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Comment by oceanstone | Hacker News Reader

Keep in mind, for many people, the scariest thing about this whole mass surveillance issue is the potential to blackmail elected officials. It takes courage for them to stand up to something like the NSA. We need to show our reps we have their backs. 89,000 calls is pretty impressive.

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Anyone who doesn't believe this needs to watch Client 9 [1] about Eliot Spitzer.

It's very convincing that someone powerful targetted him for his anti-wallstreet policies and sought to catch him with a high paid prostitute. The weird part starts happening when they interview the madam and brothel hustlers who she hired, and find out tons of famous politicians and Wall st execs uses them... but noone else got brought down despite all the private investigations, wiretaps, and FBI investigations, except the one guy pissing off people in power.

Now in 2014 we're back down to nearly zero reputable prominent people in office calling out Wall st or political corruption. Except maybe the crazy fringe types like Rand Paul.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1638362/

It is not only the fringe. It's almost a rite of passage for ambitious prosecutors/attorney generals to take on Wall Street and/or corruption. Guiliani, Spitzer & now Bharara (he took the lead on Galleon, SAC, etc)

It's hardly productive to call crazy one of the very few senators who has consistently and without compromise opposed the kind of things the fightback in question was referring to. It's no wonder America's in the state it is, when someone is called crazy for opposing war, but the presidents who readily kill children and innocents by proxy (drones) are seen as perfectly sane.

That movie was a real eye opener.

M: 10/10

Lets be honest here, Spitzer was using prostitutes of his own free will. Just someone either put some effort into catching him or got lucky while he was getting lucky. So I am not going to jump on the conspiracy bandwagon when the party in question is supplying the gun.

Your conclusion doesn't logically follow, given what the GP said: "tons of famous politicians and Wall st execs uses them... but noone else got brought down despite all the private investigations, wiretaps, and FBI investigations, except the one guy", clearly suggests a conspiracy to get to this particular person regardless of whether they brought their own rope.

You're basically saying "I don't care, he went to a prostitute of his own free will", which is no rational reason to discount the theory that they targeted him specifically, because if he hadn't done so, they'd have either found something else, or made something happen. The fact that they didn't have to, doesn't suggest they did not target him, while the fact that they also didn't out any of the tons of other people, suggests that there might be a reason for this particular person other than mere chance.

Keep in mind it's scary for the individual to call as well for fear of being put on a list. So 89,000 is definitely impressive. I wouldn't be surprised if I was put on a list yesterday after saying something along the lines of "the government's actions are turning people against the government and creating enemies of their own citizens". Oh well I don't care about being on a list anymore. It's time to stand up.

Do you have any evidence that anyone would be tracked or targeted for such a thing, or is this just wild speculation?

He didn't speculate on anything; he said he wouldn't be surprised if he was put on a list. And given all of the information that has come out over the past few years, would you be surprised that such a list were in place?

You must be kidding. Nobody did a pencil and paper list. But according to Snowden leaks this list is easily retrievable with a few clicks. These might had been speculations in 2000. Today this is a fact.

First, the parent suggested that they were put on a list not only for calling, but "after saying something along the lines of" something. That is, that either the content of the call was being recorded by the NSA, or whatever phone system Congress has set up is both recording and being used to compile a list of people. The leaks strongly suggest that there is no mass recording of the content of calls by the NSA; although it is possible that the phone number used to contact Congress is being tapped, this would be illegal (since the NSA is not supposed to target communication between US persons) and there isn't evidence that it is happening. As for Congress itself doing it, I guess it's possible, but I think lawmakers have better things to do than go after random constituents.

The leaks do state that metadata about the call, including that it was made between the parent and Twilio, would have been stored in a database, so theoretically the parent could be targeted for calling on that day "with a few clicks", as you say. News outlets have published theories based on the leaks under which this would happen:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/the-nsa-...

But they sound pretty hyperbolic to me. Note that according to the official procedures, the data is supposed to be destroyed immediately unless it "is reasonably believed to contain significant foreign intelligence information", etc.:

http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Minimization%20Procedures...

and the NSA was/is certainly not supposed to intentionally go after this type of information. But to be fair, I might not have been so skeptical if the parent had only mentioned metadata.

The parent responded and brought up COINTELPRO. Yes, if something like COINTELPRO were happening now, then such fears would be warranted. I cannot rule that scenario out, but it's worth noting that the leaks make it significantly less likely, since the NSA would probably be involved in such a program (as it was in COINTELPRO), yet nothing of the sort came up in the leaks. I guess the proven ability of the government to keep misconduct secret in general means that it is rational to suspect that some kind of misconduct is happening somewhere, but I wouldn't say there's enough evidence to rationally specifically fear being targeted for contacting Congress.

They and another person also reiterated that the wording was "wouldn't be surprised" that something is happening, which is a more general standard than thinking it is actually likely to be happening. And I admit that even a small chance of it happening can still make it "scary" to call, since the repercussions if it were true could potentially be much larger than the benefits of calling; moreover, some of the people who might call may not be rational or well-informed but still should be entitled to call and state their views on what ought to be happening. Still, I do not think it's unreasonable to ask for evidence either.

Didn't claim to have evidence. The reasoning for why I wouldn't be surprised [1]. The source talks about a break in at the FBI during the Vietnam war by protesters who felt the FBI had been targeting them. It turned out that the FBI had indeed been spying on them and compiling documents about these individuals.

[1] - http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/06/22205443-...

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