Quote:
Originally Posted by Sumeragi
Your interpretation would be incorrect. Given that the situation is essentially the same as banks keeping records of customers' transactions, this is not a problem unless the government has unlimited and overreaching access to said information. Is there any evidence of such unlimited and overreaching access? If not, then all this whining is based on unreasonable expectation of having everything "private" which is impossible for the working of modern society.
Now, if we have the situation where the government does not need to go through the regular process to obtain information, then it's an infringement of rights. Before then, there is no particular violation, and all this uproar is nothing but entitlement.
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The issue here isn't really about privacy in the strict sense, but trust in what governments and corporations do with the information you give (voluntarily or not). I can't speak for everyone, obviously, but my trust in either institution is at an all time low. Both show gross incompetence and reckless disregard for social improvement.
My uproar personally is that all of this information collecting has helped prevent what crimes, exactly? Stopped terrorists? Nope. Stopped shootings? Nope. Any crime? Nope. All of this information, and they're just as helpless to protect their citizens as they were a decade ago.
So what's the point of spending all of this time and money for something with no tangible benefit? Surely we have more productive things that can be done with our limited resources.
Or is this another case of feeding the beast? Homeland Security is now a money making business, just like the military industrial complex. Contractors rake in millions, if not billions, helping the Government tap phones and collect data. Clearly it's in someones interest to keep all this going even if there's no public benefit to it.