[PlzSnow]

"I fear that if I use the wrong words or visit the wrong websites, I'll trigger some automated system and will be put on some kind of watch list that will change my life"

I'm afraid you've got caught up in a modern-day hysteria. Nobody is watching you or cares anything about what text messages you type or websites you visit.

[dang]

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11586218 and marked it off-topic.

[fit2rule]

Thats just simply not true. There are automated systems doing precisely this kind of tracking. Did you not dig into the Snowden revelations and see just how bad it is?

Because, its really, really bad. No, I do not want my data in some secret government organizations' computer systems, for secret analysis. Ever. It may not be of consequence to the current administration, but do we really want Trump to have the power that the NSA grants? Clinton? Do we really want anyone with that power?

I think the biggest problem with the Snowden revelations is that, even now years after the fact, people don't seem to understand just how corrupt and how crippling the NSA security apparatus is, truly. Dig into the details and you will see that one of the most technologically advances tools of mass oppression is now upon us - and not just 'upon us', actually - but has been in operation now for over two decades.

Just what effect it has had, we will never know. Maybe there are people who have been spirited away, detected by this system as the rising new radicals that will upset the apple-cart, and we have absolutely no idea who or what they were. Do you really trust the religious zealots in power over this machinery to use it appropriately? Really? Then you are a huge part of the problem.

[hargup]

That is if you are white and American, for everyone else the possibilities of getting harassed based on what you see, read or say are very real.