<p>Just wondering what everyone thinks about the NSA having the powers that it currently does. Do we have to allow the NSA to data mine to keep us safe, and is giving up some of our civil liberties worth the trade off?</p>
<p>Dan Brown wrote my favorite book about the NSA having the power to read all emails many years ago. In that fiction he lays out how easy it would be to use a super computer and brute force to crack any encryption code to read emails. In that story the NSA stops 100’s if not 1000’s of terrorist attacks yearly with this tactic, and I think for me how much safer it really makes us is what would push my stance on it either way. How do you feel about this?</p>
<p>Not sure how long this thread will last… although interestingly, people from both sides of the political spectrum have expressed dismay about this. When Michael Moore and Glenn Beck agree on something, maybe that means it transcends politics! I personally am appalled… rooting for the ACLU’s lawsuit myself.</p>
<p>I worked on projects back in the 1980s and it was generally rumored that the CIA or NSA had backdoor access. This sort of thing isn’t surprising. You might want to watch “Enemy of the State”.</p>
<p>Does it prevent attacks? I don’t know. We aren’t told about the attacks in detail that are foiled. Why didn’t it foil the attack at the Boston Marathon? The two perps used computers and phones and other intelligence agencies knew about them.</p>
<p>I do not believe that he made $200K working for BAH. You need to be a senior associate or higher to earn that kind of salary at BAH. And GS salaries for a person of his qualifications do not pay anything close to $200K. Some reporter did not did do their fact checking.</p>
<p>One news channel I watched corrected it’s earlier claim and said he made closer to 120k. </p>
<p>I think this is a very interesting topic because it does transcend party lines so much. I think the original intention of the fourth amendment was to allow for searching by the authorities when they have a specific suspicion and good reasoning behind it. It did not allow for massive searches of a whole town because there was a suspected killer loose let’s say. I think that’s a good place to draw the line myself, and I feel that this massive data grab goes against any specific suspicion that used to be required. It’s hard to draw a line here though, without having a good understanding of how the whole process works.</p>
<p>Booze Allen stated his salary was 122,000. </p>
<p>It doesn’t make me feel any better or safer knowing that the government has access to my communications. This president has called people who hold my beliefs terrorists and his enemies. So it doesn’t make me feel all is right in the world that the information will be used to prevent terrorist attacks.</p>
<p>I wonder how my political opposites will feel when the other party’s administration has control of this info and acts on it, as we’ve learned in the last few weeks did indeed happen. I don’t care if those gov’t agencies acted accidentally or illegally or mistakenly or was just performed by low level employees.</p>
<p>I find the IRS scandal more problematic…and ABC and CNN spent 0 minutes of prime time coverage on the hearings…The media is no longer the watch dog of our government when a certain party has the power.</p>
<p>Additional bonus? Doubtful, especially since he was terminated yesterday. Besides, he only worked for BAH for 3 months. I’m sure this is a PR nightmare for them.</p>
<p>I personally feel that NSA data collection falls into a gray area: I don’t want a government agency collecting my personal data. At the same time, Google, Facebook, Verizon, and a multitude of commercial entities already DO record my every keystroke. They already know which websites I visit. My credit card company records every transaction and informs me when my spending patterns are unusual or come from strange countries. They all do this legally. I’m not trying to justify the fact that the NSA is compiling a huge database without public knowledge, but the fact is that data mining is already legally widespread. The feature article of May/June 2013 Foreign Affairs is “The Rise of Big Data.”</p>
<p>Every time I read about the NSA & IRS scandals, all I can think of is the famous Pogo comic strip from 1971 where Pogo says, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”</p>
<p>Google, Facebook, Verizon and those other private companies don’t have the power to investigate me, charge me with crimes, try me or imprison me. So no, I don’ t feel safer with Big Brother watching my every keystroke or phone call or purchase.</p>
<p>Some are saying this is the same as the Patriot Act, and some are saying that it is a reach on top of the Patriot Act. I can’t say I approve of either this or the Patriot Act myself.</p>
<p>I remember news stories from 1996 about this, but nobody seemed to care. I assumed after the Patriot Act that anything that could be be in this “war on terror” would be done. I guess I am just to cynical about it. I find it funny listening to the same people that willingly put their entire lives on facebook, tell us all when they go out on foursquare and tweet about what they eat are now concerned with privacy. Most people in the new generation willingly give up their entire lives. </p>
<p>I seem to recall a science fiction novel where everything was monitored, recorded, etc by citizens. Soon everyone was running around naked for fear that hiding something would mean that they had something to hide. </p>
<p>I am upset about this latest breach, but it is no more heinous than anything else that has happened in the last 12 years.</p>
<p>I hope that Snowden gets to spend his life in prison. He is a traitor. Whether the program was right or wrong, it was not his right to disclose that program to the public. He signed agreements and promised to do otherwise.</p>
<p>IT folks can do quite well with current skills. I believe the guy that stole the keys to San Francisco’s computer systems several years back was making in the $140s. The IT stuff is a lot different from developer work which requires more of a mathematical and programming background.</p>
<p>I think it’s actually worse that we’ve given private companies even more access than the government has grabbed. Google and Facebook have vast amounts of personal data, including emails. The government bothers me less because they have to use courts and police to translate information into action. While TV and movies show vast conspiracies in which everyone seems to keep extreme secrets, the reality is the courts and police are essentially local and that the federal courts and federal police (DEA, etc.) have limited power. As long as we have a functioning judicial system, we are better protected from the government than from Facebook - or hackers who in a few years will be able to put together highly detailed portraits of you.</p>
<p>As for looking at stuff, what do you think the NSA does? They look at stuff to figure out patterns that might indicate dangers. I’m not convinced of the value of that, given their failure to identify 9/11, but that’s the idea. Going forward, I try to keep in mind that developing this capability is important for national defense because our enemies and sometimes allies are building the capacity to get into our systems and our data. Having a non-technical government would be stupid in the long run … unless we want to give the advantage to other countries.</p>
<p>If the government has information, for example, that I’ve looked at porn (of the non-child variety), it can’t do anything with that because that doesn’t translate into action in courts. But a private company could blackmail me for money to keep my privacy. Or use that information to get me to do something for them, say in a transaction that otherwise wouldn’t go through. Say you have collected data on a broker or 3 and you say you won’t wreck their families if they just do this little favor … like account access … or … That is the difference: the government actually has to go through more hoops to get information and then to translate that into action.</p>
<p>Does this even work? As BCEagle pointed out they were clueless about Boston bombing. So massive that it can’t be effective. Besides, secrets are used to cover up wrongdoings as often.</p>