> In one case, after the government learned that a foreign intelligence target had ordered new computer hardware, the American manufacturer agreed to insert a back door into the product before it was shipped, someone familiar with the request told The Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet...
Compelling.
So from that you extrapolate all devices made by US companies are secretly under the control of the NSA? Pretty big logical leap there.
That leads me to believe that you're either part of an organization that's subverting the internet and assisting the NSA or you're willfully ignorant.
Fact is, your other comments point that you have not well-researched the situation.
Every week there's a new revelation of just how deep the surveillance really is-- not just "metadata" but ALL data is being collected. The NSA hacks into companies, pays off others for cooperation. Backdoors. Broken encryption. It's all there out in the open thanks to the documents that have been leaked.
You do harm to the liberty of others by dismissing these facts.
> It's all there out in the open thanks to the documents that have been leaked.
You dismiss his point that unsubstantiated documents is largely the source of all this speculation and then you remake a bunch of unsubstantiated claims, saying they are all proved by the aforementioned documents.
Even Obama and the NSA itself has backed this up.
They'd been trying to extradite Snowden ffs, get your head out of the sand.
That is to say: there are some things that we know and are verified (e.g. that there is a program, called PRISM, etc.) but other things where there's a lot of speculation, but less or no verification (e.g. that the iPhone is backdoored.)
Some of us like to distinguish between these things. Some of us don't. It doesn't help to call people names over it, though.