White House: "We expect" Hong Kong to comply with Snowden extradition

[MADem]

62. I am not surprised about the metadata, actually.

I'm sure the phone companies keep that shit anyway--how else do they determine customer usage, preferences, network requirements etc. It's not guesswork that tells them that x zillion calls are made on Mother's Day, that last for an average of y minutes, as opposed to b zillion calls on Father's Day, that last c minutes. It's METADATA that tells them that kind of stuff. Same deal with "Oooh, we had x million calls after that earthquake/typhoon/flood/what-have-you." That's METADATA. It's industrial information, and they keep it because they can use it to improve their own systems and for their own marketing purposes.

People who are really worried about privacy, and who are calling places where they don't want to be tracked, would do well to go buy a ten dollar tracfone and a twenty dollar card from the bodega on the corner. Much harder to track, and that number can go dead without a problem. Save the "real" phone for official biz.

I've lived places where you could hear the people listening in breathing and smoking--they weren't even subtle. I would have to yell at them if I had a bad connection to get them to shut up, and mention the names of some bigwigs I would pretend to know to threaten them.

I guess my expectation of privacy is much lower than people who spend most of their time in USA. If it can be hacked, tapped, or cracked, there are people who feel it is their duty to do just that. I figure that they're always going to be trying, and I adjust my conduct accordingly.