Slashdot Mirror
Spy Industry Leaders Befuddled Over 'Deep Cynicism' of American Public
New submitter autonomous_reader writes: Ars Technica has a story on this week's Intelligence & National Security Summit, where CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey had a lot to say about the resistance of the American public to government cyber spying and anti-encryption efforts. Blaming resistance on "people who are trying to undermine" the intelligence mission of the NSA, CIA, and FBI, John Brennan explained it was all a "misunderstanding." Comey explained that "venom and deep cynicism" prevented rational debate of his campaign for cryptographic backdoors.
Mr Fox feels misunderstood and would like to continue guarding the hen house.
Requiem for the American Dream
"You see, we thought that the Constitution doesn't apply to us. Why can't anyone understand that we're the good guys?!?"
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
"I don't think we've really tried to find answers yet because no one in the private sector has been properly incentivized."
They haven't been properly motivated. We'll help them come around to our way of thinking.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
I'll tell you who is undermining it. It's the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, and Homeland Security. They have already demonstrated, unequivocally, that they will happily fuck over every last man, woman and child, not just in the US, but around the entire planet, if they could get away with it. The list of abuses is already long, and at no point have they shown any interest in stopping.
The fact that they are accusing unknown people "trying to undermine" them, and that these people are "fueled by their adversaries" just tells you how completely and utterly out to lunch these dimwits are.
They don't seem to understand that, the tighter they squeeze their fist, the more that squeezes out from between their fingers.
The FBI engaged in a massive amount of illegal wiretapping. It was MASSIVE. It was also quite illegal--and completely unpunished. This was organized violation of civil rights--a plain crime.
The FBI engaged in massive surveillance of student demonstrators, including infiltrating student protest movements. This wasn't for suspicion of crime--this was for intelligence. That was plain wrong.
The FBI burgled--there is no other word for it--the office of Daniel Ellsberg and others. That is wrong.
Then there was FBI Director L. Patrick Gray and the Nixon coverup.
AND THEY ASK US WHY WE DON'T TRUST THEM NOT TO VIOLATE OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO PRIVACY?
Oh, come on now...
The United States was founded and structured around a deep cynicism towards government. I'm surprised members of the intelligence community haven't picked up a history book before.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
You know ... you should be far more terrified of people who think they're doing the right thing, and fervently believe in all the crap they say.
Those people? Those fucking people are scary motherfuckers who will do anything if they can justify it to themselves. And if they can avoid getting caught, they'll do even more.
A bunch of people who sincerely believe in all the crap they do ... those people are dangerous, unhinged, and will simply do anything they feel they need to.
You can't have a free society protected by thugs who ignore the basic tenets of that free society. It just doesn't work. And they can't protect freedoms by taking them away.
At this point, they can either try to protect your lives, or your way of life ... but what they've been doing is incompatible with both.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
> I do believe that many of them are honourable people, but their viewpoint has become so skewed
You know, in a way, I do too; its just, I can't imagine how that could matter less when we know the road to hell is most easily paved with the best of intentions.
It doesn't matter how good they intend to be, or how honorable they are. What they are building, as a technological capability, is too powerful of a weapon to trust anyone with. Actions taken in secret audited in secret, regulated in secret.....
Once the gun is built, it is a matter of the will of the user where it is pointed. The only thing you can be sure of is, the owner will someday change. Policies will change.
Just imagine what happens if we wind back the clock to my parents 20s. What if, after the very first protest, police could identify the names and home addresses of all the social hub people in the community. What would our world look like today if every gay rights protest or every anti war protest just saw a string of quiet arrests for "drugs" or traffic stops that "got violent" and removed the very people who glued others together....
Who really looks at history and thinks this sort of power is safe to leave in the hands of those in power? When has any sort of power to silence opposition NOT been abused?
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
This isn't "deep cynicism". This is the Founding Fathers' hard-won experience in freeing themselves from oppression.
The King, George III, used all kinds of tricks to keep opposition down. Warrantless searches, "general warrants", allowing them to root around your house and papers until they find something they can tag you with, which would be applied to uppity folks. Outlawing of speech. Outlawing or restriction of presses, the literal mechanical method of mass producing speech for distribution, a backdoor method of censorship. Using one particular popular denomination of one particular religion to stir outrage and knock down other opponents through religious laws.
These a d dozens of other concepts are not freaking cynicism!
Attention NSA leaders and politicians: You are constructing a panopticon (go look it up) that is literally more powerful than that which was cynically portrayed in "1984". With no mechanical methods to prevent, or even track its abuse, you cannot guarantes that the 1 out of 1000 agent who is a G. Gordon Liddy type won't abuse the spying to report on political opposition to his patron.
"Imagine a boot stamping on a human face...forever." Ancient Rome and Greece, 1930s Germany, these are democracies that handed over emergency power and The People never got it back.
The Founding Fathers knew the only way to guarantee (as far as such is possible) this cannot happen is to simply blanket forbid these powers to government. Now you want Eye in the Sky crap, too?
Yes I am sure you all fancy yourselves The Untouchables, but it's not you We, with our Founding Fathers hats, are worried about. It is those who would abuse these marvelous tools for dictatorship.
Do you think Putin, to whom you are selling Eye in the Sky to, won't abuse it to track opposition?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Why not "People who don't trust the people are surprised that the people doesn't trust them either."
Trust is a two way street.