<story><title>It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?</title><url>http://pandodaily.com/2013/10/31/its-time-for-silicon-valley-to-ask-is-it-worth-it/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>EXTERMINATE ALL RATIONAL THOUGHT. Questions are not allowed. Consideration is not allowed. Context is not allowed. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.</text></item><item><author>duairc</author><text>&amp;gt; Everyone on HN acts like there&amp;#x27;s no possible reason for people to support these types of activities.&lt;p&gt;And they&amp;#x27;re right. You don&amp;#x27;t need to play devil&amp;#x27;s advocate. The devil has enough advocates.</text></item><item><author>mikeyouse</author><text>Everyone on HN acts like there&amp;#x27;s no possible reason for people to support these types of activities, but there could be very legitimate reasons these engineers choose to do what they do.&lt;p&gt;It could just be a challenge for them. Where else can you not only get away with, but be rewarded with a good salary and a pension for hacking into the most secure systems on earth? It must be thrilling to be &amp;#x27;Competing&amp;#x27; against the best security engineers, best practices, with a massive budget to support your activities.&lt;p&gt;It could be that with their security clearances, they know things about threats that make their decision to work for the NSA a moral imperative. It&amp;#x27;s entirely possible that there are some really horrific classified things that were stopped via similar spying activities, so intercepting some Gmail messages seems like a much less evil alternative.&lt;p&gt;They could just be &amp;#x27;blindly&amp;#x27; patriotic, have faith that the faults of the government are outweighed by the need to keep the US on top of the world.&lt;p&gt;There are many possible reasons.</text></item><item><author>sharkweek</author><text>I have an honest and serious question -- who are the developers and designers who put these systems into place for the NSA? Are they aware of what they&amp;#x27;re doing or is it all classified and contracted out? Are they proud of their work? Is it just a paycheck? Surely someone with such a high aptitude could easily get a job elsewhere -- I guess I&amp;#x27;m just unable to make the connection on who willingly builds this kind of stuff.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not trying to be intentionally obtuse, I just legitimately am curious</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>duairc</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a Deleuze quote about this that I really like: “It is not the slumber of reason that engenders monsters, but vigilant and insomniac rationality”.&lt;p&gt;What I understand this to mean is that the nature of “rationality” is such that a rational person can rationalize &lt;i&gt;anything&lt;/i&gt;. Nobody is saying “EXTERMINATE ALL RATIONAL THOUGHT”, obviously this is just you trolling, but to the extent that anything intelligent can be distilled from your reply, that&amp;#x27;s my response to it.&lt;p&gt;We can always rationalise anything, especially misdeeds committed by those in positions of power over us. Sometimes it&amp;#x27;s important to halt that process and stop and just say &amp;quot;this is definitely fucked up&amp;quot;, and yes, &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; to question it any further. It can actually be really hard not to question it sometimes, especially if you trust, or have been conditioned to trust, those in positions of power over you who are abusing you. You want to find reasons to defend their abuse of their power, you don&amp;#x27;t want it to be what it looks like. And you can find reasons for it, you always can. You will. But abuse is still abuse. So sometimes you have to stop and just say “this is fucked”.</text></comment>
<story><title>It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?</title><url>http://pandodaily.com/2013/10/31/its-time-for-silicon-valley-to-ask-is-it-worth-it/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>EXTERMINATE ALL RATIONAL THOUGHT. Questions are not allowed. Consideration is not allowed. Context is not allowed. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.</text></item><item><author>duairc</author><text>&amp;gt; Everyone on HN acts like there&amp;#x27;s no possible reason for people to support these types of activities.&lt;p&gt;And they&amp;#x27;re right. You don&amp;#x27;t need to play devil&amp;#x27;s advocate. The devil has enough advocates.</text></item><item><author>mikeyouse</author><text>Everyone on HN acts like there&amp;#x27;s no possible reason for people to support these types of activities, but there could be very legitimate reasons these engineers choose to do what they do.&lt;p&gt;It could just be a challenge for them. Where else can you not only get away with, but be rewarded with a good salary and a pension for hacking into the most secure systems on earth? It must be thrilling to be &amp;#x27;Competing&amp;#x27; against the best security engineers, best practices, with a massive budget to support your activities.&lt;p&gt;It could be that with their security clearances, they know things about threats that make their decision to work for the NSA a moral imperative. It&amp;#x27;s entirely possible that there are some really horrific classified things that were stopped via similar spying activities, so intercepting some Gmail messages seems like a much less evil alternative.&lt;p&gt;They could just be &amp;#x27;blindly&amp;#x27; patriotic, have faith that the faults of the government are outweighed by the need to keep the US on top of the world.&lt;p&gt;There are many possible reasons.</text></item><item><author>sharkweek</author><text>I have an honest and serious question -- who are the developers and designers who put these systems into place for the NSA? Are they aware of what they&amp;#x27;re doing or is it all classified and contracted out? Are they proud of their work? Is it just a paycheck? Surely someone with such a high aptitude could easily get a job elsewhere -- I guess I&amp;#x27;m just unable to make the connection on who willingly builds this kind of stuff.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not trying to be intentionally obtuse, I just legitimately am curious</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dasil003</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re trampling over his legitimate point, which is that gears of the US government PR machine are massive, and the well-fed targets of their propaganda are well-fed and cozy, and yet the dangers of government overreach are bigger than ever.&lt;p&gt;Are there potentially reasons why &amp;quot;terrorism&amp;quot; might in fact be a greater threat to our ideals and way of life then government power?  Sure! Anything&amp;#x27;s possible. But such threats would need to be justified publicly, they can not be justified behind closed doors with classified documents.</text></comment>