Quote:
Originally Posted by the_tyrant
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Give this man the internets!
Intel gathering on the populace has been going on for years, decades, even centuries. The only thing that has changed is the ability to search and index information that has been gathered, but even then it would take thousands of man hours for an NSA agent to physically read each email provided, therefore it's just stored and if someone wants to index search, then blam it's done.
Does that make it right? Of course it doesn't, but no matter how much righteous indignation is directed at it, nothing will change, if anything the web will increase, and privacy will decrease. Furthermore, if a major terrorist incident occurred and thousands of lives were lost, and it emerged that the NSA could have intercepted the incident in its planning stages through the tools at its disposal, do you not think that the same people crying out now in outrage would be equally vocal in their condemnation that this plot was not stopped before thousands of people died?
Sure, it won't stop small plots, the spontaneous events, but it stands a chance of breaking cells and groups that form in home soil, as well as those on foreign soil who plot attacks against the home country.
People cannot complain about security and civil rights in the same breath as complaining about the ineffectualness of the government in stopping terrorism. After 9/11, the biggest question was 'why did we not see this coming', now the biggest question is 'why are we looking?'.
No matter what happens now, it's going to carry on, the public has no say in the matter, it never has and it never will. Everything else is just theatre.