134 upvotes but only 34 contributors. If you truly support privacy rights, please support those fighting for them. Donate.
Oh give me a break with the hyperbole. The NSA likely doesn't give a fuck about your activity of pissing and moaning on hacker news.
That is rather the point though, isn't?
There are many other countries whose authorities would absolutely care to detain foreign nationals over being smug.
What makes you believe that some individuals within the NSA are not of that type of person?
Because the NSA just records the information, they don't get to make the call on detention. Gitmo isn't full of people that called the government a bunch of jerks or complained about wiretapping/taxes/etc.
In my humble opinion, the greatest abuse that could come from this wiretapping is much more mundane and offensive - NSA employees cyberstalking and mining data of sexual interests/current partners.
Link to where this was abused to punish an innocent person?
It makes no difference whatsoever if these tactics were ever used against an innocent person. These tactics are violations of civil rights across the board. Yes, guilty people have civil rights in this country. No, our justice system is not meant to ensure that every single guilty person is punished for their crimes.
I dont know how you know what kinds of people are detained in Gitmo and other more secret locations? I believe that information is specifically kept secret?
EDIT: I am thinking you meant that you hope that Gitmo and other similar but more secret places do not contain people who piss and moan about government surveillance?
gitmo is actually full of people whose crime was to piss someone in off, get handed in for a bounty, then get caught in the middle of Republicans rousing their inbred base by opposing trials.
From the wiki article: "The Center for Policy and Research's 2006 report based on DOD released data, found that most detainees were low-level people who were not affiliated with organizations on U.S. terrorist lists." [1] One example: "The U.S. offered $5,000 per prisoner and distributed leaflets widely in the region. A perfect example would be Adel, a Chinese Uighur and dissident who had been sold to the US by Pakistani bounty hunters"
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp#D...
Neither are most (all?) of the people who are detained at the airport, denied entry into America, or otherwise harassed by our government. What exactly is your point?
The NSA might be greedy for info, but they're not stupid or act [as an agency] irrationally.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.#FBI_Sur...
But thanks for being so pleasant about sharing your assumptions.
And come on, there's no need to be pleasant the umpteenth-thousand time that someone mades a snide, ultra-paranoid remark about America that scrapes the bottom of Godwin's law.
...
[1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/govt-agrees-to-de...
Yeah, sure...
"Cyberscare: Ex-NSA chief calls transparency groups, hackers next terrorists"
please note: IANAL, but that's what I gathered so far.
[1] Probably closer to an ordinary 5-15% once page views are factored in