Who Do You Trust Less: the NSA or Anonymous?

[Are_grits_groceries]

<snip>
The Journal admits that Anonymous "has never listed a power blackout as a goal," but warned that "some federal officials believe Anonymous is headed in a more disruptive direction," anyway.

The Anonymous-affiliated Twitter account, @YourAnonNews, responded with a blunt denial. "NSA head engages in alarmist rhetoric & fear-mongering," they wrote today. "Why would Anons take out power grids when lives depend on them?"

Security expert Christopher Soghoian displayed skepticism about the NSA warning, too. "I'm confused," he tweeted, "What will happen in next year or 2 to give anonymous ability to hack power grid. Either the grid is secure or insecure."
<snip>
The overheated cyber rhetoric reminds some of the way the Bush Administration used yellowcake uranium in the lead-up to the Iraq war.

"Evidence to sustain such dire warnings is conspicuously absent," wrote George Mason's Jerry Brito and Tate Watkins last week in Wired's Threat Level. "In many respects, rhetoric about cyber catastrophe resembles threat inflation we saw in the run-up to the Iraq War. And while Congress' passing of comprehensive cybersecurity legislation wouldn't lead to war, it could saddle us with an expensive and overreaching cyber-industrial complex."
<snip>
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/02/who-do-you-trust-less-the-nsa-or-anonymous/253399/

They either can't or won't go after China, N.Korea, and others so they will pull out all stops to capture some Anonymous hackers. Maybe they have made strides, but don't want to talk about it so Anons will serve for them in absentia.

They will parade them around as GIANT proof of their efforts against cyberattacks. Nevermind that
some countries are a much bigger threat and have been rummaging around in our cybersystems for gawd knows how long. They have also caused gawd knows what damage.

I don't trust the NSA at all. Anon may be a stateless group, but they are state sponsored spying and I probably don't want to know what else.

Delivery of 1000 pizzas and DDOS attacks vs messing with our power grids and ??? right now.
Obviously extra larges are much more dangerous.

[mmonk]

1. Easy. The NSA.

[xchrom]

2. NSA. Nt

[dipsydoodle]

3. I don't trust either outfit

.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. NSA, hands down, ears to the ground. Oh, wait, their ears are everywhere.

[tama]

5. Do you trust your self?

We are all anonymous, free to participate in open and free ops.

NSA is a tool of state violence and control against we the people.

[TBF]

6. No question - NSA. nt

[rusty fender]

7. NSA hands down!

I have ZERO trust in them.

[FarCenter]

8. Anonymous

You can form a rational expectation of how NSA will behave.

The actions of Anonymous are more unpredictable.

[JackRiddler]

14. You can also form a rational expectation of how Godzilla will behave.

Or a tsunami, or the Black Plague, or an asteroid striking your planet.

[FarCenter]

15. The question was about trust, not the relative merits of their activities.

[JackRiddler]

17. That's an interesting form of "trust."

I trust NSA absolutely to do the wrong thing, and to create a surveillance state light-years beyond anything that can be justified by their putative mission. I trust them to trample upon the human rights protected in the US Constitution.

If you want to call that "trust," okay.

[sabrina 1]

19. Actually based on their activities so far, you can predict what Anonymous might do.

Which is why I trust them more than I trust the NSA.

[hifiguy]

9. NSA, no contest.

The government has the power of the military and the militarized police behind them. Anonymous does not.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

10. Anonymous

Unelected. Unaccountable. Private agenda. Self-appointed.

and very geeky

[baldguy]

11. Anonymous has nobody to hold them accountable. The NSA never has been.

If Congress and the Presidents over the last 60 yrs had done their jobs, Anonymous wouldn't exist.

[RZM]

12. I don't really know. But I would recommend Anonymous put more effort into PR

The narrator in the last video about the Black Block looked and sounded like a cross between Max Headroom and guy from 'Saw.' A little too creepy for me.

[raouldukelives]

13. Well now I know who to blame

If our highly maintained and up to date power grid should suffer an outage.
Also I've heard Anonymous might be targeting car stereos. If you should lose one it's probably them.

[chrisa]

16. I stopped reading at the first sentence. It starts with a baseless hyperbole.

With that being said, neither. 30 year anime / MLP fans who spend their lives trolling innocents vs. a power-hungry bureaucracy.

[JNathanK]

18. NSA. They can kill people through extra-judicial orders.