Obama does not feel Americans' privacy violated
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Re: Obama does not feel Americans' privacy violated
#2I hate how the US Government says things after the fact that we have seen many lies come from them over the past 6 months. Seriously, what do they expect? For us to start believing them right away?
Re: Obama does not feel Americans' privacy violated
#3I hate how the US Government says things after the fact that we have seen many lies come from them over the past 6 months. Seriously, what do they expect? For us to start believing them right away?
You're getting the word "fact" in your sentance confused with the word "speculation". They are not the same thing.
Re: Obama does not feel Americans' privacy violated
#4I hate how the US Government says things after the fact that we have seen many lies come from them over the past 6 months. Seriously, what do they expect? For us to start believing them right away?
You're getting the word "fact" in your sentance confused with the word "speculation". They are not the same thing.
Fact. NSA has been spying on all Americans without their knowledge for years.
Re: Obama does not feel Americans' privacy violated
#5Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're getting the word "fact" in your sentance confused with the word "speculation". They are not the same thing.
Fact. NSA has been spying on all Americans without their knowledge for years.
...and now that the real facts are not fitting your narrative, you're starting to contradict and deny those facts using every emotional response and every fallacy you can think of.
Re: Obama does not feel Americans' privacy violated
#6Yes, because they couldn't possibly have just made up a document saying a random, small number of people were "closely scrutinized". It's also a little odd that a document describing the allegedly tiny reach of still-classified programs is somehow unclassified. This doesn't sound like it was designed for the public at all.
Re: Obama does not feel Americans' privacy violated
#7The key word there is "closely".
Re: Obama does not feel Americans' privacy violated
#8But how many phone numbers do they have the capacity to closely scrutinize?
Re: Obama does not feel Americans' privacy violated
#9300 people of interest seems reasonable to me...but that number must not include all the first-degree and second-degree contacts that each person-of-interest has...if you saw that Alice was talking to Bob and Carla and suspected Alice to be a terrorist, why wouldn't you also follow the rabbit holes of Bob's and Carla's records? And when do you know to stop?
In this way, unhindered surveillance is a lot like torture...sure, you may think it's perfectly justified when you just know that Alice is a bad person. But when the dragnet brings in many non-guilty people, it's not just about whether it's ethical to torture/warantlessly-spy on someone (guilty or innocent), it's also about whether you're actually accomplishing anything by bringing in all this irrelevant noise.
So that's why 300 closely-inspected people (plus their network, but to a limited degree) seems reasonable...the NSA has finite resources and finite analysts and can only conjure up finite investigations. Call me naive, but I think it's possible that a good chunk of NSA staffers believe their main role is to protect the nation from evil threats...(just like most military staff joined for the "good of country", initially) and if any of them are half-wise, they'd probably realize that wantonly spying for the hell of it doesn't get them promotions nor serves their country...the NSA is still a bureaucracy, after all.
Of course, that doesn't mean that the NSA won't evolve the technology to the point that thoroughly analyzing someone's network and extended network is trivial...and, that all the good-hearted idealists who work for them don't see the true nature of their work, due to the layer of technology and bureaucracy...but...we know of the current controversy because Snowden was able to walk out undetected with the files in a USB drive. So we're not there yet, so hence, it's possible this report is legit.
Re: Obama does not feel Americans' privacy violated
#10One has to wonder how they'll define data-mining for the purposes of (for example) credit fraud or insurance fraud, and whether that qualifies as "closely" scrutinized.
There are a myriad of other questionable uses that could come from their data set of everything that don't require "close" scrutiny.
Just like how quickly DNS-based website blocking expanded beyond simple and straight-froward "think of the children" child-pornography hunting turns into "decency" enforcement, this NSA data warehousing program could quickly turn unpleasant.