Those who work for the NSA are like any other collection of people: some are good, some are bad, the majority are a little of both. If the sample is very large, as in the 500,000+ employees and contractors who?ve had access to NSA data, a very few might even be saintly and a few more purely evil. Given the bad, given the evil, given that power corrupts all but saints, this is yet another predictable case of the cure being worse than the disease. Witness the good intentions with which tens of thousands of Americans were lobotomized. Witness the good intentions with which millions of innocent, unwitting Americans are now surveilled. There?s nothing new here ? other than the unprecedented scale of these well-meaning intrusions and of their chilling effect on free and open expression
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The NSA Is Just People
Those who work for the NSA are like any other collection of people: some are good, some are bad, the majority are a little of both. If the sample is very large, as in the 500,000+ employees and contractors who?ve had access to NSA data, a very few might even be saintly and a few more purely evil. Given the bad, given the evil, given that power corrupts all but saints, this is yet another predictable case of the cure being worse than the disease. Witness the good intentions with which tens of thousands of Americans were lobotomized. Witness the good intentions with which millions of innocent, unwitting Americans are now surveilled. There?s nothing new here ? other than the unprecedented scale of these well-meaning intrusions and of their chilling effect on free and open expression