<story><title>New Snowden Docs Indicate Scope of NSA Preparations for Cyber Battle</title><url>http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/new-snowden-docs-indicate-scope-of-nsa-preparations-for-cyber-battle-a-1013409.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>krapp</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re probably right.&lt;p&gt;No need to consider the arguments made by people who don&amp;#x27;t agree entirely with a particular point of view, or even discuss it at all. They&amp;#x27;re obviously just shills.&lt;p&gt;Edit: Much of the &amp;#x27;pro NSA&amp;#x27; comments I see here seem merely to suggest that not everything the NSA does is evil, and not every disclosure is necessarily useful. As often happens in threads like these, any such comments are dismissed as the work of astroturfing or shills.&lt;p&gt;To imply that disagreement with any narrative presented by the Guardian and Spiegel Online must make one an agent with ulterior motives, is precisely the kind of propagandist trolling any forum which cares about &lt;i&gt;truth&lt;/i&gt; should avoid.&lt;p&gt;Yes, the NSA has a covert program to attempt to influence online messageboard and social media accounts. No, this program does not account for every even remotely &amp;#x27;pro-NSA&amp;#x27; opinion one might find online. And even if it did, judge them on their own merits and move on, because you really can&amp;#x27;t tell. It&amp;#x27;s all just text in a box.&lt;p&gt;Seeing spooks everywhere doesn&amp;#x27;t make you free, it just makes you paranoid.</text></item><item><author>pa7ch</author><text>Looking at the comments in support of the NSA here makes me suspect an astroturfing campaign is happening.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I should add that my suspicion came from noticing that the vast majority of the comments when this was first posted seemed aligned in favor of the NSA&amp;#x27;s mission.&lt;p&gt;It wasn&amp;#x27;t the presence of pro-NSA comments that was interesting but rather that these opinions were the overwhelming majority. This is, of course, how astroturfing becomes effective, it is not the rhetoric that is important but the cognitive bias imparted by the facade of so many people falling to one side of an issue.&lt;p&gt;This is of course, only a suspicion, but it seemed worth noting.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>elwin</author><text>Try looking at the comments from a different angle. Instead of grouping them into &amp;quot;pro-NSA&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;anti-NSA&amp;quot; categories, try checking for technical ignorance. Look for ideas about cyberwarfare based on bad analogies with real warfare. Look for a mindset that puts winning an arms race first and never considers ethical implications. Look for vague statements about protecting or harming America that don&amp;#x27;t explain whether they mean the American military, the civilian government, or ordinary citizens. Look for equation of the NSA&amp;#x27;s offensive and defensive capabilities.&lt;p&gt;The other side of the debate has its own poorly reasoned comments. I haven&amp;#x27;t noticed many on this article yet, but they should arrive soon.&lt;p&gt;I doubt such comments are written by people with NSA connections, but their sudden appearance is odd. The only other subject that produces so many strongly opinionated, poor-quality comments is systemd.</text></comment>
<story><title>New Snowden Docs Indicate Scope of NSA Preparations for Cyber Battle</title><url>http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/new-snowden-docs-indicate-scope-of-nsa-preparations-for-cyber-battle-a-1013409.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>krapp</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re probably right.&lt;p&gt;No need to consider the arguments made by people who don&amp;#x27;t agree entirely with a particular point of view, or even discuss it at all. They&amp;#x27;re obviously just shills.&lt;p&gt;Edit: Much of the &amp;#x27;pro NSA&amp;#x27; comments I see here seem merely to suggest that not everything the NSA does is evil, and not every disclosure is necessarily useful. As often happens in threads like these, any such comments are dismissed as the work of astroturfing or shills.&lt;p&gt;To imply that disagreement with any narrative presented by the Guardian and Spiegel Online must make one an agent with ulterior motives, is precisely the kind of propagandist trolling any forum which cares about &lt;i&gt;truth&lt;/i&gt; should avoid.&lt;p&gt;Yes, the NSA has a covert program to attempt to influence online messageboard and social media accounts. No, this program does not account for every even remotely &amp;#x27;pro-NSA&amp;#x27; opinion one might find online. And even if it did, judge them on their own merits and move on, because you really can&amp;#x27;t tell. It&amp;#x27;s all just text in a box.&lt;p&gt;Seeing spooks everywhere doesn&amp;#x27;t make you free, it just makes you paranoid.</text></item><item><author>pa7ch</author><text>Looking at the comments in support of the NSA here makes me suspect an astroturfing campaign is happening.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I should add that my suspicion came from noticing that the vast majority of the comments when this was first posted seemed aligned in favor of the NSA&amp;#x27;s mission.&lt;p&gt;It wasn&amp;#x27;t the presence of pro-NSA comments that was interesting but rather that these opinions were the overwhelming majority. This is, of course, how astroturfing becomes effective, it is not the rhetoric that is important but the cognitive bias imparted by the facade of so many people falling to one side of an issue.&lt;p&gt;This is of course, only a suspicion, but it seemed worth noting.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pa7ch</author><text>In the interest of facilitating a open and fair discussion on the larger issue of state surveillance, I highly recommend checking out the 2014 Munk debates: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.munkdebates.com/debates/state-surveillance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.munkdebates.com&amp;#x2F;debates&amp;#x2F;state-surveillance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;General Hayden and Glenn Greenwald are given fair time to discuss the issue and to give rebuttals to each other.&lt;p&gt;Its much more informative then trying to parse HN comments to form an opinion about state surveillance. It also forces you to consider the views of people who don&amp;#x27;t agree with you.</text></comment>