Imagine a most upstanding human, righteous, kind and lawful. That human gets elected to hold some office. Should that person not worry about government spying because they would never find anything compromising about him?
Surveillance can be used for more than just discrediting imperfect people. Even meta info, much less whole texts of email, can be used to learn who is important to your target. Then pressure would be put on those important people to make the target — their father or spouse or friend — comply with some government dictate or another for fear of harm to those he loves. Typical mafia approach made even easier by NSA and their handlers.
I find the Jews In The Attic test is still the best judge for good and bad laws:
http://www.joehuffman.org/Freedom/JewsInTheAttic.htm
Also, in reality even the most perfect person can have snippets of their life taken out of context, and devoid of the appropriate context (kept secret for national security reasons no doubt) a new more sinister story can be told.
Not to mention that with the latest reports of their being able to compromise devices beyond just mere surveillance, they could plant incriminating evidence (child porn) on the device of anyone they want to get rid of.
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Not to mention that with the latest reports of their being able to compromise devices beyond just mere surveillance, they could plant incriminating evidence (child porn) on the device of anyone they want to get rid of.
Wouldn’t such a thing leak? The people responsible for actually conducting the operation would all have to be completely immoral or amoral.
It’s one thing to spy on foreigners, or break laws. But ruin people’s lives that way, because of .. what?
Wouldn’t such a thing leak? To date there has been only one real whistleblower on their blatant violations of our 4th and 5th amendment rights. It seems that the mechanisms they have in place to keep people quiet do largely work.
The thing is they aren’t just spying on foreigners or those who are breaking laws, they’re spying on everyone without any reasonable suspicion to begin with. So while they’re not likely proactively fabricating evidence today in this fashion, how long until they have a suspect that they just can’t pin something on that they feel a ‘need’ to take down anyway? It’s happened before in traditional settings, it’s only a matter of time, when not if, until they do it in this new digital world.
.. how long until they have a suspect that they just can’t pin something on that they feel a ‘need’ to take down anyway?
I wonder.
FBI recently changed, in official documents it’s primary mission from law enforcement to national security.
They spied on the Occupy Wall Street movement and considered them to be a security risk, even though it was a somewhat feckless form of protest..
It’ll take some years I imagine. Manufacturing and planting evidence to get rid of dissidents and such is a thoroughly totalitarian practice..
What I’ve heard so far that LE goes on fishing expeditions, keeps trying to find something on people.
This would be a step beyond that – they’d need expert assistance to put the trojan onto a computer, someone else to provide the evidence and it’d all have to be done professionally.
The people responsible for actually conducting the operation would all have to be completely immoral or amoral.
You wish. It’s the hypermoral “whatever I do is justified because I’m doing it for The Greater Good” folks who can justify killing you for your own benefit, and then sleep like a baby.
Examples are legion, starting with the hijackers of 9-11.
“Typical mafia approach made even easier by NSA and their handlers.”
That was the whole plan from the start. They consider the American people a greater threat to their power than any jihadist, and they’re correct in that assessment. The IRS targeting scandal, the “make it hurt” campaigns during the so-called “government shutdown” recently, Chris Christie’s recent targeting of political opponents; these are just the tip of an iceberg. If these rebels, usrpers, thieves, and miscreants feel threatened enough, and they will before long, they will stop at nothing.
It’s not a matter of what you or I have to hide from government. The main issue is that those in government have so much to hide from us. Understand that, and you understand the NSA, the IRS, the president and his cronies, the leadership of both parties, et al.
Cornered cats.
Are you absolutely sure you don’t have something to hide, given how many felonies there are on the books today. A typical federal felon used to be someone like Al Capone. Now it’s more likely someone like Martha Stewart.