Government Secrets and the Need for Whistle-blowers
I tend to take the opposite of the popular HN view on security issues (to my karmatic dismay), but...<p>"our government regularly classifies things not because they need to be secret, but because their release would be embarrassing." - Agreed.<p>"but the U.S. government seems to have successfully destroyed it {wikileaks} as a platform." - Agreed.<p>I don't agree, though, that you should put yourself at personal risk to expose something you don't morally support. I also don't agree that the government shouldn't pursue programs like this. If popular fiction is to be believed, crime is predictable, and the magic answer to finding malicious people is there in the Internet, if we have a superhacker who can bang randomly on a keyboard while making Trekkie-sounding soliloquies.<p>I say eh, let them have a go at it. Because it will ultimately fail to give the desired results, just as airport body scanners have failed to find badguys, just as DHS security checkpoints have failed. Nothing will replace regular brownshoe investigation, and no brave action on the part of individuals will fix our tendency to build corrupt governments who abuse power.<p>No, Bruce, I'm going to take care of my family by not being sent to jail, rather than be a martyr to the doomed cause of dismantling the government's ability to use the net to spy on us.