Unless you have been living in a cave on Mars with your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears -- an increasingly attractive option, we'll admit -- you are aware that the Guardian and the Washington Post confirmed that the NSA has been spying on Americans’ phone calls, Facebook accounts, Google searches, emails, iTunes playlists, Skype video chats and AOL chat logs for, oh, five or six years now, give or take, no big deal.
Meh. What number called what number on what date. The telephone companies store all this information anyhow; the NSA just wants their own copy to play with.
The interesting question, really, is what rules do we have to put in place to prevent abuse of the database -- and how do we enforce rules on an outfit that won't tell us what they're up to? One interesting idea is to give the NSA numbers that aren't phone numbers: they can do all the analyzing and cross-checking and pattern-finding they want, but they don't get actual phone numbers (traceable to individuals) without a warrant.
Look, you're either a terrorist or not. By my math, that makes it a 50% chance that the government should be tracking you. Dick Cheney was satisfied with a one percent doctrine, but Obama's standards are fifty times stricter. So relax!
ISWYDT....
I'm cold ...
Meh. What number called what number on what date. The telephone companies store all this information anyhow; the NSA just wants their own copy to play with.
The interesting question, really, is what rules do we have to put in place to prevent abuse of the database -- and how do we enforce rules on an outfit that won't tell us what they're up to? One interesting idea is to give the NSA numbers that aren't phone numbers: they can do all the analyzing and cross-checking and pattern-finding they want, but they don't get actual phone numbers (traceable to individuals) without a warrant.
New Rule (for Bill Maher): Get over yourself
i just wonder if the NSA knows when Joffrey Baratheon is going to die.
Look, you're either a terrorist or not. By my math, that makes it a 50% chance that the government should be tracking you. Dick Cheney was satisfied with a one percent doctrine, but Obama's standards are fifty times stricter. So relax!
In other news:
WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
I'm sorry; did you say something?