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This might be a good time to remind the angry mob that other nations spy just as much, or more so, than the US. The US just got caught. This is like the secre

This might be a good time to remind the angry mob that other nations spy just as much, or more so, than the US. The US just got caught. This is like the secret of the atom bomb. Once it's out, it's out. No pretending that it doesn't exist any more. Guess what? What you put on the wire is fair game for any of scores of different intelligence agencies. No, not usually the criminal law enforcement folks, but the spy guys. And most of the politicians in these countries don't know. In fact, for a program like this to be effective, very few people should know. You can't put that genie back in the bottle by getting mad at the US and pulling your data out. (Not that I blame you. Might make a fine protest. It just does nothing to ensure your privacy and anonymity) In fact, you could actually be opening your data up to even more abuse. Who knows? The world needs to decide once and for all whether to make this data completely transparent and accessible to all, or an international crime to collect. Pretending this is a USA-only problem is just another way of sticking your head in the sand.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> This might be a good time to remind the angry mob that other nations spy just as much, or more so, than the US. Probably not "as much"; quantity of spying is limited by quantity of resources available for spying, and the US probably outspends most other nations (quite likely, as with military spending more generally, at or near the amount of all other nations combined) on spying.
- moheeb 13y ago
  It is so cheap to collect and store nowadays that your argument won't be true for long, if it even still is.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    This is true, perhaps, of voluntary collection of data from cooperative partners, which is, to be sure, one of the controversial aspects of the NSAs domestic surveillances that has come out, but hardly the limit of the NSA's spying. It will continue to require resources to collect information from people who are trying to prevent you from having it.

dragonwriter 13y ago

> This might be a good time to remind the angry mob that other nations spy just as much, or more so, than the US. Probably not "as much"; quantity of spying is limited by quantity of resources available for spying, and the US probably outspends most other nations (quite likely, as with military spending more generally, at or near the amount of all other nations combined) on spying.

moheeb 13y ago
It is so cheap to collect and store nowadays that your argument won't be true for long, if it even still is.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  This is true, perhaps, of voluntary collection of data from cooperative partners, which is, to be sure, one of the controversial aspects of the NSAs domestic surveillances that has come out, but hardly the limit of the NSA's spying. It will continue to require resources to collect information from people who are trying to prevent you from having it.