[wombatmobile]

> I will say that personally I have fewer concerns about programs to monitor public content on the Internet, than programs that seek to access, monitor, and store content that people intended to be privately communicated to other people.

You may have fewer concerns about public monitoring vs private spying, presumably because in the latter case privacy is being violated in a way that isn't the case for the former.

But both cases are nefarious, and you don't have to choose between them.

Both are examples of using public funds to abuse access to information from end users for political purposes.

[HenryBemis]

Public vs Private:

Public: I can think of an example. If the USPS finds out that in a certain area of a certain city, there is a big chance to have riots "tomorrow after 10am" (protests because of X-Y-Z resason), they can alert their local teams to e.g. deliver the post at 7am instead of 11am. Yes, some operations would be impacted (e.g. noon delivery won't happen), but this will protect the staff, protect the items (letters, parcels), the vehicles, etc.

If they just hoard data to feed a bigger best (e.g. NSA) then, the data is still out there (my public blog, your public blog, HN comments, etc.) and they are up for the taking. In which case it doesn't matter if it is a federal agent carrying a NSA or a USPS badge.

[ridaj]

I'd be surprised if they could deliver anything ahead of schedule, but I imagine they can tell people to stop what they're doing at 9am if they're in a dangerous area

[mxcrossb]

14 billion dollars was spent in the 2020 election [1]. If someone wants to “nefarious”ly analyze public information for political purposes, they can easily do it with private funds.

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/10/28/202...