At a guess they are ordinary people thinking they are doing something good and working hard for the cause, be it a love for their country or genuine sense of protecting their own or some concept ('freedom'). On average they'll be very intelligent and working harder than their counterparts in industry for less money.

True believers with good intentions.

At a guess you believe they're not actually doing something good even though you are, on average, less informed about their mission and activities, less intelligent, and lazier.

> At a guess you believe they're not actually doing something good

Correct, and the evidence available so far strengthens that belief.

> even though you are, on average, less informed about their mission and activities,

That's not my fault though, I'd love to be more informed, but hey, secrets!

> less intelligent,

Quite probably.

> and lazier.

That's very well possible but I actually highly doubt it.

So, why the insults? Did you feel somehow implicated?

It's not meant as an insult. I'm just riffing off of your own comment that

>On average they'll be very intelligent and working harder than their counterparts in industry for less money.

The Nazis would say the same of the Gestapo to dissenters, albeit with a tinge less arrogance.

They would probably also say that smoking is bad for your health.

Less prone to cognitive biases, though.

People all want to feel that they're doing good things, and not evil. They'll rationalize all sorts of things to believe that.

Do you include yourself in that, or are you not a people?

I include myself, of course. But I don't work for the NSA, so I don't have any particular need to rationalize their behavior as good.

Well, obviously, since you don't do so. You rationalize it as bad.

We established the cognitive bias to rationalize it as good.

What would the cognitive bias to rationalize it as bad be?

The reason I believe it is bad is because it violates the spirit of the 4th amendment. It gives incredible power to an organization with no effective oversight. It lacks proper judicial review, and the existing supposed review has been shown to be a farce. It makes everyone using technology less secure. It wastes everyone's resources who have to work against and around the NSA.

Everyone knows they are being watched, listened to, tracked everywhere.

The big deal, though, is the power concentration and chilling effect of such massive surveillance even the Stasi couldn't dream of.

That doesn't really matter though because these people as a group take actions that led to these stereotypes in the first place.

I don't care that not everyone working for / at the NSA is small-minded or not because in the end, the sum of all those individuals failed at being moral.

The reason we wouldn't believe you is that the intelligence community has already proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that it can't be trusted and it regularly lies through its teeth without batting an eyelash, not because we're wearing tin-foil hats. It's your fault you don't have any credibility, not our fault for disbelieving you.

You're asking us to believe something ridiculous on its face, that there AREN'T these horrible small-minded people who don't think twice about violating our rights. Congress is packed full of people like that, but there aren't any at the NSA, ehe?

I think it is funny that you say I wouldn't believe you. How do you know? I don't think I implied that these are small minded people. I'd be delighted to hear about these things, so I can build a better understanding.

Are you trying to play victim, or are you just using your holier than thou card?

like the fact that NSA analysts spy on their gfs using military equipment ?

They shouldn't do that. OTOH, anybody with a security clearance ought to be able to have the agency assign a disinterested person to do that ASAP. Without this, a foreign government can trivially send agents to date people who might know interesting secrets.