

Stop Freaking Out About the NSA - weej
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2013/06/stop_the_nsa_surveillance_hysteria_the_government_s_scrutiny_of_verizon.html

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yuvadam
Who wrote this bullshit article?

1\. This _is_ wiretapping, _par excellence_. Metadata in aggregate is
shitloads of data, and tells a much more compelling story than the data.

2\. Judicially supervised means the public needs to _know_ about the process,
and be able to challenge it. Some NSA agent visiting some "judge" who signs a
piece of paper in the darkness is _certainly not_ "judicial oversight".

3\. US Congress is biased, and lubricated with money on a daily basis. It is
beyond me how the US people continue to believe in a political system so
cynical and so corrupt.

4\. Quick expiration is irrelevant when these orders keep getting re-approved
every single fucking time, and again, with no oversight whatsoever.

5\. Um, yeah, so the NSA is apparently collecting _data_ from 9 big internet
companies. What's that about "further court orders"?

Congratulations, William Saletan, on the worst rebuttal ever of what is now,
de facto and de jure, one of the largest surveillance states in the world.

~~~
pron
Still better than Google, though, who are actually reading the content of all
my e-mails and documents, without so much as even notifying a judge, or even a
"judge" as you refer to them. It is beyond me how Americans continue to
believe in a political system so cynical and so corrupt that allows a
corporation to gather so much data about private citizens without any
oversight whatsoever.

What is Google doing with the data? Who has access to it? How do they make
sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands?

And if you say the difference is that you're surrendering your data to Google
voluntarily, I'll say it's not that different from what you do with the phone
companies. What you had here was lack of information. You simply didn't _know_
the government was collecting your data. Well, now you do. Most Google users
aren't aware that Google is actively scanning and analyzing their information
either. The only difference is that the US government owes the people an
explanation, while Google reports to no one, as long as its egregious
widespread surveillance - which, BTW, is on a much bigger scale than this NSA
business - is considered legal. The only reason Google gets away with it is
because people either don't know, or would rather not know how their personal
information is used by Google (I would add "against them", but that is a
metter of opinion).

~~~
tn13
I have authorized Google to do that. For my secret communication I maintain my
own mail server.

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adaml_623
I am reminded of the story linked on HN a few days ago detailing how many
people were in solitary confinement in US prisons and how they ended up there.

Many of the people were in solitary because the bureaucracy had decided that
they were associated with a gang. And even if the link was tenuous then into
solitary they would go being allowed out of their cell for an hour a day.

I can imagine this dragnet of NSA data being used one day for similar
automatic spurious bureaucratic purposes. If the wrong person rings your
mobile phone asking about something you're selling on craigslist then say
goodbye to your security clearance. And heaven help you if you get involved in
the US criminal justice system.

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stdgy
This is clearly link-bait.

 _It’s limited and supervised._

Seven years of daily collections from every major telecommunication company in
the United States is _limited_? I struggle to comprehend what William would
consider excessive.

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aasarava
So can we freak out now? :: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-
intelligence...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-
mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-
program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html)

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lawnchair_larry
The funny thing is this is about _yesterdays_ story, dealing with just
metadata. The article asserts that it's no big deal because it's just
metadata.

With today's revelation that they're slurping everything from everywhere with
no accountability, this article is now comedy.

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monkmartinez
Contrarian to be contrarian drives eyeballs, which drives ad revenue. Keep
writing stupid articles Will.

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Zigurd
We need this again: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee>

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larrys
"Any senator who’s expressing shock about the program is a liar or a fool. "

Or a good politician. A Senator's purpose many times is just to play to the
masses and appear to be outraged at what happens regardless of what the truth
is. That's the way they operate so it can appear that they are concerned and
getting to the bottom of protecting honest hard working Americans.

They do come off as jackasses frequently. But not everyone that votes for them
sees it that way.

~~~
brymaster
> play to the masses and appear to be outraged at what happens

Exactly and typically they won't take a stand unless they can turn it into a
wedge issue to rally their base into playing the red vs blue game.

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notdrunkatall
No.

