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This is literally years-old information. I was aware of and hollering about this at people as a highschooler at debate and speech tournaments. Same thing then
by drivebyacct2 16y ago
This is literally years-old information. I was aware of and hollering about this at people as a highschooler at debate and speech tournaments. Same thing then as now, no one cares, or those that do care don't care enough.
Besides, who cares if you have nothing to hide. Right?
- rdtsc 16y agoI knew about it too and I am always baffled at the general population's indifference to it. I guess when you are in debt, about to lose your house, your job, your health insurance, you don't really give a crap if Uncle Sam looks through your emails ... ?
- rapind 16y agoActually I think it might be when you start to care. When everything's going great you generally don't rock the boat. If everything's going down the tubes though, people get uppity. I.e. We start to examine what it is we love so much about our country and maybe even demand change (ok, maybe I'm getting a little carried away with the whole demand change thing).
- davidandgoliath 16y agoUnderstand that a lack of privacy isn't a problem until it's a problem, e.g. someone has something against you and needs something to wield against you. The government & large corps. will happily use propaganda against you, and it's easier for them to find dirt on you with little to no privacy. Think of it this way, the average person has something in their past they're probably not happy about that could be misused against them in a political way, if say, they ever wanted to be involved in politics. Enemies will use this, and enemies now have all of the data they want.
- positr0n 16y agoHonest question: do you really think they store every piece of communication that flows through the internet, just waiting for some random teenager they spied on to run for president? The way I imagine it the data runs through a lot of filters that look for evil words/phrases/whatever. Those few emails/sms/etc will be stored and sent to NSA analysts. I doubt they care about the usual type of "dirt" you use against people. I am against the illegal spying, but what you're saying seems like a conspiracy theory.
- sharednothing 16y agoBill Clinton. Complete and faithful servant of the international bankers. Why?
- SoftwareMaven 16y agoMy father-in-law said exactly that to me. I wanted to reach out and smack him. Unfortunately, it isn't just a "mental copout", either. He is a very intelligent person who has arrived at a conclusion that the government oversight is OK because he has nothing to hide and (I have inferred) he is very afraid of those who do have something to hide.
- Joakal 16y agoAsk him if he or someone ever had an issue with someone with power in a company or government. Then ask what does the person have in arsenal when the people with power have a ton of information combined with power? "Who watches the watchers" argument.
- SoftwareMaven 16y agoUnfortunately, fear of the "bad guys" out-weighs his fears of the government, and I suspect that is likely to be the case for most people. After all, they have nothing to hide...
- Joakal 16y agoBad guys never get into the government? Seems like he believes in Us vs Them mentality: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/False_dilemma https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/False_dilemma
- cookiecaper 16y agoI've found that most baby boomers have this mentality. They trust the government to do the right thing.
- joelhaasnoot 16y agoKorea, Vietnam, Iraq, oh yes, the government always does the right thing...
- cgranade 16y agoIt's newly relevant with the AT&T/T-Mo buyout. Do we really want that much more traffic going straight to the NSA?
- drivebyacct2 16y agoYou say that as if because AT&T was the only bunch of idiots dumb enough to get caught that it's safe or reasonable to assume the VZW and others aren't doing the same.
- wtn 16y agoThere's definitely evidence VZW did the same. I used T-Mobile for years because they were the only ones that there wasn't much evidence against, plus I thought the parent company was a bit more credible, but it's all a black box from the user's perspective.
- technomancy 16y agoI wonder if T-Mobile being German-owned had anything to do with that.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- holdenc 16y agoIn principal it's quite wrong and scary, but in reality I have to believe the government is too incompetent to actually do anything with their mountains of AT&T collected data.
- jedsmith 16y agoAccording to paperwork leaked by Mark Klein, they have/had a "Narus STA 6400" in the room. It's described as a supercomputer that sounds, to my ears, similar to Carnivore. I doubt that they even try to collect (too much data), and instead specifically look for things to grab from the firehose. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narus http://narus.com/index.php/solutions/intercept http://narus.com/index.php/solutions/intercept
- davidandgoliath 16y agoOr, according to TIA, compile giant banks of information on every user based on their traffic & purchasing habits. Combine this with your other online data & there's quite a bit on every person.
- lancefisher 16y agoI wouldn't underestimate the competency of the NSA. This wiretapping is frightening, especially if it falls into the wrong hands.
- intended 16y agoYet. But WE will create the tools that help the government go through reams of data, collate different pieces of information. I think its actually inevitable that the government reaches that stage. An even scarier thought is that what if they get access to data 30 years down the line, with vastly more computing power? (Heck, what happens if someone gets a hold of old tossed out ISP hard drives with logs on them?)
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- route66 16y ago
- mtarnovan 16y agoEven if you have nothing to hide, doesn't mean that you should lose your presumed innocence.