1) there are lots of non-Americans who are interested in what y'all are doing with our data
2) Hacker News is a forum for "what hackers find interesting," not whatever you think it is. Some politics, particularly digital rights and privacy, are very much part of our interests and responsibility (as non-governmental experts[1]).
Point one justifies a few articles, not a daily deluge.
Point two is true, but pissing off a significant part of your constituency is not healthy for the community.
Point three is a cute way to try to subvert the fact that the guidelines explicitly state "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon." Not every commentator's opinion about a month-old leak is evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. You may not like this or agree with it, but the HN Guidelines are effectively the constitution of HN. It should supersede your own desire to bring up politics whenever possible.
I agree firmly voodoo123. You have an entire internet full of places to whine about American politics. HN is apparently deciding right now that politics is always on-topic, in opposition to the guidelines. Fine, so be it, but we will continue to whine about it until the guidelines are changed, because we like the guidelines better.
Pay closer attention, sir--this isn't American politics writ large, but a small section of issues that has deep and far-reaching consequences for our customers, our businesses, and (without meaning to sound too grandiose) nothing less than the future of privacy and exploratory computing.
This is exactly the sort of useful stuff I'd like to see here.
Sure. And I don't object to a few articles with a lot of meat. But what I don't need is every pundit's reaction, to see every breaking story about which company cooperated and which did not, followed by a story summarizing the tally, followed by two reactions to the summary from two more pundits, followed by a guy who has a bone to pick with one of them, followed by a new revelation about a fifteenth company, ...
The guidelines clearly make an exception for new, interesting stories that have wide-reaching consequences. I agree and am glad that I found out here about the major abuses, the amendment and the more recent bill. That's four stories of real value. What the guidelines do not make an exception for is the kind of fine-toothed-combing and navel-lint-cataloguing that is going on surrounding these issues. Stories with titles like "People don't care about these stories anymore" are great examples of what isn't a new and interesting phenomenon.
I definitely grant that some of this is desired. I think you and others should grant that some of it is not desired.
Apologies, I didn't realise the guidelines officially discourage "most politics".
I do appreciate that people who are not political geeks are probably enjoying the ongoing Snowden stories a lot less than me! I'm still going to keep upvoting them though, I'm afraid.
EDITED: I said "prohibited," but they're guidelines, so switched to "discourage".
1. Technology hasn't fundamentally changed the game in surveillance,
2. That technology companies and their services aren't fundamentally involved in ongoing surveillance-state activities, willingly or otherwise,
3. That concerns over surveillance won't drive both personal and organizational (business, non-profit, and government) decisions, both within and outside the United States, over whether and what technologies and services to adopt,
4. That this is a US-only issue,
then I can only say that you are so completely mistaken as to not even be wrong. You're simply operating in a different universe. One not governed by reality.
The NSA's collection behavior strikes at the heart of giving your personal data to a third party company to hold. As a private person, I can no longer trust not only that my data is as protected as it would be on my home computer, but also that even if it isn't protected, no one is looking.
It remains to be seen if it will be a sea change for US internet law, governance, surveillance, or the privacy debate in general. But it is important and affects many digital startups.
I think this stuff is pretty critical for any company founder that will ask users for data. In or out of the US, the fact that users have to simultaneously trust both the company and the NSA to treat that information well is a serious concern.
This is an appropriate forum for discussing the surveillance of our digital habits, and those of our customers, clients, employers, employees, and the public at large.
