And I took "they" in the GP post to mean "the people who work for the NSA" although it possibly refers to the NSA itself - in which case, it is also true of any large corporation -- composed of thousands of people with their own agenda, no morals and very little to check what's going on in many respects -- see, e.g. pharma pricing.
In any case the major point I was trying to make is that spy agencies have side gigs that are so attractive to the governments that the spy agencies will keep their position, even if they don't do their main job well.
Everyone has some moral instincts (social animals and all that) but those can be overridden with right incentives.
Which is not far from true.
Morals one makes for themselves ("personal moral code") are not morals proper. They could just as well include that's its ok to kill kittens for fun (to give a silly example) -- that they don't is mostly thanks to their idiosyncrasy.
>There is a point of view from which this makes sense: Since there is no standard code, everyone is free to choose their own;
Ha, haven't read your second paragraph while replying to the first, but basically, yes, this.
Externally enforced behavior is not "morals".
That's a new definition then, because for millennia morals were derived from exactly those "externally enforced behaviours": from religion, society, culture, etc.
The personal codes someones makes on their own can be anything and everything ("shit on everybody to get rich" is a perfectly valid code that millions use). Nobody would call that "moral" though -- because precisely morals are those beyond the individual whims (though whether an individual follows them its their choice).
Personal principles someone follows are only fit to be called morals if they follow an extended, external, moral code. Which might change over time, and be culture-specific, but it's not "whatever I say".
We can't really experiment with humans, but the few experiments that have cleared ethical committees, it appears that babies as young as 6 months have a sense of equality and justice, see e.g. [0]
[0] http://www.wired.co.uk/article/babies-understand-hero-action...
I don't know if you are right or wrong, but your statement sounds to me almost exactly like the one that I hear from religious zealots about atheists: "No one to answer to, therefore, no morals or ethics".
There is a point of view from which this makes sense: Since there is no standard code, everyone is free to choose their own; It's a question of what likelihood you assign a-priori for ethics and morals to be chosen, and a question of empirical data as well, which likely no one has, so no statement can be disproved and everything is "equally right". (Was this paragraph about spies or about atheists?)