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0 pointsdavidhollander13y ago0 comments

> don't forget that we need an organization like the NSA

For those of us who have already forgotten or have never known the reason for its necessity, could you explain why? Internationally and historically, similar levels of state communications monitoring are correlated with the need for self-preservation by authoritarian regimes. There are also many modern day states which do not possess an agency directly analogous to the NSA.

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6 comments · 3 top-level

sliverstorm13y ago· 2 in thread

I believe that cyber-warfare, while fanciful-sounding in name, is going to be a part of the future whether we like it or not. In which case, the NSA seems the best positioned to conduct the USA's end of it.

davidhollanderOP13y ago

If this is a justified belief rather than a faith-based belief, you'll need to offer a refutation of Thomas Rid's "Cyber War Will Not Take Place", which holds that cyber-war is contradictory because acts of cyber-war do not fulfill the definition of acts of war: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01402390.2011.608...

sliverstorm13y ago

Ok, so cyber-warfare is a shitty word. I know that, but people understand what it refers to, which is why I used it.

Would you be happier if I said I expect cyber-sabotage, cyber-espionage, and cyber-subversion to be important parts of future conflicts?

slurgfest13y ago· 1 in thread

If you mean to suggest that the reason for the NSA is for the US government to act as an authoritarian regime (presumably meaning something like a totalitarian state or dictatorship or tyranny), why don't you just say so? And if you don't mean to suggest it, then what is the meaning of your purported correlation?

davidhollanderOP13y ago

I don't; to negate the position that the existence of communication surveillance agencies can be considered both beneficial and necessary for an arbitrary population by assumption.

rdl13y ago

One of the big problems with NSA is their dual mission of defense and offense. Dual mandates are really dangerous for bureaucracies -- the federal reserve has a similarly conflicted dual mandate of price stability and employment, no as a result it behaves a bit like a highly medicated insane person at times. NSA does the same thing -- releasing SELinux and trying to prevent the spread of encryption in protocols and operating systems simultaneously.

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