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A comment on After Snowden, the NSA Faces Recruitment Challenge. Parent comment

Re:After Snowden, the NSA Faces Recruitment Challenge by rmxt on Friday April 03, 2015 @09:15AM (#9315648)
Your first paragraph reeks of confirmation bias. It's a truism (and/or a pat on your own back) for you to say "and people who go into extreme depth on the subject [...] tend have much more nuanced opinions." Such thinking makes it all too easy to discard countervailing opinions. Of course my opinion is nuanced and correct! Those other people simply haven't read enough, otherwise they would come to the same conclusions that I have!

I don't have much to add to the discussion other than to say that people have spent miles of text, sweating this thread out, yet no one has budged a bit on either side of this discussion. Some generosity and good faith "shoe-switching" might go a long way in seeing the middle ground between "the government is completely in the clear to keep on trucking" and "the NSA should be abolished."

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Re:After Snowden, the NSA Faces Recruitment Challenge by csandreasen on Sunday April 05, 2015 @05:10PM (#9325342)
As an aside, I wish HN would give you notifications when someone responds to your comment - I didn't see this for two days and I'm not sure if you're ever going to see this, but anyway...

I wasn't trying to imply that my opinion was the correct one - of course, I am naturally a bit biased on the matter. :) I was trying to say that the whole "the NSA is 100% evil" argument is just as ignorant as the "the terrorists will win if the NSA doesn't read your e-mail" argument. Based on your 2nd paragraph, I think we're in agreement on that front.

I've watched debates like [1] where you put the NSA and ACLU in the same room and civil discussion ensues. I'd like to see more debate on those lines.

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

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