I simply do not believe that the NSA actually catches anyone using these advanced methods. The few terrorist prosecutions we've seen released almost always involve some low-hanging nut soliciting someone online for bomb materials with zero "gnome morse code" or other gimmicks. The idea that you can datamine everything running over the internet is a fool's errand and this errand is costing us billions in wasted tax dollars and millions of instances of violated human rights. Meanwhile, organizations like NASA are clearly underfunded.
Terrorism is the root password to everything from our constitution to our tax load. Playing up these charlatans and lifelong federal bureaucrats as some kind of saviors against the mythical hacker terrorist is a little much in my book. These are pork programs that go nowhere and do nothing but enrich the inside players and connected defense contractors.
> The idea that you can datamine everything running over the internet is a fool's errand and this errand is costing us billions in wasted tax dollars and millions of instances of violated human rights.
Agreed.
> Terrorism is the root password to everything.
Terrorism is pretty scary stuff, it's intended to be scary. No way are people in government singing hallelujah everytime innocent people are killed, look we can fund more nefarious shit! They're honestly trying to do the right thing and simply went overboard with collecting too much data.
Pardon my cynicism but your second statement makes you sound like a shill for those same people. Making such terrible actions sound like well-intentioned 'overstepping' only excuses such horrendously insidious activity (which is deserving of nothing but the strongest criticism).
The pernicious thing about a culture of shills and agent provocateurs is that it undermines trust in others and civil society in general. It leads to endless questioning of motives and to a complete stoppage of debate on some topics.
Think back to 2003 and the run-up to the Iraq war; which was the first time we saw what a domestic propaganda initiative on the internet looked like. Think about how much more sophisticated those tools are today. How defining and shaping issue oriented discourse can be viewed as a zero-sum game where one side "wins" and all other viewpoints are neutralized.
The thing is; once the suspicion has been planted that not all of the people one is talking to are honest participants it is impossible to ignore; impossible to disprove; and very difficult to act against.
Actually, I do think some of them are happy when it happens. Why is that so far fetched? For example, the leaders that jumped at the chance for WWI were clearly not hoping for peace. They wanted an excuse for a war. It does happen. Could it happen that there are extremists in the NSA just waiting for someone to pick a fight with them? Of course.
Hell, you can see this kind of behavior in tower defense games; people build a great power and dare anyone to cross them. The only difference is that real lives are at stake, but I think the government has proven they don't see the real lives in their game. For example, they don't even tally civilian casualties. They only even seem to care about such things because they don't want to anger the public.
Do you really believe that "doing the right thing" is the primary goal, or the secondary? Obviously that's how it's sold to the public, but it's hard to deny that espionage isn't the real goal.
If preventing deaths was anywhere close to the primary goal they'd be funneling money towards stopping traffic accidents.
Terrorism is a convenient trope to get people to willingly relinquish their liberties, just like "for the children" but with the goal of deploying ubiquitous scanners, drones, and microphones instead of censorship schemes.
Terrorism is pretty scary stuff, it's intended to be scary.
I'm not scared of acts of terrorism. I am much more concerned about vehicles killing cyclists and, really, the brain dead response the non terrorists will/have had when it comes to terrorism, like taking away our freedoms, wasting my tax dollars, and general stupid panic.
>No way are people in government singing hallelujah everytime innocent people are killed, look we can fund more nefarious shit!
I disagree with you on this one. I know this is a crazy conspiracy theory video, but please take the 30 minutes to watch it.
When you say nobody in "government" is excited, you need to refine the meaning of the term "government": Look at the players who have been at the center of this for the last 3 decades: GHW Bush and Carlyle group CIA drugsters.
I get the same impression. To me this all seems like an organization having the same delusions as John Nash when he tried to find geometric patterns in the movement of pigeons. They are so self-consumed in their intelligence community bubble chamber that they are convinced that there are all sorts of terrorists to be found in in every single corner of every place that ever was.
Are there terrorists? Yes, some. But to them it's like a boogeyman under every bed and in every closet.
Terrorism is the root password to everything from our constitution to our tax load. Playing up these charlatans and lifelong federal bureaucrats as some kind of saviors against the mythical hacker terrorist is a little much in my book. These are pork programs that go nowhere and do nothing but enrich the inside players and connected defense contractors.