Personally I just don't understand why everyone worries so much about all these surveillance announcements.
People contribute with personal data to help increase the security of a nation. I don't consider that as an act of spying from government, I call that "Crowd Funding" from the people, for global security.
But well, I'm an optimist and I assume there are doing this for the right reasons.
> But well, I'm an optimist and I assume there are doing this for the right reasons.
Even if the laws were made with good intentions, they are not implemented by perfect human beings. If you get on the US No-Fly list just because of a clerical error, you will have to fight in court for years to get off [1] because the administration does not want to admit mistakes. Laura Poitras, an investigative journalist, was repeatedly "randomly" searched and detained on airports, without any formal charge, because her documentations are inconvenient to those in charge [2]. IIRC, GHCQ employees stored nude images of those they were surveying in the "Optic Nerve" program for their private collections (I couldn't find source for that, though, so take it with a grain of salt).
The general pattern to observe: The combination of power and secrecy fosters abuse.
Imagine if we gave this sort of power to a 1960s government. It would be very effective for identifying and convicting homosexuals and communists.
Those specific groups are safer today, but humans as a species haven't changed. We will almost certainly abuse that power against some other marginalized group, whether we mean to or not.
People contribute with personal data to help increase the security of a nation. I don't consider that as an act of spying from government, I call that "Crowd Funding" from the people, for global security.
But well, I'm an optimist and I assume there are doing this for the right reasons.