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The US Is Openly Stockpiling Dirt on All Its Citizens
(www.wired.com)
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this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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politics
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We've known they've been doing this since at least Snowden, what's the story?
Remember that government agency that hoovers up all our data? Yeah, they're still doing that. Only they don't have to try as hard because they can just buy our info instead of snooping for it (but they're also still snooping).
Maybe it's good to remind people it's still happening because apparently everyone forgot we were told they've been doing this, for a while.
What really blows my mind are the people who attack Snowden while claiming this mass data collection is perfectly fine.
I love the "If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide..."
I usually respond to those folks with "Can I watch you fuck your spouse? You're not doing anything wrong, they're your spouse, so you shouldn't have anything to hide"
The crazy part is, I've gotten a few enthusiastic "Yes" responses to that...
Nobody forgot. We all depend on the internet for daily life and livelihoods. We are largely powerless against these faceless institutions
Not that I disagree with you, but I was more responding to the fact that they said they can't find anybody else reporting about it. I was saying that there's not much to report because this is kind of old news. I understand why more news agencies aren't picking up on this, like, government agencies known for sucking up data are still sucking up data. -shrug-
I don't disagree, and you're absolutely right, but i'd argue there's still a difference between a government organization collecting the data themselves, and the same organization buying it from other brokers. It's semantics sure, but it's a new dimension of this fucketry.
Fair enough.
anecdotally: people chose to forget so that they don't have to change their world view. every single snowden revelations denier i know is either software engineer, network engineer, or devops
That's a good point, as a Sys Admin I've ran into a few coworkers like that myself. Not sure how somebody could deny it at this point tbh though.
They've been doing this since the 1950s, younger generations just didn't realize the scope until Snowden.
Yeah, that's why I said "at least" because I'm sure there's earlier examples but that was the largest recent example.
Yes and no - prism and related programs weren't that big a deal (besides morally and legally) - the NSA was collecting far more data than they could use at scale. It was a problem, but realistically it wouldn't affect normal people - you'd have to catch a lot of attention first to even be searched in that system. It couldn't be used for law enforcement or anything wide scale - the collection was there, but the analysis didn't scale
It was a problem because of where we are now - AI advancement means not only can they now process the insane amount of data they ingest and make terrifying associations, they can use the ridiculous amount of compute they've been building out to actually use all this data
We're most of the way down the slippery slope now, and still accelerating fast. The capability makes 1984 look quaint, and having the ability to flick on systems China drools over is pretty concerning
People don't even know they're trying to make us use id to use sites "to protect the children". Any site that might be inappropriate (of which, social media fits under the current definitions of) would be responsible for children getting access to their services - storing driver's licenses seems to be the popular idea for compliance. Google's web DRM might be pushed out so fast to offer this kind of service too
Kosa has bipartisan support, the president has come out strongly supporting it, and it's insane to me that people still don't care