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It's interesting how history repeats itself. This is the story of how we ended up with the FISA court. The lesson for us is that need to be careful that whate

It's interesting how history repeats itself. This is the story of how we ended up with the FISA court. The lesson for us is that need to be careful that whatever reforms we make to fix the NSA won't be used in even worse ways in the future.

rdtsc 13y ago
It likely will be. The bad side-effect is that they have now measured exactly what the tolerance to this is -- t\it wasn't that bad a of a reaction from the general population. HN/Reddit and other communities are too small compared to the general population. Now what can happen, is they can be more brazen in their actions and take it up a couple of more notches, as the saying goes. For example, they know that we know, so no need to expend much effort hiding their tactics and methods. You do something they don't like? They can clearly just send an agent or make a phone call. You did something undesirable but not necessarily illegal, well they might go back 2 years and listen to how you confessed to your partner that you cheated on your IRS taxes that year. You might get a "friendly" reminder from them about that conversation and what it could do if IRS got that info. Another level of this is people start assuming they are omniscient and omnipotent in gathering information. They become the de-facto record keepers. If there is a dispute about a fact, they can chime and say that well "on Friday, November 15, 20:30, you made a phone call and you confessed to this crime". Whether that happened or not, might not matter, what matters is that they could make it up and many will take their word for it.
- sdoering 13y ago
  I don't know, how it is in the US, but here in Germany, the "normal" media reports the same narrative, that the general public does not care. I can only say, that a great lot of people I know and heard of, do care but often times, they do not know, what to do and what can be done. So do not buy into this narrative. Fight against it, as (at least to me) it does not seem to be true. But I believe, that your dystopic view might be(come) true. Sad, but true.

rdtsc 13y ago

It likely will be. The bad side-effect is that they have now measured exactly what the tolerance to this is -- t\it wasn't that bad a of a reaction from the general population. HN/Reddit and other communities are too small compared to the general population. Now what can happen, is they can be more brazen in their actions and take it up a couple of more notches, as the saying goes. For example, they know that we know, so no need to expend much effort hiding their tactics and methods. You do something they don't like? They can clearly just send an agent or make a phone call. You did something undesirable but not necessarily illegal, well they might go back 2 years and listen to how you confessed to your partner that you cheated on your IRS taxes that year. You might get a "friendly" reminder from them about that conversation and what it could do if IRS got that info. Another level of this is people start assuming they are omniscient and omnipotent in gathering information. They become the de-facto record keepers. If there is a dispute about a fact, they can chime and say that well "on Friday, November 15, 20:30, you made a phone call and you confessed to this crime". Whether that happened or not, might not matter, what matters is that they could make it up and many will take their word for it.

sdoering 13y ago
I don't know, how it is in the US, but here in Germany, the "normal" media reports the same narrative, that the general public does not care. I can only say, that a great lot of people I know and heard of, do care but often times, they do not know, what to do and what can be done. So do not buy into this narrative. Fight against it, as (at least to me) it does not seem to be true. But I believe, that your dystopic view might be(come) true. Sad, but true.