the NSA is a bit overhyped there
If you're newer than 3 years at facebook or google, there's no way in hell you're going to have any work life balance. And even if you make it past the 3 year mark, it still depends on which team your on.
So she stopped being an indirect servant of popular will, and started selling ads. Great.
> She now works in the private sector and is thrilled with how much closer to her intelligence her new colleagues are.
Not only richer, but less moral and more likely to pat herself on the back. Even better.
You do realize Google does more than sell ads, right? Search and Maps alone are tremendously useful tools, not to mention the dozens, hundreds of other products. Drive, Docs, Photos...
Proftable? Not so much.
Google is a surveillance company that currently makes money off ads, and gathers data through Maps, Search, Drive, Docs, Photos... Think about what happens when the current ad bubble pops.
The fact that it is legal for them to do this is the problem, obviously.
For example, the government argues to this day that it is ok to do drag net collection of phone meta data.
Having access to every single person that you have called, counts as spying in my book, even if they aren't listening in to the conversations specifically.
I certainly agree with you regarding previous handling of phone metadata, among other issues such as secret interpretations of law, but I was satisfied by changes/fixes made in the USA Freedom Act[1]. What current issue are still outstanding which you believe need to be addressed? (Serious, I like to learn and would be great to know if I am missing something).
[1] https://www.congress.gov/114/plaws/publ23/PLAW-114publ23.pdf
What claim don't you think is true? Was the NSA not indiscriminately scooping up and querying communications between US citizens?
Correct. That would be a very big deal in my opinion. After reading through the hundreds of source documents leaked by Snowden, I did not find evidence of any sort of mass collection on US persons. Only foreign collection, which is the job of a spy agency (Perhaps plenty of ethical arguments there of course, but that is besides the matter of USPI collection/reporting).
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
You break the HN guidelines quite a bit like this, so we'd appreciate it if you'd clean up your act.
I have a friend who worked for the NSA. We had a heart to heart over drinks about a year ago. She asked what I thought about her working there. I responded, honestly, that if I didn't know her personally I'd be starting to wonder if she was, for whatever reason, unable to pass muster at Google et cetera. Not the best decision to drop that after a day of drinking together. But I'm glad I did--it was apparently the nudge she needed to quit.
Going to work and feeling like you're working on secret, cutting edge kit with the smartest people in the country is tremendously important to many people. The NSA lots its veneer of whiz kids confidentially cracking codes for good with Snowden. It now feels like another federal bureaucracy.
Postscript: She now works in the private sector and is thrilled with how much closer to her intelligence her new colleagues are. If you work for the NSA and are not a numpty, you're selling yourself short.