NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide, Snowden documents show

Every time I read something NSA/FBI/CIA/KGB/Interpol/MI5/Stasi related I get this instinctive feeling of angriness and sadness at the same time.

We were given the “internet”, pretty much for free, and we believed it would be a fair deal? That there would be nothing in for them? When was the last time you were give something for free, can you even remember? They are breaking encryption? Really?! Didn’t we learn that it’s not feasible to break encryption? Ah, but they are using quantum computers, right. Should we even believe Snowden and Assange and Schneier, or anyone really? My father even thinks they are watching him through the cable set. Am I supposed to argue with him about the opposite?

Worldwide, governments and agencies and individuals control whatever they want, however they want, whenever they want. And we are just siting and watching them. Individuals are profiting from illegal activities? Who cares? NSA is breaking an amendment? Who cares? Governments are saying A and doing B? Who cares?All these are breaking the law? They are the law. We let them become the law. Because we don’t care.

Damon Albarn (songwriter of the virtual music group Gorillaz) was once asked about X-Factor (a music reality show) and his answer applies not only to it but to a lot of things in our lives too: Every time you do even a little thing that harms your privacy or your freedom or even your dignity, it might not do a lot of harm because it is little but what’s actually happening is that you are moving the privacy/freedom/dignity barrier away from where it should be. And all these times, all these “littles”, they sum up and next time you do something very bad it looks little again but it’s very very big.

Because you don’t realise how much the barrier has moved. We didn’t care when we had to pay unreasonable taxes last year. We don’t care when politicians lie to us in front of our sad faces, time after time, election after election. We don’t care about other any other person’s rights. We don’t care about unfairness all over around us. We don’t care about any kind of oppression, anywhere in the world. So we won’t care when we find out that someone is scrapping this page and is adding data to our profiles on a database. Of course we won’t. We don’t care that in 2014 we can send rockets to the space but haven’t evolved our culture to to the point where it would be our collective duty as the human race to make sure that everybody on this planet can have all the water and the food they need and access to an amazing education and an incredible health system for their whole life.

We have lost the war, and we don’t even care. We should expect the worst, really.

Now, please, save the “if you really cared you would actually do something” comments. Because the truth is, I can’t do anything. Not alone. I can’t make anyone care. Most of us can’t. We don’t have access to them, we don’t have the mediums to stimulate them, we don’t have nothing. I didn’t want to become a politician or a media baron or a general or anything that involves that sort of authority over other people anyway. I wanted to become a sports writer, then a columnist, then an academic and then a software developer. And I am not even a talented software developer that can hack for good or build software that will help liberate the world. And I believe that protests and occupying and rioting and any sort of such action is just expansion and nothing else, so I don’t do it. But this fact, that I haven’t found a way to “fight”, doesn’t mean I can not be heartedly disappointed by our collective indifference. Maybe that’s what I can offer, these typed words.

I shouldn’t be writing this.

I should be working on my personal project that will help me get a job and make money instead. I shouldn’t even care as much to talk about it.

But all that is left is our ideas and voices, really, and I just can’t give up without even saying a few things — even to an online community where I know nobody. Not to change anything, probably, but at least to say I tried.

I shouldn’t be writing this. But I care. And I hope you start caring too.

(I have also published this comment on medium: https://medium.com/p/ebcea7330613)

Alternatively, "people" could be skeptical of whether parallel construction isn't about "tips" "nuances" and observing a "charter." Rather that it amounts to getting a pre-cooked investigation that you just color-by-numbers to launder domestic spying.

I worked with a sociopath in the past and have studied it in literature, and a sociopath by definition sees meeting their own needs as a priority. Regardless of the effect on those around them.

A sociopath is willing to inflict suffering on others for even minor gains of their own. Sociopaths seek out high-power positions and often thrive in them, and those working with them often suffer as a consequence.

Some select quotes (minor spoiler alert):

"There is no conspiracy. Nobody is in charge. It's a headless blunder operating under the illusion of a master plan."

"It's all the same machine, right? The Pentagon, multinational corporations, the police. If you do one little job, you build a widget in Saskatoon, and the next thing you know, it's two miles under the desert, the essential component of a death machine."

Quentin: But why put people in it?

Worth: Because it's here. You have to use it, or you admit that it's pointless.

Quentin: But it is pointless.

Worth: Quentin... that's my point.

[1] https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the-cube/