That's the real problem with constant surveillance. Those in power can use it to find and silence anyone who they feel is a threat to them, or even anyone who they think might one day become a threat. I'm not sure that freedom and democracy can exist under conditions like that.
Of course .. I'm pretty sure, everything goes to Google / Samsung, you know, to help to make a better service.
I one day discovered that my phone's Samsung keyboard (the default one that came with the device out of the box) was logging every key press and sending it to a third party whose privacy policy said that they used it for "market research" and to guess at things like the intelligence and education level of the user. I immediately installed a new keyboard. I went with AnySoftKeyboard and so far it's been great, although, understandably, the autocorrect isn't anything close to what it used to be.
Simply by voting, or working for a certain company, or or striking or joining a union, or seeking an abortion may very well be notable enough for them to label you a certain way so they can pin something on you - "Acting against state interests" or some such.
Please show me a instance where a judge approved a warrant to investigate the crime of voting.
If you are a non-us citizen or you're deemed "a terrorist" they can do whatever.
This complicates further with crap like the US spying on say Swedish residents and then forwarding information to Sweden. Technically; Sweden isn't spying on it's citizens, the US is. But it's the same result.
I assumed “legal” voting from the original comment but I guess its not all legal.
No, there really shouldn't have been an investigation. This was evil, wasteful, and above all, truly fucked up.
She didn't "steal" a vote from anyone. She cast a provisional ballot, after asking permission. There doesn't need to be an investigation- just check the facts, and deal with her provisional ballot as necessary.
At my college, we had a guy walk across the stage at the graduation ceremony for the school of engineering. But he wasn't in the school of engineering; he just found there ceremony to be at a more convenient time, and assumed it was all the same. They didn't call his name, and nothing came of it. Because it was an administrative issue. What they didn't do, was throw him in jail for trying to steal an engineering degree. Because there was zero chance of that happening, and he wasn't even trying to do that.
This means voting illegally?
Whether the vote is valid or not, whether it should be tossed out or kept, is a separate issue that really should be determined asynchronously, and carry no penalty. Especially if, as in this case, she literally asked the authorities if it was okay, and her ballot was only ever provisional in the first place.
If there's a list of people who are allowed to vote, what's the fraud here? What exactly are they getting away with? It's like the crime of seeing a "Sorry, you must be logged in" page on the web. Oh noes! That page is only for certain people, and you're not one of them, and you tried to see it and failed! Somebody call the cops.
Still, we should never allow the government to do to our opponents what we wouldn't want done to our allies.
The really crazy part is that none of us has any clue what type of citizens the IC has been targeting.
I'd be willing to bet it's all of us.
It shouldn't, but I'm willing to bet it does. Even if you don't notice it. In the best(?) case it influences a small number of people you talk to, but that influences your conversations with them so indirectly influences you.
But I'd also argue that such a system would also be equally powerful enough to convincingly fabricate evidence against you. They could still blackmail you, by identifying things you might be embarrassed about, but the ability to fabricate convincing evidence is still highly problematic.
I do often wonder if the next big boom in "ad" technology will be homomorphic encryption. Where the data can be mined for the useful things like data to train ML models or target populations of people, but targeting individuals would be substantially harder.