[venomsnake]

I don't use laptops. Always have self assembled my rigs. I think there are subtle differences between "NSA has the ability to rig someone's laptop when he is a legitimate target with proven national interest" and "NSA is intercepting and rigging laptops en masse" or "NSA laptop intercepting program is yielding a lot of false positives".

The problem is that NSA is abusing its powers, taken its mission too far etc ...

But yeah - I am totally ok with NSA intercepting specific shipment after having credible HUMINT about some highly probable treat to national security. I am not ok with NSA subverting the whole infrastructure of the world just so they can snoop on their loved ones.

[malandrew]

The problem with "national security" is that it is too easy to use that term for the sake of industrial espionage as well.

The Petrobras hacking is one prime example. Is oil a national security interest? Yes. The opinions of many people in the US government justify these actions on national security grounds. Is hacking every single oil company in the world justifiable because its done in the name of national security?

They like to claim acts like those don't constitute industrial espionage, but that couldn't be farther from reality. Just because there are tenuous national securities justifications doesn't mean those acts cease to be economic espionage as well.

Is hacking the Saab Group and Dassault fair game because those companies produce fighter jets? What about hacking Airbus and Embraer? Rolls Royce? We like to think that there is a line where it's still a legitimate national security issue and where it starts to become plain vanilla industrial espionage, but that's just a fantasy. It's often both.

Hostile sovereign states are not made overnight. Countries like Germany, France and Brazil are not inclined to be hostile to the US. For the last 40 years or so, pretty much every enemy this country has had has been the fault of our failed foreign policy.

We should only start hacking sovereign states once this start on the part to hostility towards us. While they are still allies, we should trust them and use diplomacy.

[malandrew]

But there are a whole lot of useful bothersome people [0] that make this country as great as it is. They don't self assemble their rigs and don't have the time and technical ability to protect themselves against a politicized aggressor like like the NSA.

The most important Americans are not the 44 presidents we've had but the millions of Americans who have dissented in the 229 years since the founding of the United States.

Those have participated in the civil rights, women's rights, antiwar, gay rights, labor movement, black power, antiglobalization, tea party, occupy wall street, animal rights, anti-tax movement (since 1765), American revolution, abolition movement, state's rights supporters, environmental movements, transparency movements, anti-NSA spying movement, etc., etc., etc., are the American's that matter. They matter more than all the presidents combined since they are the one's that led this nation to be a leader in the free world. What is being done now is potent enough to prevent future movements from helping us move further into being a more just nation.

[0] http://martinfowler.com/articles/bothersome-privacy.html