[citation needed] for the blackmail and extortion. It's inane to be so quick to jump from mere ability to do something bad to intent to do something bad.

The FBI letter blackmailing MLK to kill himself:

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/king-like-all-frauds-yo...

Summed up by a history prof:

When you teach American history as I do, you get asked about conspiracies a lot. As it happens, I’m skeptical about some of the biggest conspiracy theories out there — unlike nearly all of my students, for instance, I think it’s highly likely that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

But I’m not one to ridicule such theories either, and I find the smug dismissal with which they’re so often greeted deeply obnoxious. Because forty-seven years ago one of America’s highest ranking law enforcement agents launched a secret campaign intended to blackmail the country’s most prominent civil rights activist into committing suicide.

That’s not a theory, it’s a fact. And once you know that, it gets a lot harder to dismiss other people’s stories of shadowy government goings-on.

-- http://studentactivism.net/2012/01/15/the-fbis-attempt-to-bl...

Comparing the FBI of J. Edgar Hoover to the DoJ's FBI of 2013 is like comparing the Long Island State Park Commission of Robert Moses to the New York State Office of Parks & Recreation of 2013. Hoover's FBI was a personal fiefdom accountable to nobody, not even the President.

Also, odious as the letter is, it's not exactly forceful. If MLK's civil rights struggle had been shifted forward in time today and he had posted the "I Have A Dream" speech directly to Youtube, he'd have found far worse.

Agreed that Hoover was a bad actor. Thankfully he had fewer tools at his disposal than today's bad actor would. Even those who feel they've learned nothing else new recently (feeling they'd seen evidence of these programs previously), have now learned there are apparently insufficient controls over individual access to "collecting" (taking off the shelf and looking at) NSA files.

Every few months another cop or DMV employee is busted for looking at records they shouldn't. In my book, this problem of collecting the data but not partitioning it from bad actors is one that should be getting more airtime at all levels of government and all levels of security.

I, simultaneously,

(1) Agree that the powers technology has implicitly granted the DoJ are a cause for concern; and

(2) am comforted, not alarmed, by a drumbeat of stories about government employees getting busted for looking at records they shouldn't be looking at.

"That example of obscene overreach and abuse of a government agency does not count because it is nothing more than an example of obscene overreach and abuse of a government agency."

I think the argument is that you need more justification to claim that a government agency is engaging in blackmail and extortion than "a once in a century character in a different government agency 50 years ago at the height of a national paranoia not seen since that time sent someone a nasty letter."

The fear is that they are creating tools that would give Hoover an orgasm on the spot, and we don't know that there isn't another Hoover.

We don't need concrete proof of current wrong-doing in order to take lessons from history. That is the value of history.

I agree with you, but I was responding to the claim:

"b/c it has nothing to do with an investigation...now blackmail and extortion???"

I read that as something stronger than "we need to take lessons from history." I think the statement goes further than that to claim that the NSA's purported justifications are entirely pretense and the real motivation is blackmail and extortion. That I think requires stronger proof than "someone sometime did something."

Are you afraid of the New York State Parks & Rec department? Your logic suggests you should be.

Have you read Caro's _Power Broker_? If not, you should!

Fears and cautions should not be tied to organizations themselves, but rather to actions. The NSA is not the FBI, yet memories of Hoover should give pause to anyone considering the NSA.

Tying fear and caution to organizations prevents you from learning much of anything from history as the offending organizations are almost all abolished, abandoned, or reorganized. Should experimentalists working in medicine and the humanities not learn from the Tuskegee Experiment because Public Health Service is a different organization today and the Tuskegee Institute no longer exists in a meaningful way?

I don't think anybody disagrees with the broad point you're making; this subthread is talking about how likely it is that the FBI is blackmailing people and trying (clumsily) to convince people to kill themselves based on the actions of Hoover's FBI.

No. It's inane to create conditions under which "mere ability" is so powerful and accessible, then rely on hope and faith that there are no bad actors with "intent" to "do something [evil]". It's not as if we haven't been there before.

OTOH, it's perfectly reasonable to be concerned about the capabilities that we give our government. That is exactly what distinguishes various forms of government and exactly why we have a Constitution that defines ours as it does.

This is a good summation of NSA discussion on HN lately: someone asking for a citation gets downvoted. Good job guys!