Comment by GaggiX
It depends, are you dealing with Mossad or not Mossad?
It depends, are you dealing with Mossad or not Mossad?
Hah, I was reminded of that essay while reading about recent events.
"If the Mossad wants your data, they’re going to use a drone to replace your cellphone with a piece of uranium that’s shaped like a cellphone."
You’re leaving out one very important class of actors, which I will call the NSA: The NSA, and others like them, unlike Mossad, are not after you personally, in that they don't want to do anything to you. Not immediately. Not now. They simply want to get to know you better. They are gathering information. All the information. What you do, what you buy, how you vote, what you think. And they want to do this to everybody, all the time. This might or not bite you in the future. You seems to imply that since nothing immediately bad is happening by using slightly bad security, then it’s OK and we shouldn’t worry about it, since Mossad is not after us. I think that we should have a slightly longer view of what allowing NSA (et al.) to know everything about everybody would mean, and who NSA could some day give this information to, and what those people could do with the information. You have to think a few steps ahead to realize the danger.
(This has been a partial repost of a comment written four years ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23572778>)