3 separate issues: CIA/NSA overreach, Metadata/Spying, and Snowden

[apples and oranges]

These issues are being lumped together inappropriately.

1. CIA/NSA overreach is not OK. They need to follow the law and report their activities TRUTHFULLY to Congress.

2. Metadata/spying. This is a legal issue. If they are allowed to do it, then fine. I'm not for it, but I'm not actively against it. Frankly Google and others have way more of our private data than the government at this point.

3. Snowden. Where and how does he fit in? Did he report something that was not already known? Is he just a stimulus that caused the CIA/NSA to lie under oath?

[Romulox]

1. Nonsense. Each of these issues folds into the next. nt

[PowerToThePeople]

2. apples and authoritarians

2. Metadata/spying. This is a legal issue. If they are allowed to do it, then fine. I'm not for it, but I'm not actively against it. Frankly Google and others have way more of our private data than the government at this point.

Google, et al, have a LOT of information. I still think that what the NSA holds can be much more damaging to citizens. They are not limited to one slice of network traffic. Even google just has google's slice of traffic. The 4th amendment still exists.

Both data mining issues are wrong imo and should be abolished and criminalized.

[Autumn]

3. I've seen them compared but not lumped together.

As for the rest, if we knew more, and there are politicians trying to tell us that what we have found out is only the tip of the iceberg, I think we would see that it's all entwined.

[Maedhros]

4. You are missing an important point.

2. Metadata/spying. This is a legal issue. If they are allowed to do it, then fine. I'm not for it, but I'm not actively against it. Frankly Google and others have way more of our private data than the government at this point.

Google doesn't have an extensive network of law enforcement and espionage agencies, empowered to detain, arrest, imprison, deport, torture and kill, that can act on the data they gather. Google represents a vastly smaller threat to our freedom than the U.S. government.