Well, when we look back on history, the progress of Western civilization and human rights is actually founded on the violation of law....Ultimately, if people lose their willingness to recognize that there are times in our history when legality becomes distinct from morality, we aren't just ceding control of our rights to government, but our agency in determining our futures.
There are lots of really interesting and cogent replies from Snowden on this thread already, I'd encourage everyone to check it out.
I find his points about governmental accumulation of power to be close to and validating that made by Assange in his very interesting Wikileaks manifesto, "Conspiracy as Governance" [1]
"[T]he very essence of the [Nuremberg] Charter is that individuals have intentional duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience imposed by the individual state.” - U.S. Chief Prosecutor Robert K. Jackson 1948
I find the rest of that specific comment particularly amazing:
> How does this relate to politics? Well, I suspect that governments today are more concerned with the loss of their ability to control and regulate the behavior of their citizens than they are with their citizens' discontent.
> How do we make that work for us? We can devise means, through the application and sophistication of science, to remind governments that if they will not be responsible stewards of our rights, we the people will implement systems that provide for a means of not just enforcing our rights, but removing from governments the ability to interfere with those rights.
> You can see the beginnings of this dynamic today in the statements of government officials complaining about the adoption of encryption by major technology providers. The idea here isn't to fling ourselves into anarchy and do away with government, but to remind the government that there must always be a balance of power between the governing and the governed, and that as the progress of science increasingly empowers communities and individuals, there will be more and more areas of our lives where -- if government insists on behaving poorly and with a callous disregard for the citizen -- we can find ways to reduce or remove their powers on a new -- and permanent -- basis.
> Our rights are not granted by governments. They are inherent to our nature. But it's entirely the opposite for governments: their privileges are precisely equal to only those which we suffer them to enjoy.
> We haven't had to think about that much in the last few decades because quality of life has been increasing across almost all measures in a significant way, and that has led to a comfortable complacency. But here and there throughout history, we'll occasionally come across these periods where governments think more about what they "can" do rather than what they "should" do, and what is lawful will become increasingly distinct from what is moral.
> In such times, we'd do well to remember that at the end of the day, the law doesn't defend us; we defend the law. And when it becomes contrary to our morals, we have both the right and the responsibility to rebalance it toward just ends.
I like his idealism, but I just don't foresee the substantial changes that he's calling for occurring any time soon. Frankly, most people don't give a shit, and there are just too many vested interests involved to ensure that can't happen (e.g. Koch brothers donating $1billion dollars in the next election cycle, Citizens United, etc). Sure, there will be some pandering by both sides of the aisle next election about how they're the only true candidate that will protect individual rights, but once they've been sufficiently elected and absorbed by the machine, they'll continue along the trend that started 50+ years ago. Obama was a constitutional lawyer ffs.
But hey, as long as gas prices are low, Netflix stays up, and I can get my $10 Domino's large pizza delivered to my front door, I'll vote for whoever sounds good and promises me the most shit. /s
This question from the AMA directly answers your point:
Question:
Mr Snowden, do you feel that your worst fear is being realized, that most people don't care about their privacy
Answer:
To answer the question, I don't. Poll after poll is confirming that, contrary to what we tend to think, people not only care, they care a lot. The problem is we feel disempowered. We feel like we can't do anything about it, so we may as well not try.
I like his idealism, but I just don't foresee the substantial changes that he's calling for occurring any time soon. Frankly, most people don't give a shit, and there are just too many vested interests involved...
I think the point he is making is that you can act as an individual, you do not have to, nor should you, depend on politicians or corporations to make this right for you. Even one individual like Snowden can have a significant effect on the world given the right leverage.
>Much like physics post-Manhattan project, an entire field of research that was broadly apolitical realized that work intended to improve the human condition could also be subverted to degrade it. [1]
At the end of the day is anyone arguing it was a bad thing that the Americans got to the bomb (and used it) before the Germans, Japanese or Russians did? I'd hand the button over to someone like Truman over Hitler or Stalin any day of the week.
Do I like the tools the NSA has in its possession? No. But I am happy they got there (and have access to them) before the Chinese, Russians or Arabs did. Are there going to be disasters like Hiroshima and Nagasaki thanks to these tools? I don't think so.
Will the NSA and the government misuse the tools and make mistakes? Definitely. Their effectiveness must be constantly monitored and questioned. (Huge respect for Snowden for making that possible.)
But these tools aren't going anywhere until all the embarrassingly smart technologists around here stop wasting their time pretending to be lawyers (the law and lawmakers aren't going to get us out of this hole) and design better tech to stop the next Boston bombing, Charlie Hedbo style attack or ISIS recruitment drives.
What answer regarding nuclear weapons would you expect to get on a hypothetical news.ycombinator.jp? a .ru? I think the GP and Snowden's point is that the world would be better off without them, not looking to start a debate about which country is the better worldwide nuclear policeman.
What better tech are you hypothesizing? You've seem to have already come to the conclusion that the tech we have isn't enough, while preemptively declaring that policy can't solve the West's issues. I think that technical literacy amongst legal professionals and legal literacy amongst technical professionals are steps in the right direction towards a balance of safety and liberty, and are ones that do not immediately entail increasing the scope of surveillance programs.
That's an interesting analogy with nuclear weapons, but I think there's an important difference. Nuclear weapons have a deterrent effect. That's why the American first possession meant that nuclear weapons would never be used to their full potential.
There won't be any deterrent effect with tools that remain secret and unattributable after they are used. We've already seen that NSA dominance isn't going to lead to a truce in the style of the Cold War. For example, see the Chinese NSA counterparts who were recently indicted in the US, or the suspected Russians who can't be rooted out of the State Department network. The fact that the NSA is (probably) better at that kind of mayhem didn't stop them.
I fear the invention of electronic warfare will be more like the introduction of firearms than of nuclear weapons.
> At the end of the day is anyone arguing it was a bad thing that the Americans got to the bomb (and used it) before the Germans
The moral justification for the bomb was a concern that Germany was working on a similar project after they stopped exports of uranium[1]. Japan and Russia had little to do with the decision.
In fact, several people working on the Manhattan project later commented they regretted the decision to develop the bomb, especially after hostilities ended in the European Theater abating the threat of Nazi Germany developing the bomb first.
Feynman has commented[2] specifically that his focus on the work had totally blinded him to this change in moral justification. "What I did immorally, I would say, was not to remember the reason I said I was doing it, so that when the reason changed, which was that Germany was defeated, not the single thought came to my mind at all about that; that that meant now that I had to reconsider why I'm continuing to do this."
Just because something is possible doesn't mean it should be done, even if there was a justification in the past.
Also, the tools that the NSA wields may not be as bloody - with some exceptions[3] - but the cost in terms of the number of people affected already exceeded the losses due to the bomb, and will continue to grow in the future. Personal-scale tools that can do their work mostly hidden from public view have very little cost to the attacker. People notice and might get angry about using the bomb, while blackmail, threats, and bribery can continue for years and years before enough people notice. (and small casual racism or sexism can continue for centuries, even after people start to think the problem is "fixed")
>But these tools aren't going anywhere until all the embarrassingly smart technologists around here stop wasting their time pretending to be lawyers (the law and lawmakers aren't going to get us out of this hole) and design better tech to stop the next Boston bombing, Charlie Hedbo style attack or ISIS recruitment drives.
You're wrong on two counts.
1.) It's American foreign policy that created anti-american Islamic extremism. It's American foreign policy that must fix it. You cannot expect tech to fix the problems of that. Technologies are tools, nothing more. Terrorists and tax payers are technology users alike, and that will always be the case. (Sidenote: anyone who is intelligent should hate the word 'terrorism', it is blatantly doublespeak.)
2.) These spy tools are going to die, because we can make technology that makes them infeasible. Indeed, we already have. Tor is reportedly unstoppable by the NSA. GPG exists and falls under the same category. The way things are headed, the only thing that will change with time is that tech companies will embrace encryption and help the general population of innocents to stop being tracked.
Those that care enough (eg: terrorists, libertarians, anarchists, and nerds) have already taken back their freedom... And will continue to do so. And there's nothing those 3 letter agencies can do to prevent it, because they've shown their hand. Anyone who has taken a cryptography class / a theory class knows that it's an unwinnable battle to try to fight RSA... It's just a matter of time before someone persuasive enough gets the message through to policy makers.
> It's American foreign policy that created anti-american Islamic extremism.
That's a very reductionist analysis. The Muslim Brotherhood has existed since the 1920s. However, it was a secular, Marxist, anti-colonialist ideology that was most successful in the Arab world for the next few generations. Then these secular Arab states lost the Six Day War, and failed to provide either good governance or economic opportunities for their populations.
The reason that Islamists have become so powerful is that the governments of many Arab countries have proven themselves to be completely bankrupt. If you're young (and the population pyramids in places like Egypt are very fat on the bottom), and you have very few economic opportunities, and your society is incredibly corrupt, then a radical change becomes very appealing, particularly if the people advocating that change are seen as pure and uncorrupt. The fact that Islamist groups oppose the US is one aspect of their appeal, but it's really only one factor. The fact that Hezbollah and Hamas are actively opposing Israel, while Egypt made peace with Israel in 79 is also a factor.
I'll be the first to admit I'm a dumb 20 year old that largely doesn't understand the world. You seem to know a great deal about the intricacies of the history in the middle east. I know nothing. I'm genuinely curious, though, do you think there is no argument for what I said?
>If you're young [...], and you have very few economic opportunities, and your society is incredibly corrupt, then a radical change becomes very appealing,
I recall looking at the revolts in Iran in 2009 [1] and what I saw was fundamentally different than what you see with ISIL. I saw people disenfranchised with the middle east governance and culture, but they were not angry or vindictive. They were productive and wanting to change things. I think that exists in the middle east, and I think that they're separate from Islamic extremists.
Meanwhile there's the anti-American camp... Is their hatred because of our actions?
* We funded Osama Bin Laden. [2]
* We trained people fighting for ISIL. [3]
* We killed 130k+ innocent civilians in the region in the past decade and a half. [4]
I think it's plausible. Sure, they might dislike us even if we hadn't done those things...
That being said, I think reasonable people in the middle east have reason to dislike America. (I think any reasonable person has reason to dislike America's actions.)
The comparison between Syria and Iran is a bit strange. These are two completely different countries. Syria is primarily Sunni, Iran primarily Shi'a. Syrians speak Arabic, Iranians speak Persian. The two countries have different systems of government, different histories, different cultures.
When young people are angry in Iran, they're angry at a theocratic, clerical government. When young people were angry in Syria, they were angry at a secular, socialist strongman. If you're disaffected in a theocracy, you don't become a supporter of theocracy. If you're disaffected in a Baathist regime, then it's natural to become an Islamist.
To my knowledge there has never been much evidence that the US funded Bin Laden in the '80s. The CIA funded Afghans to fight the Soviets, and some Arab Islamists were also fighting the Soviets. My understanding is that the CIA did not fund the Arabs. (My source for this is Ghost Wars, by Steve Coll, which is excellent).
The Guardian article you're citing is actually talking about something completely different than US training of ISIL. There are many factions in the Syrian civil war. ISIL is one faction that emerged out of al-Qaeda's Iraq branch with some members from the dredges of Saddam's regime. These people have been fighting the US for over a decade. There are also groups that oppose both ISIL and the Assad regime. These groups are being supported by the West.
All of that being said, I agree with the fact that the invasion of Iraq produced extremism. However, the place to start when studying the Middle East is not "What did we do to these people that caused them to hate us." What happened is much, much more complex than that.
> To my knowledge there has never been much evidence that the US funded Bin Laden in the '80s. The CIA funded Afghans to fight the Soviets, and some Arab Islamists were also fighting the Soviets.
According the UK foreign secretary at the time: "Throughout the 80s he (OBL) was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians."
Wow, thanks for typing that up. You're really knowledgeable!
I generally thought of Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Jordan sharing the same political and cultural climates. It's very interesting to hear that they're so different, I had no idea.
What do you think that America should do / shouldn't do to try to stabilize that region? How do you think America should be fighting terrorism?
More importantly, as we're on HN, how do you think that NSA data collection plays into it all?
I appreciate the complement. I've read a lot about the region and have traveled a bit, but am not an expert.
If we could resolve the Israeli/Palestinian issue that would be a great help. However, I don't think anyone is optimistic on that front. If the negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program are successful (and it looks promising) then at least one very scary scenario will be on the back burner. Pretty much everything else looks very grim.
I don't think that the NSA stuff will have any lasting impact on US relations with the Middle East/perceptions of America in the Middle East. It may have an impact on our ability to understand what's going on in the region, but I think that's very hard to assess from outside the government.
I'm totally willing to accept being wrong and own up to that. Can you let me know me where I've misspoken, though?
To continue on what I said above,
* One can always increase the size of the key. There's no stopping that. The fact that they can intercept and understand the bulk of communication currently is only due to the fact that we're largely not using encryption. (The idea being, they can collect huge amounts of encrypted information and years down the line decrypt it with supercomputers... But we can always generate larger keys and increase the difficulty by an order of magnitude. It is much easier to generate keys than it is to guess them.)
Not that it's necessary. We have sufficiently large keys already. We just have to start encrypting. [1]
why should it be dependent upon techies to stop those events, they are not getting funding to do that. The NSA, FBI, CIA, GCHQ et al are being funded expressly for that purpose and are failing to achieve those aims. what they are doing is hoovering up every piece of electronic data they can regardless of whether there is a need or use for it.
I think that actually " all the embarrassingly smart technologists around here" need to spend their time designing and creating better tech that doesnt allow the alphabet soup agencies the option to spy on people in such a broad fahsion, making it expensive and difficult to spy on everyone means they have to spend more time looking for the people worth spying on and only spying when they think it is worthwhile and going to lead to something.
what happens now is they spy on everyone, then after an incident go backwards through the data to see what led up to the incident. Which is useless to all the dead and inujured and usually only works to point out where these agencies missed opportunities to prevent the attack.
To give you an example, the recent terrorist hostage taking in Sydney, there was no warning or raising of the terror threat prior to the incident by the Australian Secret Services, although they are fully involved in the spying and are linked with the NSA and GCHQ. After the event we find out that there were double digit warnings provided by members of the public to a information line put in place to act as a confidential way to raise a concern. If they didnt rely on spying on everyone they would be in a better position to investigate tips such as this and focus all (or more) of their resources on these individuals instead of spreading it thinly across everyone.
A good thing about America is that while the "politics" lag behind citizens and US companies try at least to solve partially the problem. I liked these bits:
Google encrypted the backhaul communications between their data centers to prevent passive monitoring. Apple was the first forward with an FDE-by-default smartphone (kudos!)
We often denigrate US and his biggest companies like: Apple, Google or Microsoft.
So I agree since then in the politics nothing big has been changed but I'm glad to see that now we take care about things like https or generally how our data is protected.
Companies won't solve the problem, because the problem is in a different domain.
"Our data" may be sort of safe, but the civil rights are being eroded, which is a much bigger issue. Having such powerful entities living in complete independence from the government, and with complete unaccountability, is a social disaster.
Besides, the data owned by a user in the more "immediate" sense, may be sort of safe, but don't forget that you're not the only possessing data about you; there is a large ecosystem, and such entities will be always a step ahead in the game.
In absence of accountability/civil rights, such entities are completely free to rape you, independently of your technical private defenses.
Companies won't solve the problem, because the problem is in a different domain.
I think this is an interesting question, because it intersects with the rise and fall of the nation state - at some point (perhaps that point has already been reached) corporations will have greater reach and greater power than nation states and individuals will start to feel less allegiance to the state of their birth. Will they start to look to companies to protect their rights?
I disagree that laws which govern a nation state are the right level for this sort of issue or that nation states are more trustworthy - those are precisely the laws which have been subverted and used against us in order to subvert encryption of websites, sim cards or any of our other communications and allow recording of it all. Just as one example of how easily our laws are subverted the man in charge of supervising UK surveillance can be bought for a few thousand pounds for trivial matters:
International law is even worse. Even with the relatively good accountability and civil rights in the US (for most citizens most of the time), the US government has arrogated the right to kill you without trial, detain you indefinitely without trial, or torture you without legal recourse because to give you legal recourse would endanger state secrets. Such is the state of our civil rights - they are selectively applied and withdrawn by the state as it suits them, and words like traitor or terrorist are used to put someone beyond the pale of civilisation and therefore outlaw.
Here is what Snowden had to say about it on that AMA:
How do we make that work for us? We can devise means, through the application and sophistication of science, to remind governments that if they will not be responsible stewards of our rights, we the people will implement systems that provide for a means of not just enforcing our rights, but removing from governments the ability to interfere with those rights.
I agree with that - what is effective is moral certitudes which individuals agree and act upon, not nation state law or international law which are so easily ignored or subverted. That means technical solutions, not legal ones, though I agree it is better to rely on neither the nation state nor the corporation in proposing solutions.
We have to ensure that our rights aren't just being protected by letters on a sheet of paper somewhere, or those protections will evaporate the minute our communications get routed across a border.
Section 3 prohibits the election or appointment to any federal or state office of any person who had held any of certain offices and then engaged in insurrection, rebellion or treason.
Section 3 was used to prevent Socialist Party of America member Victor L. Berger, convicted of violating the Espionage Act for his anti-militarist views, from taking his seat in the House of Representatives in 1919 and 1920.
HBO here in Colorado was scheduled to show Citizenfour at 7pm local time. At approx 6pm I turned it on to get it ready. Black and silent. Continued black and silent up thru 9pm local when it was supposed to have ended. All other cable TV channels and local/public channels have worked normally during this period that I can tell. HBO worked fine yesterday and every day before for as long as I can remember. Unprecedented black out.
suspicious is saying it mildly. I wanted to post this here and on Reddit for public record in case this is evidence of a censorship attempt by NSA/gov or
aligned entity.
I feel like a tin foil hat wearer to even post this but its frightening enough and serious enough that it should be recorded somewhere, as insurance.
Colorado, a dominant provider of local cable TV service, hesitant to say which city. again, all other channels are working normally. and HBO had no similar blackout effect observed by me ever before. so the cause is both unknown and suspicious.
It took me about three seconds to find your city, address, consulting company -- and that you're a Pisces. Do you really live in a world where the spooks block HBO but can't figure out who you are from this post?
EDIT: if you think you have my address please email it to me (its in my profile). my opsec is far from perfect, haha, but I doubt its bad enough for you to have found it (that quickly anyway)
I was not able to correlate that hint with either a correct or incorrect guess. but regardless, please only make such attempts in private via email. ;-)
update: 10:30pm and still the only local cable/public cbannel out is HBO. I'm sure perfectly innocent reason. *cough
its one of the two local dominant ones but I'm not sure which. I'll try to find out tomorrow. I'd say the city but this topic is already terrifying enough considering the nature of the "adversary", haha, oh man. if you email me I'll tell you city. I'm hoping to see reports from others. I find it hard
to believe it would just be one person, one device. surely whoever/whatever did this would do an entire region/provider combo, at a minimum
10pm local. checked again. still black and silent. all other channels fine still, showing shows.
AFAIK, HBO (here, for me, my provider) had a total visual/sound outage on that day, only, the day that Citizenfour was to debut on air. HBO worked fine every day before. and every day since. I made no changes. and I've seen no explanation for it.
"Snowden", "NSA", and similar keywords are auto-flagging triggers. The HN team has algorithms in place to minimize discussion and awareness of these topics.
There hasn't been any penalty on NSA/Snowden stories for a long time. I'm surprised to see this even come up, since I've commented on it quite a bit and thought the information had gotten around by now.
"Minimize awareness"? Obviously we don't try to do that, nor would we want to, or even think that way.
The reason there was a penalty—the mildest possible—was procedural. For several months after the Snowden news broke, HN's front page was overrun with copycat stories that were simply follow-ups and added no new information. Many users complained about this, and they were right. So we applied the best tool we had available, with the intention of taking it off when the flood died down, and so we eventually did.
The discussions got very redundant, but I don't recall many duplicate articles. Early on, there was a ton of information being released every few days, and of course a lot of drama with Snowden himself.
I don't see how a blanket penalty works better than manually removing the small number of genuinely pointless articles.
This depends on how you define "duplicate". I said "copycat", meaning the plethora of follow-up stories that invariably appear when something big happens that don't include any new information, but either report on what has already been reported or are garden-variety commentary. Obviously, HN's front page doesn't have room for all of those. If you think that there aren't many of them, we must be working with different data.
It's true that during the initial period there were major revelations coming out every few days. But I was talking about later.
7. Hacking Oklahoma State University's Student ID (snelling.io)
94 points by samsnelling 5 hours ago
9. Introduction to Facebook's Flux architecture (ryanclark.me)
204 points by wayfarer2s 8 hours ago
11. Edward Snowden, Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald: AUAA (reddit.com)
376 points by ahamdy 4 hours ago
Maybe there is some forgotten code in there somewhere?
You can't compute story rank from just points and timestamps. The story is being weighted by user flags, by the fact that it comes from a source of a lot of flagged content in the past, and possibly by other factors. But none of that has anything to do with NSA, at least as far as the code is concerned.
> "Minimize awareness"? Obviously we don't try to do that, nor would we ever want to, or even think that way.
The higher up on Hacker News an article is, the more awareness will typically be allocated to the story. If a story drops from the front page, significantly less attention will be allocated to it.
While the penalties might not have been intended to minimize awareness of these stories in the greater scheme of things, they were certainly meant to minimize awareness of the stories on Hacker News.
It's not exactly difficult to move past the first page or to use the search bar, and any comments about those stories are going to appear on /newcomments anyway.
If there is an effect of 'minimizing awareness' at work, I don't think the effect is very large.
> If there is an effect of 'minimizing awareness' at work, I don't think the effect is very large.
You're assuming most HNers a) move past the first page b) search for submissions, or c) frequent /newcomments. My counter-assumption would be that is not true for a majority of users.
You seem to be saying placement on the front page shouldn't impact the eyeballs driven to a story. If that's what you believe, I won't try to convince you otherwise.
I thought you are being smart-ass/sarcastic with saying that "Snowden" and "NSA" attract a penalty. I wonder how much %age of users know about the penalty system. I predict that it is a very small number. Personally, I am very disappointed after knowing this information.
I hope, at the very least, the homepage should have a disclaimer saying that the links are not a collective effort by the community but rather a filtered list by administrators.
Do you remember when every other article on the HN frontpage was about one of the two? Not that they are unimportant subjects, but it wasn't Hacker News anymore, it was NSA News.
As other replies to you have mentioned, the discussion surrounding those articles were vitriolic and heavily partisan, to boot.
More specifically, HN tries to avoid inflammatory topics that cause a lot of ultimately fruitless discussion ("flamewars"), typically identified by news items with more comments than votes. Political topics are frowned upon for causing this.
I disagree that HN wants to minimize "awareness" of these topics, but mods have been clear in the past that, while they agree the topic is important, it distracts HN away from the tech/web/startup topics they want HN to focus on
The obvious counterargument to HN's policy is that the developers building the next generation of web services should be able to openly discuss mass surveillance and how our present technology enables it. And that, furthermore, this discussion is in the best interest of HN because developers on the whole are obviously passionate about the issue and will be a part of how it evolves in the future, one way or another.
I get HN's policy and the reasoning behind it; I just think it's wrong. Not all important discussions are constructive, and not all constructive discussions are important.
Careful. You are projecting here. This is the very reason that these topics get penalties. When it comes to politics, people assume that everyone must fall on a side and have strong feelings about a given topic.
A relatively small portion of the community ends up flooding everyone with stories related to these topics and it turns a huge chunk of people off that just don't care to read about it. They can't say they don't care because that's seen as being ignorant to people that are passionate so it just alienates them.
You missed the whole point. It doesn't matter whether or not the person actually is ignorant when it comes to the topic. If someone doesn't want to waste the limited time in their life arguing about this stuff, they don't have to. When every other article is related to it, it's pretty exclusionary.
> A relatively small portion of the community ends up flooding everyone
> a huge chunk of people off that just don't care to read about it
talk about projecting. i'm sure it was super democratic and indeed the voice of the people that got an NSA/snowden filter put in place and how robin hood of you to spring to its defence.
Are you sure? I don't see anything in your first paragraph that either we or HN's policies would disagree with—quite the contrary. And obviously HN hosts a great deal of just such discussion.
> mods have been clear in the past that, while they agree the topic is important, it distracts HN away from the tech/web/startup topics they want HN to focus on
No, that's incorrect. The first thing the site guidelines say is:
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups.
There's no question of the Snowden stories being off-topic. The issue is purely one of balance. The right principle seems to me to be that articles with significant new information are more HN-appropriate than those without it.
Does this penalty acts on comments too? Or, is it limited to only submissions?
Now I don't know if this comment thread is (currently) at the bottom of the page because of +/- votes or a ploy to stifle discussion on NSA and Snowden.
Similar to the HN penalty, reddit also seems to have some Snowden countermeasures in effect. It was a very popular IAmA, but the Android AMA app, displayed only 2 answers for it, and the 3 people who wanted to answer, Laura Poitras, Ed Snowden and Glen Greenwald, were limited to about one answer per 10 minutes, so for the whole hour they could answer about 10 questions. This limits usability and civil interactions a bit.
People should really choose boards without such censorship in place.
I love that you completely guessed the incorrect answer, and then moved right to calling it censorship and critiquing Reddit based on your assumption. Snowden's account was rate-limited because accounts with no activity are more scrutinized for spam purposes. If the other accounts were (and I see no evidence of that, since Glenn Greenwald has done his own AMA before), it's the same reason. That limit exists because new account creation is so trivial. It also exists on HN in different ways, you forget.
It took me several thousand comment karma on Reddit until I stopped noticing the rate limit entirely. I can't speak to the Android issues.
Either way, the moderators worked it out; there was some confusion about the accounts downthread. I don't begrudge someone speculation, but when you then immediately move to acting on your speculation and decrying a community incorrectly, you should probably check if you're correct first.
That happens to every single popular post on Reddit. They have lots of weird fuzzing algorithms to counter votebots and adjust for a constantly growing userbase. It's not nefarious, and it's pretty common to see some picture at 4000 points that was at 6000 an hour ago. The score is only abstractly related to the number of votes.
There are lots of really interesting and cogent replies from Snowden on this thread already, I'd encourage everyone to check it out.