[Dolimiter]

Another top-voted article about the NSA on Hacker News that is thin on evidence to say the least. It appears to be hearsay from a disgruntled ex-employee.

However I understand that the story fits the political narrative of the forums here, and will therefore be upvoted despite any lack of sense or evidence.

[amirmc]

> "... despite any lack of sense or evidence."

With secret courts, secret interpretations of laws, gag orders etc. How does one obtain hard 'evidence' of anything (beyond whistleblowers)?

And what exactly do you mean by lack of sense? That we apply our limited knowledge to the scenarios described and then discard anything that doesn't neatly fit? That leads to cargo cult thinking.

[lotsofmangos]

How would you find any information on the internals of the NSA that isn't hearsay from a disgruntled ex-employee?

Current employees who are happy and fulfilled in their work in the security services don't tend to say all that much to the press.

[XorNot]

The structure of every single one of these stories is a single slide or page or quote, containing maybe less then 50 words maximum.

From there, wild speculation then goes on to breathlessly exclaim about what this really proves, while failing to actually support any of the assertions.

For good measure toss in some wilful blindness about the point of surveillance, mechanics of law enforcement, collective action problems or the fundamental differences between one's own government and a foreign government (hint: foreign governments don't have a monopoly of violence over the citizens of foreign countries).

The people who keep yelling about how nobody cares enough need to consider that just maybe they're not very good at arguing their point.

Cue downvotes.

[lotsofmangos]

Nice story.

This story however has quotes and documents from many different people, including John Tye, Edward Snowden, Jesselyn Radack, William Binney, Melvin Goodman, Loch Johnson, Kenneth Mayer, Christopher Dodd, Ed Loomis and Thomas Drake.

Were you perhaps reading a different article?

edit - I am all for encouraging critical thinking, but you are hardly going to achieve that through complete misrepresentation.

[vidarh]

The very article linked to here directly contradicts your claim that "The structure of every single one of these stories is a single slide or page or quote, containing maybe less then 50 words maximum."

The article cites statements from and interviews with 9-10 separate sources, quoting several of them at length, and combines that with additional quotes from government source materials.

[shiven]

Pray, share it if you have anything that can disprove the wild speculation.

Hysterical speculation is to be expected when dealing with the doings of an arm of the government that is willfully shrouded in secrecy. The leaks so far have only confirmed what was being called "tin-foil hattery" until pre-Snowden.

If you are so concerned about subduing rampant speculation, how about showing up with proofs to the contrary instead of ad hominems and downvote baiting?

[XorNot]

Because if you don't tow the party line on HN you'll be downvoted no matter what. Frankly, go check my post history on the matter if you want. The only topic on which I manage to accumulate downvotes is Snowden/NSA related.

Doesn't much matter what the content or argument or tone is or was.

Though I do chuckle at "disprove the speculation".

[lotsofmangos]

I had a look at what you had greyed out, lets see...

not trusting aspects of textsecure

keeping encryption on all the time

argument about billing bad reviews on yelp

not liking lighttable

ok, whether there is a need to hide political speech from the NSA.

I don't think your claim stands up of it being the only topic.

edit - why are you bothering making claims like this in a medium where the source material is immediately available?

This kind of tactic may work in spoken discussion, but here it just seems absurd.

[XorNot]

Of 5 examples you managed to get 3/5 having something to do with the NSA or related matters (encryption, which got explicitly tied to the NSA in that exact comment).

I would question why you think this is a "gotcha" given that I know how far back my post history goes (further then the initial Snowden disclosures for example), and more or less gave up on these topic-threads for exactly this reason.

Which circles around to my original point: these threads turn into echo chambers because who wants to spend karma on that?

People are instead ironically aggressive in silencing dissent.

[Dolimiter]

"The only topic on which I manage to accumulate downvotes is Snowden/NSA related."

Indeed, I got -40 karma on this story. Dissenting opinions are not tolerated on NSA stories.

Therefore people who do not agree with the HN consensus "self-censor", and a vicious circle is created, with only a single narrative displayed.

[coldtea]

>Dissenting opinions are not tolerated on NSA stories.

Tell me about it. Plus all my proofs for perpetual motion machines and the flat earth get downvoted too.

[lotsofmangos]

I dunno, I have got a fair amount of imaginary internet points on here before for suggesting that there is a good chance that Snowden is still working for the NSA, which isn't exactly the popular opinion.

edit - well ok, 4 :) but it didn't get hammered down

[coldtea]

>Another top-voted article about the NSA on Hacker News that is thin on evidence to say the least.

Yeah, we should all wait until they hand over the evidence in a golden plate, like secret agencies usually do.