8 ms·

Of course mass surveillance leads to a chilling effect. Personally, I'm now concerned about what I say in email, in text messages, in discussion forums, and in

by mjfern 10y ago

Of course mass surveillance leads to a chilling effect. Personally, I'm now concerned about what I say in email, in text messages, in discussion forums, and in telephone calls. I fear that if I use the wrong words or visit the wrong websites, I'll trigger some automated system and will be put on some kind of watch list that will change my life. This is a very scary state of affairs. And unfortunately I don't see a near-term solution. The interests of government and corporations are aligned (reducing pressure to enact any serious privacy regulation). They're both looking to vacuum up as much personal data as possible for national security on the one hand and to develop new and improved revenue/business models on the other.

55555 10y ago
Me too. How common is this? I deliberately avoid certain topics of conversation and often don't speak the way I truly feel out of fear it will hurt me down the line. I hate this reality.
- tn13 10y ago
  My Muslim friend who is otherwise a nice guy told me how after Snowden incident some of his friends are avoiding him on all electronic media.
  - feelix 10y ago
    I don't follow him on Twitter because I don't want to get hassled when I go through US customs since I'm from another country (NZ).
    - tn13 10y ago
      Exactly. If fear of handful of terrorists have made our communities this corrupt then sadly looks like the terrorists have won in shaking the very foundation of western societies. This decay is slow but more like cancer it gives slow death to a civilization.
      - mirimir 10y ago
        It's pretty clear that Al-Qaeda etc accomplished at least some of their goals. The 9/11 attack drew the US into Afghanistan and Iraq. And chaos in Iraq has been a huge factor in the growth of ISIS. 9/11 has also corroded respect for the US Constitution. The CIA got into torture, and the NSA maxed out its intercept and analysis capabilities. So yes, it "sadly looks like the terrorists have won" :( Edit: Deleted "('just a piece of paper' according to W)".
      - theflyingkiwi42 10y ago
        mirimir, that W quote is false. http://www.factcheck.org/2007/12/bush-the-constitution-a-goddamned-piece-of-paper/ http://www.factcheck.org/2007/12/bush-the-constitution-a-god... Please check your facts before spreading false rumors. Thanks!
        hartpuff 10y ago
        While we're all busy checking our facts, the site you linked to does not state the quote is "false", it says it is "extremely unlikely".
        mryan 10y ago
        It says it is "extremely unlikely" in the second line. If you read slightly further you will see: > We judge that the odds that the report is accurate hover near zero. It comes from Capitol Hill Blue... > Update, Feb. 21, 2011: The author of the Capitol Hill Blue story has now withdrawn it.
        hartpuff 10y ago
        > If you read slightly further you will see: Good point. Because I mentioned two words that appear at the top of the page, that means I obviously didn't read any further. If you read the article you'll know that nowhere does it say false, as the other poster claimed. Why don't they say it's false, if it's false? What's stopping them? The fact that someone eventually removes something from their site does not mean it was false. Someone using the contrived sentence "the odds that the report is accurate hover near zero" - rather than just saying "it's false" - also does not make it false. I don't believe it happened either - sorry if you used your 500+ karma because I didn't issue a disclaimer to that effect - but that also doesn't mean it's false. My point was about someone whining about getting facts right, by linking to an aticle that bends over backwards to not say what they think it says.
    - tlrobinson 10y ago
      [nevermind, was confused, sorry]
      - umanwizard 10y ago
        I think he meant he doesn't follow Snowden
        MichaelGG 10y ago
        I don't think so. Who was following Snowden before the leaks? CBP has hassled me over having a book on Korean and a documentary about Hitler. It's not necessarily racist if someone was overly nervous and hid friends, especially if they were non-Arab and notably Islamic (since Muslim isn't a race). Though the chance of a random CBP agent having a bad day probably dominates your threat profile unless.you're otherwise really notable. If I was going to, say, China, I might hide friends that were pro-evangelizing their religion. Fortunately I don't use social media.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    - krapp 10y ago
      Two million people follow Edward Snowden on Twitter... media personalities and people the US government are definitely watching anyway, and plenty of "normal" hangers on. I haven't seen or heard stories of anyone getting harassed over it. I think maybe you're engaging in a ridiculous level of paranoia.
      - thomasahle 10y ago
        If they do harass you, you won't know that it's related to this. Also, it could only trigger I'm certain combinations with other things.
      - fit2rule 10y ago
        Paranoia is an entirely healthy response to this heinous intrusion into our human rights. My anecdote - I'm Australian, lived in USA for decades, moved to Europe after 9/11. Every time I visit the USA it is an hours-long ordeal to explain, in fine detail, why I have the views I have, why I follow Snowden, why I participate in European hacker cultures, why my laptop is covered in security-conference-related stickers, etc. etc. During this process there is always the implied threat of imprisonment without due process. All my stuff is gone through. They find nothing, because I am not a threat in any way, other than that I freely associate with those aspects of society and culture which 'the mainstream' find mysterious, confusing, and scary. So, I don't go to the USA much. Its about as much fun to get there as driving into a brick wall.
        rantanplan 10y ago
        I've heard these stories before but every time I stand in awe as if it's the first time(I've never traveled to US and I'll never will). Do they ask you about your FB/Twitter account or do they already know them?
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        fit2rule 10y ago
        They look me up on Facebook right then and there .. just type in my name, look at my friends, see my connections. I'm connected, in some ways, with quite some movers and shakers in the security space, and I suppose there are alarm-bells in such a scenario. I dunno, it just feels so rude, intrusive, and backwards. I had a great time when I lived in the USA - now I just think of it as a sad, sad place. It lost its soul.
    - weaksauce 10y ago
      I think the op meant they were avoiding the Muslim friend and not Snowden's Twitter.
    - madaxe_again 10y ago
      I don't go to the US because I don't want to get hassled when I go through US immigration. Shame, as my father, cousins, and half-siblings live out there - he's a US citizen and has been held at immigration over my facebook posts.
      - toomanythings2 10y ago
        I cower in fear every day cause my grandparents were born in a foreign country.
        madaxe_again 10y ago
        Oh, I don't so much fear travel to the US so much as I'd just rather not reward their behaviour with my oh-so-esteemed presence.
- c0nsumer 10y ago
  Very. The panopticon works.
awakeasleep 10y ago
For example, there are lists of words the government provides payment companies, and they have to take your money if you mention them in relation to the payment. Try and pay someone using Venmo and say Achmed or Cuba revolution. *(it's not just venmo)
- g00gler 10y ago
  For some context http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/venmo-cuba-sanctions_us_571f8057e4b01a5ebde34b97 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/venmo-cuba-sanctions_us_...
- kalleboo 10y ago
  Or perhaps more amusingly, http://zakitakubu.com/2014/12/09/nico-nico-niii-is-not-allowed-on-paypal/ http://zakitakubu.com/2014/12/09/nico-nico-niii-is-not-allow...
stordoff 10y ago
Oddly enough, I've been less worried about that sort of thing since the Snowden revelations for reasons I can't adequately explain. I _think_ that I subconsciously assumed 'suspicious' searches would be flagged and lead to tracking, but post-Snowden just assume it'll be tracked regardless so don't bother self-filtering (I'd love to know if the hours I spent researching anthrax and dispersal methods [saw it on TV, was curious if it was plausible, and fell down that rabbit-hole for a couple of days] a few months ago caused a blip on security services RADAR). That said, it is a terrible state of affairs, and I do completely understand the impulse to self-censor to avoid future issues. Likewise, I don't see a near-to-mid term solution - mass surveillance appears fairly entrenched, is not a single country issue (which would at least make it somewhat avoidable), and very few people even near positions of power seem to be addressing it adequately (or even see it as a problem).
akerro 10y ago
http://reason.com/blog/2013/08/01/innocent-couple-gets-visited-by-feds-aft http://reason.com/blog/2013/08/01/innocent-couple-gets-visit... http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/long-island-woman-claims-online-search-pressure-cooker-helped-prompt-visit-feds-article-1.1415101 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/long-island-woman-c... >Most of it was innocent enough. I had researched pressure cookers. My husband was looking for a backpack. And maybe in another time those two things together would have seemed innocuous, but we are in “these times” now.
- dsfyu404ed 10y ago
  I can see that having gone a totally different way if it wasn't a upper middle class family. >cops show up at multi-family house in blue collar neighborhood >guy in tank top chewing tobacco answers door >"can we step inside and discuss some stuff" >locks door, steps outside, closes door >"ain't nobody with a badge going in there without a warrant and after what happened to Jim who lives upstairs nobody around here talks to you people without a lawyer" >cops escalate situation >guy they're talking to does something that plays into their trap >police beat him senseless, taze him a few times, arrest him, wind up charging him with everything and then dropping everything except some circularly defined charge And all that could easily happen to a middle class white guy. God forbid you're not white or Muslim...
- throwanem 10y ago
  It is dishonest to represent this as an instance of "the search engine police" turning up as a result of NSA snooping. From the NY Daily News article you linked: >“Somewhere out there, someone was watching,” Michele Catalano wrote on the “Medium” blog[...] > The Suffolk County Police Department said it sent detectives to her East Meadow home Wednesday after a Bay Shore-based computer company reported suspicious computer searches by a “recently released” employee. > “We found out ... that the searches involved also things my husband looked up at his old job,” Catalano wrote Thursday night in a separate blog post on “Open Areas,” her personal site. In sum: Mr. Catalano and his former employer got into a flap presumably related in some way to the employer becoming "former"; said employer, which sounds like a pretty lousy place to work if this is the kind of shit they pull, tried to SWAT the Catalanos in the best 4chan style; Mrs. Catalano, seeing an opportunity to grab some headlines and maybe a touch of lasting notoriety for her otherwise entirely forgettable online presence, made this out to be something almost entirely other than what it was; the post-Snowden online media grabbed hold of it for five minutes, then realized how they'd been played and turned on Mrs. Catalano [1] for thinking she could put one over on them. I don't see how the case against ubiquitous Internet surveillance can be effectively bolstered with dishonest representations of rather trivial events. [1] http://www.wired.com/2013/08/pressure-cooker/ http://www.wired.com/2013/08/pressure-cooker/
user10001 10y ago
Once people start thinking this way, it can take multiple decades to reverse the mentality. Example: former Soviet states.
trhway 10y ago
>Personally, I'm now concerned about what I say in email, in text messages, in discussion forums, and in telephone calls. I fear that if I use the wrong words or visit the wrong websites, I'll trigger some automated system and will be put on some kind of watch list that will change my life. well, if you read Stanislav Lem, you'd immediately see that not using "wrong" words and not visiting "wrong" sites may also be a trigger - like "this guy is deliberately trying to stay under radar, why? what he is hiding/planning?" If you try to behave following average pattern for your demographics, you may trigger another one - "he is trying to blend in" :) You can't win that game for the simple reason that the game rules are decided upon strictly after your moves had already been made. You see, the issue isn't extra collection of data by government - this is already lost cause due to technological progress, the main issue is the ability of government to oppress using that data, ie. absence of due process.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- noja 10y ago
  If the op is altering his behavior in the same way that matches everyone else, he should be fine... Right?
  - scarmig 10y ago
    There's a mean behavior for a large number of traits. One of those traits is tendency to blend in. Someone who blends in on every trait may be just as exceptional as someone who is well outside the typical range for a dozen of them.
  - dingaling 10y ago
    In the army they call that behaviour 'the grey man'; trying to stay out of the upper and lower quartiles to avoid (1) being assigned difficult and / or risky tasks due to competence and (2) being assigned punishment tasks due to incompetence. Usually grey-manning involves trying to do things just well enough to be signed-off, but not quickly enough to be commended and noted.
SixSigma 10y ago
I'm coming to live in the US for a year in August and currently going through the visa process. I can definitely say I have typed and then not submitted a few different comments on Reddit because of this.
- Joof 10y ago
  Sadly, this is probably still trackable.
optforfon 10y ago
To me this is so bizarre. Now that I'm living in Asia (mainland China) it's even more bizarre. Because here ofcourse the government has the ability to look at everyone's communication - but no one has the ego to think they personally will be looked at. People appreciate that there are millions of people and no one actually cares about you unless you're really making waves. Look back at the US, my home country, I feel like a lot of people are on the off-the-grid-survivalist spectrum of paranoia. The FBI NSA CIA don't care about 99.99% of you. They never will. Can you guys stop thinking we're an election or two away from a fascist dystopia? Anyways.. just a different perspective from the other side of the globe
- BBlarat 10y ago
  I'm guessing that's what the jews and other "untermensch" in the netherlands thought before WWII, they had records of religious beliefs of every citizen. Just imagine what a NSA database full of information can do if/when a fascist is elected. Democracy is not a protection from fascism.
  - PJDK 10y ago
    So everything was fine in countries that didn't keep such records when the Nazis invaded?
    - unethical_ban 10y ago
      IIRC, there was less genocide, yes.
- rakoo 10y ago
  > Because here ofcourse the government has the ability to look at everyone's communication Maybe that's the thing: in China, everybody expects the government to watch everything. People were born in this society, it is normal to us. In the US, people believed the government wasn't invading their privacy, Snowden's revelations is new information to them (I'm talking about the majority of course).
guard-of-terra 10y ago
I don't and neither should you. If their lists start to contain millions of people they become useless. They drown in noize. Well, let them drown.
- mirimir 10y ago
  Fly a lot?
toomanythings2 10y ago
For months, I've been making like a sniper, going to and from work by crawling through dense foliage wearing camo. I crawl slowly, making only about a couple of hundred yards a day but, once I get there, I am completely unknown. No one knows I'm there and no one knows I've left. I encrypt everything and carry it all with me when I leave so no one knows what I've done. I make sure I muss up the trail behind me so I can't be tracked. If I get really spooked, I have a few drop off points where I can store material along with a change of clothes (though I probably shouldn't have said that here). It's hard work but I know it's all worth it. I haven't seen, heard of, or had any problems since I started this. Not that I had any problems before. I just know that the only issue now is I haven't received my paycheck in months. I'm worried I may have slipped up somewhere and my funding is being re-directed elsewhere in an effort to find me. But that will never happen.
eggman 10y ago
aye man; embrace change

by mjfern 10y ago

55555 10y ago

Me too. How common is this? I deliberately avoid certain topics of conversation and often don't speak the way I truly feel out of fear it will hurt me down the line. I hate this reality.

tn13 10y ago
My Muslim friend who is otherwise a nice guy told me how after Snowden incident some of his friends are avoiding him on all electronic media.
- feelix 10y ago
  I don't follow him on Twitter because I don't want to get hassled when I go through US customs since I'm from another country (NZ).
  - tn13 10y ago
    Exactly. If fear of handful of terrorists have made our communities this corrupt then sadly looks like the terrorists have won in shaking the very foundation of western societies. This decay is slow but more like cancer it gives slow death to a civilization.
    - mirimir 10y ago
      It's pretty clear that Al-Qaeda etc accomplished at least some of their goals. The 9/11 attack drew the US into Afghanistan and Iraq. And chaos in Iraq has been a huge factor in the growth of ISIS. 9/11 has also corroded respect for the US Constitution. The CIA got into torture, and the NSA maxed out its intercept and analysis capabilities. So yes, it "sadly looks like the terrorists have won" :( Edit: Deleted "('just a piece of paper' according to W)".
    - theflyingkiwi42 10y ago
      mirimir, that W quote is false. http://www.factcheck.org/2007/12/bush-the-constitution-a-goddamned-piece-of-paper/ http://www.factcheck.org/2007/12/bush-the-constitution-a-god... Please check your facts before spreading false rumors. Thanks!
      - hartpuff 10y ago
        While we're all busy checking our facts, the site you linked to does not state the quote is "false", it says it is "extremely unlikely".
        mryan 10y ago
        It says it is "extremely unlikely" in the second line. If you read slightly further you will see: > We judge that the odds that the report is accurate hover near zero. It comes from Capitol Hill Blue... > Update, Feb. 21, 2011: The author of the Capitol Hill Blue story has now withdrawn it.
        hartpuff 10y ago
        > If you read slightly further you will see: Good point. Because I mentioned two words that appear at the top of the page, that means I obviously didn't read any further. If you read the article you'll know that nowhere does it say false, as the other poster claimed. Why don't they say it's false, if it's false? What's stopping them? The fact that someone eventually removes something from their site does not mean it was false. Someone using the contrived sentence "the odds that the report is accurate hover near zero" - rather than just saying "it's false" - also does not make it false. I don't believe it happened either - sorry if you used your 500+ karma because I didn't issue a disclaimer to that effect - but that also doesn't mean it's false. My point was about someone whining about getting facts right, by linking to an aticle that bends over backwards to not say what they think it says.
  - tlrobinson 10y ago
    [nevermind, was confused, sorry]
    - umanwizard 10y ago
      I think he meant he doesn't follow Snowden
      - MichaelGG 10y ago
        I don't think so. Who was following Snowden before the leaks? CBP has hassled me over having a book on Korean and a documentary about Hitler. It's not necessarily racist if someone was overly nervous and hid friends, especially if they were non-Arab and notably Islamic (since Muslim isn't a race). Though the chance of a random CBP agent having a bad day probably dominates your threat profile unless.you're otherwise really notable. If I was going to, say, China, I might hide friends that were pro-evangelizing their religion. Fortunately I don't use social media.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - krapp 10y ago
    Two million people follow Edward Snowden on Twitter... media personalities and people the US government are definitely watching anyway, and plenty of "normal" hangers on. I haven't seen or heard stories of anyone getting harassed over it. I think maybe you're engaging in a ridiculous level of paranoia.
    - thomasahle 10y ago
      If they do harass you, you won't know that it's related to this. Also, it could only trigger I'm certain combinations with other things.
    - fit2rule 10y ago
      Paranoia is an entirely healthy response to this heinous intrusion into our human rights. My anecdote - I'm Australian, lived in USA for decades, moved to Europe after 9/11. Every time I visit the USA it is an hours-long ordeal to explain, in fine detail, why I have the views I have, why I follow Snowden, why I participate in European hacker cultures, why my laptop is covered in security-conference-related stickers, etc. etc. During this process there is always the implied threat of imprisonment without due process. All my stuff is gone through. They find nothing, because I am not a threat in any way, other than that I freely associate with those aspects of society and culture which 'the mainstream' find mysterious, confusing, and scary. So, I don't go to the USA much. Its about as much fun to get there as driving into a brick wall.
      - rantanplan 10y ago
        I've heard these stories before but every time I stand in awe as if it's the first time(I've never traveled to US and I'll never will). Do they ask you about your FB/Twitter account or do they already know them?
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        fit2rule 10y ago
        They look me up on Facebook right then and there .. just type in my name, look at my friends, see my connections. I'm connected, in some ways, with quite some movers and shakers in the security space, and I suppose there are alarm-bells in such a scenario. I dunno, it just feels so rude, intrusive, and backwards. I had a great time when I lived in the USA - now I just think of it as a sad, sad place. It lost its soul.
  - weaksauce 10y ago
    I think the op meant they were avoiding the Muslim friend and not Snowden's Twitter.
  - madaxe_again 10y ago
    I don't go to the US because I don't want to get hassled when I go through US immigration. Shame, as my father, cousins, and half-siblings live out there - he's a US citizen and has been held at immigration over my facebook posts.
    - toomanythings2 10y ago
      I cower in fear every day cause my grandparents were born in a foreign country.
      - madaxe_again 10y ago
        Oh, I don't so much fear travel to the US so much as I'd just rather not reward their behaviour with my oh-so-esteemed presence.
c0nsumer 10y ago
Very. The panopticon works.

awakeasleep 10y ago

For example, there are lists of words the government provides payment companies, and they have to take your money if you mention them in relation to the payment. Try and pay someone using Venmo and say Achmed or Cuba revolution. *(it's not just venmo)

g00gler 10y ago
For some context http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/venmo-cuba-sanctions_us_571f8057e4b01a5ebde34b97 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/venmo-cuba-sanctions_us_...
kalleboo 10y ago
Or perhaps more amusingly, http://zakitakubu.com/2014/12/09/nico-nico-niii-is-not-allowed-on-paypal/ http://zakitakubu.com/2014/12/09/nico-nico-niii-is-not-allow...

stordoff 10y ago

Oddly enough, I've been less worried about that sort of thing since the Snowden revelations for reasons I can't adequately explain. I _think_ that I subconsciously assumed 'suspicious' searches would be flagged and lead to tracking, but post-Snowden just assume it'll be tracked regardless so don't bother self-filtering (I'd love to know if the hours I spent researching anthrax and dispersal methods [saw it on TV, was curious if it was plausible, and fell down that rabbit-hole for a couple of days] a few months ago caused a blip on security services RADAR). That said, it is a terrible state of affairs, and I do completely understand the impulse to self-censor to avoid future issues. Likewise, I don't see a near-to-mid term solution - mass surveillance appears fairly entrenched, is not a single country issue (which would at least make it somewhat avoidable), and very few people even near positions of power seem to be addressing it adequately (or even see it as a problem).

akerro 10y ago

http://reason.com/blog/2013/08/01/innocent-couple-gets-visited-by-feds-aft http://reason.com/blog/2013/08/01/innocent-couple-gets-visit... http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/long-island-woman-claims-online-search-pressure-cooker-helped-prompt-visit-feds-article-1.1415101 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/long-island-woman-c... >Most of it was innocent enough. I had researched pressure cookers. My husband was looking for a backpack. And maybe in another time those two things together would have seemed innocuous, but we are in “these times” now.

dsfyu404ed 10y ago
I can see that having gone a totally different way if it wasn't a upper middle class family. >cops show up at multi-family house in blue collar neighborhood >guy in tank top chewing tobacco answers door >"can we step inside and discuss some stuff" >locks door, steps outside, closes door >"ain't nobody with a badge going in there without a warrant and after what happened to Jim who lives upstairs nobody around here talks to you people without a lawyer" >cops escalate situation >guy they're talking to does something that plays into their trap >police beat him senseless, taze him a few times, arrest him, wind up charging him with everything and then dropping everything except some circularly defined charge And all that could easily happen to a middle class white guy. God forbid you're not white or Muslim...
throwanem 10y ago
It is dishonest to represent this as an instance of "the search engine police" turning up as a result of NSA snooping. From the NY Daily News article you linked: >“Somewhere out there, someone was watching,” Michele Catalano wrote on the “Medium” blog[...] > The Suffolk County Police Department said it sent detectives to her East Meadow home Wednesday after a Bay Shore-based computer company reported suspicious computer searches by a “recently released” employee. > “We found out ... that the searches involved also things my husband looked up at his old job,” Catalano wrote Thursday night in a separate blog post on “Open Areas,” her personal site. In sum: Mr. Catalano and his former employer got into a flap presumably related in some way to the employer becoming "former"; said employer, which sounds like a pretty lousy place to work if this is the kind of shit they pull, tried to SWAT the Catalanos in the best 4chan style; Mrs. Catalano, seeing an opportunity to grab some headlines and maybe a touch of lasting notoriety for her otherwise entirely forgettable online presence, made this out to be something almost entirely other than what it was; the post-Snowden online media grabbed hold of it for five minutes, then realized how they'd been played and turned on Mrs. Catalano [1] for thinking she could put one over on them. I don't see how the case against ubiquitous Internet surveillance can be effectively bolstered with dishonest representations of rather trivial events. [1] http://www.wired.com/2013/08/pressure-cooker/ http://www.wired.com/2013/08/pressure-cooker/

user10001 10y ago

Once people start thinking this way, it can take multiple decades to reverse the mentality. Example: former Soviet states.

trhway 10y ago

>Personally, I'm now concerned about what I say in email, in text messages, in discussion forums, and in telephone calls. I fear that if I use the wrong words or visit the wrong websites, I'll trigger some automated system and will be put on some kind of watch list that will change my life. well, if you read Stanislav Lem, you'd immediately see that not using "wrong" words and not visiting "wrong" sites may also be a trigger - like "this guy is deliberately trying to stay under radar, why? what he is hiding/planning?" If you try to behave following average pattern for your demographics, you may trigger another one - "he is trying to blend in" :) You can't win that game for the simple reason that the game rules are decided upon strictly after your moves had already been made. You see, the issue isn't extra collection of data by government - this is already lost cause due to technological progress, the main issue is the ability of government to oppress using that data, ie. absence of due process.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
noja 10y ago
If the op is altering his behavior in the same way that matches everyone else, he should be fine... Right?
- scarmig 10y ago
  There's a mean behavior for a large number of traits. One of those traits is tendency to blend in. Someone who blends in on every trait may be just as exceptional as someone who is well outside the typical range for a dozen of them.
- dingaling 10y ago
  In the army they call that behaviour 'the grey man'; trying to stay out of the upper and lower quartiles to avoid (1) being assigned difficult and / or risky tasks due to competence and (2) being assigned punishment tasks due to incompetence. Usually grey-manning involves trying to do things just well enough to be signed-off, but not quickly enough to be commended and noted.

SixSigma 10y ago

I'm coming to live in the US for a year in August and currently going through the visa process. I can definitely say I have typed and then not submitted a few different comments on Reddit because of this.

Joof 10y ago
Sadly, this is probably still trackable.

optforfon 10y ago

To me this is so bizarre. Now that I'm living in Asia (mainland China) it's even more bizarre. Because here ofcourse the government has the ability to look at everyone's communication - but no one has the ego to think they personally will be looked at. People appreciate that there are millions of people and no one actually cares about you unless you're really making waves. Look back at the US, my home country, I feel like a lot of people are on the off-the-grid-survivalist spectrum of paranoia. The FBI NSA CIA don't care about 99.99% of you. They never will. Can you guys stop thinking we're an election or two away from a fascist dystopia? Anyways.. just a different perspective from the other side of the globe

BBlarat 10y ago
I'm guessing that's what the jews and other "untermensch" in the netherlands thought before WWII, they had records of religious beliefs of every citizen. Just imagine what a NSA database full of information can do if/when a fascist is elected. Democracy is not a protection from fascism.
- PJDK 10y ago
  So everything was fine in countries that didn't keep such records when the Nazis invaded?
  - unethical_ban 10y ago
    IIRC, there was less genocide, yes.
rakoo 10y ago
> Because here ofcourse the government has the ability to look at everyone's communication Maybe that's the thing: in China, everybody expects the government to watch everything. People were born in this society, it is normal to us. In the US, people believed the government wasn't invading their privacy, Snowden's revelations is new information to them (I'm talking about the majority of course).

guard-of-terra 10y ago

I don't and neither should you. If their lists start to contain millions of people they become useless. They drown in noize. Well, let them drown.

mirimir 10y ago
Fly a lot?

toomanythings2 10y ago

For months, I've been making like a sniper, going to and from work by crawling through dense foliage wearing camo. I crawl slowly, making only about a couple of hundred yards a day but, once I get there, I am completely unknown. No one knows I'm there and no one knows I've left. I encrypt everything and carry it all with me when I leave so no one knows what I've done. I make sure I muss up the trail behind me so I can't be tracked. If I get really spooked, I have a few drop off points where I can store material along with a change of clothes (though I probably shouldn't have said that here). It's hard work but I know it's all worth it. I haven't seen, heard of, or had any problems since I started this. Not that I had any problems before. I just know that the only issue now is I haven't received my paycheck in months. I'm worried I may have slipped up somewhere and my funding is being re-directed elsewhere in an effort to find me. But that will never happen.

eggman 10y ago

aye man; embrace change