3 ms·
Snowden did a lot of things but I'd stop short of saying that the NSA has stifled American civil liberties in any meaningful sense. What we have seen is the po
by Nrsolis 13y ago
Snowden did a lot of things but I'd stop short of saying that the NSA has stifled American civil liberties in any meaningful sense.
What we have seen is the potential for abuse, but not any evidence of that actual abuse.
I'm a pragmatist. I don't believe that the people that work at the NSA have any interest in domestic affairs unless there is a real threat to the republic. Of course, that could change which is why we need to scale back their domestic surveillance. But I wouldn't expect miracles here.
- dreamfactory2 13y agotbh I think you're still missing the point here. It is highly unlikely that Snowden is the only person to have got his hands on that material. He's just shown up the flaw and at least some of the bad guys are highly likely to have it. The utter stupidity here is blindly following a 'collect everything' Pokemon strategy, which leaves you wide open to not only internal abuse from factions in intelligence, military, politics, business - but also organised crime and foreign actors. Even worse, that seems to be being stored in perpetuity thus causing a combinatorial explosion of those threat vectors. And if that wasn't bad enough, we learn of another multiplier where non-US countries were adding to that toxic heap of data. Great way to contribute to global stability. The individuals involved may mean well but you know what they say about the road to hell.