[melling]

I guess if you want to constantly complain about the NSA spying on you, you are entitled. However, some of us have had enough of the complaining. After all, you're probably going to be doing it for the rest of your life. I'd rather not spend mine listening to it. So, can we clearly tag a thread as NSA rant, so those of us who don't want to hear it ad nauseam, we can skip the rehash.

[cheald]

This is the exact sort of attitude that has permitted us to get to the point where we even have to have a conversation about the government being engaged in massively intrusive spying programs. "I don't want to hear your whining about it" is a means of condoning these actions through silence. You are a part of the problem.

If you can comprehend what is going on here, you should be loud and obnoxious about it. Get people talking. Make it the focus and refuse to give up that focus. The only way this is going to change is to get so many people angry about it that it becomes more politically advantageous to oppose than support it. If you get angry about hearing about it, then I'll take that - you now have an incentive to help get it changed so people will shut up about it.

[melling]

Essentially, you are asking me to discuss my politics here, where I draw the line, etc in a thread about the iPhone 5s. I know where you stand. I heard you the first ten times.

I'm not trying to stop you from having the discussion. Can you just label the thread "NSA can get your fingerprints off that iPhone 5S" and have at it. There is a time and a place for everything. Everyone here has heard about the NSA situation by now. The word is out.

[cheald]

> Essentially, you are asking me to discuss my politics here, where I draw the line, etc in a thread about the iPhone 5s.

Nope. I'm just asking you to not ask others to not discuss their politics. You're more than welcome to not participate in the conversation if it's not useful to you.

[mcantelon]

The stuff about the backdoor capabilities came out in the last week so it's not exactly old news.

[melling]

Sorry, you aren't going to change anyone's political opinions by yelling louder. There are plenty of people who are comfortable with the NSA, as well as plenty of people are not.

We really can't discuss the finer points here because no matter how polite I am, I will simply get voted down for not agreeing with the HN politics. By the way, recently I heard a few tech heavy-weights come out in favor of the NSA (e.g. Larry Ellison, Max Levchin).

[glitchdout]

Sorry, you aren't going to change anyone's willingness to talk about the NSA spying be complaining louder.

If you are comfortable with the current NSA behaviour, you are part of the problem.

[icelancer]

Clearly other people feel the same way, since it is being upvoted. And if you don't care for reading NSA-related comments, either moderate his posts (outside of your jurisdiction, I'm guessing) or I suppose you'll have to deal with it by collapsing his threads with any number of HN plugins that exist.

[EdwardCoffin]

So you want to label concern for privacy as 'whining'? If anything, I'd call THAT snark.