I mean Jesus, you kids act like the government has been slowly and monotonically eroding privacy rights since 1789. :)
Go read about the Church Committee
Go read about HUAC.
Go read about when we locked up the Nisei.
And I'm not saying any of this to justify anything that's happening today. What I am saying is that IT'S BEEN MUCH WORSE BEFORE, and we STILL FIXED IT ANYWAYS.
This isn't a ratchet-and-pawl fixture. Don't like something in the government? Go fix it! But stop acting like it's already been set in stone, or that everyone in government is the enemy of the people advancing some Illuminati conspiracy. By and large they're trying to do the right thing for the nation, who have interests far beyond what Greenwald or Michael Moore or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh feels is important on any given day.
And at the same time, you will never fix anything by being upset about everything.
Even Ray Ozzie mentioned in the other thread that there are actual reasons a small-scale covert project would need to be secret to be effective, try getting some of the other hacktivists here on HN to admit even that. They can't, because they are blinded by their rage. My thought is that having some modicum of historical background on actual oppression can help with controlling emotion and enabling logical thinking.
Its the difference between tactical secrecy and strategic secrecy. Operations that require strategic secrecy rarely work. The best example successful strategic secrecy being the "Ultra" secret which required secrecy for no more than a few years and the success of the "Ultra" secret is less a success of secrecy and more a failure of imagination by the German High Command.
Most secrets are tactical secrets like the plan to attack pearl harbor. They require short term secrecy and the utility of that secrecy declines quickly with time. The period of time is short enough that even if it is leaked the window of risk is small (US learned about Pearl Harbor but by the time Pearl Harbor got the news it was too late).
Tactical secrecy has a high utility and a low social cost because the secrets aren't keep long. Strategic secrecy has a low utility since most plans that require it are bad plans and it has a high social cost in terms of stifling debates about policy.
Almost no one complains about tactical secrecy, all these complaints are about strategic secrecy.
I mean Jesus, you kids act like the government has been slowly and monotonically eroding privacy rights since 1789. :)
Go read about the Church Committee
Go read about HUAC.
Go read about when we locked up the Nisei.
And I'm not saying any of this to justify anything that's happening today. What I am saying is that IT'S BEEN MUCH WORSE BEFORE, and we STILL FIXED IT ANYWAYS.
This isn't a ratchet-and-pawl fixture. Don't like something in the government? Go fix it! But stop acting like it's already been set in stone, or that everyone in government is the enemy of the people advancing some Illuminati conspiracy. By and large they're trying to do the right thing for the nation, who have interests far beyond what Greenwald or Michael Moore or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh feels is important on any given day.