> By way of bona fides, before I'm again asked how long I've worked for NSA
I hate that you have to make that disclaimer. I think the attitude that only people who have a vested interest in the current system could possibly not agree completely with the group think is part of the reason why privacy advocates have so little political clout.
It's really easy to convince yourself that the system is irredeemably broken and any attempts at change are futile when you can't acknowledge that people might have legitimately different opinions on the subject than what you and your friends personally believe. You can't find common ground with others if you reject offhand differences in how they approach a given problem. And when you can't find common ground with others, you'll never have any impact in a democratic society.
Ordinarily, I wouldn't. I don't think I should have to pass an ideological purity test to put forward a descriptive argument about how FISC works.
But I found this article because Paul Graham twerped (approvingly) about it, and bothered to comment because HN was an easier place to disagree with him about the quality of the article than Twitter.
In doing that, I didn't want the thread to become a gigantic pointless fight about who does or doesn't support the surveillance state. It was a courtesy, is all.
It is perfectly reasonable to maybe make one comment saying "I think congress should just abolish this abomination, and be done with it" would be a measured response to this side-issue. Spending a lot of energy arguing about the acceptability of the FISA spying on foreigners or not having any adversarial component just probably riles up people who are understandably very upset at the larger situation. I guess what I'm saying is having a long argument about all this is like being the political version of a grammar nazi.
Using poor grammer usually just makes you look uneducated. Misunderstanding the structure of a potentially problematic situation makes you powerless to solve it, and makes it easy for people on the other side to dismiss your concerns.
I hate that you have to make that disclaimer. I think the attitude that only people who have a vested interest in the current system could possibly not agree completely with the group think is part of the reason why privacy advocates have so little political clout.
It's really easy to convince yourself that the system is irredeemably broken and any attempts at change are futile when you can't acknowledge that people might have legitimately different opinions on the subject than what you and your friends personally believe. You can't find common ground with others if you reject offhand differences in how they approach a given problem. And when you can't find common ground with others, you'll never have any impact in a democratic society.