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Comment by cliveowen | Hacker News Reader

Frankly I don't get all this paranoia about [put here your favorite government agency] spying. You're talking about criminal activities with your friends and you want a more secure way? there are a few. You're not talking about criminal activities but you're concerned someone might actually use gathered data/metadata to glean information about your private life? Then let me tell you something: first, there no evidence to support anyone has ever acted upon that information, second, the government does not focus on random individuals for the sake of it and third, if you're a person of interest, then you fucking had it coming and is gullible on your part to expect the slightest inkling of privacy on your electronic communications.

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You shouldn't have been downvoted. But you should know that if you don't tow the party line on this topic you'll be marginalized no matter how valid, on-topic, or sane your comment is.

You're right though. First off, I hope your parent was joking, because if not, what he said makes no sense and isn't really related to the subject at hand. Second, while the whole domestic spying scandal is serious business, it doesn't have to be injected into every conversation. Third, you're right. There is no evidence to support that anyone has ever targeted a random individual for the sake of it and you probably shouldn't be using something like Facebook if you plan to discuss criminal activity, and yeah, no matter who you are you can't expect an inkling of privacy online. But that's not really specific to the government either. I can spy you, the guy down the street can, it doesn't take the kind of infrastructure the NSA has to spy on someone. Hell, I'd be more paranoid that random people are spying on me than the NSA. The randoms are more likely to target you for no reason while the NSA, from what we can gather, is more than happy to collect your data and never look at it - like ever.

Questioning the amount of paranoia we seem to have and being pro-NSA spying are not the same thing and it seems like a lot of people aren't able to separate out some of the nuance.

Yes, I was joking. And it was mildly amusing to see a rant in response. And speaking of towing the party line, I wonder how many things made it to the front page of hn only to be killed… I've already shared my opinions on this subject in regards to questioning[0], so feel free to look if you want more.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6135337

I knew you were joking it's just that up until this point I didn't intervene in the whole NSA debate and I was a bit stirred to see the thing creep even in an unrelated post, but hey, it was a joke, I get it ;)

…was a bit stirred to see the thing creep even in an unrelated post

It's good to get it out sometimes ;)

Maybe there should be a internet law about how anything being discussed on the internet dealing with technology will eventually delve into something on/about surveillance :P

Exactly, from the previous comment people might have thought that I heard about the whole NSA scandal and was OK with it, I'm not. I'm just saying that in my opinion the whole paranoia is downright unwarranted. I'd settle for quite worrisome.

Since linguistic pet peeves seem to be okay here, let me just add mine: it's "toeing the line", not "towing the line". Think of a bunch of people lining up (for a military inspection, I think, but it could as easily be for a subway) with their toes on a line, so that they're all together in a row.

Thank you. I've always wondered what the correct spelling was. I've seen both ways here and now I have a firm answer.

First they came for people that were doing big things, and I didn't speak out because I live a small life and hope to keep it that way so as to never be noticed by the Eye of Sauron...

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