lesuorac 10 months ago

You are dense. Imagine a government authorizes 10B for a bridge and then in 5 years a bridge shows up.

Now instead, imagine in 1978 [1] a government authorizes "United States federal law that establishes procedures for the surveillance and collection of foreign intelligence on domestic soil" and in 2008 [2] amends it to not be a big deal if they're foreign or not and then 5 years later it turns out they're doing just that.

These bills are not secret. Were not secret. Have never been secret. It's not my fault you didn't read them but it doesn't make Snowden novel.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveilla...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveilla...

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  • Clubber 10 months ago

    >You are dense.

    Well, maybe you're one of those propagandists. If you can't attack the idea, attack the person, right?

    Hand waves, nothing new to see here, carry on.

    The bills aren't what were exposed, it was more the techniques and scope. Like PRISM and XKeyScore and circumventing laws by sharing intelligence on US citizens with allies who aren't restricted by US laws. Spying on allied governments, etc. You know, that stuff.

    You should really click on the link.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_global_surveillance_disc...

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    • dialup_sounds 10 months ago

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SHAMROCK

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_and_Mitchell_defection

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

      Et cetera. These aren't new issues. The obsession with Snowden as a messianic figure is unhelpful in contextualizing the information.

      Reply View 3 replies
      • Clubber 10 months ago

        >The obsession with Snowden as a messianic figure is unhelpful in contextualizing the information.

        Damn the gall, give it a rest. Again, methods and scope. Which one of those exposes PRISM, XKeyScore and the NSA infiltrating Google servers? Which one of those exposes the companies that willingly "integrated" with the NSA?

        Which of those exposes US government spying on allied governments, recording private conversations, etc?

        Saying Snowden didn't reveal anything is a silly hill to die on. What is your prerogative in minimizing the exposure? Do you work for one of the companies implicated in participating in prism or something?

        Microsoft joined PRISM on 9/11/2007 (fitting)

        Yahoo joined PRISM on 3/12/08

        Google joined PRISM on 1/4/09

        Facebook joined PRISM on 6/3/09

        YouTube joined PRISM on 9/24/10

        Skype joined PRISM on 2/6/11

        AOL joined PRISM on 3/11/11

        Apple, the last holdout on the list, joined PRISM 10/12 (after Jobs died).

        OP, this is why it seems nobody cares, there's plenty of people trying to sway public opinion on the matter by minimizing it. Nobody wants to believe their government would do things like this, so when someone offers that, "hey it's not so bad," they want to believe it. We've always been at war with Eastasia.

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