jbonneau_20130727

Not about the politics, but it was a good reminder that the NSA is full of decent people who aren't too different from the engineers anywhere else. They have a job to do and they're doing their best, and it actually stood out how much people working there do care about the rules and formal processes they have in place, unlike academia where people hate following rules. I think the main changes that need to happen are political, and changing FISA courts, and probably replacing some of the NSA leadership, but I can respect most of the people working at the NSA.

My fear is that it will be treated as a normal "scandal", they'll fire 1 or 2 NSA executives, and none of the laws will change. I hope this becomes a well-known cautionary tale and is a constant reminder for future politicians that we don't want to go down this path, essentially an anti-9/11.

Career-wise I have lots of interesting projects to work on at Google, perhaps I'll try to become a professor in the future. I enjoy research and teaching.

Life-wise I want to finish a half-Ironman this fall and get certified as an EMT.

The biggest worry is that we don't know what's being collected, how long it's being stored, and what limitations there are on its use (or abuse). We know just enough to know we should be very concerned, but we don't really know enough to have a public debate about if the amount collected is "reasonable."

A second, very important issue is economic. The US is fortunate to be home to most of the largest web companies. That's a tremendous economic resource, but we'll kill the golden goose if other countries think US corporations can't be trusted with their data due to the local government, particularly when the law provides virtually no protection from eavesdroppping for foreigner's data held by US companies. Can we honestly tell people in other countries that they should trust all of their data with US companies?

NSA employees can't talk about this kind of thing at all so you don't get to directly have that conversation unfortunately. Perhaps it's different behind closed doors in the employee break room, but even then I doubt it's discussed a whole lot.