After Snowden, the NSA Faces Recruitment Challenge

Re:After Snowden, the NSA Faces Recruitment Challenge by o_____________o on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @01:47PM (#9298403)

There's an entire generation that believes our government has completely lost representation of its own people, and will use any nefarious means in its power to subvert any rule it wishes to. The ostensible goal of security is questionable in both effectiveness and actual intention. In a sense, some branches of the government are viewed as a geopolitical corporation with an oligarchy in place of a CEO.

Google and Facebook, as contentious as some of us feel about them, produce products people like, and are voted into power by our direct and continued usage. You can't opt out of the NSA.

In the end, you're comparing an organization with a world-destroying military that regularly murders and imprisons people at all ends of the earth, to another that displays diaper ads that follow you around the internet. Not quite the same.

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Re:After Snowden, the NSA Faces Recruitment Challenge by zzzeek on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @02:11PM (#9298608)

> There's an entire generation that believes our government has completely lost representation of its own people, and will use any nefarious means in its power to subvert any rule it wishes to.

A subculture, yes. An "entire generation", absolutely not, this is hyperbole. You can't "opt out" of the NSA, but certainly if you wanted to, the very first step is to get as far away from Facebook as possible. Yet there is no large gap in ages amongst those gleefully participating in Facebook all day which would indicate "an entire generation" seeking to avoid government surveillance.

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Re:After Snowden, the NSA Faces Recruitment Challenge by fandu on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @02:17PM (#9298665)

> A subculture, yes. An "entire generation", absolutely not

If you're not just being pedantic:

http://www.businessinsider.com/poll-millenials-have-historic...

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Re:After Snowden, the NSA Faces Recruitment Challenge by ethanbond on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @02:25PM (#9298749)

Wall Street and "The Media" rank lower, substantially, than even the NSA. So it's still hyperbolic, to say the least.

The millennials are distrustful of everyone, and why shouldn't they be?

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Re:After Snowden, the NSA Faces Recruitment Challenge by zzzeek on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @02:24PM (#9298745)

is there a link to the poll? did they poll other demographics as well?

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Re:After Snowden, the NSA Faces Recruitment Challenge by jasonlotito on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @02:50PM (#9298947)

Yes, their was a link.

http://iop.harvard.edu/harvard-public-opinion-project

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Re:After Snowden, the NSA Faces Recruitment Challenge by zzzeek on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @03:42PM (#9299331)

OK, so no, only millenials: "The Harvard Public Opinion Project conducts a biannual poll examining the political opinions and civic engagement of young Americans ages 18 to 29." So this shows nothing about, "a generation". General trust in government is down across all demographics: http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/26/section-2-views-of-th....

The idea that distrust of the government has suddenly leaped on generational lines implies that millennials are savvy, informed, and active in comparison to demographics over 30 who are assumed to be complacent and naive in comparison. But the reality is that most people right now will gladly answer on a poll that they don't like the government as much as they used to, and that most people are still almost entirely complacent in any case; there are no millions marching in the streets in protest, voter turnouts remain terribly low across all demographics, and everyone freely donates datapoints to Facebook all day which is one of the NSA's most bountiful conduits for information.

That's not to disagree with the very original comment here. The original comment refers to the interaction of subcultures as well, namely the "builder" subcultures who can direct their efforts towards pro-privacy or anti-privacy efforts. That is of course an important conduit.

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Re:After Snowden, the NSA Faces Recruitment Challenge by pekk on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @08:55PM (#9300908)

Participation in Facebook doesn't mean those people aren't against NSA. It probably isn't hard to find examples of people using Facebook to complain about NSA. Whether it's a matter of ignorance or cognitive dissonance or believing that the same level of surveillance is unavoidable.

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Re:After Snowden, the NSA Faces Recruitment Challenge by o_____________o on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @02:41PM (#9298874)

In addition to the other reply, I didn't say anywhere they were actively avoiding surveillance, there are gaps, and you assume far too much in expecting users to understand the scope, value and portability of the information they're leaking to an innocuous seeming website. You can't conflate Facebook usage with opinions towards the government.

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