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Comment by greyman | Hacker News Reader

And then there are people like me, who don't see the situation as black&white, i.e. I am not signing that petition. In my opinion, for the sake of security, it is necessary to "cache" the whole Internet communication to prevent terrorists attacks and other dangers. Like what the Brits are doing and currently they didn't have any big attack after the London bombings.

I am not an American and I don't have a motivation to defend NSA or whoever, I just think that what Snowden did was partially wrong. Of course, caching the Internet like NSA and others are doing has human rights consequences, and those should be discussed publicly. But question the very existence of such practices is unreasonable in the situation the world is in nowadays. There are LOT of people in the world today who would want to wipe off the whole Western civilization, if they could... there must be a protection from them.

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In my opinion, for the sake of security, it is necessary to "cache" the whole Internet communication to prevent terrorists attacks and other dangers.

Except you know, it doesn't prevent terrorist attacks. At all.

All it does is make the pile of hay with the needle in itthat much bigger. And a hell of a lot more expensive to the tax payer that is paying for the privilege of being spied on by their own government.

Even Snowden agrees that surveillance is necessary. However it is done outside of the public's eye and as we have seen without legal authorization. That's the part that made him blow the whistle.

Mass surveillance is deeply contrarian to our core values as a democratic society. If it is to happen there needs to be a discussion and a public decision. That's exactly what is set into motion by the Snowden revelations.

He agreed that targeted surveillance is necessary (I do too), not this indiscriminate 'collect it all' bulk surveillance of entire populations that we have now.

Isn't that what startups do these days? Collect every piece of damn information from each user visiting their site? Log when they hover over a link and all?

Morals aside, startups are after typical behavior. When you do analytics, you normally want to discover things something between 5% to 90% of your users. Most companies even have problem for getting into that 5% limit because it is too small.

Terrorists are a few hundred, spread through the billions of people. Or, on the same kind of numbers, around 0.0000001% of the people the NSA spies on.

I think targeted surveillance is not enough - if you find a suspect, I think you need to take the bulk surveillance data and look at what that person communicated in the past and whether he is indeed a suspect, not just watch him only from this point on.

Considering the bulk approach is what they've been doing for 10 years or more and terrorist attacks continue to happen, usually by people the intelligence agencies already identify as risks, it doesn't seem to be at all effective.

The bulk approach leads to a saturation of data. That doesn't make things easier, it complicates them.

If you include other agencies or even the whole military-industrial complex, it seems to me that they are both source and solution to the problem. With Saddam still in Iraq, ISIS would not be a thing and there would not be a need for intelligence on them. Doing less can be more.

The usual justification for invading becomes ridiculous in that context: We need to restrict the people's freedom by spying on them, because we tried to bring freedom to another country.

Yes, I recall that line of reasoning very well - When Saddam is gone, that is, after bringing democracy to Iraq, the rest of the Middle East will become democratic and peaceful. Iraq was to be a beacon of for freedom and democracy.

"...they didn't have any big attack..."

"Big attacks" are vanishingly rare. But, just for the sake of argument, they haven't had an attack until they do.

The point of this is the US is actually harvesting way more data than the U.K., and we have so-called "lone wolf" attacks every couple of months.

Mass surveillance doesn't keep you safe.

I am in Europe and... they aren't that rare in France or Germany for example.

> ... it is necessary to "cache" the whole Internet communication to prevent terrorists attacks and other dangers.

Keep in mind that while we're trying to prevent terrorist attacks against us, we're actively and have actually used those same terrorists to further our goals in other countries.

If you are so sure that this sort of surveillance is effective due to the non happening if a rare event, then I have a tiger repelling rock to sell you. It is garunteed to stop tiger attacks.

It doesn't stop terrorist attacks. You undermined your entire comment by implying that it does.

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