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Fully agreed. Further, let's assume that you were an every-man (as we all are) and had the ability to type anything into a magical console that spat out privat

Fully agreed. Further, let's assume that you were an every-man (as we all are) and had the ability to type anything into a magical console that spat out private details about US citizens. That would be an "unreasonable search and seizure", so you wouldn't do it, right? It's logged! How many of your fellow citizens would not do that search? But the NSA doesn't just hire anyone, so you have to assume the folks aren't exactly like your fellow citizens and they know they're being logged. But is your guess "0"? I've seen people delete ("sudo rm -rf /some-important-dir") critical bits of infrastructure when they knew logs were in place, so my guess is most certainly not zero. Note: I know some 3-letter-agency folks and they are very tight-lipped, so I don't want to suggest 3-letter-agency folks are not entirely trustworthy. But the NSA appears to have an incredible honey-pot and it't hard to imagine that no NSA analyst would have a taste. Note^2: the NSA should have internal honey-pots to catch analysts browsing their (girl|boy)friends and such, but I'd not be surprised to hear that they don't...

malandrew 13y ago
The thing is that they don't even need to do anything as obvious as that. They could simply eavesdrop on the communications of some important executive of a foreign enterprise with ADRs trading on a US Stock Exchange. The potential for abuse extends well beyond personal intrusions. The NSA could literally fund itself entirely by simply trading against the information they have access to.
- deleted 13y ago
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- czr80 13y ago
  Tangentially, so could Google.
  - w_t_payne 13y ago
    From what I hear, so is Google.
    - glitchdout 13y ago
      With the whole "NSA has a GMail backdoor" and "Windows Phone YouTube app blocking" thing, I really don't wannna defend Google but... Baseless accusations like that will get you nowhere.
      - danielsiders 13y ago
        With the NSA at least theoretically we have congressional oversight. The same can't be said for Google and most of the other companies we trust with our data. Their level of access may be comparable with the NSA but there are few if any legal protections or opportunities for oversight. If the same abuses were happening, they might never come to light. With the big companies, we might only ever be able to speculate.
        pyre 13y ago
        Google employees that become whistle-blowers don't have to face the same adversity as government employees that become whistle-blowers. It's also easier to sue Google than it is to sue agencies like the NSA.
      - pyre 13y ago
        > Windows Phone YouTube app blocking Wasn't the issue that the app displayed the YouTube videos without the advertisements though, and this was against the Terms of Service?
      - leot 13y ago
        I'm usually surprised by the depths of cynicism I find at large corporations, not by their altruistic goody-two-shoes-ness. Google would be remiss if it wasn't trading against the massive wealth of data it has. They're probably not mining email (though they could use a proxy and look at the frequency of particular ads' being displayed in Gmail), and probably have a privacy line, somewhere, that they're unwilling to cross. But I'd be surprised if most people ended up being comfortable with that line's placement. And it's not like we have any way of knowing where it is.
      - 13y ago

malandrew 13y ago

The thing is that they don't even need to do anything as obvious as that. They could simply eavesdrop on the communications of some important executive of a foreign enterprise with ADRs trading on a US Stock Exchange. The potential for abuse extends well beyond personal intrusions. The NSA could literally fund itself entirely by simply trading against the information they have access to.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
czr80 13y ago
Tangentially, so could Google.
- w_t_payne 13y ago
  From what I hear, so is Google.
  - glitchdout 13y ago
    With the whole "NSA has a GMail backdoor" and "Windows Phone YouTube app blocking" thing, I really don't wannna defend Google but... Baseless accusations like that will get you nowhere.
    - danielsiders 13y ago
      With the NSA at least theoretically we have congressional oversight. The same can't be said for Google and most of the other companies we trust with our data. Their level of access may be comparable with the NSA but there are few if any legal protections or opportunities for oversight. If the same abuses were happening, they might never come to light. With the big companies, we might only ever be able to speculate.
      - pyre 13y ago
        Google employees that become whistle-blowers don't have to face the same adversity as government employees that become whistle-blowers. It's also easier to sue Google than it is to sue agencies like the NSA.
    - pyre 13y ago
      > Windows Phone YouTube app blocking Wasn't the issue that the app displayed the YouTube videos without the advertisements though, and this was against the Terms of Service?
    - leot 13y ago
      I'm usually surprised by the depths of cynicism I find at large corporations, not by their altruistic goody-two-shoes-ness. Google would be remiss if it wasn't trading against the massive wealth of data it has. They're probably not mining email (though they could use a proxy and look at the frequency of particular ads' being displayed in Gmail), and probably have a privacy line, somewhere, that they're unwilling to cross. But I'd be surprised if most people ended up being comfortable with that line's placement. And it's not like we have any way of knowing where it is.
    - 13y ago