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That's clearly not what Snowden has been saying or implying. The information he released about Chinese spying and hacking was about what he considered abuses, e

That's clearly not what Snowden has been saying or implying. The information he released about Chinese spying and hacking was about what he considered abuses, e.g. spying and hacking civilian infrastructure in China rather than targeting state actors.

mpyne 13y ago
Snowden has been saying in other realms that foreign citizens should have as much privacy as U.S. citizens do, which essentially defeats the purpose of having the NSA at all given how intertwined "national security-related" communications are with the rest of our comms. The other way you can go is to degrade the level of protection from this type of data collection an American gets to match what NSA can do for foreigners (since having so much as one foreign party to a conversation makes the whole thing fair game for NSA). But I don't think that would be politically feasible, and it's not as if that would really make those who live outside the USA feel any better about the idea of their data being collected.
- camus 13y ago
  if they can spy on the rest of the world they will spy on you too,sooner or later.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Indeed, just like if they can wiretap a mafia boss's phone calls they could tap mine, sooner or later.
    - keithnoizu 13y ago
      I regret never getting around to obtaining enough karma to be able to down vote that post. That is a completely false analogy. It's more along the lines of: "Indeed, just like if they can wiretap my son's girlfriend, because her father was from Sweden, then they could tap mine, sooner or later"
      - mpyne 13y ago
        Well, that's just it. Once you assume malice on the part of the government you must assume they can wiretap you for any reason at all. What many here are saying is that is the reason for which we must not even have this capability at all. But why then do we allow other law enforcement tools that could also be misused (even horribly misused)? David Simon had an interesting theory about why the tech community is so up in arms about this one.

mpyne 13y ago

Snowden has been saying in other realms that foreign citizens should have as much privacy as U.S. citizens do, which essentially defeats the purpose of having the NSA at all given how intertwined "national security-related" communications are with the rest of our comms. The other way you can go is to degrade the level of protection from this type of data collection an American gets to match what NSA can do for foreigners (since having so much as one foreign party to a conversation makes the whole thing fair game for NSA). But I don't think that would be politically feasible, and it's not as if that would really make those who live outside the USA feel any better about the idea of their data being collected.

camus 13y ago
if they can spy on the rest of the world they will spy on you too,sooner or later.
- mpyne 13y ago
  Indeed, just like if they can wiretap a mafia boss's phone calls they could tap mine, sooner or later.
  - keithnoizu 13y ago
    I regret never getting around to obtaining enough karma to be able to down vote that post. That is a completely false analogy. It's more along the lines of: "Indeed, just like if they can wiretap my son's girlfriend, because her father was from Sweden, then they could tap mine, sooner or later"
    - mpyne 13y ago
      Well, that's just it. Once you assume malice on the part of the government you must assume they can wiretap you for any reason at all. What many here are saying is that is the reason for which we must not even have this capability at all. But why then do we allow other law enforcement tools that could also be misused (even horribly misused)? David Simon had an interesting theory about why the tech community is so up in arms about this one.