<story><title>NSA morale down after Edward Snowden revelations, former U.S. officials say</title><url>http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-morale-down-after-edward-snowden-revelations-former-us-officials-say/2013/12/07/24975c14-5c65-11e3-95c2-13623eb2b0e1_story.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tokenadult</author><text>&lt;i&gt;More like &amp;quot;USA morale down after Edward Snowden revelations, much of U.S. population says,&amp;quot; I&amp;#x27;d say.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I suppose you and I meet different subsets of the United States population in our daily lives. I am on record here on HN as having participated in the Take Back the Fourth protest in Minneapolis about overreaching NSA surveillance. I was not afraid to go out in public in view of TV cameras and the police (the protest location was a plaza across the street from the headquarters of the Minneapolis police deparment, and I saw officers with cameras overlooking the protest location) to indicate that I think governmental surveillance, if it occurs at all, should be according to law, and strictly limited by law.&lt;p&gt;That said, I don&amp;#x27;t treat Snowden as a hero, and I hope no one else in the United States emulates him, ever. He would have done a lot more good for humankind by increasing the NSA&amp;#x27;s ability to conduct surveillance in China and in Russia (the two countries that have protected him so far) and in central Asia in general. And what has most struck me as I have conversations with American adults of approximately my age (birth years in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s) who remember more history is that they are mostly very eager to see Snowden prosecuted to the full extent of the law, which would probably mean spending the rest of his life in prison.&lt;p&gt;Yes, people choose where they work. And some people remember not to stab their co-workers in the back when they go to work. I have never chosen to work for NSA, and I would be glad to see NSA have more effective oversight from Congress and a more limited role in data-gathering. But the United States (like every other country in the world) needs some intelligence-gathering capabilities, and I seem to be joined in my daily activities by a lot of Americans who think that Snowden didn&amp;#x27;t help anyone by revealing official secrets and that he has a very misguided set of priorities about which governments to oppose. My morale decreases to know that anyone who was contracting for NSA wasn&amp;#x27;t checked out well enough to detect that tendency to treachery in advance.&lt;p&gt;The day the news broke that Edward Snowden had left Hong Kong, I was out of town at a soccer tournament with my daughter. The parents of her teammates, mostly younger than I am, heard me announce that news, and when one parent asked, what Snowden&amp;#x27;s destination was, another said, &amp;quot;Gitmo?&amp;quot; with a smile that indicated that he thought Snowden belongs there. I find that reaction quite commonplace among Americans I know.&lt;p&gt;AFTER EDIT: I see the downvotes indicating disagreement are already coming here, and that is not a surprise here on Hacker News, but do we have strong evidence that the general opinion of the American public is united in supporting the HN community view of Snowden&amp;#x27;s conduct as an NSA contractor? That&amp;#x27;s one factual question worthy of factual discussion here, whether you agree with my opinion or not.&lt;p&gt;AFTER FURTHER EDITS: I appreciate the replies to my comment, practicing free speech to help me understand other people&amp;#x27;s perspectives. I would say that it&amp;#x27;s quite possible to be a genuine whistleblower without disclosing the degree of operational information that Snowden disclosed. And it is possible--it has been done--to decry current NSA practice and still stay in the United States, as some NSA officials have done in the last few years. I&amp;#x27;ll check the polling data kindly shared in one reply. I&amp;#x27;ll note that Americans my age and older (well above the modal or median age of HN participants) have multiple sources of information through which to form opinions on this issue, and don&amp;#x27;t rely solely on governmental statements or influence from political leaders to make up our minds on these issues.</text></item><item><author>spodek</author><text>More like &amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;USA&lt;/i&gt; morale down after Edward Snowden revelations, much of U.S. population says,&amp;quot; I&amp;#x27;d say.&lt;p&gt;That happens when you do something most people would feel shame for.&lt;p&gt;A major difference between NSA employees and the rest of us is that they can easily stop what they&amp;#x27;re doing. Let&amp;#x27;s hope their pitiful loss of morale leads them to develop a conscience, respect for the law, or whatever it takes to stop doing things that lead to feeling so bad.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;“They feel they’ve been hung out to dry, and they’re right.”&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bullshit. They&amp;#x27;re adults who chose to do what they did and work where they work.&lt;p&gt;We have emotions to guide our behavior. If they feel bad for the environment they chose to work in and the work they chose to do, maybe they should look in the mirror and ask if they ought to reconsider their choices and do something that doesn&amp;#x27;t draw shame and contempt from the rest of the world while undermining their county&amp;#x27;s interests.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lemming</author><text>&lt;i&gt;...when one parent asked, what Snowden&amp;#x27;s destination was, another said, &amp;quot;Gitmo?&amp;quot; with a smile that indicated that he thought Snowden belongs there. I find that reaction quite commonplace among Americans I know.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I find that reaction quite horrifying. It is appalling (although not surprising) to me that supposedly educated people are willing to support extrajudicial process and treatment amounting to torture because they don&amp;#x27;t agree with the way someone has acted. Even if they think a crime has been committed this sort of blasé Bush-style attitude that &amp;quot;you&amp;#x27;re with us or you&amp;#x27;re against us, and if you&amp;#x27;re against us you deserve everything we can dream up to do to you&amp;quot; contributes a lot to foreign disgust at the US attitude.</text></comment>
<story><title>NSA morale down after Edward Snowden revelations, former U.S. officials say</title><url>http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-morale-down-after-edward-snowden-revelations-former-us-officials-say/2013/12/07/24975c14-5c65-11e3-95c2-13623eb2b0e1_story.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tokenadult</author><text>&lt;i&gt;More like &amp;quot;USA morale down after Edward Snowden revelations, much of U.S. population says,&amp;quot; I&amp;#x27;d say.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I suppose you and I meet different subsets of the United States population in our daily lives. I am on record here on HN as having participated in the Take Back the Fourth protest in Minneapolis about overreaching NSA surveillance. I was not afraid to go out in public in view of TV cameras and the police (the protest location was a plaza across the street from the headquarters of the Minneapolis police deparment, and I saw officers with cameras overlooking the protest location) to indicate that I think governmental surveillance, if it occurs at all, should be according to law, and strictly limited by law.&lt;p&gt;That said, I don&amp;#x27;t treat Snowden as a hero, and I hope no one else in the United States emulates him, ever. He would have done a lot more good for humankind by increasing the NSA&amp;#x27;s ability to conduct surveillance in China and in Russia (the two countries that have protected him so far) and in central Asia in general. And what has most struck me as I have conversations with American adults of approximately my age (birth years in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s) who remember more history is that they are mostly very eager to see Snowden prosecuted to the full extent of the law, which would probably mean spending the rest of his life in prison.&lt;p&gt;Yes, people choose where they work. And some people remember not to stab their co-workers in the back when they go to work. I have never chosen to work for NSA, and I would be glad to see NSA have more effective oversight from Congress and a more limited role in data-gathering. But the United States (like every other country in the world) needs some intelligence-gathering capabilities, and I seem to be joined in my daily activities by a lot of Americans who think that Snowden didn&amp;#x27;t help anyone by revealing official secrets and that he has a very misguided set of priorities about which governments to oppose. My morale decreases to know that anyone who was contracting for NSA wasn&amp;#x27;t checked out well enough to detect that tendency to treachery in advance.&lt;p&gt;The day the news broke that Edward Snowden had left Hong Kong, I was out of town at a soccer tournament with my daughter. The parents of her teammates, mostly younger than I am, heard me announce that news, and when one parent asked, what Snowden&amp;#x27;s destination was, another said, &amp;quot;Gitmo?&amp;quot; with a smile that indicated that he thought Snowden belongs there. I find that reaction quite commonplace among Americans I know.&lt;p&gt;AFTER EDIT: I see the downvotes indicating disagreement are already coming here, and that is not a surprise here on Hacker News, but do we have strong evidence that the general opinion of the American public is united in supporting the HN community view of Snowden&amp;#x27;s conduct as an NSA contractor? That&amp;#x27;s one factual question worthy of factual discussion here, whether you agree with my opinion or not.&lt;p&gt;AFTER FURTHER EDITS: I appreciate the replies to my comment, practicing free speech to help me understand other people&amp;#x27;s perspectives. I would say that it&amp;#x27;s quite possible to be a genuine whistleblower without disclosing the degree of operational information that Snowden disclosed. And it is possible--it has been done--to decry current NSA practice and still stay in the United States, as some NSA officials have done in the last few years. I&amp;#x27;ll check the polling data kindly shared in one reply. I&amp;#x27;ll note that Americans my age and older (well above the modal or median age of HN participants) have multiple sources of information through which to form opinions on this issue, and don&amp;#x27;t rely solely on governmental statements or influence from political leaders to make up our minds on these issues.</text></item><item><author>spodek</author><text>More like &amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;USA&lt;/i&gt; morale down after Edward Snowden revelations, much of U.S. population says,&amp;quot; I&amp;#x27;d say.&lt;p&gt;That happens when you do something most people would feel shame for.&lt;p&gt;A major difference between NSA employees and the rest of us is that they can easily stop what they&amp;#x27;re doing. Let&amp;#x27;s hope their pitiful loss of morale leads them to develop a conscience, respect for the law, or whatever it takes to stop doing things that lead to feeling so bad.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;“They feel they’ve been hung out to dry, and they’re right.”&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bullshit. They&amp;#x27;re adults who chose to do what they did and work where they work.&lt;p&gt;We have emotions to guide our behavior. If they feel bad for the environment they chose to work in and the work they chose to do, maybe they should look in the mirror and ask if they ought to reconsider their choices and do something that doesn&amp;#x27;t draw shame and contempt from the rest of the world while undermining their county&amp;#x27;s interests.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>austinz</author><text>&amp;gt; I am on record here on HN as having participated in the Take Back the Fourth protest in Minneapolis about overreaching NSA surveillance.&lt;p&gt;Let your argument stand on its merits, not on what the argument-maker has or hasn&amp;#x27;t done in the past.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;  He would have done a lot more good for humankind by increasing the NSA&amp;#x27;s ability to conduct surveillance in China and in Russia...&lt;p&gt;The United States has done tremendous good for humanity. But given our history of extralegal, unaccountable meddling in the foreign policy of other countries and how spectacularly it&amp;#x27;s blown up in our faces over and over again, I must absolutely disagree with you.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; the two countries that have protected him so far...&lt;p&gt;Every time a Snowden discussion comes up this point also bubbles to the top, as if people actually thought Snowden chose to flee to those countries because he felt that Russia and China had better support for freedom...as opposed to those two being practically the only possible countries he could flee to without being assured of his extradition.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; I seem to be joined in my daily activities by a lot of Americans who think that Snowden didn&amp;#x27;t help anyone by revealing official secrets&lt;p&gt;I think the NSA didn&amp;#x27;t help anyone by grossly overstepping its mandate and doing things which only tinfoil-hat cranks would have claimed the government did five years ago.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; which governments to oppose&lt;p&gt;This sort of belief, where government wrongdoing can never be exposed because the United States is implicitly locked in some sort of existential crusade against foes which do even worse (and exposing it would undermine this crusade), can be used to justify all sorts of evil, totalitarian actions. I don&amp;#x27;t think our moral yardstick should be set relative to the worst country(ies) in the world. I don&amp;#x27;t think our ideals (the ones tested by the War of 1812, the Civil War, WWII, the fight against segregation, and countless other times) are so fragile that we need to sink to the bottom of the barrel in order to guarantee our national survival.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; another said, &amp;quot;Gitmo?&amp;quot; with a smile that indicated that he thought Snowden belongs there&lt;p&gt;If this is the mindset of the &amp;quot;general opinion of the American public&amp;quot;, I fear for the long-term future of rule of law in this country.</text></comment>