pera: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6911100

> Really? why should anyone trust in anything coming from the NSA when you are systematically lying again and again? why should we listen to anything you say when historically, part of your strategy is to try to influence the PoV of society || specifics groups?

OP is not the NSA. OP was an employee for a couple years and can only comment about what he specifically knows about, just like anybody. Take what he says with that context.

alfiejohn_: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6911106

(ex-)Employees can write about anything, but if it involves IC related topics, they have to submit to a review before publication. All those various books about life in the Spy world or Special Forces etc. all went through similar reviews.

malloreon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6911226

> There are articles suggesting this is happening many thousands of times per year - shouldn't each of these 'regular employees' be put on trial? They have committed serious crimes.

Quite often they are. The minimum penalty is loss of clearance and job (which is a career death sentence in the IC), and depending on what they did and if the agency feels like it's a good expenditure of resources, some kind of criminal prosecution may be involved.

e.g.

- Employee sees if his own cell phone number has been collected (violates rules regarding looking up U.S. persons): probably a firing, but not worth criminal prosecution

- Employee starts a side business and starts monitoring communications of his competitors to get a leg up, probably a firing + prison time.

te_chris: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6910858

> Thank you so much, kind American intelligence guy, for having the grace to not look at USA citizens emails, all the while not even mentioning foreigners, who should apparently just lie down and take it.

Foreigners don't just "take it", they have their own nation's intelligence apparatus collecting against their foreigners. Let me know when there are mass protests against foreign collection in the rest of the world and maybe then your complaint will make some kind of sense. Until then it's just bitter complaining about something you knew all along anyway. It's kind of the point of Intelligence.

lucb1e: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6911262

> Why is a distinction made between US and non-US people?

Because, at least in the U.S., there's a distinction between IC and LE entities -- this is not a distinction shared by most countries. LE deals with domestic events and U.S. people, while IC deals with non-domestic actors and locations. There's a bit of overlap, for example, a U.S. citizen doing bad things in a foreign country gets a bit of both, or a foreign national in the U.S. But that's generally where the line is drawn. U.S. law doesn't apply outside of the U.S. and it shouldn't. Can you imagine the world if the U.S. suddenly decided that France had to apply by all U.S. laws including the U.S. Constitution? If people think New Zealand cooperating on

> What makes me a potential criminal, and Mr. Smith not?

The reverse is true of U.S. citizens w/r to other country's intelligence apparatus as well.

IC agencies generally aren't looking for criminals...meaning they aren't looking for people who broke U.S. law. They're basically looking for threats to U.S. soil, citizens and concerns. LE agencies look for law breakers. That's one of the reasons why the trials at GTMO are such a mess, guys were wrapped up and sent off to Cuba for interrogation based on "Intelligence" but not using information collected as part of a criminal prosecution. IC and LE really do operate under very different methods (at least in the U.S.).

princeverma: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6911007

> I am a foreign national, I and my company uses services provided by a US company (email etc.), and this gives right to you guys to collect and ready my emails?

Yes. Look at your question from a different angle, under what legal regime is the U.S. not allowed to do so? Or the contrapositive, what are you doing to prevent your country from spying on U.S. Citizens?

Tarang: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6910916

> If an employee had a contrarian opinion to the NSA would it be declassified like this one?

Yes. You can check Amazon yourself for books by former NSA employees who don't side with the Agency. Their books were all reviewed by the NSA for classified information, but not for dissenting opinions.

muglug: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6910838

> Do you think Snowdon's revelations had any beneficial impact, or is your view of them entirely negative?

Disappointingly no. At least in my circles, Snowden is not mentioned in polite terms. The likely outcome will be no change in NSA collections or capabilities, but automation in system administration, better collection of auditable information on IC employees and more compartmentalizing of the activities even further.

room271: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6910827

> My question to the OP: even if you believe that at the moment abuses are rare and that your colleagues are trustworthy and law-abiding, does the capability and level of information concern you in terms of the potential for future abuse it enables?

I'll toss in my answer too. I think it is serious cause for concern. But the kind of work the IC does is hard and I'd say impossible to get right. Anybody who thinks the kinds of work that most of us do in our day-to-day businesses is hard have no idea how really difficult the industry is. In a normal business, if you get things wrong you might get sued or shut down. In the Spy industry? countries might fall, nukes might loose and people might die. Doing that kind of work in balance with people's rights, or at least not negatively impacting truly innocent people is among the hardest things to do in the world.

aaron695: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6911046

> "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

Doing nothing would be for the U.S. to not spy at all, which is a sentiment shared by many in this forum. And then bad things would certainly happen for the U.S. because no other country would do the same. Sometimes doing the right thing really involves doing hard things that don't feel good. I won't make any apologies for it and nor should the OP. The kind of work that the IC and the military does, make no mistake about it, is ugly ugly work. It is very important though that this public debate be held often, and constantly. The IC/Military construct is like a huge guard dog. You want it a bit mean and angry, but you don't want it to bite you, the mailman or the neighborhood kids...it's not so bad if it goes after the occasional solicitor or burgler. So it's very important that you keep a constant eye on it and keep it in check. Because it will dig up your yard, chew up the sofa and otherwise misbehave.