... I am no fan of Snowden, but he has certainly forced some discussion that I don't believe would have happened any other way. If he'd chosen to be an internal whistleblower, I doubt anything would have changed, and for the most part I doubt much will change even with him going public...
That is pretty much my take on it also. I just don't think I know enough, at least at this point, to judge him. Maybe others feel they do, that's OK.
Re: 'collecting data':
That's what I thought until I saw the program Frontline did. There appears to be a lot more information (emails, phone calls, credit card records) being collected than what we've been told.
OK, I see samclem pointed this out, but I agree with him - big difference between 'collecting it all ' (it's all on the fiber, you probably get it all or nothing) and actually looking/analyzing any of it, until there is reasonable cause to go there. I think the 'collecting it all' is just typical journalistic sensationalism.
Did not watch the interview, but the whole issue makes me wonder about the utility of this spying 'program' in preventing terror attacks. If NSA can monitor every call & tap into every keystroke, how in the Lord's green earth did these clowns miss the Boston bombers
? ...
This is my concern also. It reminds me of so many calls to bring in all this amazing technology, but then the simple things slip through the cracks. In hindsight, there were all sorts of deep yellow flags with those brothers, ones that I think should have been caught.
It reminds me a bit of when we first got full near-real-time databases of all our production information going at MegaCorp. At first, we were thrilled to have all this data at our fingertips. Ten minutes later, we realized, "What the hell are we going to do with all this data?!?! We're drowning in data!". But we figured out how to create reports that condensed it into something meaningful, and flagged anomalies. But it took time and effort.
Overall, I'm far less concerned about how much data they collect, even of my personal data (in fact, I really don't care about that at all), than I am of
what controls are in place to assure it is not misused. As a more down-to-Earth example, not hypothetical at all - we send our SS# and sensitive financial data, address, phone numbers and maybe checking account numbers to the IRS. Am I concerned that they have that info? Only to the point that it might get misused. If it is used for its intended purpose, it's a non-issue for me.
I feel the same about anything they collect from me. If they want my shopping list from emails to DW, I don't care. Just
don't give anyone access who could use it to figure when we are away from the house, and
do use it to catch bad guys.
-ERD50