from Hacker News

Obama defends surveillance effort as 'trade-off' for security

by kyle_t on 6/9/13, 2:57 AM with 35 comments

• by joelrunyon on 6/9/13, 3:48 AM

  terrorist - ter·ror·ist [ter-er-ist] noun 2. a person who terrorizes or frightens others.

  It seems more & more that the people doing the most to rally up fear & frighten us are the people we elected - not random people throughout the world that "hate" us.

• by kiba on 6/9/13, 4:03 AM

  Ok, since they "done so much" to protect us, why don't they tell us about the effectiveness of their program in concrete terms?

• by dschiptsov on 6/9/13, 5:15 AM

  It is so funny to see how correct and accurate were insights of Ayn Rand, Steinbeck, Misihma in describing how the system (corporations, banks, politicians) works and how naive and abstract are all those political theories compared to what was actually built.)

  It is a good moment to re-read Atlas Shrugged. And Orwell, of course.

• by untog on 6/9/13, 4:32 AM

  It'll be interesting to see how this flies. To be entirely honest, while the tech and journalistic circles are utterly outraged about this, the general public has yet to display any real care or regard for data privacy.

  I know a number of people that are quite happy with the idea of invasive airport scans in order to get better security. It's a hard mindset to change.

• by philippelh on 6/9/13, 3:35 AM

  ”Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.”

• by summerdown2 on 6/9/13, 9:00 AM

  Here is a very interesting and cogent article from David Foster Wallace from 2007 about this very thing:

  http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/just-ask...

  The truth is that Obama may be correct: it might be a valid trade to give up some freedom for security. But in a democracy it would be better to have that debate openly and let everyone have input into it.

  The main issue here, IMO, is the lack of democracy or accountability over this particular level of surveillance. Even those representatives who knew about it and wanted to have a public debate about it were kept quiet.

• by lignuist on 6/9/13, 8:11 AM

  "You can't have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience,"

  So he is offering us (well, actually just U.S.) 100% security. Interesting...

  YES WE SCAN.

• by olgeni on 6/9/13, 10:10 AM

  > "We're going to have to make some choices as a society..."

  Apparently, "society" didn't know much about this.

• by mtgx on 6/9/13, 6:14 AM

  Great article from HuffingtonPost about why this is a false choice. Please read it. It might change your mind if you're thinking the trade-off may be worth it:

  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-van-buren/a-childs-guide...

• by RexRollman on 6/9/13, 1:08 PM

  I suspect that a vast majority of people are going to be okay with this. It was been my observation that people are far more interested in safety than freedom.

• by cinquemb on 6/9/13, 7:54 AM

  I have a better chance of overdosing on pharmaceuticals than I do being killed by "Terrorists".

  And lets not pretend that we are suddenly more vulnerable after 9/11. Maybe our perma-pandering leaders are more vulnerable as more people start to see they aren't wearing any clothes…