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Comment by Jedi72 | Hacker News Reader

I live in Texas, and I've seen awkward moments at dinner parties where pro-gun people say the government must not ever have a registry of owners or civilization will collapse. I bet that the next day, to let off a little steam, they bought bullets on their iPhone and had Google maps take them to the range...

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Why is it awkward? Because only you recognize the extent of their privacy loss? Enlighten them.

This.

Why are we allowing people to go around society being this ignorant of what's going on?

Take the opportunity to gently inform the guy of all the information the government has on him.

This is not a case of consistent logic through ignorance. The same friends who will literally go out guns blazing before letting law enforcement take their AR15, believe Snowden was a traitor and the intelligence agencies would never abuse their power ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Are you saying they're hypocrites because you imagined it so?

I understood GP post more like "They are afraid of government registry, yet willingly give their sensitive data to corporations."

"Willingly" might be overstating things - Google is expert at misleading privacy notifications, and just like they wouldn't expect the local baker to keep logs of what they buy and when, and sell them to data collectors, maybe they have a naive idea that buying something on their phone is similar. They're just not aware how deeply hostile and backstabbing the entities they're dealing with are - like most humans, they're adapted to dealing with neighbors and people they know, not amoral international conglomerates.

Almost everyone works for a company that does marketing, so it's weird to please ignorance.

Which we now know, courtesy of Edward Snowden, that it is not much different from giving sensitive data directly to the government.

That was known long before Snowden did anything.

"The cascade of reports following the June 2013 government surveillance revelations by NSA contractor Edward Snowden have brought new attention to debates about how best to preserve Americans’ privacy in the digital age."

Pew, 2015

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2015/05/20/americans-at...

Unfortunately time-series data on perceptions and sentiments is difficult to find. But the very fact we're discussing this on the grounds of it being or not being an Edward Snowden-related awareness speaks to Snowden's impact. As does the the fact that the matter hasn't been considered notable enough to warrant tracking over time as part of a sentiment study.

Writing as someone who has been long aware of the issue, well before Snowden. But who has also noted that the nature and tenor of discussions with others since has changed markedly.

Indeed.... Who needs a registry when you have real-time data!

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