Have any facts been disclosed regarding the nature of the surveillance, or are most people relying solely on the word of one young, former contractor?
Is it worse to be suspicious, do nothing, and subsequently conditioned than to be ignorant? Why are people seemingly more acceptable of surveillance today than years ago? Political hypocrisy?
I have been effectively defending the NSA, but the adults still need to step up and ensure privacy is properly protected at every conceivable level. There must be political firewalls in place that are facilitated by the private sector. Data should be effectively anonymous until warranted by the courts. Not sure how to associate anonymous data from disparate sources though. Maybe through a trusted 3rd party (uh... excluding Snowden).
NSA mistakenly pulled records. Stories are coming out that this happened dozens of times. The problem with the program is no one is told when it happens. There is no oversight. It potential for abuse scares the hell out of me!
This NSA guy claims anyone can pulled records on a whim, I tend to believe him.
Emmel, the NSA spokeswoman, told the Guardian: "Current technology simply does not permit us to positively identify all of the persons or locations associated with a given communication (for example, it may be possible to say with certainty that a communication traversed a particular path within the internet. It is harder to know the ultimate source or destination, or more particularly the identity of the person represented by the TO:, FROM: or CC: field of an e-mail address or the abstraction of an IP address).
Basically the NSA is arguing that since they can't be 100% sure of the actual person reading email addressed to that person, then they aren't invading the privacy of that person. Such an argument would be laughed at in any court of law.