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Comment by brian-armstrong | Hacker News Reader

Depends on the medium, I think. If you post it just to your friends in a protected way with a reasonable expectation of privacy, then it feels wrong for the government to do dragnet surveillance on that. On the other hand, if you start tweeting about your plans to commit an act of terror, how is that any different than going to the city center and shouting it?

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So what you are saying is, we need microphones on every street corner running natural language processing and speech recognition software to identify and record any threats someone may make?

No, but I'm talking about a situation where you'd be surrounded by people. And what is Twitter if not a giant megaphone?

The difference is, if you announced those plans on a city street, you'd only face government reaction if a citizen reported you or a police officer overhead.

That's different from the federal government having power to eavesdrop on all street corners at all times. The fears over these powers aren't based in a desire to keep the government in the dark, they're a reaction to the massive scope, and the notion that everyone is suspicious all the time.

And this discussion is about setting up systems to automatically monitor/record everything spoken through that megaphone.

It's much more than the people around you taking it upon themselves to report your threats.

I think this is more a reflection of using a digital medium to speak. Everything is inherently kept around anyway

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