I know several people who received a tax audit after posting a conservative article on Twitter or Facebook. The nsa sucks, anyone who thinks they are good suck just as much. Trump 2016.
You can be imprisoned for supporting a political group, you could be "deregistered" to vote (or have your voter registration "lost" in the mail) based on who you support politically, you could be harassed by the police, you could be targeted for voter fraud (ie. Phone calls saying that election day was moved), and a whole bunch of other stuff that can compromise democracy. They could also selectively pick and choose who they want to charge. Some states have laws where criminals cannot vote. If it's something minor they might ignore the people who support the "right" candidate but charge the person who supports the "wrong" candidate. Conservatives are always taking about "small government" and the constitution when talking about firearms,but when it comes to actual civil rights such as privacy, they for some reason stop caring about that.
It's best summed up like this. We give up our freedoms for our security. If we want to monitor terrorist and possible terrorist then nsa needs the power to monitor anyone at any time. We could have all our rights but no protection. I think it's just about finding a balance.
Do you think it is better that Snowden didn't enlighten people? As an Aussie, we don't have a bill of rights. We have no guaranteed right to privacy. Our anti-terror laws are some of the strictest in the Western world. We also have data retention laws whereupon service providers must retain all their users megadata for govt perusal if required. Has this breach of privacy impacted on our lives? Nah. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ While NSA activities may not have prevented terrorism, I'm sure they contributed to investigating other crimes. Otherwise that's a lot of money to spend listening to people chat about Tay-Tay. From my perspective, then, I don't really see the horror of it. So yeah, it's Ok.
Whats the difference between the NSA and an inmate? One has no freedom and the other wants it across the board. Some think it is petty to expect privacy. Aah todays youth knows not what they speak of. Stay in school.
To bring this to a more modern debate (not that I dislike where it is at the moment!) but,.. The FBI and the iPhone hacking. Was it ok for the FBI to hack the iPhone of the Boston bomber? Despite Apple's and plenty of other tech company's disapproval including Google and Microsoft?
Moose made a thread about the FBI and the San Bernardino shooters iPhone. The government doesn't make anything more secure. It's just a money and power grab. The fact is, if somebody wants to do bad things to lots of innocent people, guess what, there's nothing in the world the government can do to stop them. The amount of money we spend on so-called "security" and the amount of worry we have about potential terrorism isn't anywhere near the actual danger it is to us. So if terrorism isn't a threat to the vast majority of people, but cancer is, then the real question becomes; why do we spend so much more on fighting "terrorism" than we do fighting cancer?
The real threats do not come from the outside. They come from the inside. Security is no reason to take away liberty. Tobacco and hamburgers killed 100x more Americans in 2001 than 9/11 did. Would you give up your right to use tobacco or eat a hamburger? Would you ban others from using tobacco or eating a hamburger? Why would you give up your right to have a conversation without having to worry about saying the wrong thing? It's not even comparable - banning smoking or unhealthy food would save tens of thousands of lives annually. Spying on innocent people has not been proven to really save anyone.
The more information the government gets, the more powerful they become. They get more control over the whole society. This isn't a problem if the information is only used to fight against terrorism, but in the wrong hands the information can be abused. How much do we trust the society; how much control over us should they get? There needs to be a balance between privacy and security. And atleast the population should know if they're being spyed on.
How do we know there aren't other Edward snowdens at the NSA but instead of publishing information online they send it straight to threats? Too much knowledge is too much power?
I don't see anything wrong with spying, if you are not doing anything wrong then it's not going to affect you.
With ya there. Remember that we elect our governments. If you don't trust them with your safety and private info, why did you vote them in?
@Daph simply because we don't always elect them in In the UK the current government only received ~39% of the country's vote. They can't possibly be seen as what the majority of the country want Admittedly I have no reason to oppose the spying, if the gov't want to look through my iCloud and see mainly bunchies, Harry Potter gifs and homework from a load of 11 year olds who can't spell then they can be guest. Though if they are spying they will wonder why I've written the word terrorist so many times in the last 2 days...
Until the government is overthrown, you have no power of who watches you or what they do. Forget about it and move on. Or move to a remote place in the middle of nowhere and no one will care about what you do lol. Or better yet, invest in better security. You mentioned iCloud... Don't use apple after all, their devices were recently opened through an outside "agency". Or so they tell us. It's all political nonsense, I'm frankly getting sick of it.