> For the NSA I'm sure you'll literally be able to look up personal details on anyone.

This is contrary to everything I’ve heard about their internal controls, especially after Snowden. He was able to get as much as he could because he was a trusted administrator, and that was reportedly tightened significantly afterwards.

Snowden had mentioned that he had observed people within certain roles of electronic surveillance had almost unlimited ability to review personal text messages of arbitrary targets. He went on to say it was often by used/abused by them to verify the fidelity of each other's partners or romantic interests. I would say at the time, there was probably not adequate internal oversight.

Or it's ... just different. I mean, I'm pretty sure most people agree that Iran not having nukes is a good thing. I'm also pretty sure that far fewer people agree that Google should have a far-reaching profile on every citizen who isn't aggressively blocking ads/tracking.

The government does shady stuff, but would you really have more trust in a corporation?

Not necessarily more trust for a corporation by virtue of the corporation not being government.

I have less trust for the NSA and CIA because of past infractions. For example how the CIA was selling coke to the US to fund their programs. That's next level shit that not even a corpo will do.

Corporations wouldn't get people hooked on drugs and misinform/bribe doctors to over-prescribe opioids to make a nice stack of dollars? I guess the motives are different, the CIA does their stuff to fund guerilla troops to overthrow uncooperative governments or battle the Soviets, the corporations do it so their owners can buy another 400ft yacht.

I think it's still easier to rationalize working for the CIA than Purdue, and easier to work on mass-surveillance for the NSA than for Google. National security vs private yachts. I mean, I'd understand if you say you wouldn't work for the CIA or NSA because you don't believe in their approaches to things, but I doubt you'd say "... but I have no problem writing software to push more oxy into rural communities and kill a few tens of thousands citizens a year as long as my bonus comes through".

As I said I'm making no commentary about government and corpos in general. I'm saying something specific to the CIA and NSA.

Goog employees cannot. Amazon employees have been rumored to.

>For the NSA I'm sure you'll literally be able to look up personal details on anyone.

Without a warrant? That would attract all sorts of creeps and stalkers to the organisation.