aNewDomain — It’s true.
The United States is a full-fledged authoritarian super-security state 
omplete and predictive of behavior than could be obtained by listening to phone conversations or reading e-mails, experts say. Phone and e-mail logs, for example, allow analysts to identify people’s friends and associates, detect where they were at a certain time, acquire clues to religious or political affiliations, and pick up sensitive information like regular calls to a psychiatrist’s office, late-night messages to an extramarital partner or exchanges with a fellow plotter.”
“Plotter?”
Oh, right, terrorism. Preventing terrorism — the scourge that kills an average of 16 Americans per year — worldwide — is the self-proclaimed mission of the post-9/11 intelligence experts at the NSA.
And man, do they suck at stopping terrorism.
When the Snowden leaks began, NSA PR flaks argued that turning the country into the set of “Big Brother” was a small price to pay to stop the 50 terrorist plots that were claimed to have been foiled. (Never mind the fact that the NSA’s own charter limits its activities to spying outside the U.S. Even unintentional spying on Americans by the NSA is illegal.) The spies’ defense was unverifiable and almost certainly a lie
Awesome column.
But if it wasn’t for your post on Facebook, I wouldn’t have found this article.
Honeypots everywhere…but do I care?
Oh, the irony. Always rife.
Good article. But:
“Finally: a reason to quit Facebook.”
“Finally”? There have been plenty of reasons all along, long before the NSA revelations.
Excellent article. Problem is, Americans keep going along with all of it, and we really don’t have to. For example, I was asked for my personal info when I went to order a pizza–in person. They didn’t need my address or other info as I was ordering it & picking it up right there. I wouldn’t give out my info & that made the kid taking my order uncomfortable. He hesitated b4 asking the next customer for his personal info. If that customer had refused, as I had, the kid at the counter probably would have stopped asking, as he didn’t want to make the customers angry. But I watched as other customers came in, were uncomfortable when asked but gave out their personal info anyway. Why?
Are we that filled with fear that we can’t even refuse to give out our info to a teenager at a pizza joint? There won’t be a revolution in this country. Americans are too weak to even defy the local pizza joint. We can’t even stand up for our rights in small ways. Nor can we stand up for each other. The average American doesn’t seem to care or even think about how the other guy/gal is doing. It’s just all about “me.”
BTW, thanks to DHS, NSA, FBI and all the other govt hacks for reading this comment. I hope you enjoyed it! Guess it gave ya’ a lot of info on how my convoluted mind works, eh. (Yeah, I speak Canadian too…)