[gojomo]

They are still trying to recruit a diverse, capable group of patriotic employees, so that the workforce has the full range of skills and opinions for it to do its proper mission, and identify and correct any abuses.

If the armchair-ethicist standard is: "if you have any qualms, you'll quit" – then the type of people doing recruiting, and being recruited, and staying in the agency, all become even more self-selected for total devotion to total surveillance than may already exist. Whatever oversight or shame might remain as an internal check would decay. Whatever hints/leaks we get would dry up even further.

That isn't necessarily any better of a result for us. It doesn't necessarily bring reform/correction any sooner.

[Amadou]

I think the better result for us is that the more monolithic the thinking is within the NSA the more they are going to over-step in such a way that even their most ardent supporters outside the agency will have to abandon them.

I'd like to think the no-fly-zoning of Bolivia's president is an example of that sort of thinking exposing itself for public embarrassment/criticism. Here's hoping they keep digging their own hole deeper and deeper.

[selimthegrim]

Blast from the past (wrt monolithic thinking):

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/11/197...

http://www.parsarts.com/2010/11/29/tehran-wikileaks-1979-cab...

http://wikileaks.org/cable/1979/08/79TEHRAN8980.html

No wonder even Cyrus Vance couldn't save the State Dept. from becoming a giant noodly appendage after Carter.

[jlgreco]

If we want to keep the "bad people" diluted in these organizations, then should all of us be looking for the next Enron so that we can do some community service by hopping on that ship?

[gojomo]

I'm not arguing that there's a duty to join-and-reform. (Though, if that were the only or best way to fix the problem, it would be the most sensible thing to do, even if somewhat uncomfortable.)

I'm just saying the simplistic "you must quit if you have qualms" standard shouldn't have an automatic presumption of either effectiveness or righteousness.

This is especially true about an old, powerful, and sovereignty-claiming institution like the USG and its security organs. They are beyond easy influence through either simple boycotts or idealistic infiltrations, and you can't easily ignore them or wait-them-out.