do not have clear reasons for what I do - and I learn things about myself. If I have trouble figuring out why I do what I do, how could an outsider - one who does not possess the same set of biases that I have developed myself, via my own life, choices, experiments and education - ever hope to understand me so well as to correctly declare my motivations and predict my future behavior?
But then, to restate my first claim, more information will yield better accuracy. But can everything the NSA, or google, collect about me ever be enough?
Surveillance as a topic overall is interesting because it is so resistant to black-and-white rule setting - context is everything. Now I have something to think about on my afternoon walk.
In Soviet Russia, us are belong to all your base.
As someone wise once told me.. "Wish in one hand and shit in the other. One hand will be full and the other empty, tell me which is which." What you are attempting to claim is that someone today can unlearn thousands of years of study on human nature. I realize you were attempting to be nice, but nice and honesty don't always go hand in hand.
To the psychopath that decided this person was Socrates I will ask that they actually go study Socrates. This person was not Socrates or Plato by any stretch of the imagination. In both cases the Philosopher would have been smart enough to know that self interests and preservation prevents a fair view of their ethics. The only way for someone to evaluate the ethics fairly would be to evaluate as an outsider.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
you both achieved a goal. so don't investigate the guy because he tagged you. he did his job. you did your job, you found an ethical dilemna worth studying. win-win. I want a cookie.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The philosophy is simple and obvious: guilty before proven innocent. What else can possibly be said?
You already have several cookies. We use them to track your web browsing activities. And our ethicist has assured us that it is ok for us to do this.
No, I call it putting bread on the table. Picture this. There's a call for "writers", a guarantee of relative anonymity (the column will be published in an internal network of a highly secretive organization), and a chance to either get paid extra or at least rise in the eyes of your bosses (and thus make yourself a wee bit less dispensable). If I were already in his or her position, I'd apply and do my damnedest to write something at least grammatically and stylistically competent while pleasing to the target market (the head spooks). And he appears to have met the criteria. It's no different from being the speech writer of an annoying political candidate.
I suspect most of the NSA rank and file belong to this category. They love their job because it puts bread on the table.
They could have hired an actual philosophy PhD, or contracted a researcher in surveillance ethics to write their columns. Instead of which they hire internally and come up with a would-be storyteller.
Major brownie points for the name
Just asking.
They're employing this idiot for the same reason a priest is dragged in to babble pointless bullshit when the state executes someone: It makes them feel better about what they're doing or, at least, gives them a good excuse.
It was interesting to see terms like "total surveillance", been "loyal" and a "higher level".
"Total surveillance" is great for budget growth and domestic expansion requests.
The German "orders are orders" aspect vs the US constitution is another interesting idea that seems to be well established over decades.
Long term the US is facing the same issues the UK faced in the 1930's -1970's
A flood of staff with skills but no vetting just to get the needed Russian or German or later computer skills worked for the UK short term.
After the 1950-60 UK vetting was found to be vital again and outsourcing was used to fill the skills gap with loyalty been the only new test.
What the US and other nations found is that "loyalty" alone does not bring a fully rounded person, a smart person with life skills for the world stage.
The UK solved the issues by adding more expensive excellence in terms of working conditions, ongoing education, better wages, real advancement options at every level, making every domestic action legal and ensuing only the very best staff where kept long term.
The understanding of total compartmentalization also helped the UK.
The US now the huge internal tasks of ensuing every loyal staff member is comfortable with their working around the US constitution domestically, ensuring another Church Committee like report is never made public again and no more whistleblowers.
Constant internal legal reassurance over illegal domestic spying, pay issues, a living wage, spending on further education of loyal staff, the new external contractors testing US gov staff for loyalty with new tests and tracking.
What can be said about US intelligence capabilities long term if the loyal only trend continues? Loyal gov staff with few advancement prospects, rising living costs surrounded by highly paid expert private sector contractors is not a great mix.
Now the US has now funded internal, domestic "total surveillance" as a bureaucratic growth opportunity for its huge numbers of loyal gov staff.
More domestic electronic "total surveillance" will be the only solution available to any issue.
Weak domestic crypto, working with big US brands for more trap doors, back doors will ensure total domestic surveillance. The East German issue of bureaucratic surveillance size to population size will become a US budget issue.
A domestic controlled opposition system would have been much more effective and cheaper but the US seems to be sold on public/private/mil total surveillance.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It would be an oxymoron to put the terms "NSA" and "ethicist" in the same sentence, much less hire one. Let's see:
Position: in-house ethicist for NSA
Requirements:
Candidates displaying a cloven left hoof and horns will be given preference.
From comments in TFA, the public blog is here: http://workshopheretic.blogspot.com/
and a picture is here ("American as Berbere"): http://baltimorereview.org/index.php/fall_2014/section/category/fiction
I wish we had similar data about all NSA employees, or even all federal government employees.
The information isn't associated with a name. It should therefore be OK for people to have it, right?
The successful candidate will be highly skilled in ethical gymnastics.
Are you looking to sell out your country for the ends of the current malignant government?
Are you unable or unwilling to follow even the basic principals of the constitution? (Preference given to those that haven't even read it.)
Does calling you a patriot or vague warnings about terrorism motivate you to do even the shittiest most underhanded things to innocent people?
Are you highly talented in moral ambiguity and a motivated hypocrite? We have the job for you.
They need a writer. One who simply writes down the existing NSA philosophy which can be boiled down to:
All your base are belong to us!
Hey, NSA, I just did some work for you! You can send me the money later, you already know where to find me.
...where one submits to one's captors and even begins to sympathize with them. This guy has it. Mind you, surrender and submission is one of several strategies for dealing with threats. In "Socrates'" case the threat began with the polygraph test and his chosen strategy was complete submission to an adversary he probably perceives as superior. Snowden adopted a different strategy, though he may have made the same assessment of the adversary.
If we gather data, and nobody knows we did it, how can it be illegal!
Job done.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Seems he's Jacob Weber, photo on a story of his here: http://baltimorereview.org/ind... - which links to his blog at http://http//workshopheretic.b...
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.