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.

Comments

One hopes

[Majestix]

...that these men are just acting. They cant be that naive that they dont understand the resistance to their designs.

Re:One hopes

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that they are caught up in their own bullshit that they have forgotten how ''the man in the street'' thinks

These people are not "the man on the street". They are members of an increasingly prominent caste in Western society, which for want of a better term, we can call "Corporate careerists". These people know what they want from day one and that is an Important Well Paying Job. They are motivated and in many cases groomed from a very early age to jump through formalised certification hoops, network relentlessly, fit into existing systems and to expand the scope and role of those systems so as to advance their own career. It's a new kind of aristocracy, one whose economic fortunes are increasingly -- and mostly in the case of government careerists -- based on rents of one kind of another.

It would be impossible to explain to this person that his plans to expand the reach, control, influence, and above all budget of his little part of corporate america is somehow a bad thing. Appealing to constitutional principles, legal prcedents, or commons sense mean nothing to someone whose entire working life has revolved around using power point presentations to elicit funding for hair brained projects based on numerological "models" of one thing or another.

This person knows only one truth: I do as the system dictates and I get paid. Their entire life is the comfortable and predicable drawl of the modern office and "professional" workplace. It is impossible to explain to them that their actions are eroding the very foundation of the system and life they lead, because in their minds the modern world is a default state. Nothing will ever erode the stability or predictability of the status quo they operate in -- or so they believe.

In reality this professional "careerist" caste has done more damage to western society in the last 30 years than any other factor. They erode both stability and order as they increasingly mismanage their systems on what is now a colossal scale. We see this everywhere: Government, Banks, Military, Politics, Media, Business, Academia. The hoop jumpers are running the show and the ringmaster is one of them. There's really nothing to be done anymore except wait for the system to fail. It won't be pretty to watch what careerists like Brennan and Comey do then.

Re:Nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

The, where is the American Dictatorship?
Where are the death squads and ditches full of dead bodies?
Where are the crying survivors hoping to find their disappeared loved ones?

The problem is that the gas chambers didn't start claiming bodies on January 5, 1919, when the German Worker's Party was founded. No genocide occurred on July 28, 1921, when Adolf Hitler was elected party chairman. On November 8th, 1923, the rest of the world shrugged at (even if they were aware of) the Munich Beer Hall Putsch. No Jews fled the country on December 20th, 1924 when Hitler was released from the prison where he wrote Mein Kampf. The government of Germany showed no real concern in 1925, when Hitler re-founded the previously banned Nazi party. No death squads suddenly started roaming the streets after September 14, 1930 when the Nazis gained a significant representation in the legislature. No crying survivors searched for their loved ones on January 30, 1933, as Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor. Perhaps some concern was raised in February 28th, 1933 when government suspended civil liberties, but, hey, the main government building had been the victim of arson - the country was under attack, so suspension of civil liberties seems reasonable, no? And besides, where was the evidence of death squads and ditches full of dead bodies? And on March 23, 1933 when the parliament gave the Chancellor sweeping powers, it was passed by a large margin. "No, Hitler's not a dictator, he just has emergency powers, granted to him by the legislature. You Communists, complaining about it and weakening the ability of our government to exercise their duly appointed capabilities. Besides, they're just *emergency* powers, and will expire in four years ..."

The problem is that gross infringement of rights probably isn't going to happen with you waking up one morning with some oppressive regime goose-stepping through the streets. It's much more likely that it will creep up slowly. Germans in the '20s and early '30s all could have argued "Where is the German Dictatorship? Where are the death squads and ditches full of dead bodies? Where are the crying survivors hoping to find their disappeared loved ones?" The big atrocities didn't happen overnight, they only occurred once the Nazis has cemented their power and it was hopeless for anyone in Germany to resist them.

There were plenty of warning signs *in retrospect* that Hitler and the Nazis were bad apples - hell, as mentioned, the Nazi party was even banned at one point in time. The problem was that *at the time* no one took the red flags seriously. "Well, the Nazis haven't genocided anyone yet .. I guess they're okay." "Well, theoretically he *can* commit gross atrocities, but that would be crazy, so we don't need to worry about it."

I'm certainly not saying that any current government - American or otherwise - is as bad as the Nazis. I'm not even saying that they are definitely, probably, possibly, or even vaguely on the road in that direction. What I am saying is that "they haven't instituted a brutal, oppressive regime" isn't a ringing endorsement. If you *were* going to flagrantly violate someone's rights, you'd make sure to hide that fact until you know no one could oppose you. If an American Dictatorship ever does come about, at the point in time that there are death squads, ditches and crying survivors, it's likely going to be too late for anyone to do anything. The time to act is not when the megalomaniacs are in charge of the military and all the government and can deport your to an interment camp for disagreeing with them. The time to act is when they're a fringe group in a remote province, or minor players in the government, trying to extend their power by questionable means. An ounce of prevention, and all that.

"Besides, he looks like such a sweet young man. Who would he ever harm?"