While on the topic, the Western Center for Journalism asks if, perhaps, some of this NSA-collected material might have been used to influence Chief Justice Roberts to change his vote at the last minute on Obamacare.
And if you still cling to the foolish and long debunked ‘I have nothing to hide, so I have nothing to worry about’ fallacy, please, consider the following book: Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent by Harvey Silverglate. Here is an excerpt from a review of the book:
‘The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior.’
After all, Kiera Wilmot, a 16-year-old student, faced 2 felony charges of bomb-making and was to be tried as an adult for a school science-experiment that produced a ‘pop’, in which nobody was hurt and no damage happened – only popular outcry forced the authorities to eventually drop the charges.
And, of course, who can forget why ‘the authorities’ kept such a concise log on citizens’ activities in Fahrenheit 451! If they could not catch the real culprit, an early-morning dog-walker would be a suitable substitute… (Yes, it is since having read this book in English that I cannot bring myself to use the word ‘fireman’ and instead use ‘fire-fighter’.)
And, if you think that ‘just’ collecting metadata does not tell ‘the regime’ a lot about you, please, consider this interesting, humorously written article which graphically demonstrates how the analysis of metadata would have helped identify and ‘neutralize’ Paul Revere.
P.S. In the above video, they say that when the EFF asked the US government to clarify how they were interpreting the laws, they were told the answer was ‘classified’. Consider the implications of that! How can you possibly follow the laws if you are not permitted to know how the government will enforce them? Do you still think you have ‘nothing to hide’?!?!?
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 