Excellent. Ostracizing complicit people is the key to reducing bad behavior. Imagine if you did some real bad but legal thing and then no one would talk to you, not even your family, or even serve you in a restaurant. Others would think twice. I don't think it's as horrible a consequence as prison, where these people belong. (NSA folk flouted their oath to support the Constitution and defend it against domestic enemies.) If you changed your ways you could be forgiven.
"But if any healing is possible, it would probably start with making the NSA and its ilk socially unacceptable"<p>I'm surprised people are suggesting this as a solution. I don't see how creating an us vs them mentality is helpful here given that when you get down to it they are basically just folks trying to make a living and feed their family like any one else. A better and more positive solution could be for a bunch of private sector companies who opposed what is going on here to get together and aggressively poach their employees. It's hard to build an evil empire when all your best engineers have been hired away.
This is stupid. You severe ties with the NSA but what about the FBI, CIA, DEA, DISA, DIA, the list goes on. What about contractors who do business for the NSA? The big primes. Lockheed, Grumman, SAIC, CGIFederal, BAE, Booz, etc.etc.<p>It's pointless to say you won't do business with one when they are all interconnected. Coming from someone raised in Beltway culture.<p>edit: It is also funny when people say things to the effect of "Beyond what conspiracy theorist could have ever imagined". I'm honestly surprised when people say they didn't know or expect this was happening.
And this: <a href="http://www.securitycurrent.com/en/writers/richard-stiennon/it-is-time-for-the-trusted-computer-group-to-repudiate-the-nsa" rel="nofollow">http://www.securitycurrent.com/en/writers/richard-stiennon/i...</a>
The AMS needs a `Society of Concerned Mathematicians'. Collectively, it could voice and lobby with authority in DC. Neal Koblitz, of Elliptic Curve Cryptography, has been doing humanitarian crypto outreach for political dissent in Central America for decades.