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.

Comments

Easy

[StikyPad]

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.

Re:Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Man is not a rational animal - man is a rationalising animal.

The easy bit is seeing this in other people. The hard bit is accepting it of yourself.

They used it for spying on spouses ffs!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

His argument makes a tiny bit of sense ..

[ahodgson]

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.

Re:Putting bread on the table

[The Real Dr John]

Yup, that sums up the problems with modern capitalism very well. Everyone is doing something wrong because it pleases the boss and makes them money.