[brudgers]

So this week I've been reading Battle of Wits: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II by Stephen Budiansky.

The US intelligence community has a long history of going right to the communication source and obtaining raw data from public companies. In the 1920's Herbert Yardley's "American Black Chamber" worked with Western Union and other cable companies who turned over interesting cablegrams and radiograms.

In 1940 [before the US entered the second world war], the military assigned Lt Earl F. Cook to read and copy cable messages that passed through RCA's office with the consent of RCA's president, David Sarnoff.

After the war, there was of course project Shamrock.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_O._Yardley#The_American...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SHAMROCK

[ThomPete]

So if anything. What we are seing might be an improvement of the situation rather than a worsening. People can and do speak up and for each generation we will move toward a more liberal approach perhaps.

[dmix]

There seems to be a pattern in society over the last century, towards social liberalism/acceptance among people (sex, drugs, race etc). This of course happens very slowly and takes decades.

The big question is how this will affect the intelligence community long-term, who are becoming simultaneously more important, and simultaneously more threatened by technology and the openness of the internet.

Will they be forced to become more transparent or succeed in their fight to keep growing in power/secrecy?

Having an extremely large and powerful government, now even more obsessed with aggressive enforcement of law, is almost always going to be continually at odds with the peoples trends towards social liberalism.

The internet seems to have accelerated liberalization and terrorism seems to have accelerated state totalitarianism. So it seem's we're witnessing an acceleration in the battle between the two (especially if you live in the HN bubble).

The counter argument of course could be, and often is, dismissed by those who see the state as a representation of the people and total secrecy in the intelligence community as necessary for a healthy country/national security.

[dTal]

>terrorism seems to have accelerated totalitarianism

How do you figure? I weakly dispute that totalitarianism is accelerating (there are some worrying trends at various stages of development in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, but accelerating is a strong word - we may just be more aware of power abuses because of the internet), but I strongly dispute that, if true, "terrorism" is the cause. There has always been terrorism. There will always be terrorism. Terrorism is merely the enemy du jour. The idea that terrorism represents a new and uniquely dangerous threat is pure propaganda. Indeed, when you look at some the shit that went down in the latter half of the 20th century, we are living in a comparatively terrorist-free time. Possibly governing politicians are more afraid of terrorism after 9/11 (not because of its lethality as such but because of the unpredictable political aftershocks), but equally (more likely?) they may be consciously aware of its utility at pushing through power grabs. Either way, it's not right to call it a cause.

Have a look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States

It's rather interesting how much longer the 2000s section is - rather misleadingly, as each entry is 2-3 lines of text while the earlier entries are generally a single line. Also, there's a lot of fluff in the 2000s entries. Search for where the word "bomb" appears and you'll see what I mean. I wonder if this is the result of terrorism hype, or one of those instances of subtle Wiki bias we've all been hearing about?

[dmix]

Measuring terrorism in number of historical attacks or body counts shows a lack of understanding of the goal of terrorism. I'm not saying terrorism attacks itself is the source, but the fear of terrorism (which is still essentially terrorism).

Terrorists attacks probably aren't accelerating (domestically). But politically in the last decade, it has been the source of the accelerated militarization of police [1], extreme border policies such as the TSA follies and the elimination of judicial check on executive power [1].

All signs of increased totalitarianism and all directly connected to terrorism.

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/11/how-the-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Secrets_Privilege#Elimin...

[brudgers]

Maybe. But intelligence is an odd enterprise.

Two hundred years ago, intercepting signals was extremely difficult. They were sent by courier in envelopes. Couriers are crafty and the backwoods perimeter long.

150 years ago, they could be sent by wire and this meant both an explosion of signals, but also a corresponding ease of identifying the route by which they would be passed.

In the early 20th century, radio increased the volume of signals, but again interception became easier to the point that there were many so many locations from which an antenna could be used that the development of encryption and decryption methods became the most important task in signals intelligence.

Today, anything could be important. And the NSA, being charged with national security assumes that you and I may very well be up to no good. There job is to be paranoid, and they are good at it.

Building a massive security apparatus, so far as I am aware, has never led to a more liberal political regime. While anecdote is not evidence, I don't see how one can make a strong case that the current state of affairs is the result of increasing liberalization.