• mctoasterson@reddthat.com
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    9 months ago

    He revealed massive warrantless domestic surveillance. The 1700s equivalent would be if the post office made copies of every single letter everyone sent and then promised not to read them unless the sender or recipient was one day subject to a valid warrant. Whoever revealed this info would’ve been a hero and a patriot back then, and it should be the same today.

    Snowden leaked his info about these programs more than a decade ago. If that is what the three-letter agencies and big tech were capable of doing in secret then, just imagine the shady shit they’re doing now.

    • AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      If that is what the three-letter agencies and big tech were capable of doing in secret then, just imagine the shady shit they’re doing now.

      It’s publicly available information that almost all social media companies have all of your private posts and the ability to release them to anyone they desire. People just don’t care.

    • lanolinoil@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I mean if they could have feasibly done that in 1700 they 100% would have and probably not even hid it in the courts like today

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      Read the Cuckoo’s Egg from 1989. NSA were at the very least tapping all international calls in the 1980s.

      The people that cared knew about this for a long time.

      All Snowden did was give up sensitive intel to foreign adversaries and got NSA capabilities that anyone that cared already knew about talked about more in the media.

      And nothing has really changed. There’s no international law against this so there’s nothing preventing Russia and China from looking at your data. There’s also nothing prevent five eyes countries from spying on each other’s citizens and sharing it back with the country whose citizens they spied on. Do you feel better that the NSA is spying on Canadians while Canadians spy on US citizens and the two countries exchange what they have on each other’s citizens?

      If that is what the three-letter agencies and big tech were capable of doing in secret then, just imagine the shady shit they’re doing now.

      They would have all data that any company has about you that has been sold to a marketing company. It’s trivial to create a shell company posing as a ad agency and legally buy all that data. And given the enshittification of everything there is data on basically everything you do. You buy groceries with a loyalty card? It’s on an NSA database being analyzed by an AI for suspicious activity. You didn’t read the fine print when you got that loyalty card that said they would share the data to third parties? It means the data will be shared to anyone that’s willing to pay them for it, and that includes the NSA. Why do you think they were giving you that discount? Because they’re nice? Nope, it’s because they can sell your data.

      This is happening because it’s the job of the NSA to gather data for intelligence purposes. They will sponge up any data they can legally obtain. And if you agree to data being shared with third parties, you’ve agreed that the data can be shared with the NSA. So it is.

      So now you understand that the NSA is likely doing these things because they can, do we need another traitor to hand over classified data to foreign adversaries to make you aware of it?

      • Cataphract@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        Do you feel better that the NSA is spying on Canadians while Canadians spy on US citizens and the two countries exchange what they have on each other’s citizens?

        but then,

        do we need another traitor to hand over classified data to foreign adversaries to make you aware of it?

        Government doing it in secret vs a citizen exposing it? I’m going to back my fellow citizen in this one.

        This is happening because it’s the job of the NSA to gather data for intelligence purposes. They will sponge up any data they can legally obtain. And if you agree to data being shared with third parties, you’ve agreed that the data can be shared with the NSA. So it is.

        That’s some serious bootlicking there, you think they’re only collecting “legally” obtained information? Let’s also gloss over the anti-consumer practices that companies employ to obtain that sweet third party data on you.

        “you’ve agreed that the data can be shared with the NSA. So it is.” - JFC you have some weird logic going on in your head. Let’s just forget what’s required in today’s society, the data that has to be shared to perform basic functions like employment now adays. The average citizen is not a privacy expert and no one is educated in K-12 to be consensual informed.

        • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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          9 months ago

          I’m going to back my fellow citizen in this one.

          Your “fellow citizen” is a citizen of Russia. Ya think he’s going to expose all the data collection Russia is doing? LOL

          Let’s also gloss over the anti-consumer practices that companies employ to obtain that sweet third party data on you.

          Indeed. Everyone glosses that over because it’s considered acceptable for every scumbag marketing person to know everything about you so they can manipulate you into buying shit you don’t need. That’s fine as long because you’re too paranoid over the NSA to give a shit about the fact that privacy doesn’t even exist anymore. You’re data is so boring to the NSA it gets filtered out with one pass of an algorithm. The marketing companies are data mining the shit out of your data.

          There’s no such thing as privacy now, the only thing Snowden accomplished was compromising intel which Russia rewarded him for. Dude is a straight up traitor.

      • mctoasterson@reddthat.com
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        9 months ago

        I don’t think it was feasible at the time (2013) for the average American to know and understand the concept that their government was capturing essentially all mobile cellular and internet communications for storage and analysis in giant fusion centers.

        The real tragedy is that many people now know and still don’t care, or have given into this bizarre cynical defeatism that we might as well just accept it. Hard disagree on those points.

      • the post of tom joad
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        9 months ago

        I just spent the entire time reading this just aghast at the audacity for you to voice an opinion like this in 2024, with rising fascism throughout the world.

        How deeply under a rock must your mole-hill have been built, how jingoistic and nationalistic must one become to have such… such a collosally naive take? I am so angry with you right now.

        • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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          9 months ago

          Yeah and where is a lot of the propaganda promoting fascism coming from? The country where your hero Edward Snowden lives and is now a citizen of?

          How much data do you think Russia is collecting about you? How much data are they collecting on their own citizens? Do you think Snowden is brave enough to blow the whistle on that kind of activity happening in the country he’s currently a citizen of?

          Who is the one really living under a rock here?

          • the post of tom joad
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            9 months ago

            I thought i had blocked you? I’ve already looked thru your history you fuckin venal little turd. Don’t ever conflate the fact we accidentally spoke with thinking you ever deserved my attention.

      • postmateDumbass@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Any US intelligence agency or military unit operating on US soil against US citizens is supposed to be illegal.

        That is law enforcement’s territory.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      He would have been a hero if he had just stayed in place or gone directly to a non-extradition country without a ton of secrets. Instead this dumbass ends up in China with several laptops and hard drives.