Let's talk about AI and end-to-end encryption

> We are about to face many hard questions about these systems, including some difficult questions about whether they will actually be working for us at all.

And how. I'd lean towards no. Where we're headed feels like XKEYSCORE on steroids. I'd love to take the positive, optimistic bent on this, but when you look at where we've been combined with the behavior of the people in charge of these systems (to be clear, not the researchers or engineers, but c-suite), hope of a neutral, privacy-first future seems limited.

Given how politics and companies evolved, I actually trust those people in charge of XKEYSCORE systems more than ever. They may wear suits, but those people usually come from some military background, and have a sense of duty towards defending US, from threats both foreign and domestic, and historically have not really abused their powers no matter what the administration is. XKEYSCORE for example, wasn't really about hacking people, it was just about collecting mass metadata and building profiles, well within the legal system, and the blame should be on the companies that didn't provide privacy tools, because any big government could have build the same system.

Meanwhile, the anti anti-establishment Republican Party since 2016 who cried about big tech turned out to be the biggest pro-establishment fans, giving Elmo an office in a white house and Zucc bending a knee to avoid prosecution.

With these new systems, Id rather have smart people who only work in US defensive forces because of a sense of duty (considering they could get paid much more in the private sector) in charge.

> historically have not really abused their powers

How would you know?

We do know - that they demonstrably have abused their powers. I didn't realise it was possible to know about XKEYSCORE with no context or understanding of the Snowden leaks but GP seems to have missed that the "suits" "in charge of XKEYSCORE", the NSA, have repeatedly illegally wiretapped American citizens, to say nothing of the FISA abuses, Five Eyes, etc. Regardless of how you feel about the three-letter agencies' impacts on the rest of the world, the thought that anyone on Hacker News would consider these programs defensible is shocking.

Name one bad thing that happened to some innocent person because from XKEYSCORE.

I bet you don't even understand how XKEYSCORE works. NSA wasn't illegally wiretapping anyone with it. The whole surveillance program was simply massive data collection, with metadata tracing. It just so happens you can derive a lot of personally identifiable info from the metadata. And you can say thats bad, but then again people really don't give a shit about privacy in the sense that they aren't willing to forgo the comforts of modern apps and devices for actual privacy (for example, see reaction to Tik Tok ban)

On the flip side, we do have evidence of Russia meddling in US politics. We do have foreign nationals commit acts of terror on US soil. We do have Chinese spies and information leaks.

So yea, I consider these programs defensible, because I grew out of my high school libertarian phase, and realize that the world is a bit more complex than "suits in charge".