5 ms·
I think this interview perfectly illustrates the distinction Snowden mentioned between technical capability and policy. Note that the president says "if you're
by drcode 13y ago
I think this interview perfectly illustrates the distinction Snowden mentioned between technical capability and policy.
Note that the president says "if you're a US person the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls" instead of saying "if you're a US person, the NSA isn't recording your phone calls".
The word "cannot" in this context means "they aren't supposed to", not "it is technically impossible".
He's saying that listening to your phone calls is "against the rules" but that doesn't mean this data isn't still being captured and put into an NSA data warehouse somewhere, in case circumstances change.
- jsz0 13y agoI may be in the minority here but that seems completely reasonable to me.
- stmfreak 13y agoIf Snowden is to be believed, then Obama may as well have said that the NSA doesn't have time to listen to your phone calls and will not, unless it has reason and gets a warrant. The problem is the retroactive profiling possible by fishing through a citizen's recorded history. If they want to build a case against you for something, and go through your history of phone calls, locations, emails, IMs, etc. with a bias toward connecting you to a crime or conspiracy, they'll undoubtably find something that helps them assassinate your character enough to convince the public you are a bad person and deserve what's coming to you.
- AnIrishDuck 13y agoThere's the reason the Germans wouldn't even take a census until recently because of what the Nazis did with that data during WWII: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303982504576423814268469244.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230398250457642... Can you imagine what kind of weapon this massive library of data would be in the wrong hands?
- gnarbarian 13y agoThe article is behind a pay wall.