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Comment by rb2e | Hacker News Reader

No offence is taken. I've been reading and studying Intelligence/espionage for a long time. Not the fancy James Bond stuff, just the boring average, mundane stuff of the past 100 years.

I offer no solution because quite frankly, there isn't one. Unless you want to shut down the US military's and civilian intelligence gathering capabilities, it's not going to happen. There will always be reading your mail and listening in to your phonecalls. It is not going to stop.

I am not for this, I love my privacy but I am simply pointing out what will happen, regardless of any action taken.

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You're repeating yourself, and so I'll repeat myself: it's not helpful.

Unless you are prepared to give a mathematical proof of your claims, you ought to doubt them yourself. A priori, there is "no reason" (to mirror your argument) that life ought to have evolved 5 billion years ago on this planet.

Likewise, there are lots of tech projects aimed at countering this sort of thing; saying they won't succeed only makes the participants more determined. :) Propaganda is a double-edged sword.

So with that said, what would you recommend the average foreign citizen do?

I mean, every western country right now is a vassal to the states. I doubt my country can really go against US interests (Canada). Most educated people I talk to about these matters agree that the US is not a functioning democracy, but rather a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

> I am not for this, I love my privacy but I am simply pointing out what will happen, regardless of any action taken.

Well if that's the case, what would you suggest a poor foreign person do?

This is what I don't understand. Why can't the US scale down this huge military complex? It has already served its purpose; it won World War II and defeated the Soviets in the defense budget chicken race, so how about calling mission accomplished and going home, now?

Considering how many Americans die of heart attacks, and how many in terrorist attacks, wouldn't giving your citizens an actual first-world health care system a much better use of these gigantic black budgets?

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