I already acknowledged that I'm a virtual nobody to them. I just don't want to be a virtual somebody to them, even if it's just a raised XKeyScore rating.
I wonder how many people are genuinely afraid of raising their own profile in such a way. I'm not American, but I would certainly be partaking in any political action against the actions being discussed here.
Although as it is, I'm very hesitant to even level criticism at the CIA on HN. I'm by no means an important person, but from what we've learned I don't even want to register on the radar of these entities.
>The war on terror, like all the metaphorical wars, is really a civil war. It needs to stop now.
There's too much money at stake for those at the top for this to be stopped. Lucrative contracts for all their buddies whether it's in consultancy or providing military hardware and software.
I mean the fact that congress keep ordering tanks the military themselves have proclaimed loudly that they neither want nor need should be setting off alarm bells everywhere, and yet it seems to just get brushed over.
>This is not about you. This is not about your data. This is about our society's collective ability to think and act for itself. Blanket acceptance of surveillance is a dangerous attitude and shockingly common.
It's also about the future of our society, that which our children have to grow up in and deal with.
I don't know how we'll be able to turn to our children in the coming decades and tell them "the government is monitoring everything you say through voice and text on your phone, every keystroke you make on your tablet or computer, every purchase you make on your phone or through your card in this inevitably cashless society, every connection you make on a connected device, everywhere your devices check in, connect to GPS or triangulate... oh and every camera you see out and about is recording you and facial recognition software is tagging it as you" with the justification for their complete lack of privacy being "there were some guys in the middle east riding around in pickup trucks with AK47s so we needed this to protect us".
We're at a pivotal point now and it's very much up to us which way it goes. Our governments are supposed to serve us but instead we live in a society where we are very much ruled, where our rulers are the elite and their ruling mechanism is the complete charade of representative democracy.
We'll all be dead before it gets too bad, thankfully, but our apathy will condemn our children and their descendants to a life under tyranny which we ushered in through theatrical politics, fear mongering and a bizarrely held belief of There Is No Alternative.
For the company. Depending on how it is implemented, taking a cut of the first 2 years' salary could be very high risk. Intuitively there seems to be little to stop someone taking the education and then absconding abroad.
>Or are attention spans so short and/or the agency so completely removed from the rule of law that we're going to let them get away with their crimes? If we're not even going to bother with the trial - acknowledging that we won't even bother trying to maintain the rule of law - then I guess that's sufficient proof that we have lost our republic, as we let it be replaced with feudalism.
No, there will never be accountability for any of the gross abuses of the constitution, people's rights (including all those in the USA) and foreign "captives" physical and mental wellbeing highlighted in the NSA and CIA revelations.
Let's not kid ourselves. Representative democracy has shown itself to be a charade, particularly in the USA where you've two very similar entities who have billions pumped into them at election time to ensure no other entities have a shot at power, and then once elected those two very similar entities spend their time serving and protecting those that pumped in those billions.
The worst thing about it that I can't see any way out of it for the American people. The system is now so thoroughly stacked against them that any attempt at radical change - whether it's passive through the political system or more active through protests or at worst a revolution - will be very rapidly quashed. As a European I absolutely loathe that this very same, corrupted, abusive entity - the US Government - is reaching its tentacles into our governing and is now vying for power here via the TTIP and similar.
>to drum up more support for killing people an ocean away
To drum up more support for pumping billions or trillions of dollars borrowed from America's descendants into the pockets of the US elite via the military industrial complex.
Don't like it? You're welcome to protest but make sure you do it in the designated "free speech zone" over there, well away from those you're holding the protest against.
Oh and while you're doing it we'll increase the attention we give your NSA profile, everything you look at online, your emails, everyone you've ever interacted with in a trackable way and more. Can't have you radicals trying to upset the system the elite rely on, after all.
I find it amazing that people seemingly don't know that Facebook tracks you across the web through those embedded Like buttons, and more amazing that many who do know don't seem to care.
>It seems that for most people total calories are more important than the carbohydrate/fat-ratio.
It's also relatively easier to track. It's easy to say "Well, I can consume about 2000 calories per day, this donut has about 300 so I'll have roughly 1700 calories left", but it's quite difficult to know the breakdown of how much carbs/protein/fat should be consumed within those 2000 calories and more difficult again to plan and monitor for those values.
>I think Twitter would have stopped these much earlier if they could.
If Twitter clamped down on bots on the site/network it could end up revealing a very unflattering (to investors) picture of the sites true user traction.
The site has struggled to grow to its targets and has a significant issue with people creating accounts and quickly abandoning the site.
So Twitter has a very large incentive to do nothing about the bots.
>If you are enabling a surveillance state, I think many people would consider that to be harmful to public welfare.
I honestly do not know how those working for the NSA, GCHQ, etc. can live with themselves for the damage they're doing. Snowden said he was getting something like $120k p/a as a consultant for the NSA, so it's not like it's massively financially lucrative.
>It's not being thrown at the tech industry. It's people within the industry calling out the problem that we have. It's very telling that you think of the industry as a community under siege.
Actually, the vast majority of it is being carried out by people on the fringe of the industry in roles as "journalists" and similar who've never spent a day working within it.
And yes, I see the tech industry as being under siege.