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In reply to the discussion: Greenwald Lashes Back At Critics Who Call Snowden A Russian Propagandist [View all]MADem
(135,425 posts)I don't know if Snowden is "clever," or "stupid" or "hubris-laden" or a patsy, partisan or Putin propagandist. He's a cipher, still. He's not coming off too well right now, I will say that. Is he playing three dimensional chess, or is he just a linear asshole who thought--because he's rarely been challenged--that things would go his way, but instead they've gone all pear-shaped on him? And now, he's STUCK, he's figured out that he's stuck, so he's making his bed and lying in it.
The time to cry about domestic surveillance was eons ago. The horse has left the barn on that score. We LOVE it when it catches the child rapist or the serial killer or the terrorist bomber, or the drone shows the anti-government supremacist trying to sneak up and kill the police; it's not so much fun for "someone" when it proves that "someone" wasn't where they were supposed to be.
It's not going away, in any event. Private businesses WILL surveille their property, and their cameras WILL pick up what happens around them. The highways WILL have cameras speckled across the system. Government office buildings will be surveilled as well. You can't go anywhere without your face being recorded, you should assume that anything you send out into the wireless "ether," be it email, text or a voice communication, CAN be intercepted, and act accordingly.
This whole idea that people can wag a finger and say "Agggh! Why, that's just WRONG, and you should not do it!!!" and then expect--on FAITH--that no one will do it, is well, NUTS. They will keep doing it and they will lie about it, or put it in a box labelled "national security" and say that's where we keep our exceptions to the rule. If our own government isn't "doing it," then China is. And Russia is. And Germany is. And UK is. And France is. And Germany, UK and France will share their "America listening" stuff with us, and we'll do the favor for them. It's all a big game. But hey, they'll be able to say that "they" don't do domestic surveillance. Yay!!! Big Win!!
Not. It's just subcontracting the work.
Privacy on the phone, or privacy on the internet, is like privacy at the food court at the mall. This IS--like it or not, and most do not like it--the new reality and no amount of railing or messenger-shooting is going to change that. Probably that guy at that food court, tucking into his burger at the next table, who seems to be listening to his Walkman (quaint reference), is not paying any attention to what you say...but ya never know.