Hmm, nah I don't think people understand that they created NSA. It is them and their neighbor living in quiet area paying taxes where government want to keep them quiet and keep paying.

This way of things is giving birth to idealism and naivete. Just like people living in cities are idealistic and naive about life of cattle and poultry.

You don't want innocent chicken to be killed, but it is tasty. You don't want innocent person to be kept in hidden prison, but you feel safer.

They all would like to close down the farms or agencies that deal with bad stuff, but once they will be hungry enough that they will have to kill an animal or will be faced with actual violence, they will change their mind right away. (I bet they will want someone else to deal with such things)

If someone lives comfy life he can be oblivious. But on the other hand that is also beneficial for society because people in first world countries can focus on growing their interests and don't mind that bad stuff.

In the end if I would have to kill chickens for food every day I could not learn software development. So I am grateful I don't have to. I am also grateful that I don't have to deal with criminal people every day, because also I probably would not have time to do software development (most likely I would be dead before my 20th birthday).

I would say it is the _opposite_ of what you suggest. That is, people are willing to accept the existence of oppressive institutions because they are kept ignorant about their terrible impact. And those who aren't ignorant are fearful.

On a personal note: I' been arrested, I've been beaten, I've been in court and I've been in prison (*) to uphold and promote my beliefs and principles. And I do software development too... it's possible :-)

> You don't want innocent person to be kept in hidden prison, but you feel safer.

Umm, no. That this happens makes me feel less safe. If it can happen to anyone, after all, it can happen to me or the people I hold dear.

A spy agency is necessary for the USA to compete on the world stage. Though, it's operations should be significantly limited.

The CIA is a disaster that needs to be dismantled.

The conceit of planetary-level politics being a "competition" is - with due respect - propaganda of the imperialist powers, that most of us are being fed and expected to buy into. Don't.

In fact, with deepening global threats like climate change and nuclear war (), it is becoming clear just how mortally dangerous such perceptions are. So: Stop supporting "competition on the world stage".

---

Yes, that is still a thing and making quite the comeback; see:

https://www.newsweek.com/us-military-new-nuclear-weapons-782...

and

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/28/us-nuclear-wea...

for example.

Welp, I'm a doomsday prepper now.

> The CIA is a disaster that needs to be dismantled.

Working for the CIA is like being a sysadmin. The world only knows you exist when you fuck up.

There was a great CCC talk recently that showed how one of the Vault 7 tools wasn't a remote assassination boogieman drone tool like Wikileaks framed it, but actually a control the CIA developed that allowed them to give anti-air weapons to friendlies in Syria and Ukraine with positive access control and strong time/geo scoping to prevent them from being used nefariously.

> Working for the CIA is like being a sysadmin. The world only knows you exist when you fuck up.

While there's some truth to that, this way of thinking entirely ignores the opportunity cost that all those agencies have. With those insane budgets, you could do so much good in the world that one wouldn't have to fear the problems those agencies try to solve, because a lot of them wouldn't exist in the first place.

The budget of intelligence agencies is not anywhere near that big.

CCC... Communist Congress of China? Christian Columnist Caucus? Conference on Computational Complexity?

Probably Chaos Computer Club, a German association of hackers. At least in Europe quite well known. They do a lot of cool stuff, like looking for security flaws in voting machines and such stuff.

I'm sure that's what you would have told me 300 years ago if I claimed we should abolish monarchy and hereditary rule...

I am fine getting rid of the NSA as soon as you can guarantee that Russia and China dismantle their equivalents. Not to mention all the other agencies in the world.

Sorry but when you talk of those two in particular, the US is the obvious good guy. Regardless of the terrible shit Trump has done, we would never accept him murdering journalists or critics. That shit happens regularly in Russia and China

Thinking of the US as “the good guy” deters improvement. If anything, the US is “the better guy,” a more modest claim.

> Regardless of the terrible shit Trump has done, we would never accept him murdering journalists or critics

There is strong evidence that Turkish intelligence intercepted the telephone call between Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Bin Salman green-lighting the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, and used it as leverage to force the US drawdown in Syria. Turkish state media was the source of the audio recording of the murder inside the embassy, so it is not unreasonable to believe they have sufficient espionage capabilities against the Saudis to have phone recordings as well.

Source for Kushner phone call claim?

So you are saying the US killed Khashoggi.

Of course you don't mean that. What you mean is that the US didn't intervene.

Yes, I am certain the world that hates the US would have loved the US intervening in Saudi Arabia's affairs.

Whether the US gov't knew Saudi was going to do it or not is different than the US gov't pulling the trigger.

Can you name the Trump, Obama, or Bush vocal american citizen critics that have been killed by the government? Because it sure is easy to find the ones Putin has murdered

Not really about critics, but murder of Epstein pretty much shows corruption of the US establishment.

I'm pretty sure there more deaths like this but I don't collect this data and US is the country with most efficient propaganda and brainwashing. It's extremely effective at hiding unpleasant facts and dissemination of fake news.

It takes a lot of hubris to think that you would ever know for sure if some US three letter agency was killing journalists and critics.

Ummm Trump's biggest critics aren't dropping dead left and right. That is exactly what happens to Putin's critics.