What used to be considered paranoid is now our reality. That can't be good for mental health.

[dkf]

What does it do to a person to know their government can track every freaking thing they do? That every electronic device is capable of being a bug, that they basically have put a tracker on themselves?

That the government will know what we are thinking by looking at our emails and our searches, that they know who our friends are and who we speak with?

It's no longer paranoid and delusional to think your government is watching you and has the capability and the power to do so.

I guess we are all supposed to get over our misgivings and accept intrusion and constant surveillance? God forbid anyone feels panic over the thought.

[geek tragedy]

1. Russian malware programmers will know that stuff about you years before the NSA will. nt

[jollyreaper2112]

2. Yeah

I always thought the biggest dick move you could do was agree with a paranoid suffering a reality break. Yeah, I see the pink aliens, too!

Now it seems like treatment will be keep away drugs, alcohol, sharps and news media.

[uriel1972]

3. I have a friend in hospital...

Who believes ads were being targeted to her and her computer and phone was hacked. She also believes that the horoscopes in a popular magazine were targeted at her by the people who were doing the above.

I couldn't say the first bit wasn't happening, after all google and facebook do targeted ads, as for the second and third I tried to point out it was very unlikely. As for the last, well I was fairly confident that that didn't happen.

The thing is, someone could have hacked her computer for all I know, but I couldn't really address that without feeding into the delusion. I did some serious evasion and guiding the conversation back onto getting better then dealing with any stuff that may have happened.

Truth and fiction woven so tightly together, how to separate them I have little idea. How do you tell someone they are not being spied upon these days?

[dkf]

5. What a nightmare. I felt heebie jeebied when I got an email from a company whose product I googled.

It's still pretty obscure so I know it was due to my search. Ugh.

[uriel1972]

7. Yeah, the poor kid is scared and confused...

At least she is getting the treatment she needs. Her doctor sees her every night and the place is pretty good. Private health helps, it still took a week to get her a place. I shudder to think of what is happening in the public sector.

[MineralMan]

4. If you are a typical American citizen, the government

is not tracking or watching you. There's no reason for them to do so. If they want to know about you, you already have supplied the government with detailed information on multiple occasions.

The government is not interested in the content of your emails, phone calls, or much of anything else. It doesn't care what you post on internet forums, either. It simply doesn't. Of what use would such information be, in the first place?

The government is also supremely uninterested with where you go, when you go there, and what you do when you get there. There's no agency watching your movements. If you drive on a toll road that uses some sort of RFID identification mechanism, some computer will note that you drove on that toll road, but that's about it.

If, on the other hand, you're someone who is digging around looking for child pornography, planning a crime, or working together with others to do some terroristic thing, then the government might be interested enough to pay attention to you. On the other hand, the fact that all of those things happen all the time, to the complete surprise of the government, it appears that the government isn't proactively look for those activities, either.

In theory, the government could do all of those things. But, it's not doing them. The government doesn't give a crap what anyone here on DU, their friends, anyone they know, or their families do. If it did, it could, but it doesn't. There's not enough money, nor enough people, on the planet to do that to everyone, all the time.

So, if you're worried about the government spying on you, you can relax. You're not that interesting. Really.

But, businesses are interested, and they can do most of those things, and do. They want your money, and so they're interested in your activities. You're being followed, but it's not by the government. You're being followed by companies who want some of your money.

[uriel1972]

9. I'm concerned about the abuse of power...

Individuals with access to that power need to be watched closely. Funny in a way, we get back to the age old problem of "Who guards the guardians?".

[dkf]

10. The government is watching us all at once by scanning through our communications en-masse.

That's not even an audit, it's a blanket process. We've all been touched.

[MineralMan]

12. Actually, a computer, or a bunch of computers, are doing that.

Computers. Not humans. The algorithms they use eliminate almost everyone from further scrutiny.

Google is also watching you. So is your bank. They can find out enormous amounts of information on you. Put Ghostery on your PC, and you'll see just how many tracking companies are watching where you go on the internet.

Frankly, lots and lots of organizations, public and private, are watching you and everyone else they can. Computers sift through all that information and do things like send you email, show you ads, and that sort of thing. The government? It can't afford to do that. It collects everything it can, then has computers discard almost all of it right away.

Truly, you are not interesting to the government in any way. They're not selling anything, and you'll send them money through a big range of taxes, many of which you never think about. The government is looking for truly dangerous activity, and that's all. You're not doing any of that, so the government doesn't give a crap about what you do.

[Egnever]

17. +1000

[dkf]

20. Oh yeah, like videotaping everything is only a camera right?

Is this like the "if a tree falls in a forest" thing? Oh it's not surveillance unless someone watched it. So that goofball asshole that made a hole in your wall to tape you didn't watch it yet. No harm no foul!

Hey that's okay too because why would he want to see you naked right? Oh that's of no interest to him. Yeah let him store it on his mantel.

[MineralMan]

21. Videotaping is a verb.

Camera is a noun. They're not the same thing at all.

[dkf]

22. Great diversion.

[MineralMan]

23. Nothing up my sleeve, see?

Now watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!

Then, you say:

Again? That trick never works.

It's all Moose and Squirrel, this thread.

[dkf]

24. Lol. Well at least you are entertaining. :)

[legcramp]

26. But what if the poor gal in DC yesterday had access to the internet

and happened across website discussions where all sorts of hyperbolic threads regarding Big Brother tracking her every move? Especially if she was close to the edge in the 1st place.

Probably would scare the crap out of her and drive her over the that edge.

[MineralMan]

27. Who's to say she didn't see it?

I have no idea. There's no question that the government and private industry have the ability to track us in many ways. Corporations have a financial interest in doing so, and they actually use the information they find to try to sell us more crap. The government, on the other hand, gets nothing from the information, so it tosses everything that doesn't have to do with illegal activities, terrorism, and other threats. That's the bottom line.

The reality is that we live in a communications society. As long as we use all of that, we're putting ourselves out there and people are watching. The government, though, isn't who we should be worried about as much as private corporate interests for whom that tracking means money.

[KurtNYC]

6. Whole different thing. I used to work for feature film company and the

"fan" mail that came in was just plain scarey. It is not uncommon for people with certain mental health issues (including paranoid schiz) to act on their delusions that they have some connection to some famous person -- being stalked, pregnant with their child, etc.

I read the outside of an envelope (manila file folder taped shut actually) addressed to "Molly Ringwold, Hollywood USA" that demanded she "repent" Others came in addressed to Kato (of the Green Hornet, not OJ's Kato and not the actor who played Kato but the actual fictional character). We had to turn some over to the FBI. One series turned out to be from a person who was in care but the care givers thought her obsession with writing to celebs was "an outlet." I think those were the letters to Sean Penn which threatened to kill Madonna Ciccone.

[dkf]

8. I wonder how these people get on in life?

How often are they fending for themselves?

[Hydra]

11. It's the new normal

I remember an odd event from my childhood that relates. One of my relatives who worked as a counterterrorism consultant asked us if we wanted to come on a vacation he was taking. We never had much money being a single parent family, so we said yes.

The vacation was great, but during the trip I overheard him talking to a client he was meeting, and the client said she was being stalked by people who were photographing her and she was thinking her phone was tapped. He told her they do that sort of thing and there's nothing you can do about it.

I remember thinking at the time that it was ridiculous...we don't do that sort of thing to people. Boy was I ever wrong...and look now- we're doing it on a planetwide scale.

What do they want to know so badly that they need to do this?

[dkf]

13. It's about controlling us...

[Hydra]

14. Having read 1984, I have to agree

"Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed— would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper— the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you."

Too bad the Prophet was correct.

[gordianot]

15. So at least we must declare: "die gedanken sind frei".

[Egnever]

16. Real easy

if you are that freaked out about it turn them off.

[NickB79]

18. I think it explains a lot about our society

Not just the NSA scandal currently, but the trajectory we've been on for the past couple of decades now. Increased paranoia, not only about the government but of previously-revered public institutions.

Look at the state of science in America. Vaccines became bad because people became paranoid of autism. Global warming became a hoax because people were paranoid of some egg-head scientists trying to take their SUV's away.

General paranoia also explains the rise of the Tea Party and the whole "doomsday prepping" movement in recent years.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

19. LOL. And of course Central London which is blanketed in surveillance

is site of many many attacks by the schizoid. Oh wait--it's not! There goes THAT theory!

[Blue_Tires]

25. um...You do realize people have had

"they're all out to get me!" episodes of psychotic paranoia long before the NSA and Information Age ever existed, right??

[ProSense]

28. This is too Alex Jonesish.

"What used to be considered paranoid is now our reality. That can't be good for mental health."

It's still "considered paranoid."

[Pathwalker]

29. It's clear you don''t have a paranoid schitsophrenic reative who's

ever had a psychotic break, ever had to have one involuntarily committed, or try to commit suicide by cop just to stop those voices in their head that won't let them have a moment's peace. This woman WAS delusional, she WAS having a psychotic break, and for you to use her tragedy in this way is disgusting, IMO. Cheap. Nasty. Callous.

[jwirr]

30. In the last two days we have seen a woman with mental issues crash into a WH barrier, attempt to

run down the men who were trying to stop her and do this all with her child in the car. Today we are hearing about a man on fire in the Mall. I can actually understand what would drive them to this if there are mental health issues. What they hear from the media is all the programs that are being cut and how little hope there is that the rethugs will do the right thing.

It is bad enough that they are confused in the first place but then add the threat of all these cuts etc. The pressure most be enormous. It is bad enough for those of us who are simply afraid of what is going to happen let alone dealing with health issues on top of it.

The rethugs are heartless. What comes aroung goes around - may it happen to all these greedy rethugs.