Glad this is back on the front page, because an earlier post with the story was flagged:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16576569

Someone care to explain why this was flagged?

Flags are from users, not moderators.

So? Once a mod is informed, and the story is proven legit, the flag needs to be removed.

In fact, a user made a post - news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18577485 - calling for discussion on the removal of this thread, and the implications of such.

'dang', the moderator, accused him of "breaking site guidelines", "creating drama" and said the story needed to remain flagged to prevent "outrage".

So yeah, we need to talk about the mods now.

It does break the guidelines and it does create drama.

Dang is Dan Gackle. His handle is his first name and last initial, a fairly common format of member name used by such prominent members as Sam Altman (sama) and Jacques Mattheij (jacquesm). He does have a sense of humor about how his user name also works as a mild faux swear word or exclamation, but it isn't the primary reason he chose that handle.

I'm sorry you aren't happy about stuff being flagged or whatever, but this is not a good way to try to accomplish anything on this site. The mods do a good job and are generally pretty respected and the rules exist for a reason.

"Outrage" is from users, not moderators.

EDIT: see comment reply, appears person I replied to turned an 8 into a 6

You link returns 'no such item' looks like perhaps mods used a hard-delete on it.

I think they probably mean this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16577485

So, you can put your tin foil hat away. There's no conspiracy here, just a typo in the link.

Thanks. Odd typo error, perhaps the person I was replying to typed the URL out by hand?

No clue. I post a lot from my phone and auto-corrupt does all kinds of maddening things that make me spit nails.

There have now been three articles on this subject that have been flagged off the front page.

Kind of smells like censorship, or at least mod indifference to a group of users improperly flagging these:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16579219

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16578715

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16576569

The story is mainstream politics, which is off topic. It presents no new or interesting phenomenon of intellectual interest, nor does it bear an even tangential relationship to technology. And, as expected, the threads posted have mostly devolved into partisan shit-flinging or complaints about the mods.

This isn't censorship or improper flagging, it's an attempt to keep Hacker News from descending even further into the cesspool of politics. The bar for these kinds of stories needs to be set much higher than it has been.

This thread is now gone from the front pages as well. Holy fuck HN, your red flags are poking me in the eyeballs.

It's very offensive to me that this post was flagged. Like red flag, quit reading hackernews level offensive.

Edit: I'm seeing that the comments got way outta hand. People are clearly very upset and feel helpless about this.

Mods, could you consider unflagging this story?

Just curious, but why is this flagged? It seems like it is an article of interest to the community - just trying to understand what happened. Thanks for any feedback!

> but why is this flagged?

It's not on topic for HN. HN users flagged it.

There are countless other places you can discuss this.

This could be unpopular to say: There is no qualified indiv in the CIA who will not have her background characteristics. Go outside the org and you get a Tillerson, a well meaning person, but someone out of their element. If we believe Russia is about to enter our walls, as the MSM broadcast, we certainly need someone who knows the reins who will capably deal with our adversaries.

That’s simply wrong. The CIA has 20000 employees. The vast majority of them never participated in torture. That’s because they are not in roles that do such things, because torture was just not used extensively enough to involve many people, or because there has been a lot of turnover in the roughly 12 years since the practice was stopped.

Let's just say rank and files will never get congressional approval. So they are out. You're left with career operatives who've proven themselves in multiple facets including bureaucratic organizational, etc.

What if the CIA is intentionally propagandizing our nation into thinking Russia is about to enter our walls because it increases their funding - both directly from congress and through increased value of their investments in the MIC?

I mean.... technically... now she runs all CIA black sites.

You are given a task. "Torture terrorists for intelligence" you are not given high quality terrorists and you get pretty much nothing. It gets shut down, shred the evidence. As an employee is this your problem or the problem of the person who gave you this task?

It's a crime under Geneva Convention to obey an illegal order (unless, I believe, you think you will killed if you don't obey). It's also a crime under the same conventions to give an illegal order.

This was the basis of the Nuremberg and Tokyo war trials.

Torturing people deemed to be terrorists is not intelligent, it's a war crime, and it's everybody's problem.

Both. Torture is criminal.

This question was probably answered most eloquently in Hannah Arendt’s report on the Eichmann trial, The Banality of Evil.

But to summarize:

> is this your problem or the problem of the person who gave you this task?

Yes