[Zirro]

"The nsa could potentially read my email or track my location. But Google definitely already does."

From the leaks we know that they both do the same thing, which is to use their computer resources to sift through all emails they get their hands on, build profiles of people and connect them with each other. Neither could afford to have humans reading all the data coming at them.

The difference is that Google uses their conclusions to show you the most profitable ads, while the NSA keeps their conclusions to themselves until the day of your potential arrest.

Whether people consider the creation of such a profile to be spying is up to them, but my personal suspicion is that people would strongly object if they understood what was being done with their data.

[digi_owl]

Why limit it to an arrest?

Consider if you get into politics in some way?

Maybe you get a evening visitor telling you to either drop your ambitions, vote a certain way once in office, or in some other way dictate terms for not releasing something to the press.

Something that while not directly criminal, will be negative enough socially to make a mess of your life.

[PJDK]

This would make things very different.

However I've not seen any suggestion that this is happening, nor is dragnet surveillance in any way a pre-requisite for this sort of thing.

It isn't the lack of means that stops democracies becoming dictatorships.

[cryoshon]

Check out JTRIG. The stated purpose is to degrade and disrupt all kinds of lawful and nonviolent organizations.

As far as democracy vs dictatorship goes, consider that there is a third (and probably many other) alternatives: inverted democracy: all the totalitarianism of a dictatorship paired with passive "participation" to rubber stamp the majority of the regime, which is not subject to any form of democratic oversight. I think we're headed there rapidly, if not already there.

Remember the study that showed that public opinion is less important than moneyed interests? That's part of it, too.

[mattgibson]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

[AlisdairO]

Dragnet surveillance is not a prerequisite, but it makes it wildly more effective. Without it, when someone becomes an issue you have to dig into their past and try to find that which they haven't covered well in the intervening time. This is costly and can be circumvented given determination. Dragnet surveillance gives you a complete history of everyone at your fingertips. It makes oppression wildly cheaper and easier.

[justincormack]

This has definitely happened in the past, before dragnet surveillance. The fact that many uk politicians have found they have gchq files suggests it continues in some form.

[rhino369]

The NSA is nonpartisan and is subject to overview by both parties.

Google on the other hand? They spend millions upon millions of dollars trying to influence policy in Washington.

Who do you think is actually more likely to use blackmail here?

[djrogers]

>The NSA is nonpartisan and is subject to overview by both parties.

The same NSA that lied to it's oversight committees about it's actions? Or do you live under a different NSA than the rest of us?

[cryoshon]

The NSA lied to the congressional oversight committee repeatedly and reliably. After each lie, there was another leak which showed them to be liars.

They tried to hide by redefining the meaning of all sorts of simple terms ("collection" comes to mind) and narrow political answers like "not under this program".

There hasn't been any actual overview by either party... the actions of the NSA are aggressively hidden from them, and they prosecute whistleblowers.

[daemin]

From what I recall it has only been in the last several years when Google has actually started doing any lobbying.

Also when it comes to lobbying involving a lot of money and for draconian measures you should take a look at Hollywood and the entertainment industry. They've been using lobbyists for decades to pursue even more draconian agendas.

[mindcrime]

The NSA is nonpartisan and is subject to overview by both parties.

Non-partisan my ass. The NSA is it's own party. And from what we've seen over the past 3 years or so, they are - effectively - under NO oversight whatsoever. They lie to Congress with impunity, get rubber-stamp "warrants" from the FISA courts, and then do whatever the hell they want anyway.

[digi_owl]

"rogue elements".

[rhino369]

Applies just as much to Google.

[rhino369]

The NSA doesn't get my email unless it gets a FISA warrant since I'm in the USA. Court records show they get about 3000 warrants a year. I'm pretty confident I'm not one of those.

The problem with google though, is that anything Google knows about me can be sought by the NSA with just one of those FISA warrants.

Google and Facebook are essentially NSA Reserve Branch.

The NSA also isn't charged with making criminal cases. There is a conspiracy theory about "parallel construction" but too much crime is totally unsolved for the NSA to be secretly feeding law enforcement data on a large scale.

I also wouldn't be so sure that Google or Facebook won't fuck with your life. Plenty of American companies have done extraordinarily evil things before. Then again so has the government.

[cryoshon]

Did you really just call parallel construction a conspiracy theory? Hell no it isn't, and you are being dishonest or ignorant by claiming it's not well founded.

Let's quote Wikipedia:

"In August 2013, a report by Reuters revealed that the Special Operations Division (SOD) of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration advises DEA agents to practice parallel construction when creating criminal cases against Americans that are actually based on NSA warrantless surveillance. The use of illegally obtained evidence is generally inadmissible under the Fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine.

Two senior DEA officials explained that the reason parallel construction is used is to protect sources (such as undercover agents or informants) or methods in an investigation. One DEA official had told Reuters: "Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day. It's decades old, a bedrock concept.""

That's a formal government advisory to its agents that they should cover up the way that they actually encountered evidence. And that is total bullshit because it completely invalidates your right to a fair trial, among other rights. This isn't the NSA, solving crimes, it's the government law enforcement agencies querying the NSA database in order to solve cases they've already opened.

[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

[Zirro]

"The NSA doesn't get my email unless it gets a FISA warrant since I'm in the USA. Court records show they get about 3000 warrants a year. I'm pretty confident I'm not one of those."

Your implication seems to be that this is supposed to make the practice more acceptable. Well, I'm not from the US or even a Five Eyes-country. I speak from the perspective of the billions of people who don't have these rights under the NSA and similar-minded agencies.

[mindcrime]

The NSA doesn't get my email unless it gets a FISA warrant since I'm in the USA

And you're basing this belief on what, exactly? The NSA party-line? I think a lot of evidence shows that they've been scarfing up damn near everything, FISA be damned, by using bogus interpretations of various laws. Are you really confident that the NSA aren't hoovering up your email, web traffic, phone calls, etc?

Just curious, as I see nothing to support such a belief.

[idlewords]

The FBI can read any email of yours older than six months without a warrant.