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.
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
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"
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.
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.
Indeed, more information *can* yield a clearer picture of the event, situation, etc.
However, more data also simplifies the job of cherry picking data points to prove some totally random theory.
Hope drives the former, while laziness drives the latter.
Anything you say can *and* will be used against you in a court of law (except in cases where you're exempt from the extra paperwork of courts). That takes on a more ominous tone when you can't control the massive volume of data being collected and generated about everything you ever do.
Let's talk about the limits for a second. Folks are upset by activities that were 1) authorized by Congress, 2) had oversight by the executive branch of the US government (White House, Department of Justice, and ODNI), and 3) were reviewed by the courts. If you don't like what is going on then stop wasting your time posting on ./ then get involved and write to your congressmen to change things.
Do you hear what you are saying? You are saying the people who work as NSA are the same as those at Auschwitz who killed masses of people.
They are essentially the same. They're part of a system which kills people it finds inconvenient, all over the world.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No, he's saying that "I was only following orders" is in no way a justification for behavior that is morally wrong or even illegal. The parallel is clear.
This NSA guy is actually admitting that he is willing to do his job as a cog in the machine even if he thinks the activities are wrong.