[edwardunknown]

I hate to be this guy but there are people lighting off bombs out there and as soon as a big one goes off people will demand they do a lot more than this. Would you rather have your Facebook scanned or see a car bomb go off in Times Square during rush hour? That's not hyperbole, that's the decision we have to make.

[betterunix]

That is hyperbole. The number of terrorist incidents is massively low, and the few that the government claims to have stopped were such laughably unrealistic plots that one wonders the government even bothered. Meanwhile, we have a government surveillance program that literally surpasses the level of the Stasi, here in the United States, and simultaneously an administration that will not even reveal the criteria used for deciding when to engage in an extrajudicial killing.

Sorry, but you cannot scare me with terrorism. I would rather see the rare terrorist attack than live in a country where I have to think twice about what I say on the phone.

[edwardunknown]

Bullshit, 'the Stasi"? Go talk to somebody who lived in East Germany. And they catch people all the time trying to get bomb materials, how did you think they were doing it, luck? (In the case of the car bomb in Times Square you're right, it was dumb luck, the timer malfunctioned.) If the average person didn't freak out and start yelling retarded things like 'Stasi!' I'd say fine, maybe my fucking Facebook is worth people's lives but they do freak out and then they pass things like the Patriot Act, or worse. So to prevent mindless fear I say fine, scoop up whatever crap you need, if I want something kept secret I know how to do it.

[gaelian]

My partner grew up in East Germany and has told me of the Stasi and their activities. I note that the GP wrote 'we have a government surveillance program that literally surpasses the level of the Stasi' - emphasis mine, and I think this is a fair statement.

Also, on a meta-point, every time I see someone start their post off with the word 'Bullshit' on HN - and I see it quite often, like it's some sort of HN meme - I always think: gee, that post would have lost nothing from the exclusion of that first word and probably would have been a little more in service of promoting civil discourse.

[edwardunknown]

How old's your partner, I've known two people who escaped from East Germany and one from Romania. I asked them all about what it was like living there & how they escaped because of course I'm an asshole American and all I got was the thousand yard stare. When the Berlin Wall fell there were hundreds of divorces because they found out their spouses were spying on them. Bugging people's homes was routine. If you said anything against the government you were shipped off or executed. In the case of the Romanian guy I've never seen that kind of look on a man's face. In all three cases I feel terrible for even asking, and I won't be doing it again. Datamining your worthless Facebook page does not compare to what they went through.

[gaelian]

I have a general policy of not divulging exact personal details of friends or family on the Internet without their express consent. But suffice it to say she was old enough to understand what the Stasi did, and lucky enough to have not been directly affected by them as an individual, although some people around her were: interrogations, permanent disappearances, etc.

However, not everything was beatings, disappearances and terror. Believe it or not, East Germany wasn't all downsides. People were employed, general crime was apparently quite low, children felt relatively safe, children were given education (though indoctrination was certainly a heavy component), they were clothed and fed. While the standard of living sounded like it was relatively low across the board, it also seemed that this standard of living was more evenly distributed than might have been the case in some other places at the time. Obviously traditional Communism has borne out to be more or less unsustainable, and I won't be participating in any debate about Communism vs other dogmas, but I feel I would not be accurately conveying all that I've been told were I not to mention these counterpoints to the Stasi's behaviour.

One fascinating thing my partner has told me is that for some reason, the memories she has of East Germany before the wall came down tend to be in black and white, in her mind's eye.

As you retell, the Stasi were quite big on the human intelligence angle, but I doubt they would have had to resort to such measures would they have had access to the kind of communication infrastucture that is common in the developed world today. Such a system as the NSA et al have access to now, would have been a Stasi wet dream, I'd imagine.

[paganel]

> Bullshit, 'the Stasi"? Go talk to somebody who lived in East Germany.

I grew up as a kid in Romania, we didn't have the Stasi but we did have the Securitate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securitate), which were as bad if not worse. I would like to confirm that from half a Globe away what I'm reading about the NSA gives me the chills.

[flyinRyan]

They don't catch anyone! The only plans they intercept are their own fucking plans! Have you not noticed that every would-be "terrorist" they've caught was entrapped? That is, without the US government talking them into it and supplying the materials they wouldn't have done shit? Get your fucking head out of your ass, you're selling our freedoms to fight shadows.

[rhp]

Nobody wants to see a car bomb go off in Times Square, but the problem with this line of reasoning is that it requires an unrealistic amount of trust that the government won't take this power to extremes. It's just human nature that power tends to corrupt, and absolute power will corrupt absolutely -- especially if left unchecked. In the case of these revelations, how can something be kept in check if its mere existence is kept secret by those who abuse it?

[edwardunknown]

I'm just happy someone found a productive use for Facebook.

But right, it can't be kept in check because it will bleed out into other areas of law enforcement. Then we hit back. But I do think people's thermometers are good enough to know when something like this is warranted and when it's not. When you remember that we are at war, on our own soil, this is a very minor thing. But if one major attack happens though it will create a panic and then we'll see major changes to our way of life. And a lot of the same tough guys here from New York and San Francisco will be the ones demanding it.

[pyre]

Right. Their argument is invalid because if some hypothetical future even happens, you predict that their attitude would change.

[edwardunknown]

"Hypothetical": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foiled_Islamic_terroris...

And those are the ones we know about, Obama doesn't spike the ball on that stuff quite like Bush did.

And if you think there wouldn't be global ramifications for blowing up the New York City subway line you're not thinking clearly.

[flyinRyan]

So in 20+ years we have 12 cases? And how do we know any of these cases are actually true? Because the people who benefit from wiretapping us claim it's true? The cases I follow have all been clear cut cases of entrapment (where the victim still went to jail!).

[flyinRyan]

You're a moron. We had none of this infra in place until recently and what have the "terrorists" managed to pull off? Two WTC attacks in 20 years and the biggest one killed 3k people. I'd rather take the chance on a bomb going off in Time Square at rush hour. That happening is insanely unlikely, but the government abusing privacy information has already happened. The more they have the worse it will get.

The only "terrorists" I worry about is the US government itself.

[gyardley]

Did I sleep in the day we actually made that decision? Because from where I'm standing it looks like the government made that decision for us, without telling us about it.

Had we been asked to participate in the decision somehow, armed with a bit of the 'transparency' this government keeps talking about, we might have weighed the evidence and democratically chosen the exact same course of action - although I'm not 100% sure of that. But none of us were asked.

[edwardunknown]

You were asked, it was called "mid term elections". They had them without you.