Robert Scheer: Who Needs the Gestapo When You Have ‘Angry Birds’?

[marmar]

from truthdig:


Who Needs the Gestapo When You Have ‘Angry Birds’?

Posted on Jan 28, 2014
By Robert Scheer


Somewhere in the lowest reaches of hell, Adolf Hitler and his coterie of lesser dictators must be tormented by the knowledge they did not live long enough to get their hands on “Angry Birds.” How much diabolical power they would have had, not playing the game, but rather mining the data freely volunteered by its billion unsuspecting customers.

“When a smartphone user opens Angry Birds, the popular game application, and starts slinging birds at chortling green pigs, spy agencies have plotted how to lurk in the background to snatch data revealing the player’s location, age, sex and other personal information ...” The New York Times reported, based on the latest of Edward Snowden’s leaks.

No need then for the Gestapo to go crashing through apartment doors to brutally interrogate citizens as to the most guarded moments of their personal lives when a vast amount of private information from gaming, mapping and social networking sites is pirated by the government. No totalitarian leader could ever imagine such surveillance power over his populace.

Of course, such nightmarish fantasies are a long way from the rationalizations of our own democratically oriented U.S. and British spy agencies that assure us they only ever target the bad guys. But the harrowing specificity about our once presumed private lives, as revealed this week in yet another devastating trove of documents from Snowden and reported in the Times and The Guardian, might one day open the floodgates to a totally regimented society. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/who_needs_the_gestapo_when_you_have_angry_birds_20140128

[villager]

1. Interestingly, you even have the phenonmenon of "Good German"-style apologists for NSA overreach

More outraged that any excesses were exposed, as to being angry that the 4th Amendment has vanished.

[xchrom]

2. du rec.

[KoKo]

3. It came silently on stealth paws....into our lives through games, social networking

and the need for businesses and therefore the rest of us to embrace this wonderful new technology that many of us didn't understand in the first place. But, those who did understand it and had all access from the beginning had a marvelous new "experiment." And, they abused it. So, we have a generation or two who will have to learn how to undo this...if it can be undone at this point. Or, find creative new ways to undermine it.

Strange times ahead. Drone Surveillance and with possible "kill powers" domestically and Robot Armies that can be deployed anywhere. All kinds of interesting new stuff coming down the pike faster than we can keep up at this point.

[RobertEarl]

4. Not this shit again?

Comparing our spying with the Nazi's is not, well, it just ain't.....

Wait, yes it is. Totally fair.

Hitler would be drooling. Thank Gawd there are no more Hitler types, eh?

[neverforget]

5. But guys, it's only METADATA!!!! It's not like they have your name. Besides, they're

protecting us from ___________ who want to kill us for our freedoms.