Try looking at the comments from a different angle. Instead of grouping them into "pro-NSA" and "anti-NSA" categories, try checking for technical ignorance. Look for ideas about cyberwarfare based on bad analogies with real warfare. Look for a mindset that puts winning an arms race first and never considers ethical implications. Look for vague statements about protecting or harming America that don't explain whether they mean the American military, the civilian government, or ordinary citizens. Look for equation of the NSA's offensive and defensive capabilities.

The other side of the debate has its own poorly reasoned comments. I haven't noticed many on this article yet, but they should arrive soon.

I doubt such comments are written by people with NSA connections, but their sudden appearance is odd. The only other subject that produces so many strongly opinionated, poor-quality comments is systemd.

If I were being paid to influence a debate, especially being paid by the U.S. Government, the first thing I do is lots and lots of research. The easiest way to discredit someone is to point out technical ignorance in their argument. So I'd make my point technically sound on all points. I'd research the counter-argument so I have rebuttals to every knee-jerk response the amateurs on the internet will toss at me. I'd read other discussion threads and make note of writing styles that frequently engender agreement. After all, this is my job and I've got professional pride on the line.

And there are a lot of people on the job market who can do those things very well. It's something American schools have been teaching for decades. In my high school there was this thing called a forensics club. "What's forensics? Isn't that like crime stuff?" I asked. It was explained to me that they learn how to debate issues, like free speech on school grounds. "Well obviously we want free speech." "Actually", my friend says, "I'm going to be arguing against it." "You don't support free speech?" I ask. "I do. But I was assigned to the against side." I thought it sounded stupid. Now I get it. It was cognitive dissonance as a vocational lesson.

So it's the people who sound unusually well-informed that I most suspect of astroturfing. Except I assume they also practice how to make what they write not sound rehearsed.

So if you were operating 50 accounts to try to influence the debate you'd be posting 50 informative and persuasive comments? I doubt it, that would take way too much time.

If I were an NSA shill I'd just mention something about Snowden harming the US or Snowden being a spy. It's a controversial and dumb argument so it's going to get a decent amount of replies. It also doesn't take much effort. You'd derail the conversation, and informative comments would be drowned out by a bunch of people arguing whether Snowden is a hero or traitor.

You only have to write the argument once. Then use the social media management software that's being peddled to tweak the wording slightly so you have prepared text stating the same thing 50 different ways. Then if someone gives a counter-argument that you have a prepared response for, you can copy-paste that in a matter of seconds. Arguments you haven't prepared for are ignored because the goal isn't to engage in dialog, it's to give the false impression that a dialog is occurring. To an outside observer the forum would appear to be populated equally by people for and against the topic. Even though it's really an overwhelming support for one side and a single agent spamming with 50 different personalities.

Derailing a conversation works well because they will have a large number of responses prepared that talk about, using your example, Snowden being a traitor. So once they've wedged the issue their spam can become the dominant voice. If the discussion had drifted to an area they weren't prepared for, say the historical precedents for whistleblowers of government misdeeds, they probably don't have as much material for that.

My point is I assume astroturfed material would not be written off-the-cuff but meticulously edited ahead of time to give the desired impression. And near the top of that list must be the requirement that it not look like an obvious shill.

I wonder how effective it would be if agents were able to control both sides of the debate, even? A more sophisticated shill would give the appearance of supporting the opposition but will subtly help draw attention to the propaganda. A living straw man, as it were. Not unlike the way SWAT police will pretend to be violent protesters to goad troublemakers into doing something they can be arrested for.

> A living straw man

The term is agent provocateur, I presume

I see nothing wrong with presenting a coherent argument backed up by research which accounts for opposing points of view, even if it's the US government doing the arguing. I would much rather they try to persuade people through dialogue than violence or subterfuge. And I wouldn't consider what you're describing to be subterfuge, necessarily.

Theoretically, my goal wouldn't be to influence debate. It would be to find places where thoughtful individuals discuss ideas like this that have an anti-current-government-position bent, and not put forth well reasoned thoughtful arguments. Instead I'd just throw out, en masse, the same tired fearmongering comments, surveillence apologist comments, accuse snowden of being a traitor, anything that would make the pro-democracy elements of this site feel like they are in the minority, or unwelcome. Then they leave, or comment less. Movement destroyed. A slew of garbage one liners about protecting freedom or trusting the secret ultra-powerful decision makers and all of a sudden anyone who has anything intelligent to say feels like, "why bother. This isn't the place for me, obviously. Maybe noone agrees with me."

Actually changing someone's mind through argument is almost impossible. On the internet I'd say it is impossible. So don't change minds, just make the people who disagree with you feel like the whole world is against them when actually they're in the majority.

In particular, pay special attention to any post where the only content is a divisive, wedge topic trying to change the conversation. Divide and conquer is a classic strategy, and was an explicit goal of JTRIG in their attempts to disrupt "threats".

While a post where this type of rhetoric is only part of a larger argument is harder to categorize, there have been a lot of posts here and elsewhere that seem to bring up stale talking points (and little else), that distract threads from more important topics.

This is a tactic that Scientology was famous for, and it seem other groups have started using it as well. None of this is proof, of course; I merely suggest being extra vigilant about off-topic distractions and attempts to create division and unnecessary argument.

To be fair, I doubt many people (including myself) with an opinion either way actually know what they're talking about. The expert pool for knowledge about high-level classified government hacking is probably pretty small, even on Hacker News.

It's politics, and politics hits people in the lizard brain and short-circuits their ability to think rationally.

One the other hand there aren't many opinions on it on hacker news that are more clueless than those of elected officials and various powerful lawyers. But I think the one where you just trust those caught out being grossly incompetent (even if you have zero ethics) really has been one of them.

You might be surprised. Regardless, none of them will ever post anything relevant on the topics in discussion.

That's pretty condescending. How many sports fans know how to be a pro athlete or manage a team? How many critics of government, "know what they're talking about," by your standard?

I'm sorry, I should have been more specific. The poster I was replying to mentioned that it was odd that low-quality, uninformed arguments tend to crop up in threads like this a lot. People make broad statements about how evil and nigh-omnipotent the NSA is, and how deeply they've infiltrated every facet of human life. The existence of parallel construction leads to the assumption that every case involving the government is due to parallel construction. Google appears on a PRISM slide, they must be an NSA front company. Someone suggests politics may be more complex than they appear, or the NSA may not be as powerful as they seem, they must be a shill. The US government is involved with NIST and TOR, it means they've completely undermined all forms of encryption and TOR is a honeypot.

This subject seems to be a trigger for people to try to outdo each other to come off as cynical and in the know as possible about things which by definition almost no one knows much about.

I understand, but when you say:

People make broad statements about how evil and nigh-omnipotent the NSA is, and how deeply they've infiltrated every facet of human life

...is not the reverse case also true? We find ourselves discussing a condition where a lot of information is unknown, on both sides, but nobody upbraids the intelligence communities for exhibiting the same tendencies in the same breath that they castigate those people analyzing the situation with incomplete information.

There is ignorance, conclusions based on assumptions and a desire to know more on all sides of the argument. It's the nature of the beast, and if criticism is going to be levelled in this context, it should be pointed at those who withold the transparency required for understanding.

That's fair. The intelligence community really has no one to blame but themselves for that.

Arguably, secrecy exists for a good reason sometimes. But when you begin to treat the rest of the legal system, the government whose job it is to oversee you, and the public as enemies and keep everything as secret as possible, you really give people little to suspect anything but the worst.

I mean, here we are with what appears to be the biggest and most complex global data gathering correlation system in history - possibly a technological achievement to rival the web itself - and two terrorists who posted anti-American rhetoric on their Twitter accounts managed to bomb the Boston Marathon despite having been under surveillance at one point, and the Russians more or less tell us outright to watch these guys. They weren't exactly hiding behind 7 proxies so what the hell are we even doing?

How to interpret the cognitive dissonance in that? Maybe the system isn't as comprehensive as it appears? Maybe bureaucracy got in the way? Maybe the pieces just didn't come together in time? Is there even a Panopticon or not? Who knows.

It only reinforces OP's point. I don't see sports fans discussions productive in any way.

In the interest of facilitating a open and fair discussion on the larger issue of state surveillance, I highly recommend checking out the 2014 Munk debates: http://www.munkdebates.com/debates/state-surveillance

General Hayden and Glenn Greenwald are given fair time to discuss the issue and to give rebuttals to each other.

Its much more informative then trying to parse HN comments to form an opinion about state surveillance. It also forces you to consider the views of people who don't agree with you.

For those who aren't Munk members, it's also available on C-SPAN[1]. I thought it was an entertaining debate, but not as good as I hoped it would be (I watched it live when it was first broadcasted). My memory is a little foggy, but as I recall, Glenn Greenwald went off on his usual 'the NSA is the epitome of evil and exists solely to invade your privacy' rants; Michael Hayden spent most of his time backtracking and focusing on where Greenwald was factually wrong rather than making his own argument; I didn't think Alan Dershowitz made a particularly convincing argument; and Alexis Ohanian made some greats points but was completely ignored by everyone else.

I personally enjoyed watching Jameel Jaffer (ACLU) square off against Chris Inglis (former NSA Deputy Director) at the Brookings Institute last year[2] - both sides had good arguments. For that matter, Benjamin Wittes (the guy moderating the debate) has had some good interviews on his blog[3] and podcast[4] as well - you don't see many outlets that will have James Comey (FBI director) one week followed by Chris Soghoian (ACLU) the next week.

[1] http://www.c-span.org/video/?319161-1/munk-debate-state-surv...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3KKEh2AS6E

[3] http://www.lawfareblog.com/

[4] http://www.lawfareblog.com/category/podcasts/

Thanks for this I didn't know this existed. Interesting for sure to see the evidence presented on each side and how little actual data came through in the course of the debate.

The parent poster didn't advise ignoring the pro-NSA opinions but gave his opinion that he felt there might be an astroturf campaign. And why follow a comment agreeing that astroturf campaigns are employed with one slanting those pointing it out as 'spooks' and 'paranoid'?

I think it's worth reminding fellow readers that this sort of manipulation happens, and likely on HN.

I have a problem with the 'likely' part, because that's where the 'paranoid' comes into play.

What evidence is there that it's likely, other than paranoia?

If you were to be assigned to astroturf certain demographics, what better target than HN would you chose to reach tech-professionals?

That's a fair point, but as evidence of likelihood, it's still kind of weak. The US government might post here. But then again, so do communists and anarchists and libertarian capitalists and what have you. It's not as if HN is awash in pro-US, pro security sentiment anyway.

It seems to me as if the purpose of bringing it up is to warn people that any opinion they encounter of a certain kind can't be trusted, because it's probably part of a coordinated campaign of government manipulation. That's a couple of steps away from calling it thoughtcrime.

I haven't seen a political comment thread on a major site which hasn't been polluted with astroturf in the last 2 years or so. Anything regarding Russia is particularly obvious but they are all at it. Then again, when enough regular commenters are just parroting talking points there's not much distinction.

Being paranoid does not mean they are not targeting you.

True. But it also doesn't mean you actually know they are.