My Muslim friend who is otherwise a nice guy told me how after Snowden incident some of his friends are avoiding him on all electronic media.
So yes, it "sadly looks like the terrorists have won" :(
Edit: Deleted "('just a piece of paper' according to W)".
http://www.factcheck.org/2007/12/bush-the-constitution-a-god...
Please check your facts before spreading false rumors. Thanks!
> We judge that the odds that the report is accurate hover near zero. It comes from Capitol Hill Blue...
> Update, Feb. 21, 2011: The author of the Capitol Hill Blue story has now withdrawn it.
Good point. Because I mentioned two words that appear at the top of the page, that means I obviously didn't read any further.
If you read the article you'll know that nowhere does it say false, as the other poster claimed.
Why don't they say it's false, if it's false? What's stopping them?
The fact that someone eventually removes something from their site does not mean it was false.
Someone using the contrived sentence "the odds that the report is accurate hover near zero" - rather than just saying "it's false" - also does not make it false.
I don't believe it happened either - sorry if you used your 500+ karma because I didn't issue a disclaimer to that effect - but that also doesn't mean it's false.
My point was about someone whining about getting facts right, by linking to an aticle that bends over backwards to not say what they think it says.
Thanks :)
CBP has hassled me over having a book on Korean and a documentary about Hitler.
It's not necessarily racist if someone was overly nervous and hid friends, especially if they were non-Arab and notably Islamic (since Muslim isn't a race). Though the chance of a random CBP agent having a bad day probably dominates your threat profile unless.you're otherwise really notable.
If I was going to, say, China, I might hide friends that were pro-evangelizing their religion. Fortunately I don't use social media.
I think maybe you're engaging in a ridiculous level of paranoia.
My anecdote - I'm Australian, lived in USA for decades, moved to Europe after 9/11. Every time I visit the USA it is an hours-long ordeal to explain, in fine detail, why I have the views I have, why I follow Snowden, why I participate in European hacker cultures, why my laptop is covered in security-conference-related stickers, etc. etc. During this process there is always the implied threat of imprisonment without due process. All my stuff is gone through. They find nothing, because I am not a threat in any way, other than that I freely associate with those aspects of society and culture which 'the mainstream' find mysterious, confusing, and scary.
So, I don't go to the USA much. Its about as much fun to get there as driving into a brick wall.
Do they ask you about your FB/Twitter account or do they already know them?
You may not ever have experienced what I've described, but it happens every single day, time and again. You can find others' reports if you care to look for yourself .. my anecdote only has relevance if it serves to make you, an American citizen, truly contemplate what you have allowed to occur in your name. The security nightmare is real for a lot of people.
BTW, I left you the, surprisingly hard(took me 3 minutes) to find, evidence you asked in the other comment.
A 5 minute search on the Internet would be... enough?
As if all similar stories are part of some global conspiracy?
Like... you only know how good, efficient and super cool the people at the TSA are?
Really?
Laura Poitras is an American citizen too. Is she credible enough for you? Can you tell me what are her thoughts on the TSA?
No? Do you even care? If you do care, then put the effort to learn what is already accessible to you. Otherwise what's the point in engaging in discussions with comments "oh yeah you read it on the Internet derp derp"
Here, have a freebie from Bruce Schneier: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/04/hacker_detain...
EDIT: it seems, when facts come in, downvotes are cast! Ouch. It burns
But this is the whole point... people change their behaviour because of fear of being persecuted, it may seem irrational and paranoid to some looking in with certain beliefs about what constitutes a risk, but it is entirely understandable and this is the negative effect of governments that spy on their citizens to mark them as threats.
One of the interesting effects of the Snowden revelations was how what is considered "paranoid" changed.
Pre-Snowden, if you thought that the USA government was definitly spying on everyone, you'd be considered a bit paranoid.
And well... Snowden told us those paranoid people were right...
The EFF has a timeline of quotes / stories that basically extend back to the September 11th attacks.
https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/timeline
I personally don't think paranoia, though. To me, this whole collecting data on everyone instead of targeted individuals is more this: a huge data storage that is both subject to both internal abuse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT) and data leaks (Snowden); a wasteful process that didn't really stop a lot of terrorist attacks (eg, San Bernadino, the Boston Marathon bombings, Fort Hood, the Charleston church, etc.); a process that damaged America's reputation considerably (even from a pure business perspective); etc. Honestly, the NSA spying appears to end up being a colossal waste of resources and a general failure overall.
If some NSA database records this opinion, good. :)
Not at all, what we're trying to do is quantify what is the appropriate level of paranoia. As others have pointed out, (see sibling comment by rmc) it turns out that some people why were previously considered far too paranoid turned out to be right.
According to him the immigration can look at your social graph see how many Muslim friends your have can their system can raise red flags for you based on that so a lot of people avoid muslims.