(no subject)

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

http://reason.com/archives/2013/06/12/three-reasons-the-nothing-to-hide-crowd
http://www.cato.org/blog/why-nsa-collecting-phone-records-problem
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110524/00084614407/privacy-is-not-secrecy-debunking-if-youve-got-nothing-to-hide-argument.shtml
http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/the-data-trust-blog/2009/02/debunking-a-myth-if-you-have-n.html

There are a significant number of people who respond to any revelation that government is violating the law (yes, the Constitution is part of the law) with a shrug and "I've got nothing to hide". These people are selfish fools at best. They are not looking at the bigger picture and/or aren't considering other people. Plus, they probably aren't paying attention to the fact that everyone in America is currently a criminal, that everyone violates a law with serious penalties at some point, whether you know it or not. (And the fact that that is the case is another problem, but that's outside the scope of my point here.)

Even Biden and Obama railed against what they are themselves supporting now, before they were in power. That alone should be enough to make you stop and think about what having that kind of power available can do to people.

Comments

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

The Patriot Act authorizes a certain type of data mining that is outside the scope of the Prism program. The data collection part of the Prism program is called Echelon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON).

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

The PATRIOT Act does, however, authorize this phone snooping.

[whoasksfinds.livejournal.com]

Echelon was designed to capture military and diplomatic communications. It became obsolete with the advent of fiber optics. Prism captures civilian data and puts it into a massive database.

[whoasksfinds.livejournal.com]

the internet is a lot bigger, and it appears Prism is being used to capture and store domestic communications indiscriminately, hence the heightened concerns.