Sapir-Whorf and Newspeak. What does "security" mean?
I have no doubt that the NSA's job is "national security" and that some portion of that work serves the people. Nobody knows what that portion is, by design.
If you bury the difficult, complicated issues under terms like "security", "threat to the country", and "bad guys", you're basically just supporting the NSA on faith.
Forget the terminology and FUD of "threats", and let's ask ourselves what the concrete benefit to the people of the United States (or better yet, the world) is for the NSA to be arming themselves for the destruction of computer systems. Is the benefit Cold Waresque deterrence through keeping the rest of the world in fear? Is this the strategy we want our work and taxes to support?
Maybe it's too complicated to think about, and even if we wanted to critically analyse the situation, secrecy prevents us from knowing anything besides what the government desires the people to know. It's easier to just trust in benevolent "national security" protecting us from Eastasia. Let's not forget that the world does have bad guys, and besides, we've always been at war with Eastasia.
I have no doubt that the NSA's job is "national security" and that some portion of that work serves the people. Nobody knows what that portion is, by design.
If you bury the difficult, complicated issues under terms like "security", "threat to the country", and "bad guys", you're basically just supporting the NSA on faith.
Forget the terminology and FUD of "threats", and let's ask ourselves what the concrete benefit to the people of the United States (or better yet, the world) is for the NSA to be arming themselves for the destruction of computer systems. Is the benefit Cold Waresque deterrence through keeping the rest of the world in fear? Is this the strategy we want our work and taxes to support?
Maybe it's too complicated to think about, and even if we wanted to critically analyse the situation, secrecy prevents us from knowing anything besides what the government desires the people to know. It's easier to just trust in benevolent "national security" protecting us from Eastasia. Let's not forget that the world does have bad guys, and besides, we've always been at war with Eastasia.